Ponzi schemes and the roles of trust creation and maintenance

The purpose of this study is to elaborate on how schemers build and maintain trust essential for financial fraud that persists over many years. A Ponzi scheme is a form of financial fraud that involves repeated interaction with an increasingly large number of individuals over a long period time. This type of fraud involves the building and maintenance of each individual’s trust. All Ponzi schemes come to a dramatic conclusion. Either the schemer defaults on payments, or someone gets suspicious and the scheme is uncovered. Understanding how schemers build and maintain trust may help prevent or uncover the fraud earlier, limiting financial devastation endured by unsuspecting investors, as well as externalities inflicted on the financial system as investors lose trust.

This study combines an understanding of trust accumulation from multiple disciplines in the existing literature to build a comprehensive model of trust creation and maintenance in Ponzi schemes.

This study finds that key characteristics of both the trustor and trustee contribute to long term financial arrangements. Schemers prey on individuals with specific characteristics that indicate they are more trusting. Trusting individuals are less likely to conduct due diligence to detect fraud. Prevention and detection of fraud are made more difficult by convincing, yet false, mimicry used by schemers to signal trustworthiness.

Bringing together multiple views on trust allows creation of a comprehensive model of trust that captures key characteristics of unsuspecting investors and schemers who prey on them in financial fraud.