{"id":44671,"date":"2023-05-07T04:42:30","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T11:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=44671"},"modified":"2025-05-28T08:13:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T14:13:21","slug":"scams-in-zion-part-iii-utah-is-indeed-the-ponzi-scheme-capital-of-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2023\/05\/scams-in-zion-part-iii-utah-is-indeed-the-ponzi-scheme-capital-of-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Scams in Zion, Part III: Utah is Indeed the Ponzi Scheme Capital of the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a long time coming, but this is part III of a series on \u201cScams in Zion,\u201d with part I (showing that Latter-day Saint-heavy counties have less fraud) here<\/a>, and part II discussing our multilevel marketing problem here<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here I\u2019m directly addressing a particular kind of affinity fraud we\u2019re known for: Ponzi schemes. I ran across a site<\/a> where a financial lawyer fairly exhaustively tracks all known Ponzi schemes in the US over one million dollars and provides a helpful database.<\/span><\/p>\n

I went ahead and downloaded his file, pulled the number of people in each state from the Census Bureau, and created a \u201cnumber of people per Ponzi Schemes\u201d metric. (Nitty gritty, wonkish disclaimer: It\u2019s slightly apples and oranges because I\u2019m pulling the number of people from the most recent ACS 5-year estimates, whereas the Ponzi scheme database goes back to 2008, but for all practical purposes it doesn\u2019t matter because the amount of variation within states across time is nothing compared to the variation between states).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to this metric Utah is by far the highest state per capita for Ponzi schemes at one per 70,247, with the next highest being Nevada at one per 117,663.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I generated a map to show the variation across the country. Some of the very low Ponzi scheme states drown out a lot of the others, so to make it show more variation I quickly and simply set the very low states (Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico) to missing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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To describe the pattern in one sentence it would be: Ponzi schemes are more common in financial centers on the coast (unsurprisingly) and the Mormon Corridor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few more points:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n