We start off this week with the story of the man whose scam was so good they named it after him - the infamous Charles Ponzi. If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not true unless you can get in and get out really quickly - then you might benefit! Farz also notes that the first “Ponzi Scheme” was actually committed by Sarah Howe in Boston in 1879 - but a Howe Scheme doesn’t have the same ring to it. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
We start off this week with the story of the man whose scam was so good they named it after him - the infamous Charles Ponzi. If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not true unless you can get in and get out really quickly - then you might benefit!
Farz also notes that the first “Ponzi Scheme” was actually committed by Sarah Howe in Boston in 1879 - but a Howe Scheme doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
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Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
0:13
we are recording and then we can carry on with the banter that we had before we were recording but now it'll be official
0:19
and other people can hear the banter as well that's what they're here for best we're here for the banter I know
0:25
let me let me start us well no you know what let's see banter before we kick things off okay so you're in New York
0:30
yes with husband and children husband children niece nephew no no nieces well
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kind of like a cousin who's like a niece nephews husbands cousins husbands aunt
0:43
and uncle a whole bunch of family super fun we're having a great time that's awesome half the conversations are in
0:49
Spanish try my best Delight what what are y'all what are y'all doing
0:55
in New York it's at Juan's mom's birthday Lily happy birthday Lily today um so and we were gonna come here anyway
1:01
just to visit and then um the rest of the family was like we're coming too so we got I found this awesome Airbnb we're
1:07
in Newburgh New York so we're actually very close to Hyde Park where the and we're gonna go one of these days and I'm
1:14
like over the moon excited so we're close to Hyde Park and then we are we got this awesome Airbnb and it's just
1:20
like a big house and there's an indoor pool which is super nice and a hot tub outside and there's like a pool table
1:27
and an air hockey table and a ping pong table and a movie room with like liners and there's like a bunch of bedrooms and
1:32
like so half of us are staying at a different house but this house is like the activity house and super fun it's
1:38
awesome it's very cool and we're going to be on the same time zone shortly because I'm in Dallas right now I'm
1:44
leaving in about four hours or something to go to the airport to head to DC and I'll be there
1:51
for the week it's good for you we're really I mean if you just listen to this you would think that we were like Setters you've kind of
1:58
been all over I'm really impressed with us we are dress Setters remember our marketing efforts we're not going to
2:03
quantify anything we're just gonna go with it we're always doing cool [ __ ] we're always on cool trips so yeah maybe
2:10
maybe everybody else is too that's true that's true so maybe we're not the summer
2:16
it is it is nice to think I'm special I I have been looking at a trip up to Massachusetts because for some reason I
2:23
just had this sudden hankering to go to Nantucket
2:28
Jesus listen to the F6 on last podcast on the left it just seems like a very romantic kind
2:35
of like seafaring place is it still like that I don't know but I feel like they
2:40
just like throw lobsters and you're walking down the street and that sounds awesome that part's true I think that's 100 like clams and clams yeah
2:47
clams but not like themed I can't do scene yeah one time my
2:53
my grandma used to make clam chowder and it was really good at one time she made clam chowder and my dad got sick so she
2:58
was like have some more clam chowder and then you got sick again and then they were like she needs more clam chowder and they did it like six times before they realized
3:04
that the clam daughter was making him sick I'm like how persistent she was but he
3:10
was like you're totally right I need more clam chattered if you feel better she was like totally and they just kept doing it until finally they were like it
3:15
could possibly be the clam Charter that does also sound like a remedy that an
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Iranian grandmother would prescribe so I feel that yeah so let's let's go ahead
3:26
and kick things off uh welcome to Doom to fail the podcast recovered two historical or one historical event slash
3:33
True Crime events about things that were doomed to fail I'm Forest joined here by Taylor how are you sleepy sleepy Taylor
3:44
11 so ever be awake at seven no eight o'clock in the morning
3:49
and in my own time but I'm up I've been up for a while so I'm good three hour three hour
3:56
difference is you know what it is it's um that time zone difference between California and New York is actually
4:01
pretty significant but it's not so significant that people think it's significant and so it's like [ __ ] up but
4:08
like it actually is a pretty dramatic change I read a really compelling article one time I was an argument for
4:15
America just having two time zones like just east and west that's it an hour apart and I was like that sounds awesome
4:21
