Word: zuckoff
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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 million - nearly $25 million in today's dollars - in 1899. After drumming up interest by claiming to have an inside window into the way profitable companies operated, Miller - who earned the nickname "520 percent" due to the astonishing rate of return he promised investors over the course of a year...
...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 European currencies' lower fixed rates before redeeming them in U.S dollars at higher values. "For instance," Zuckoff explained in a Dec. 15 article for FORTUNE, "a person could buy 66 International Reply Coupons in Rome for the equivalent of $1. Those same 66 coupons would cost $3.30 in Boston," where Ponzi was based. But there weren't enough coupons in circulation to make the plan workable. The ploy...
...Zuckoff said he was originally unsure of whether he would be able to capture the experience of an interracial marriage in addition to their parental challenges. But, he said, he discovered their views on race provided a prism through which to look at entering the world with a disability...
...They understood that every time there was an interaction, the disability was there,” Zuckoff said...
...Globe series won Zuckoff the prestigious 2000 Distinguished Writing Award for non-deadline reporting from the American Society of Newspaper Editors...