15 Tales Of Lost Ponzi Riches

Swindlers can steal billions because investors won't learn from history. Here's a ranking of America's top Ponzi schemers.

“In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules.” – Bernie Madoff

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Boston swindler Charles Ponzi defined a classic grift in the 1920s, but the millions he stole are a pittance beside the billions that scammers rip off today using the same old trick.

Ponzi crafted a story about profiting from postal coupons sold abroad. But he never really did this.

Instead, he used the funds of new investors to pay off old investors while he pinched the pot. He bought himself all the trappings of a fabulously successful business magnate, from a mansion and a limo to a controlling interest in the Hanover Trust Co.

Ponzi schemes are childishly simple, greedy and stupid – and they almost always run the same course that made Ponzi a household name. Charismatic perps lure investors with a story, never truly invest in that story, then spend the money any way they want until … kaboom.

Investors can easily steer clear of these scams by asking a few basic questions: Is the money held by a fiduciary? Are the financial statements audited by a reputable auditor? And can anyone explain how this works because it sounds too good to be true.

Charles Ponzi wore expensive suits and swung a gold-headed cane as he strode the streets of Boston. He was so convincing that even the police who examined his company decided to invest.

Too often, though, one’s insatiable avarice gets in the way. And more than 100 years later, people are still losing their life savings to Ponzi schemes – even Harvard Business School students who should know better.

Learn from history. Here’s a ranking of the 15 biggest Ponzi schemers by the amounts stolen – and these are just the shameless slicksters who were criminally prosecuted:

15. Lou Perlman – $300 million

Lou Pearlman, who famously launched the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync boy bands, used his entertainment empire as a front to defraud investors of more than $300 million.

He sold unregistered securities through his company, Trans Continental International, falsely claiming to have investments in aviation and other ventures. He plied investors with fake financial documents showing fake profits while he pursued a lavish lifestyle, which included luxury homes and private jets.

In 2008, Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died in federal custody in 2016.

His story has been the subject of several documentaries, including Netflix's “Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.” Like the hit Backstreet Boys song goes: “Tell me why; Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache. Tell me why; Ain’t nothing but a mistake.”

14. William Stenger – $350 million

William Stenger, former president of Jay Peak Resort in Vermont, devised a $350 million Ponzi scheme by duping immigrants through the nation’s EB-5 visa program.

The program is a bit of a scam in itself, allowing wealthy foreigners to essentially buy their way into the U.S. by investing at least $500,000 in job-creating projects. Stenger took EB-5 money, but his scheme didn’t create anything but a fast buck for himself and his co-conspirators.

He and his business partner, Ariel Quiros, raised about $350 million from foreign investors, promising to use the funds for development projects at their Jay Peak and Burke Mountain resorts. They also proposed something called the AnC Bio Vermont biotechnology plant, which never came to be because they misappropriated the money.

The federal government seized Jay Peak and Burke Mountain resorts in 2016 and later sold the properties to recover funds for the defrauded investors.

In 2022, Stenger was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison at age 73. Quiros, was sentenced to five years in prison at age 65. And William Kelley, an advisor to Quiros, received 18 months in prison at age 73.

When all else fails, you can always use the prison system as a retirement plan.

Like President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: “If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking ... is freedom.”

13. Gerald Payne – $500 million

Gerald Payne was the leader of Tampa, Fla.-based Greater Ministries International, and he fleeced more than 18,000 Christian investors in the name of the Lord.

Between 1993 and 1999, he amassed nearly $500 million by promising to double his investors’ money in 17 months through divinely inspired investments.

Payne and his associates claimed they could do this through investments in gold and diamond mines in Africa and the Caribbean. But the money went to fund their own heavenly lifestyles.

Payne was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison. His wife, Betty Payne, received a sentence of nearly 13 years. Other leaders of his ministry also received significant prison terms, ranging from 12 to 27 years.

They loved citing scriptures to convince followers that their financial contributions were acts of faith, particularly Luke 6:38:

^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Somehow, the creator of the entire universe is always short on cash.

12. Reed Slatkin – $600 million

Reed Slatkin was the co-founder of EarthLink, an early Internet service provider, and an ordained minister in the Church of Scientology. He used his position in the church to defraud about 800 investors out of nearly $600 million between 1986 and 2001.

Operating from Santa Barbara, Calif., Slatkin ran an unlicensed investment club. One of his victims was actor Giovanni Ribisi, who starred in the 2000 film “Boiler Room” about penny-stock fraud.

He sent his clients with bogus account statements showing consistent, above-market returns, but what he was really doing was stuffing his pockets, snapping up real estate, private jets, automobiles, and artwork.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2003, but he was released in 2013. He died of a heart attack in 2015 at age 66.

“If you want to get rich, you start a religion,” Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once said.