but I am obviously I'm not in charge and no one will ever make you that but it would be cool
4:27
one day it'll happen so today we are going to be starting off
4:33
with the True Crime side of the equation right yeah okay so why don't you tell us
4:39
what you're drinking so I have um some coffee and I only could find
4:45
French vanilla coffee which is weird and I don't have any I just have so I'm drinking French vanilla coffee but also a red stripe which I haven't had in a
4:51
really long time just because I'm on like this weird equilibrium where I had a lot of beers yesterday so I'm like
4:56
beers coffee red eye time zone whatever but as it pertains to my story I'm drinking a
5:03
Manhattan do you remember the one time that we went to that restaurant in Louisville and had dinner and they went
5:08
to that bar that was like the bottom of a pool and we were like this is not for us like we walked in and it felt like you were
5:13
in a pool that was empty and those fleas yeah because it was connected to that restaurant's Atrium and this picture and
5:21
they were like this is way too cool for us so we walked across the street and drink Manhattans at the library yes yes anyway
5:28
um yeah that's where Jeff Goldblum does his Jazz nights right no this is the
5:33
thing like kind of next door that has terrible food it's called something else but the atrium is good food is it the
5:39
place that I kept telling us that we have to go get Prime ribs at and it was never really that good but it felt really old school Hollywood no it was a
5:46
different place those feelings is the best it has a bunch of cool restaurants
5:52
dream um anyway so yeah imagine I'm drinking in Manhattan because that's going to pertain to my story cool when I get to
5:59
it sweet we'll get to yours here in a moment I am drinking a Waterloo tropical fruit because I'm just tired I'm just
6:06
tired I don't want to drink I'm just so exhausted it's just like constant traveling and this is my second time in
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Dallas in two weeks and it's far yeah it's it's you know what it's just like
6:16
the fact that you feel kind of like this homeless person like living out of a suitcase and and it's just not your
6:22
environment now my dad's computer here sitting next to me is like constantly dinging so I need to figure out how to shut that off so it stops interrupting
6:29
this which I don't know if I can but anyways I'm just gonna shut the
6:34
computer off shut up I can hear you fine there we go okay so I'm just gonna drink a Waterloo
6:41
because I want to hydrate and yeah I also have water somewhere good for you um you're actually drinking a red stripe
6:47
that's awesome right how cute are these they're very very cute so I'm gonna get to my story first and
6:55
foremost and my story is going to touch on historical and True Crime theme so I'm kind of
7:02
dabbling a little bit in Taylor territory here so you can't wait for the day that we do the same one it's gonna
7:07
be the most fun crossover episode because it'll be an unintentional crossover episode I have no idea what your story is about but the fact that
7:13
you mentioned Manhattan and the fact that oppenheimer's coming out maybe you think that you're going to do something that has to do with the nuclear weapon
7:19
with the nuclear weapon and I have been desperate to try and find a like true
7:24
cry me component to Atomic weapons and I'm just having a really hard time with it I was also thinking last night as I
7:31
was going to sleep I was like we should have done something about Oppenheimer and Barbie to be in the in the news as I
7:37
was like drifting off to sleep in like my confusion and fever dream um I did not it's not my time project
7:44
okay well they uh then I'm we're not covering the same well we're not we'll get to uh overlap with each other you
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just go so I started researching topics for today's episode and I somehow went down
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the pathway of thinking about the mafia and I was thinking like that's probably a doom-defense story on the True Crime
8:05
front where two guys maybe got together and then they were like let's start a
8:10
mafia and I thought that might be a good story so I started looking into the Sicilian Mafia you know it's into the
8:16
American Mafia then I lateraled over to the Chicago outfit thinking maybe Al Capone had a best friend who helped pull
8:23
him into all this stuff and the problem was that I kept running into is that none of this stuff was documented right
8:30
so early Mafia stuff is like tied to America and Code of
8:35
Silence and so a lot of those Old-Timers never talked so you never knew what their story was what their origination was and so you're actually tracing down
8:41
the roots of the mafia is like kind of impossible but somehow through a weird
8:48
Wormhole I entered into when it had to do with Italians in America in America I ended up on falling to another Italian
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man who is a really good True Crime Story he is the not the inventor but he
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is the person who is most commonly associated with a Ponzi scheme today I'm
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going to be covering Charles Ponzi yeah you're familiar with this concept right
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yeah I think we talked about Ponzi schemes before like we've like mentioned it like someone was running a podcast
