Ken早上在飲水器旁見到同事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問同事 Dan和April，Have you heard the big news? 你們聽沒聽說公司里的大新聞。原來是公司財務總裁 Jason Smith 被抓起來了。April覺得難以置信，說 No way! 不可能！what for? 因為什么？

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.

原來，Jason Smith是因為涉嫌參與龐式騙局才被抓起來的。龐式騙局是Ponzi Scheme. Dan不知道什么是龐式騙局。Ken和April解釋說，Ponzi scheme是一種特殊形式的詐騙，fraud，用高回報率a high rate of return 來吸引投資者，把從他們那里騙來的一部分錢做為紅利dividend，分給最開始的那些投資者。

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.

這樣一來，最早的一批投資者會覺得自己找到了金礦，they've struck gold, 馬上介紹自己的親戚朋友也來加入。這樣越滾越大，等騙到了足夠的錢以后，龐式騙局的謀劃者就帶著錢不知去向了。

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.

龐式騙局是以一個意大利移民Charles Ponzi的名字命名的。他是美國歷史上最大的騙子之一。Swindle是欺騙的意思。公司財務主管Jason Smith造了假賬 cook the books，但最后還是被抓住了。