Free Republic

On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law. Eighty-eight years later, our Social Security system is among the most successful and popular government programs in history. Nearly every worker pays premiums (Federal Insurance Contributions or FICA) for Social Security. In return, they receive insurance benefits when they retire, become disabled, or lose a family breadwinner. Social Security is secure, efficient, and the most important source of retirement income for the vast majority of Americans. Social Security does have one major flaw, though: Its benefits are too low. The average Social Security benefit is only $1,700...

“Ponzi Scheme” is a term that was coined about 100 years ago. It was named after an Italian immigrant, Charles Ponzi, who realized he could get investors by promising large returns for undefined, high-yield investments. His endeavor needed to make just enough money to keep attracting new investors, whose money, after Ponzi’s cut, was used to pay some of the earlier investors. In our modern day, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme resulted in losses in the billions of dollars when the stock market tanked during the Great Recession. Selling the Deal Americans are just beginning to see the tip of the...

Politicians and liberal media outlets on the receiving end of FTX donations and grants are sitting on "stolen" money, journalist Glenn Greenwald said Tuesday, urging them to return the funds given to them as a result of a "Ponzi scheme" that impacted an estimated one million customers. "Everyone knows, including these politicians, that it is not their money," Greenwald said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." "That money was stolen. It was a Ponzi scheme and people are without their money while these politicians keep the money that doesn’t belong to them."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on Friday that “extreme MAGA” Republicans view Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” calling on Democrats to work to protect the program. “The Extreme MAGA Republican crowd claims Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. More evidence they want to destroy it. Dems must stop them,” Jeffries tweeted, using an acronym for former President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. The White House and Democrats have been arguing this week with the GOP over whether Social Security and Medicare are at risk as part of some Republican Congress members’ proposals. During his State of...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has now signed extradition papers in the Bahamas, where he lived in a multimillion-dollar mansion, after waffling on the decision since his initial court appearance last week. The disgraced former CEO signed the papers to waive an extradition hearing from the Bahamas and will now be flown to the United States to face prosecution after the collapse of a company that was once valued at $32 billion, according to acting Commissioner of Corrections Doan Cleare. Bankman-Fried, 30, had been expected in court Tuesday but did not appear, even as his lawyers and U.S. consular officials waited...

How can she conduct an impartial investigation of his Ponzi scheme? ... Sam Bankman-Fried, according to Victor Davis Hanson, “may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors.” He “protected from federal securities regulators, had drained off, lost, hidden, or spent billions of dollars of other people’s money.” Now his dear friend Maxine Waters (D-Incitement), who was caught on video blowing him a kiss in December 2021, will be leading an investigation into his sleazy FTX Ponzi scheme as Chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Waters initially stepped on a rake when...

Caroline Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian and law firm WilmerHale to represent her in the FTX investigation, per Bloomberg. Avakian was a top regulator at the SEC, where she increased oversight of cryptocurrency. She also led major cases against companies including Tesla, Theranos, Facebook, and Wells Fargo, among others.

During a Twitter DM interview by Kelsey Piper of Vox with FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried last week, something remarkable happened.Bankman-Fried ditched his annoyingly sanctimonious "monk-like" mask and revealed his true self: a greedy cynic who is laughing at the world, including the gullible media, for believing his phony "effective altruism" shtick as you can see in the section of the interview below.

Celsius Network, once a titan of the crypto lending world, is in bankruptcy proceedings and facing down claims that it was running a Ponzi scheme by paying early depositors with the money it got from new users. Some of the 1.7 million customers ensnared by the alleged fraud are now directly pleading with the Southern District of New York to help them get their money back. Christian Ostheimer, a 37 year-old living in Connecticut, wrote in a letter included in court exhibits that he trusted Celsius with his retirement savings and has lost more than $30,000, which has brought him...

Green energy executive Robert A. Karmann, who was the chief financial officer for a now non-existent company, was sentenced to six years in prison on Tuesday for his role in a Ponzi scheme encompassing billions of dollars. Karmann was also ordered to pay $624 million in restitution for his involvement in fraudulent acts related to the DC Solar company, which made mobile solar generator units. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, investors were given “generous federal tax credits” for purchasing the units. The investors were also falsely told that there would be consistent revenue...

