10 of the Biggest Financial Frauds of the Past 25 Years

The high-profile implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is the most recent financial scam to dominate the headlines. In announcing charges against FTX founder and former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said that the case was "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history." But FTX — and Bankman-Fried — are only the latest massive fraud case to rock the financial world. Financial fraudsters have been engaging in schemes to separate their victims from their money since well before Charles Ponzi became synonymous with swindling in the 1920s. The original Ponzi scheme took investors for as much as $20 million. While that's nearly $300 million in 2022 dollars, modern scams have dwarfed that figure. In the gallery, we take a look at 10 of the most infamous frauds of the last 25 years, ranked by the estimated amount of losses in 2022 dollars.