Charles Ponzi lives in infamy for his fraud scheme in 1920. Ponzi did not invent the scheme named after him, but he gained this recognition because his operation earned so much money that it became the first to be known in the United States. Others eventually surpassed his record.

It was on this day, December 11th, in 2008 that FBI agents arrested Bernie Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. Later, it was revealed that Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the United States.

In March of the next year, Madoff pled guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted that his fraud scheme began in the early 1990s. Investigators believe that it could have actually begun as early as the 1970s. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence, for stealing an estimated $65 billion from client accounts.