1) Sarah Howe, who in 1880 opened up a "Ladies Deposit" in Boston promising eight percent interest, although she had no method of making profits. This unique scheme was billed as "for women only". Howe disappeared with the money from her scam.

2) The novel Chance by Joseph Conrad depicted a Ponzi scheme in 1914 before Ponzi himself had hit the scene. Conrad's scammer "de Barral" offered ten percent interest on deposits in his operation "without system, plan, foresight, or judgement".

3) On March 22, 2000, four people were indicted in the Northern District of Ohio, on charges including conspiracy to commit and committing mail and wire fraud. A company with which the defendants were affiliated allegedly collected more than $26 million from "investors" without selling any product or service, and paid older investors with the proceeds of the money collected from the newer investors.

4) In late 2003, a scheme by Bill Hickman, Sr., and his son, Bill Jr., was shut down. He had been selling unregistered securities that promised yields of up to 20 percent; more than $8 million was defrauded from dozens of residents of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, along with investors from as far away as California. Hickman was sentenced to 160 years in state prison.

5) In December 2004, Mark Drucker pleaded guilty to a Ponzi scheme in which he told investors that he would use their funds to buy and sell securities through a brokerage account. He claimed that he was making significant profits on his day trades and that he had opportunities to invest in select IPOs that were likely to turn a substantial profit in a short period of time. He promised guaranteed returns of up to fifty (50%) percent in 90 days or less. In less than two years of trading, Drucker actually lost more than $850,000 in day trading and had no special access to IPOs. He paid out more than $3.6 million to investors while taking in $6.3 million.

6) In June 2005, in Los Angeles, California, John C. Jeffers was sentenced to 168 months (14 years) in federal prison and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution to more than 80 victims. Jeffers and his confederate John Minderhout ran what they said was a high-yield investment program they called the “Short Term Financing Transaction.” The funds were collected from investors around the world from 1996 through 2000. Some investors were told that proceeds would be used to finance humanitarian projects around the globe, such as low-cost housing for the poor in developing nations. Jeffers sent letters to some victims that falsely claimed the program had been licensed by the Federal Reserve and the program had a relationship with the International Monetary Fund and the United States Treasury. Jeffers and Minderhout promised investors profits of up to 4,000 percent. Most of the money collected in the scheme went to Jeffers to pay commissions to salespeople, to make payments to investors to keep the scheme going, and to pay his own personal expenses.

7) 12DailyPro was a version of what is commonly known as a "paid autosurf" program where "investors" deposited money and received an extremely high profit (44%) within a short period (12 days). Charis Johnson created what authorities considered one of the largest modern day versions of the Ponzi scheme. She accumulated a total of over US$1.9 million from the program. More than 300,000 people joined over the course of 8 months, spending over $500 million. When a federal investigation of 12DailyPro took place, its main payment processor, Stormpay, froze all funds related to it. Stormpay has since refused to return any of these funds. On February 24, 2006, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered 12DailyPro and its parent company to cease and desist all operations. On February 28, a Los Angeles judge ordered all company assets and records to be turned over to an appointed receiver for investigation. Charis F. Johnson now faces criminal and civil suits from both local and federal agencies.

8) High Yield Investment Programs are related to established economic rules such as supply and demand, material assets that appreciate based on value-added through high-end skills such as high-end electronics, buildings & estates, hotels, technology parks, museums, theater and organic systems such as businesses involved in producing the previously mentioned material assets. HYIPs could involve printing of cards as certificates, with units being transferable to third parties. The monetary value of units rises over time, so most holders of such cards won't want to transfer their units. At the same time, the card can be used as a means of exchange for value making it a form of money. It's like turning the HYIPs into a form of Central Bank and the units it issues become currency.

9) In September 2007, another bank in Second Life called "The Bank" owned by the in-game character "Jasper Tizzy", operated as part of an in-game group of companies known as Atlas Venture Capital (AVC) and Countless Galaxies (CGI), stopped processing customer withdrawals. This was closely followed by the disappearance of Jasper Tizzy and his staff; Paydayloan Lindman and Teanna Nomura. They claimed they could give returns on average of 10% to 20% per month and, like in many of these schemes, they were making good on their claims for several months. The beginning of the end was when a separate venture supported by The Bank, the Kristatos Fashion Mall (KFM), was abandoned by the owner, Teanna Nomura and caused AVC and CGI to prematurely cave in on themselves. As with the Ginko episode, some residents have lost amounts of L$2.5M (around US$10,000) in the scheme and more calls for Linden Labs to clamp down have been raised as a result.

10) Affinity fraud refers to investment schemes that center upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious organizations, ethnic communities, professional groups or other identigfiable groups.  The financial advisors who promote affinity scams commonly are - or pretend to be - members of the group. Many times they enlist community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scam, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's scam as well.  Religon is one of the most frquent affinity scams.   

These schemes exploit the trust and friendship that exist in groups of people who have something in common.  Financial victims often fail to notify authorities or pursue their legal remedies, and instead try to work things out within the group. This is particularly true where the fraudsters have used respected community or religious leaders to convince others to join the investment.