9:17
game by myself that we talked about in the past at some point um yeah that was the guy who killed his
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entire family in celebration where he would just take out loan yes pay his other loans yeah
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cool I'm excited I I didn't hear the word until Madoff
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yeah yeah exactly that's probably what a lot of us heard it so for those that are unfamiliar with how a Ponzi scheme work
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works it's a classic rob peter the pay Paul story where you tell someone that if they give you their money you can
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generate exorbitant returns through really should investing but really what you're doing is you're taking the money of earlier investors or later investors
9:53
and paying off earlier investors and then the cycle continues basically
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today we know this have a fraud because the name derived from Charles Ponzi but he was not the originator of the concept
10:05
so in a nod to feminists all over the world the first documented policy scheme
10:11
was started by a woman actually we did it ladies this is this is like a really touchy one
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I'm gonna go through it I'm actually really curious
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there's a woman in the 1800s named Sarah Howe living in Boston Massachusetts
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she came up with a concept in 1879 and her Target was widowed or single women
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usually older single women or without women at that time handling money was really
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considered like a man's thing and so she focused on this demographic because she knew there were easy marks they didn't want to go to the bank they didn't want
10:49
to like worry about investing their money and she's like well this is an obvious place to go and what she did was
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she created this investment vehicle she coined the ladies deposit oh and yeah
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like these one were super happy to hand over the money basically she was saying that I'm Gonna Get You super high interest rates on that money and they
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didn't want to manage themselves anyways by the time the fraud was exposed which only lasts about a year after it started
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she had swindled what would be the modern equivalent of 13 million dollars out of these women [ __ ] yeah I mean
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you know what I mean that's sad but also cool so she was so she was caught she went to
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jail and we're gonna kind of leave the story there I would I read this story about Sarah
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Howe and uh magazine called Mel magazine and the author is Isabella Cohn title of
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the article is before Charles Ponzi there was Sarah Howe which is a great article to read and her justification
11:47
for why it's not called the house scheme now is basically twofold one Sarah story was actually only known
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locally so back then there was no National Publications and so as a result it was basically small town news so it's
12:01
all all within like where she where her like her specific location Charles Ponzi didn't come around until like 50 years
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after this by that point there was National syndicated news and so the entire world the entire country knew
12:13
what was going on with Charles Ponzi and the other thing Isabel the author of that Mel magazine article notes is that
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there are no crimes that are named after female perpetrators they're only named
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after female victims which is kind of interesting to think about that's interesting back in this time nobody
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wanted to think a woman could do something so shitty and diabolical and so that's probably a part of it it's
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it's like I don't know if it's a good thing like I'm so conflicted on like should have been Nicole the house scheme
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is it better than it was a wasn't I don't know is a cooler word but yeah I feel like she should get the credit for
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it even if the credit's like it's not good credit you know is this sexism to
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not name it a house scheme possibly I don't know it's a good question
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so here's the thing here's the thing that's interesting about the share a house story so I didn't mention this earlier she didn't go to jail because
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she stole money from investors when she went to jail for was because when she would ask for this investment from these