OUTSIDE THE BOX CORRECTION: Social Security would need to cut benefits across the board by 22% when it hits insolvency in 2034, according to the latest trustees report. An earlier version gave it as 24%. There was no error in the table. There is one fact about Social Security on which all policy analysts agree: the longer Congress waits, the harder it will be to fix the program’s finances. The extension of that axiom is: every dollar of delay today costs future Americans — whether workers or retirees — more than a dollar to fix. Over the past two years,...

According to the latest just released report on the State of the Crypto Market from Gemini, 2020 which polled 3,000 U.S. adults, ages 18 to 65 with $40,000 or more in household income (survey respondents were polled from October 19-November 16, 2020, and included 921 self-identifying current cryptocurrency owners and 1,697 consumers who were interested in learning more about cryptocurrency), the exchange estimates that roughly 14% of the U.S. population owns cryptocurrency. This translates to 21.2 million U.S. adults who own cryptocurrency, and other studies estimate this number to be even higher. This number is expected to double in 2021.Gemini...

Over the last week, the altcoin market has added over $500 billion taking the overall crypto market cap to above $2.5 trillion. Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and Dogecoin (DOGE) have been the top performers in the crypto market while Bitcoin (BTC) has been consolidating for a long time time. As altcoins continue to extend their market dominance, Wall Street investors are worried over Bitcoin’s falling market dominance. From over 70% at the beginning of 2021, the BTC dominance has now dropped to under 44%. Strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co and DataTrek Research LLC calling it a warning sign...

Bernie Madoff, whose $65 billion Ponzi scheme made him one of the world’s most hated criminals and destroyed even his own family, died Wednesday at the secure federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year prison sentence, according to prison officials. The Associated Press reported the 82-year-old scam king, who had been suffering from end-stage kidney disease and other chronic ailments, died of natural causes. Madoff would have turned 83 on April 29. His epic stock fraud, which came to light amid the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and remains the biggest in...

A little-known Los Angeles-based actor was reportedly arrested by the FBI on Tuesday for allegedly running an enormous Ponzi scheme where he duped investors by lying about the success of his film distribution company. Zachary Horwitz, 34, who has had roles in small films under the name Zach Avery, is accused of cheating investors out of $227 million and using most of the funds for himself, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing federal authorities. Horwitz allegedly enticed the investors by falsely claiming his company, 1inMM Capital LLC, had film licensing deals with Netflix, HBO and other platforms, the newspaper reported.

Prior to the economic downturn—or collapse—that we’re now experiencing, the trust fund was projected to run out of money by 2035. This has, practically overnight, gotten worse. Why? Because some 16 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last three weeks. This means there are a lot fewer—millions fewer—people paying those payroll taxes into the Social Security system. And on top of a lot less money coming in, a lot more will soon be going out. That’s because people who are now out of work and eligible to draw benefits may soon do so, out of sheer economic need....

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate. Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009. The latter instance was...

Bernie Madoff, the notorious Ponzi schemer, says that he is dying from terminal kidney disease, and on Wednesday asked a judge to grant him an early release from prison on compassionate grounds so that he can live out his remaining days with a friend. A lawyer for Madoff, in a legal filing, says the fraudster has “less than 18 months to live,” and is suffering from “numerous other serious medical conditions” including cardiovascular disease and hypertension. On Thursday, a lawyer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Madoff, filed a court document asking...

How Christine Lagarde, Clinton and Nuland Funded a Massive Ukrainian Ponzi Scheme John Helmer Fri, Jul 5, 2019 | 3120 words 8,340 Comments The author is the longest serving foreign correspondent covering Russia. He published his fascinating memoirs in December of 2018. They are full of insights into what has really been going on in Moscow over the past 30 years. RI wrote about it here. He is the author of 12 books, 3 of them about Russia. When Igor Kolomoisky (image below, centre) financed anti-Russian units operating with the Ukrainian Army in the Ukrainian civil war, he was a staunch ally of Petro Poroshenko’s government in...

The co-owners of DC Solar Solutions, Inc. plead guilty on Friday to charges associated with running a one billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Jeff and Paulette Carpoff (along with five others who have/will plead guilty) acknowledged that between 2011 and 2018 they sold investors mobile solar generator units (MSGs) that did not exist and manipulated documentation (think: financial statements, lease contracts) to make it appear as if the units had been leased out and were in use. New funds were used to pay the scam’s earliest investors and to make several sports related purchases including; NASCAR sponsorships, an independent league baseball...