Romania had something similar going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) > An estimate

Romania had something similar going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) > An estimate of Romanian newspaper România Liberă gives the amount of money involved as 1.4 trillion lei or about 20% of the 1993 expenditures of the Romanian government of 6.6 trillion. The New York Times estimated the scheme attracted between $1 billion and $5 billion Anecdotally, people got involved in it fully knowing it was a Ponzi scheme, but hoping they could get their money out before the music stopped playing. And some of them did! In fact, my first computer was bought by my parents with Caritas money.