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these these investors she also purported that part of that the
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Returns on those Investments would be funneled into a non-profit she also runs that would help needy women
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and that's what she was arrested for for lying that part of the investment went to this non-profit
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that's fair so none of these investors were women who were like widowed women who like were living giving her their
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life savings really saw Justice for any of this like it was it was this
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ancillary thing that is the reason why she went to anyways that's that's the
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origination story of the concept we now know as a Ponzi scheme let's get back to the namesake because this story is kind
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of unique and interesting and in terms of the scale of what he ended up doing uh and and look I'm not going to go a
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lot into the detail of Charles Ponzi because it's kind of boring like he's just he was just an Italian guy who came
14:06
to America to make it big and he just was like a small time shitty criminal for the entire time he stepped into this
14:12
country until his eventual deportation I'll touch on some highlights from his earlier days in the U.S and specifically
14:18
his relationship with a man named Luigi zaprosi because that's the most important part of the conversation here
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to help illustrate how he ended up becoming who he was and that's really the Doom to fail part is this guy Luigi
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kind of taught him a really shitty lesson that he scaled magnificently do
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you say that with an Italian accent please oh my God I'm gonna get canceled that
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was Perfection I'm pretty funny cancellation so Luigi was also an Italian immigrant
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uh as though yeah like I need to say that he lived in Montreal and he lived
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in Montreal and he started a bank called Banco zerosi Charles went to work at this bank as a teller and I think that's
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basically like under his time with Luigi he kind of learned how to do things that were very
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lucrative and also criminal at that time Luigi's Bank was the new kid on the
15:15
Block and his way of trying to grow the cost for baseball is by offering very very high interest loans or sorry High
15:21
interest rates on Bank deposits I think it was somewhere around six percent which like that at the time it was three
15:27
percent was more typical I mean it's crazy now it's like you get point zero zero zero one person no that's like
15:32
that's great enough of money in his bank institutional like how like institutionally it's harder to make
15:38
money in America now like this is a part of it like it's like people yeah you could literally Park your money on it that's a higher yield interest than
15:44
you're getting on your 401k right now which is like awesome that's playing this yeah so Luigi had uh was basically
15:51
using this higher interest on Bank deposits to draw more customers in it was working incredibly incredibly well
15:56
but at the same time his bank was also making out putting out mortgages to people and a lot of those mortgages were shitty and they would default and he was
16:04
pretty close to insolvency while still continuing to pay a super high interest rate to his customers on their deposits
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and the way he was doing this and the way Charles learned about how he was doing this was he was basically just taking money from the new depositors
16:16
paying out the old depositors so he literally he started yeah
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[Music] I'm not going to give him a credit for this because he didn't like do it in as
16:31
an egregious away like right it wasn't asking it was like oh I'm trying to get my business afloat and like offer you a
16:37
deal that you can't refuse because it's not real yeah like he was he was doing it in a way that could have been
16:42
perceived as legitimate you didn't have to like if if you paid attention to his business you'd be like this is still legitimate
16:49
you'd have to go super deep into the accounting long story short was like that all failed and like there's a Side
16:54
Story this guy Luigi basically abandoned his entire family in Montreal and like fled the country with like all of his
16:59
bank deposits and like he just lived he just didn't say yeah it's like amazing I
17:05
really wish I was born in this time I'd be so successful and but at this point let's go into the
17:11
concept of what what the actual Ponzi scheme was supposed to be so I learned a lot about this um researching this which
17:17
is really interesting I didn't know this was really a thing there are things called International reply coupons or
17:24
ircs for short of some reason Taylor I feel like you would know what these are because you're so crafty I am crazy but
