Question:
Recently, a student came into a faculty member’s office and handed the faculty member a card he had found in the business school building advertising a company called 12 Daily Pro. He said someone had been distributing these cards around the building, encouraging students to invest in a “business opportunity.” It suggested that you could invest $6 to $6,000 and earn a 44 percent return in 12 days. The card called this program a “new economic paradigm.” The faculty member decided this had to be a Ponzi-type scheme and sent an e-mail to all students in the school reminding them that such schemes are illegal, unethical, and immoral. The next day a local TV channel carried the story, and the following day the electronic payment service for the scheme froze all the company’s accounts and essentially shut them down. A few weeks later, the SEC filed a securities fraud charge against the head of the company and against the company itself, calling it a Ponzi scheme.