Three thousand people put £70 million into a Costa Rican forest. The forest existed. That was the clever part. The trees were real. Around two million of them were planted in Costa Rica. Real saplings. Real land. Real photographs for the brochures. You could point to them. That mattered, because Ethical Forestry Limited was asking…

Charles Ponzi didn’t invent the Ponzi scheme. He just did it so spectacularly that we named it after him. Boston. July 1920. There is a line outside 27 School Street. Then around the corner. Then down the street. Then all the way toward City Hall. People are standing four abreast in the summer heat. Some…