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is it how is it crafty I feel like you mail a lot of stuff internationally more than I do yeah I
17:38
mean I have mailed things internationally keep going oh there you go so if you mail if you mail something
17:43
like a letter internationally and you expect to reply it was considered a common courtesy at the time to include
17:48
an IRC in your letter this way the recipient can exchange that IRC for stamp in their home country and
17:57
reply to your letter without having to go buy a stamp themselves got it so it's a redeemable coupon for the value of
18:04
that stamp in every country sets their own price for irc's in their own rates for
18:09
international postage stamps so Charles in 1919 was hit with this idea that
18:15
there was a substantial drop in the cost of stamps in Italy after World War One
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and the difference between an IRC purchased in Italy in the price of a
18:28
postage stamp in the U.S was somewhere around four to one so you could get so basically the think of it this way there
18:35
was you could exchange four ircs for one U.S stamp and IRC was way less valuable than the U.S stamp so in theory if you
18:43
go to Italy you buy a shitload of ircs then you bring them to the US you can trade those
18:49
in for U.S stamps and you get four times the number of stamps that you paid for with the Italian IRC does that make
18:56
sense Panda I believe you okay and so his idea was to set up a company
19:03
that goes out buys all these irc's brings them to the US then exchanges them so QD Capital do this
19:11
because he had to buy a huge quantity of you to be able I mean the stamp's not that expensive individually so you have
19:16
to do this in a large scale to make it worth your while and he does what Luigi did at the bank he offers a sailing High
19:23
return rates to convince investors to give them the capital he needs he basically it was something around like
19:28
within 45 days of the investment he would return 50 of that Capital back anyway the processors repeat over and
19:35
over and over again and this worked he was able to fundraise very very quickly and almost immediately started
19:42
delivering on his promise on those high high returns Charles did some quick math on so he he
19:50
was just eager to get up and running he hadn't actually worked out the nuances of how to execute on his plan he was
19:56
just like any Capital how do I get the capital and he started doing this like he almost stumbled into the project team
20:01
it wasn't like Sarah who like was no I will literally just go get your money and then just steal it from you and give
20:06
it to the other like that was not it he actually thought he had something on his hands here so he started doing some quick math his
20:13
initial pool of investors was about 18 investors and when he did the math on this he realized that he needed 53 000
20:20
ircs just to pay them back at the time he did this in 1919 there
20:27
was 27 000 ircs in total in circulation right so he had to like it was
20:33
impossible yeah yeah it was actually because these are government issues you can't just go and tell the government to
20:39
make more ircs so the plan at scale was never going to work he realized this pretty early on and
20:47
that was the 18 000 investors near the end of the scheme he had about 15 000 investors he was bringing in about a
20:53
million dollars a day in investment Capital so there was zero chance this
20:58
ever could have turned legitimate yeah but at this at this point the momentum already built people were excited to
21:04
invest with him early investors were psyched on their returns and everybody was winning and that's kind of the thing about a Ponzi scheme that's kind of
21:10
[ __ ] up is that it kind of works if you're the First Investors right if you
21:15
get out yeah you can get out but that's the point it's like they have all the money to give you so if you're like keep
21:22
giving me these returns you'll make your money back and you never lose it right I
21:27
mean that's kind of the the sad thing about the suffering this stuff and the Madoff scheme is that a lot of those
21:33
early people like they're not criminals they they just thought foolishly that they were able to get
21:40
these returns and they made out like Bandits like so realistically if you find yourself like
21:46
with a chance to invest in a Ponzi scheme just figure out how long yeah just figure out how long dude I would do
21:52
it Taylor you wouldn't I would totally do that if I believe the guy was charismatic
21:57
enough to keep swindling more people oh definitely you're part of a Ponzi scheme and the first tranche or maybe the
22:04
second tranche of it but like it's the ones at the end that's when the House of Cards falls down and then you lose
22:09
everything or if you're like oh I'm gonna or if you're like I'm gonna double down and like keep my money in there because it's going so well you know
22:15
that's because like worse and worse for you and and that's actually what ended up happening was a lot of these people when
22:21
they would get paid out those returns would go back into the Ponzi scheme what's interesting is it's worth noting
22:27
that because these are securities being exchanged there's there's track record of what is how the money is actually
22:34
flowing and it was clear that Ponzi himself never invested despite making millions and millions and millions of
