Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of the Legendary Scam Artist
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1900s, Charles Ponzi arrived in the United States chasing opportunity but struggling to find steady work. After years of false starts, he began promoting an investment idea that promised unusually high returns in a short amount of time. But the model depended on a steady stream of new money, and once that slowed, the foundation began to crack.
Jonathan Small of the Write About Now podcast shares the story of how Ponzi built his operation, how it ultimately collapsed, and how it paved the way for later figures like Bernard Madoff to carry on similar schemes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.3 | Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. |
| 0:07.7 | Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand |
| 0:11.8 | new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. |
| 0:15.5 | Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the |
| 0:20.3 | biology of taun tons and wampas on |
| 0:22.4 | the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. |
| 0:28.3 | Listen to Stuff to Bo Your Mind on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your |
| 0:33.5 | podcasts. |
| 0:48.0 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:56.8 | Up next, the story of the man who lent his name to a scheme you may well know, but the man you don't. |
| 0:59.5 | We're talking about Charles Ponzi. |
| 1:06.4 | Here to tell the story is John Small, the man behind the podcast, right about now. |
| 1:07.5 | Take it away, John. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scheme where all the returns are paid to earlier investors |
| 1:15.5 | using the money that was contributed by newer investors. |
| 1:19.1 | So basically what you do is you pay the investors of your Ponzi scheme with the money from the new investors. |
| 1:25.7 | So it's a constant cycle. |
| 1:33.8 | You have to keep on getting new investors in and the money that the new investors put in you use to pay your old investors. |
| 1:44.5 | Ponzi schemes have been around forever, but they weren't really called Ponzi schemes until Charles Ponzi came around, probably much to his disappointment. |
| 1:56.5 | He was actually born Carlo. He was a poor Italian immigrant, and he came from like a working class family, but he always had a chip on his shoulder about being not as rich as he thought |
| 2:02.2 | he should be, and he always thought he was much richer than he actually was. When he turned 18, |
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