Understanding Ponzi Schemes

Reviews / Votes

'This book offers highly valuable information about Ponzi schemes. The writing is clear and well organized, and it is an excellent work not only for academic researchers, policy makers, and students, but it can also be valuable to general readers.' -- Yiyan Li, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice '. . . more than two dozen books on Ponzi schemes have now been written, but Understanding Ponzi Schemes provides a most informative and detailed? ?analysis of this phenomenon based on the author's theoretical analysis and empirical case? ?studies. . . . The subject of Lewis's Understanding Ponzi Schemes is significant, as Ponzi schemes are a kind of investment fraud that occurs frequently around the world. . . He does a superb job of offering a systematic description of what? ?Ponzi schemes are, how they happen, why people fall for them, how they are able to survive? ?for long periods of time, what we can do to avoid being victims, and ways of preventing them. . . . On the whole, this book offers highly valuable information about Ponzi schemes. The writing? ?is clear and well organized, and it is an excellent work not only for academic researchers,? ?policy makers, and students, but it can also be valuable to general readers.' -- Criminal Law & Criminal Justice Books 'The short, well-referenced volume is an invaluable arrow in the quiver of finance scholars, regulatory agents, financial advisers, and other public policy officials. But it is also, not unlike the topic itself, an engaging, very readable look inside this fraudulent world. Summing Up: Highly recommended.' -- A.R. Sanderson, Choice 'Ponzi schemes are a particularly vicious form of financial fraud, in that the overly trusting victims, who are often wiped out, typically share an affiliation with the fraudster. They are interesting, in that they share some features with legitimate financial phenomena (such as stock manias) and shed light on the human tendency towards behaving foolishly, especially when encouraged or modeled by others. In Understanding Ponzi Schemes, Mervyn Lewis has written what is probably the best and most comprehensive book on the topic. Extremely readable, this book uses both theoretical models and real-life case studies to provide readers with an answer to two questions: "How do Ponzi schemes work and why are they successful?" Lewis also provides useful answers to a third question: "What can regulators and individuals do to be protected from future incarnations of Charles Ponzi?"' -- Stephen Greenspan, University of Connecticut, US and author of Annals of Gullibility