22:41
dollars he never put his own money in there it's like there's some clues that were popping up around here that like things weren't exactly as they seemed
22:48
and by this point Charles is seemingly loaded and he wisely uses some of this
22:55
money to buy other businesses that he can divert profits back into his processing to slow down the news from
23:01
China because that's the problem is like you'll eventually run out of money there's not an infinite pool of money
23:07
the money isn't real again it is real but like you don't have all the money you think you say you have yeah exactly
23:12
exactly like it in in the middle of all this people are looking around people are sitting around and
23:19
there's some people who are freaking out and starting to do withdrawals there was a story about at one point yet it would
23:24
do two million dollars of withdrawals all in one sitting it was yeah it was the facade was cracking on the Ponzi
23:31
scheme did you watch the Madoff documentary yes it's so good you can talk about it later
23:36
I just want to talk about that one dude like from Europe who got all the European like monarchy people in it and
23:42
like ended up dying by Suicide and zombies killed himself yeah he like slit his slit his wrist over a garbage can
23:47
because he didn't want to bother anyone yeah yeah it was terrible it was so sad um I forgot who played him but he was if
23:54
you watch the HBO um master of oh my God I forgot what it was but Robert De Niro
24:00
plays Bernie yeah yeah um it's so good like I that's one of those ones like that's like half of
24:06
where I'll re-watch it like on a regular basis I don't know if I've seen it or watch it for the first time yeah so
24:13
go back to Charles his downfall basically started about a year after all this began so it was a pretty quick
24:19
turnaround time it was all because journalists started kind of poking around and asking questions because all of these you know well-off people are
24:26
like rambling on the sky and like what's going on with this and how's it possible he's able to generate returns that are so high he's the one who did the math on
24:34
how many irc's are in circulation he talked to the post office and was like we don't there's not like a run on rrc's
24:42
like there's nothing has changed like in the past year or two years like nothing more yeah exactly like you're like
24:49
there's no Mass rush to acquire them like it's not it's all still the same this guy did uh he's with the post he
24:57
did a calculations on how many irc's would be required for this scheme to be working and he did the calculation
25:03
determining that it was going to be about 160 million had to be in circulation for this to work and how
25:09
many were they you said like 27 000 yeah okay yeah like he would have had to
25:15
he would have had to have like steamer ships filled with Just ircs Right moving
25:20
across the Atlantic from Italy to the U.S and also think about it like these are not high cost items like you're
25:26
doing a one-to-one exchange the overhead so yeah there was a four to one ratio of
25:31
value but to realize it would cost so much money just to get it over here exchange
25:38
it then you got to turn around and fence that right he's not doing any of that like he's not doing any of that physical
25:44
stuff yeah exactly exactly yeah so this article gets published in more
25:50
and more Satan criminal and banking authorities started taking notice of Charles and when he was doing it by this
25:56
point new Investments were not coming in so by all accounts he had liquidated essentially every asset he had to be
26:03
able to kind of continue paying the returns so that people don't withdraw their cash
26:09
because the more you withdraw the further in the hole you are at that point right and by this point Charles
26:15
was essentially ripping his hair I was like there is no way to continue this on at this point a little over a month
26:20
after the this was set in motion through that publication Charles basically just surrenders to authorities and was like
26:27
The Jig Is So up it was about he was about seven million dollars in debt at this point but all accounts he took down
26:33
a number of banks in the region because he was their primary depositor because
26:39
he would take all these all these um investment sources and just shuffle them around so nobody could really Trace
26:45
where this deposit was going for that deposited then he goes to another bank and does withdrawal for that to pay that
26:51
investor off and this is like cooked down yeah it's like before banks are regulated because you're like you can
26:56
just like have a bank right basically yeah he was actually the president of at
27:01
least one maybe other Banks because he was the or just depositor in in in the region oh my God so
27:09
he surrenders himself to authorities like The Jig Is up I'm about to get jump Beat to Death by all these people who
27:15
want their money back which I can't give them I'm actually safer in prison anyways in total about 207 million
27:21
dollars in investor money was lost that's in today's money so it was still substantial he would serve three and a
27:28
half years in federal prison before being indicted on state criminal charges for which you would also be convicted and sentences seven to nine years
27:35
three years into his sentence he was released because he had to face he was released on Bill to go face charges
27:41