And when you’re a minister, it’s a handy way to find gullible victims.

11. Patrick R. Bennett – $600 million

Patrick R. Bennett was the chief financial officer of Bennett Funding Group, a leasing company based in Syracuse, N.Y. From 1990 to 1996, he fleeced more than 12,000 investors out of more than $600 million.

He inherited his company from his parents. It leased office equipment, including photocopiers and fax machines, to government entities. It then sold interests in these leases to investors.

Unfortunately, many of these leases were either fictitious or they were sold multiple times to different investors.

Nothing like having your own fleet of copiers. And being in the business for so long, Bennett must have seen this 1987 ad campaign: “Xerox brings out the genius in you.”

Bennett blew his ill-gotten gains on gambling properties, including a $40 million gambling barge in Biloxi, Miss.; a majority stake in Vernon Downs Racetrack; Harold's Club casino in Reno, Nev., and a 238-foot gambling showboat called, “The Speculator.”

Office machines may have seemed too boring for the nepo baby, but he soon found himself facing some real boredom.

In 2000, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, which was later reduced to 22 years.

10. Thomas Nicholas Salzano – $658 million

Thomas Nicholas Salzano, head of National Realty Investment Advisors, ran a $658 million fraud between 2018 and 2022 that leveraged ads on Fox News and an endorsement from Bill O’Reilly.

He spent his ill-gotten gains on “erectile dysfunction medications, expensive dinners, extravagant birthday parties,” and hefty payments to his wife, ex-wife and girlfriend, according to a federal indictment.

He received a 12-year prison sentence in 2024. And get this: It was his second Ponzi scheme.

In 2001, Salzano and his brother co-founded NorVergence, which sold a magic box they claimed would slash telephone and Internet bills. Investors, who lost more than $300 million, filed lawsuits calling the company a Ponzi scheme. Salzano got three years probation and struck a $50 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission – which was suspended because he didn’t have the money.

But you know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed … Or maybe the third time’s a charm?

9. Marc Dreier – $740 million

Marc Dreier, once a prominent New York attorney, sold fictitious promissory notes to hedge funds and private investors, falsely representing them as legitimate investments.

Between 2002 and 2008, he fabricated financial statements and audit reports, and even impersonated company executives to amass $740 million in ill-gotten gains.

Dreier used the stolen funds to acquire multiple luxury properties, including a $10.4 million Manhattan apartment and a beachfront mansion in the Hamptons. He also purchased a 121-foot yacht, fine art collections featuring works by Picasso and Warhol, and luxury vehicles.

In July 2009, Dreier was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. His law firm, Dreier LLP, filed for bankruptcy, and Dreier was disbarred from practicing law.

President Joe Biden commuted Dreier’s sentence in 2024. Hey, if you’re going to steal, steal enough to preserve your influence in Washington D.C.

8. Paul Burks – $900 million

Paul Burks, founder of Lexington, N.C.-based ZeekRewards, duped more than 900,000 investors worldwide out of $900 million from January 2010 to August 2012.

Burks operated Rex Venture Group, which owned Zeekler, an auction site, and its affinity program, ZeekRewards. Investors were enticed with promises of up to 125% returns that never happened.

By August 2012, Burks falsely claimed that the investments had grown to nearly $3 billion, despite having only $340 million in assets. He personally diverted about $10.1 million as he paid off old investors with new money.

In February 2017, Burks was sentenced to nearly 15 years in federal prison. Co-conspirators Dawn Wright Olivares and Daniel C. Olivares also received prison sentences.

Like a lot of Ponzi perps, Burks was a victim of his own hype. U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. put it this way at sentencing: “Anyone could have seen what was going to occur outside of himself and his cheerleaders.”

7. Joel Steinger – $1.25 billion

Joel Steinger defrauded about 30,000 investors out of $1.25 billion through his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company, Mutual Benefits Corp. between 1994 and 2004.

The company sold “viatical settlements,” or investments in the life insurance policies of terminally ill people.

Mutual Benefits purchased these policies at a discount. Then it purportedly sold fractionalized interests in them to investors, promising high returns upon policyholders’ deaths.

Steinger was already a convicted felon when he started this morbid Ponzi scheme, but he hid behind a figurehead company president to conceal his criminal history.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014. MBC President Peter Lombardi also received 20 years in prison.

Studies show prison time can reduce one’s life expectancy. Anyone want to buy an interest in their life insurance policies?

6. Robert H. Shapiro – $1.3 billion

Robert H. Shapiro, former CEO of the Woodbridge Group of Companies, defrauded more than 8,400 investors out of $1.3 billion between 2012 and 2017. Most of his victims were seniors who had invested their retirement savings.

