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In 1920, Charles Ponzi became a household name when his investment scheme, rooted in postal reply coupons, collapsed. He promised investors the unimaginable—doubling their money in just three months. At the height of his operation, Ponzi was generating more than two million dollars a week in downtown Boston. However, this facade crumbled when there were not enough new investors to pay off earlier ones. While Ponzi didn’t invent this form of fraud, his case gave rise to the term "Ponzi scheme," which describes the practice of paying earlier investors with the capital of newer ones.