elsewhere and then immediately jump bail and try to flee back to Italy he was caught like pretty much immediately and
27:48
sent back to state prison for another nine years that's kind of where his story would end he'd get immediately deported after
27:54
being released from State Prison back to Italy and then you would move on to work uh in Brazil as a translator and
28:02
basically just died broke in penniless and Rio de Janeiro in 1949 so like none
28:08
of what he thought was was going to happen was realized I didn't mention this he was also married she was not part of the doomedical part of the story
28:14
because she thought it was legitimate like right like if he's able to convince like millionaires in like Harvard MIT
28:22
people in Boston like he why would his wife think anything else right I don't know I'm suspicious of what what's
28:28
what's Ernie madoff's wife's name Ruth Ruth I don't remember Ruth I don't
28:34
believe that Ruth didn't know what was going on I do I do I do yeah I don't know I think
28:39
she did too good to be true she doesn't fall a little further a little harder I think it so you haven't you have not
28:47
seen the HBO thing no is it Michelle Pfeiffer it is Michelle Pfeiffer okay
28:52
but like but the reason I think when you look at it like when you're like of that
28:57
stature you know like because he was like the head of the was he the head of
29:03
the Dow Jones or something like he was like yeah it's crazy he was like President like NASDAQ or something yeah yeah like he was like in it and you look
29:11
at the the lives of the women who marry into into people like that and
29:16
it seems like they're just like super it's like their job is to socialize and look rich like their job is not to care
29:22
about or taxes being paid or like I don't know it feels like it's almost a career just your job is literally just
29:29
to be rich that's it yeah my buddy made office group I think that was so this was 207 Million by today's
29:36
money that was 68 billion by comparison holy [ __ ] yeah I mean it almost it it was a very
29:44
significant factor in bringing down the economy in 2008 so he was incredibly consequential is he still alive I feel
29:50
like no he's dead he died yeah wow he died two years ago but what
29:57
a sad story man what a sad story I mean like both of his kids died like one type of cancer one died by Suicide and like
30:02
it was awful because some of his sons were like we didn't know you're like I don't know that I don't believe
30:08
yeah I think the sun's there's like dope Sons like what were they just dopes I don't get it and that's the thing
30:14
looking like Ruth and you're like man like she um The Wizard Of Lies that's the name of the HBO special it's
30:20
incredible but um but it's like man can you imagine that like being that woman where it's
30:25
like your kids are all dead your husband's dead in the jail like your names it's just like what a horrible way you would
30:32
assume the back half of life would be somewhat better than the front half and in her case it was just like so not yeah hey [ __ ] they
30:41
had a home in Nantucket oh you should go visit it dude that is crazy that is a huge huge
30:48
house there's multiple houses with a giant pool and it's literally like a stone's throw from the water that thing
30:54
had to be like a 20 million dollar house oh yeah seven seven well it says Mark
31:01
made up 700 million dollar summer home in Nantucket and beat but they maybe they had another one you just said 700
31:07
million seven million oh seven million wow the
31:12
madhouse bought it in 2008 for 6.5 million it is right on the water that does seem
31:18
nice that's so bougie I love that [ __ ] I'll never be able to have it but you know again you can dream
31:25
I Can Dream um so Taylor that is my story uh so if
31:31
you ever meet someone who is offering someone that is too good to be true uh
31:36
find out how long they've been doing it and if they're just getting started uh Dive Right In jump in yeah and then
31:42
double your money and get out that's the problem because you're gonna get excited you're gonna be like oh no I'm getting
31:47
such big Returns on this and you're gonna forget you're gonna forget and it's fake so
31:52
don't let it don't Cloud your judgment when you get the first round of money and be like oh I can do it again so you
31:59
don't want to be on the news from 1919 to 2008 so many apologies teams and
32:05
nobody learns that if it's too good to be true it's not true it's too good to be true
32:14
it'll happen again we just had nfts I got into a debate with someone
32:20
recently Taylor yeah go ahead and it was um so I I met somebody who um was on the
32:28
team that created chat gbt and and I sat there like basically
32:35
manselling to her how AI is just like nfts and like blockchain
32:43
and how AI works as a concept and she was like so everything you said about
32:51
the technical underpinnings of AI is wrong here's actually how it works and I
32:57
was like you know man this is why I should just like stop expressing my opinions to people
33:02
not the persons on the team that created GT that makes no sense that's so funny I'm
33:08
so glad that she told you you were wrong and I'm sure she's like tongues on right
33:14
now like some dude tried to man this plane and I created
33:20
could you at least subscribe her to our podcast on her phone no I was so humbled by the conversation
33:25
I lost all confidence oh she's my hero that's amazing yeah I love that I love
33:33
that that's awesome well one's cousin uh yesterday she has an Android phone when
