Ponzi

//ˈpɒnzi// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A Ponzi scheme.

    "To be fair, degenerate gambling and poorly designed Ponzis have consumed some corners of the crypto market, […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to a scheme whereby investors' returns are paid for directly by later investors' investments, giving the false impression that the investment is viable. not-comparable

    "Officers, who say he [Kautilya Nandan Pruthi] was Britain's most prolific Ponzi fraudster "by some way", fear that only around £2m will be returned to his victims."

Example

More examples

"The whole thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme."

Etymology

Named after con artist Charles Ponzi (1882–1949) who notoriously ran such type of scam.

Related phrases

ponzi scam

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.