a fraudulent investment operation that pays quick returns to initial contributors using money from subsequent contributors rather than profit
Word origin
After Charles Ponzi, who famously perpetrated such a scheme in the United States of America in the early20th century
Ponzi scheme in American English
(ˈpɑnzi) or Ponzi game (ˈpɑnzi)
a fraudulent investment scheme in which funds paid in by later investors are used to pay artificially high returns to the originalinvestors, thus attracting more funds
Examples of 'Ponzi scheme' in a sentence
Ponzi scheme
The economists said that the whole system was basically a Ponzi scheme destined to implode.