33:39
she listens to podcasts on Spotify so I did subscribe her to our podcast and then she had to listen to an episode before I let her read it so we put it on
33:45
silent and the ones that played all the way through that her beta is five stars so that's exactly how you do it she did a great job I noticed the bump I noticed
33:52
the bump in our stats love it I love it well that's awesome that is crazy A
33:57
crazy it's a crazy story that both the Ponzi and the Madoff and the how like just people at some point you're like
34:03
you they they have to just like I think well one thing from the Madoff documentary that I watched like you're like did he have good intentions ever
34:09
you know like it sounds like how did not because she was stealing from widows yeah yeah good intentions like nah
34:19
it was executable it's like when we came up with our plan
34:24
of selling muumus and making the fashion Concepts I mean we had a plan so we
34:31
started collecting investor Capital we weren't being like totally nefarious we had no way to execute on it because I don't know where you get movies from
34:36
yeah I don't know where we get anything from yeah Amazon sell them for more money that's what
34:43
I've seen I mean also this is not related to any of us but um for everyone's knowledge I've like found
34:50
these dresses on Instagram and they were like a hundred dollars so I took a picture of them like I screenshot them
34:55
and then reverse image search them on Google and I found them on Amazon for like 20 bucks people are just like
35:00
buying them and selling them like other stores which obviously they're doing that but you can now do that to find where things are coming from so so yeah
35:06
that that's what this was it's Arbitrage it's literally that's the term for it it's like you just take something and
35:12
then turn it around for a bit and then collect the margin or the the profit off it so much good ideas
35:20
involved in this dress selling business that I'm about to get into I mean get in early how much is the
35:26
initial investment a million dollars well if you give me 50 of my money within the first 45 days I'm in okay
35:34
I'll work on it I'll work on my business plan I'll keep you posted cool well thank you for ours that was super fun
35:40
um I have a listener mail for today or for this one and the next one so wait um
35:47
if folks think that it's if folks have opinions on whether it's sexist or not sexist to not name crimes after women I
35:55
would love to hear that feedback at Doom defelpod gmail.com I like it well programs are named after women
36:03
after women who are the victims right oh I've been done after the after the
36:09
perpetrators yeah got it let us know let us know
36:16
yeah nice okay nice you've got some great emails with some great suggestions for things um but for this episode
36:24
um our friend Henry emailed us to tell us about a hitchhiking story um I think I got another hitchhiking story too but
36:29
I will share that one later but Henry he said um he is from the UK and he and he
36:36
lives in Portugal and I told you he listened which is super fun what did he say how can I get minded he went
36:42
hitchhiking 20 years ago from France to Morocco which was amazing he didn't get murdered his first ride was a fairy
36:48
Captain who took him all the way from cherborg to Bordeaux seven hours and only once on this whole trip did a monk
36:54
try to touch his leg so only one near assaults but he survived and had a great
37:00
time he did say that he would not hitchhike in the UK or the us because there's too many weirdos
37:05
or Australia I'm gonna add that in there yeah but thank you Henry super fun to
37:10
hear from you I saw Henry when I was in Lisbon last year and he came down with covet right
37:17
when I got there and so we would just like hang out together but he was wearing a mask and we'd have to stand like 10 feet away and I got covered the
37:24
day I landed in in the U.S so I'm pretty sure I gave everybody on the plane covid and it probably originated from Henry so
37:31
we still wear masks on planes but the only ones but I don't want to get like the flu or the colds from these weirdos either I mean it kind of makes sense to
37:37
wear a mask like in Asian countries like where they wear masks like everywhere it's like it's like yeah but also well
37:43
you know what I actually taught myself out of that because it's probably better for your immune system to get Mass exposure to [ __ ] and then learn how to
37:49
overcome it but I remember before covet you would be like Oh I'm Gonna Fly for Thanksgiving
37:54
but I'm definitely gonna get sick because I always do you could just not do that by wearing a mask I don't know I'm very sure you told me you had covet
38:01
you were the first person I knew who had Clifford seriously yeah remember you were like I feel [ __ ] terrible and
38:06
you were like dying in your apartment on the floor and I was like you need to call the doctor and I tried to get you the online appointment so we don't know
38:11
so we don't know if I was patient zero we don't know if I was patient zero but I was thinking yeah because like I got
38:18
it in yo got I got it so early so early but you were so sick yeah that was one
38:24
that was the worst sick I've ever wrote in my life for sure yeah yes um so we'll go ahead and cut this off
38:32
and do the magic and power of editing y'all will not know that we're gonna restart the conversation in two seconds
38:38
and find us out yeah [Music]