I agree with your overall point here, but I just wanted to throw it out there that initially Charles Ponzi did intend to do what he set out to do in the origina

I agree with your overall point here, but I just wanted to throw it out there that initially Charles Ponzi did intend to do what he set out to do in the original Ponzi Scheme, so I'm not sure if that is a useful metric. It seems like plenty of scams start off with good intentions, decide to fake it until they make it, but never end up making it. See also: the whole Theranos debacle. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi#Origin_of_the_term_%22Ponzi_scheme%22_and_IRC_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi#Origin_of_the_te... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos