The largest known Ponzi schemes in history are:

• William "520 Percent" Miller, who in 1899 opened for business as the "Franklin Syndicate" in Brooklyn, New York. Miller promised 10 percent a week interest, and exploited some of the main themes of Ponzi schemes such as customers reinvesting the interest they made. He defrauded buyers of $1 million and was sentenced to jail for ten years. When he was pardoned he opened a grocery store on Long Island. During the Ponzi investigation, Miller was interviewed by the Boston Post to compare his scheme to Ponzi's-- the interviewer found them remarkably similar, but Ponzi's became more famous for taking in seven times as much money.^[1]

• The eponymous scheme was orchestrated by Charles Ponzi, who went from anonymity to being a well-known Boston millionaire in six months using such a scheme in 1920. Profits were supposed to come from exchanging international postal reply coupons. He promised 50% interest (return) on investments in forty five days or “double your money” in ninety days. About 40,000 people invested about $15 million all together (roughly $150 million in 2006 dollars); in the end, only a third of that money was returned to them.

• Between 1970 and 1984 in Portugal, a woman known as Dona Branca maintained a scheme that paid ten percent monthly interest. In 1988 she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She always claimed that she was only trying to help the poor, but in her trial it was proved that she had received 85 million EUR.^[2][3]

• In May 1995, Pennsylvania's attorney general moved to freeze the assets of the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy and its chairman, John G. Bennett, Jr. The organization had raised over $500 million from 1,100 donors. Participants, including the Red Cross, had believed they were participating in a matching-gifts program through New Era, but in fact it was simply a Ponzi scheme; losses amounted to $135 million.

• In early 1996, the SEC filed a civil action against Bennett Funding Group, its chief financial officer, Patrick R. Bennett, and other companies Bennett controlled, in connection with a massive Ponzi scheme. The companies fraudulently raised hundreds of millions of dollars, purportedly to purchase assignments of equipment leases and promisory notes. [1]

• In 1997 the government of Albania officially endorsed a series of pyramid investment funds. When the inevitable end came, the people of Albania, who had lost $1.2 billion, took their protest to the streets in a revolt that toppled the government.

• In 2000, a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Scientology minister Reed Slatkin came unravelled when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulators became aware that Slatkin was not a licensed investment advisor. Slatkin had raised some $200 million from over 500 wealthy investors, mostly Hollywood celebrities.

• In December 2005, in Los Angeles, California, Larry Toshio Osaki, who ran a gigantic Ponzi scheme and continued to offer bogus investments in accounts receivable “factoring” after being ordered to stop by a federal judge, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. In addition to the prison term, Judge Stephen V. Wilson ordered Osaki to pay more than $145 million in restitution to victims.