"I'm going to take $50 of that. And here's a list of 10 names. We're going to send 50 bucks to whatever dorm room that this person at the top of the list is. Then we're going to take their name off the list and put your name at the bottom. So we'll make it a $50 chain letter. And as everybody else does that, your name moves up the list until you're at the top."
"I made sure my friends all got their money back. And so I got up to the top of the list. And it was amazing, because I'd go to [my mailbox] and there'd be envelopes with 50 bucks from here, 50 bucks from there, and that's how I paid for my junior year of college."
Mark Cuban funded his junior year at Indiana University in the early 1980s by running a dorm-based chain-letter Ponzi that circulated $50 payments and rotated names on a list. He initially solicited $100, kept $50, and organized a $50 payment system that moved participants up the list until they received multiple $50 envelopes. He ensured friends recovered their money and relied on the scheme to cover expenses. Cuban grew up in a working-class Pittsburgh suburb with a father in car upholstery and began entrepreneurial ventures early, including selling trash bags.
Read at Fortune
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