Word: dollarses
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Though a Boston businessman named Charles Ponzi was the scam's namesake, he wasn't its original practitioner. According to Mitchell Zuckoff, a Ponzi biographer, the reigning king of the "rob Peter to pay Paul" scam was a New York grifter named William Miller, who bilked investors out of $1...
Ponzi was a charismatic Italian immigrant who, in 1919 and 1920, coaxed thousands of people into shelling out millions of dollars - including a staggering $1 million in a single three-hour period - to buy postage stamps using international reply coupons. This strategy, Ponzi promised, enabled one to purchase postage at...
Ponzi, who was released from prison and deported back to Italy in 1934, set the standard in the genre. But the golden age of Ponzi and pyramid schemes didn't arrive for decades. (The two highly similar cons are often conflated, though in Ponzi schemes, a ringleader facilitates the entire...
In some communities in Africa, parents still believe their children are dying not from AIDS, but from witchcraft. Meanwhile, many HIV activists encourage medical doctors in these contexts to rely on the assistance of traditional healers (who are known to spread the myth that sleeping with a virgin cures diseases...
The Tribune Company’s decision to file for bankruptcy was only the latest in a series of setbacks for the American newspaper industry. Even before Tribune—which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and its namesake Chicago Tribune—announced its filing, the...