Ken早上在饮水器旁见到同事Dan和April.
K: Good morning, Dan. Good morning, April.
D&A: Hi, Ken. Good morning.
K: So…have you heard the big news?
A: No! Tell us!
K: Well, you know Jason Smith?
D: You mean our company’s Chief Financial Officer? That Jason Smith?
K: Yep…that’s the one. He got arrested yesterday.
A: No way! What for?
Ken问同事 Dan和April，Have you heard the big news? 你们听没听说公司里的大新闻。原来是公司财务总裁 Jason Smith 被抓起来了。April觉得难以置信，说 No way! 不可能！what for? 因为什么？
K: Seems our Mr. Smith was running a Ponzi scheme.
D: Sorry…I’m not familiar with that term. What’s a Ponzi scheme?
A: Basically…it’s fraud.
K: But a very special kind of fraud.
A: See, what they do is offer investors a very high rate of return on their money. Then the schemer takes some of the money and pays some of the original investors a large dividend.
原来，Jason Smith是因为涉嫌参与庞式骗局才被抓起来的。庞式骗局是Ponzi Scheme. Dan不知道什么是庞式骗局。Ken和April解释说，Ponzi scheme是一种特殊形式的诈骗，fraud，用高回报率a high rate of return 来吸引投资者，把从他们那里骗来的一部分钱做为红利dividend，分给最开始的那些投资者。
K: So of course the original investors think they’ve struck gold and they tell their friends about this great opportunity.
A: The friends pile their money in too and a few of them see big returns as well. Pretty soon, loads of people are “investing” their money with the bad guy and when he has enough…poof…he disappears.
这样一来，最早的一批投资者会觉得自己找到了金矿，they’ve struck gold, 马上介绍自己的亲戚朋友也来加入。这样越滚越大，等骗到了足够的钱以后，庞式骗局的谋划者就带着钱不知去向了。
A: The name comes from an Italian immigrant to America called Charles Ponzi. He was one of the biggest frauds in American history and ended up swindling thousands of people out of millions of dollars.
D: So Jason Smith was running a scheme like that?
K: Pretty much. He cooked his books so he wouldn’t get noticed, but these kinds of frauds almost always end up getting exposed because when no new money comes in…the pyramid collapses.
庞式骗局是以一个意大利移民Charles Ponzi的名字命名的。他是美国历史上最大的骗子之一。Swindle是欺骗的意思。公司财务主管Jason Smith造了假账 cook the books，但最后还是被抓住了。