Charles Ponzi is the founder of the Ponzi scheme in 1920. He promised investors he will pay them 50% in 45 days buying and selling international postal reply coupons. What he really did was pay the old investors with the money he got from new investors. The scheme crashed when he ran out of International postal reply coupons.

Scammers have used Ponzi scheme and evolved it beyond any doubt and made it a very lucrative scam. There are several variations to the Ponzi scam. They target different people using very unique scenarios to trap their victims.

- Senior citizens - Senior citizens looking at investing their life savings are often taken unaware by scammers to invest their money. The scammers vanish into thin air and theses people are only left with a painful reminder of losing their life savings.

- Businesses contacts asking you to invest in very lucrative businesses such as shares or bonds. Usually friends who don't know any better will lure you into these schemes and before you know it your friends as well as you are in trouble. You will never get the high return you were promised or the shares that you invested in.

- The famous case of the Ponzi scam recently is of Wall street's boss Bernard Madoff. Madoff scammed $65 billion using the Ponzi scam and would have carried on making more money tricking stock market investors if hadn't faced $7 billion in redemptions.

- Individuals in companies can easily carry out a Ponzi scam, even if the company is collapsing.Tthey use impressive accounting techniques and show manipulated figures to lure investors, and the more they lure the more they can keep the scam going.

- Scammers post advertisements in very reliable sites saying they need at least a $100,000 invest which can be paid off in a month with the invest doubling in a year.

- The latest news on scams is that there are banks involved in caring out the Ponzi scam. This maybe a little difficult to understand but Millennium Bank in the Caribbean, was found selling false deposit certificates amounting to $ 68 million.

- There certain Charity Organization and Foundations that have been fraudulently created to aid and abet the Ponzi scheme.

Since the Ponzi scheme is illegal there is a very small possibility that you can recover your money even though you report it and have the necessary evidence.