His companies employed about 130 people and operated like a boiler room, deploying high-pressure sales tactics, deception and manipulation.

The scheme involved selling unregistered promissory notes. The money raised was supposed to be used for loans to commercial property owners. Instead, new money went to old investors and the rest went to luxury homes, private plane charters, and artwork by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alberto Giacometti.

Shapiro, of Sherman Oaks, Calif., was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for a scheme as old as time.

Like one of his favorite artists, Picasso, once said: “We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.”

5. Scott Rothstein – $1.4 billion

Scott Rothstein was a prominent South Florida attorney who conned more than 1,000 investors out of $1.4 billion between 2005 and 2009.

He convinced his investors to buy into bogus legal settlements, promising returns as high as 25% over a short period. In reality, he was using new investor funds to pay off earlier investors, while he spent with abandon on a phony Floridian lifestyle.

Rothstein blew his stolen money on a multimillion dollar mansion, extravagant parties and a $10 million watch collection.

He also maintained an exotic car collection that included a 2008 Bugatti Veyron, a white 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago SV, a yellow Mclaren SLR, a matching pair of Ferrari 430 spiders, a Rolls Royce Phantom and a Bentley Continental GT. He spent heavily on political donations and bribes, to burnish his false image of success and influence.

In 2010, Rothstein received a 50-year prison sentence. Too bad, authorities auctioned off his watch collection. He could have used at least one of them to mark the time.

4. David Gentile – $1.6 billion

David Gentile, founder and CEO of GPB Capital Holdings, defrauded more than 10,000 investors out of $1.8 billion between 2013 and 2018.

His firm marketed private equity funds to individual investors, promising high returns from investments in auto dealerships and other businesses. But it wasn’t profitable as advertised.

The firm allegedly used new investor capital to pay returns to earlier investors to keep the game going. Gentile’s lavish spending including a private jet and a $355,000 Ferrari FF.

Gentile received a seven-year prison sentence in May 2025. Another defendant, Jeffry Schneider, the former CEO of Ascendant Capital, received six years.

Somehow, Gentile made the all-too-common mistake of thinking investors money was his money, according to testimony during the trial from another defendant in the case, auto dealer Jeffrey Lash.

Gentile “always told me that essentially the investors’ money was his money and he could do with it really anything that he wanted to with it,” Lash said

3. Tom Petters – $3.65 billion

Minnesota tycoon Tom Petters once owned Polaroid and Sun Country Airlines and went on to swindle everyone from hedge funds to missionaries and pastors.

He claimed his namesake firm, Petters Co., was buying retail merchandise at a discount and selling these goods to stores at a profit.

Instead, he was using the money to finance other businesses as well as his lavish lifestyle … until, well, you might say he finally Pettered out.

In 2010, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. His scam is reportedly the biggest in Minnesota history.

2. Robert Allen Stanford – $7 billion

Robert Allen Stanford was arrested in 2009 for allegedly defrauding more than 30,000 investors in 113 countries. He stole more than $7 billion and he received a 110-year prison sentence following his 2012 conviction.

Stanford convinced his mostly foreign investors that their money was safely deposited in CDs while he spent it with abandon, destroying lives wherever he went.

Stanford used his ill-gotten gains to create an international cricket league and to name sporting venues named after himself. He also used his loot to practically take over the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, where he was officially knighted in 2006.

Sir Stanford also owned two newspapers in Antigua. And he was named “2008 Man of the Year” by London-based World Finance magazine.

Nobody in the world of finance should have made man of the year in 2008 when the entire global economy buckled under the weight of debt and fraud.

1. Bernie Madoff – $65 Billion

Bernie Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors out of billions of dollars, until it all came crashing down with the 2008 financial crisis. Regulators never caught him. He was only charged after he turned himself in.

His victims were mostly fellow Jews and Jewish organizations, including the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation.

His fraud was initially estimated at $65 billion. That figure was wildly inflated with made-up investment gains that Madoff investors believed they were getting, but he still holds the record for running the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered.

The undisputed king of all Ponzis pled guilty in March 2009 to 11 felonies. He received 150 years. His brother Peter received 12 years. His son, Mark, hanged himself in 2010. His son Andrew died of lymphoma in 2014. Bernie died in prison in 2021 at age 82 after destroying just about everyone in his life.

Among Madoff’s victims:

• René-Thierry de La Villehuchet, a French aristocrat and investment manager who lost an estimated $1.4 billion, committed suicide a few days after the Ponzi scheme imploded.

• Charles Murphy, a hedge fund manager with ties to Madoff, jumped to his death from a New York hotel in 2017.

• William Foxton, a former British Army major, died by suicide in 2009 due to the shame of going bankrupt after losing his family's savings.

This is what Ponzi schemers do. And when their victims die of despair, their crimes are on par with murder.