ANTARA PAK MAN TELO, CHARLES PONZI DAN BERNARD MADOFF

Seorang Melayu, seorang Itali dan seorang Amerika. Tiga manusia yang berbeza kulit, bahasa, budaya dan agama, dan dari pelusuk dunia yang berbeza. Tetapi tiga manusia ini mempunyai persamaan dalam cita-cita, citarasa dan matlamat iaitu mengadakan sekim cepat kaya atau skim piramid dengan memperdaya mereka yang hendak cepat kaya dan haloba tanpa berusaha.

Osman Hamzah (tiada gambar), orang Taiping, Perak atau lebih dikenali sebagai Pak Man Telo telah mewujudkan satu skim cepat kaya yang paling terkenal di Malaysia. Ramailah rakyat terutamanya, atau memang semuanya, Melayu terpedaya dengannya. Pak Man Telo dikatakan telah menipu kira-kira 50,000 pelabur dengan dana sebanyak RM99 Juta. Yang hebatnya pada asalnya beliau hanyalah seorang penduduk kampung biasa yang bekerja sebagai wartawan sambilan. Beliau telah ditahan pada 1990 dan dibuang daerah dan meninggal dunia di Terengganu pada 1997. Selepas kes beliau, banyak lagi skim-skim cepat kaya atau piramid wujud kemudiannya. Tetapi manusia yang tidak pernah belajar atau kerana haloba terus tertipu.....

Bernard Madoff, 70 tahun, dari New York, Amerika Syarikat baru sahaja ditangkap oleh polis kerana disyakki memperdaya pelabur-pelabur besar dunia (tidak pasti lagi samada pelabur Melaysia juga terkena) sejumlah AS$50 billion. Beliau berjaya menipu para pelabur dan pihak berkuasa kewangan Amerika Syarikat selama 40 tahun!! Beliau akan dibicarakan tidak lama lagi.

Charles Ponzi juga beroperasi di Amerika, berjaya memperdayakan pelabur-pelaburnya sejumlah AS$10 juta pada awal tahun 1920-han. Beliau telah menjadi buah mulut ramai pada waktu itu hingga nama beliau Ponzi telah dijadikan istilah dalam kamus yang membawa maksud skim cepat kaya atau inggerisnya "Ponzi scheme".Beginilah hebatnya manusia apabila masuk bab hendak menipu orang. Tidak kira bangsa, kalau sudah hendak menipu dia akan menipu. Yang malangnya yang ditipu ialah mereka yang mudah terpedaya atau cepat percaya kalau bab-bab hendak dapat wang cepat melalui jalan pintas! Wallahualam.

The Original Ponzi Scheme
Charles Ponzi's Name Means Investment Fraud Today
© Jill Browne
How the Ponzi Scheme got its name - a short version of Charles Ponzi's story.

Charles Ponzi Was A Real Person
In the field of investment or securities fraud, the phrase "Ponzi scheme" is often heard.
According to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Charles Ponzi raised over a million dollars in three hours in 1921. People thought he was selling them an investment that would give a 50 percent return in 90 days. It sounds too good to be true today, and it was too good to be true then.
By the time the court caught up with him, Ponzi admitted to taking $10 million from investors, many of whom were neither wealthy nor sophisticated. The actual amount could have been $15 million or more. He returned $8 million before his trial.
The Promotion Behind the Original Ponzi Scheme
Ponzi was a convicted criminal before he concocted his most famous scheme. Many would say he had no intention of ever making an effort to actually run the supposedly honest business that he was promoting. Writer Mark C. Knutson, in "The Ponzi Scheme" (1996), has taken a close look at the scheme and concluded it would be impossible to run it at any scale, and certainly not at the scale Ponzi proposed.
What Charles Ponzi told investors was this. He could buy International Postal Reply Coupons cheaply abroad and then turn them into American postage stamps. Then he would sell the postage stamps and get lots more money than what they had cost him to buy. This was because of an apparent arbitrage opportunity arising from foreign exchange rates. An American dollar could buy more coupons in Bulgaria (for example) than in the U.S., because the value of the coupon was set in local currency, regardless of the prevailing exchange rate. However, no matter where the coupons were purchased, they could be exchanged in the U.S. for the same thing, a U.S. postage stamp.
What Mark C. Knutson points out is that Ponzi would have needed armies of wheelbarrow-pushers just to carry the tens of millions of coupons he pretended to have bought. Turning the coupons into cash would also have been problematic, but not for Ponzi. He may have begun with the intention of working the arbitrage as described, but those intentions seem to have quickly evaporated. No matter what Ponzi told investors, he did not use their money to buy coupons.
What is a Ponzi Scheme?
Charles Ponzi's modus operandi was not new, but now bears his name as some kind of tribute to the vast scale with which he performed it.
Very simply, a Ponzi scheme is one where the promoter "robs Peter to pay Paul". The actual venture, whether it's postal coupons, real estate, racehorses, or anything else, does not make enough money to pay back the investors and give them the big profits they are expecting. The promoter, desperate to keep the scheme going, uses the money from new investors to pay the old ones. The most successful schemes go on for a long time by keeping investors just happy enough not to complain, and to never ask for their money back. When the investment comes due, a Ponzi scheme promoter will try very hard to get the investor to reinvest their money.
Even if the promoter of a Ponzi scheme doesn't keep any money for himself (and that would be unheard of), the scheme will collapse as soon as the payments going out exceed the money coming in. Since the whole point of the Ponzi scheme is to make money for the promoter, typically a large portion is spent or hidden early on. Charles Ponzi lived a lavish life for a little while, enjoying the fruits of his criminal ingenuity.
People were more than eager to give him their money.
A Ponzi Scheme is Not an Investment
Arguably, a payment to someone running a Ponzi scheme is not an investment at all. It's a gift. The money will not be paid back, and the promoter will disappear like Santa Claus on Boxing Day.
Charles Ponzi's End
Ponzi himself was found out by the investigative journalism of the Boston Post, and the whole scheme quickly tumbled down. He was convicted of mail fraud, sentenced to jail for five years, and eventually deported from the United States. He died alone and apparently poor in Brazil in 1949. His name lives on infamously.