Ray William Johnson

He's taking money from the people in the community and he's pretending to invest it, which is essentially a big Ponzi scheme.

But by now, he's pulled in over $200 million.

Damn.

But then, around 2010, things start to get complicated for him.

Because he ultimately runs out of new investors to take money from.

And he can't pay back some of the old investors.

And some of those old investors get super pissed.

They want Ellie to give them their money back.

And so then some of those old investors start to think that this is a scam and they go and they report Ellie to the FBI.

And the FBI starts investigating and they see that he's running a big Ponzi scheme.

And so, bam, the feds arrest him.

Here is a picture of him getting arrested.

And two years go by and Eli is no longer in jail.

He's actually out on bond waiting for his trial.

And while he's waiting on that trial, he comes up with a brand new way to con some more money.

See, during this time, Facebook is really popular and the company is about to IPO and go public.

So Eli recruits some of his friends to approach some new investors with a proposal.

And they claim that they have a way to buy Facebook shares before it goes public, and this is all going to make them so rich.

And I guess the investors are like, sounds legit.

And they start sending millions of dollars to a bank account that Ellie controls.