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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old One" data-source="post: 1596177" data-attributes="member: 83">Ponzi Scheme...A take-off on the "false trader" mentioned above...Convince 10 people to invest in your trade scheme with a low initial investment 100 gps.  Use forgery and other skills to make it look like a legitmate operations (ship's manifest, letters of credit, etc).  Use some of your current gold to return their investment 2-3 times over.Then tell them you have a bigger expedition planned, with even more profit expected.  Have them tell their friends and family.  This time, up the intial investment to 200 gold and return their investment 2-3 times over.Then set up the big one.  Go back to all of the investors and tell them you have a huge trade deal coming up.  The buy-in this time is 1,000 gold.  By this time, you should have investors breaking down your door to get in on the deal.  Now, you have 2 ways to go:(1) Just get as much money as you can and run-OR-(2) Pay off the first 5 investors (using money from the other investors) and tell the others that part of the shipment has been delayed, but the first shipment was so profitable that you are sending a 2nd caravan or ship.  With the first 5 talking about how great the investment is...you bring in even more sheep.  Once you have pocketed a significant sum...you shut it down and disappear...leaving the investors holding the bag <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />!~ Old One</blockquote>

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