The business model that controversial e-commerce platform Evaly followed and deceived people with has been known to the world for hundreds of years.
Known as Ponzi scheme, the model’s history is rife with incidents of financial scams and fraudulence. When the dust settles on these Ponzi schemes, the ones left cheated are those who invested in the ventures, usually customers.
In literature, the first ever story of a life-destroying Ponzi scheme is described in Charles Dickens’ novel series “Little Dorrit” published between 1855 and 1857.
The popular term for the fraud is named after Italian immigrant Carlos (Charles) Ponzi, who established a succession of multi-million dollar Ponzi schemes in the 1920s, first in Boston and then in Florida of United States.
Ponzi ran a bizarre plan to buy and resell international postal-reply coupons which, according to the US Postal Service, actually could not be redeemed for cash.
He had gathered almost USD15 million from around 30,000 investors in just eight months. The business was ‘successful’ at first but his scheme finally got exposed.
Ponzi was sentenced to 14 years in prison, deported from the US, and spent the remainder of his life trying in vain to retrieve his investors’ losses.
What transpired for Evaly’s customers and merchants thus does not come as a shock for those well-versed in these chapters of commercial deceit.
Most Ponzi schemes advertise high rates of return for investors to lure them and their cash in. The money…
