The Internet really does change everything, including Ponzi schemes.

In the late 1990s, when we were experiencing the first wave of Internet madness, Bill Gates famously/supposedly said "the Internet changes everything." And ol' Bill turned out to be pretty darned right. It's hard to think of any crevice or corner in our lives that hasn't been somehow reached and impacted by the Internet.

Even if you take off your Fitbit and ditch your phone and decide to take a long, brooding walk in the dunes, there's a non-zero chance that there's a satellite capturing the scene and tossing it into the cloud for Google Maps. Or something. 

So it's no surprise that Ponzi-schemers are using the net to lure in folks hoping the make the quick, risk-free buck that Ponzi-schemers promise.

Matthew Motil was an Ohio laborer who apparently saw podcasting as a way to get out of lugging 2x4's around construction sites. That way out was combined with another one of the current "it" things: house-flipping. 

Now house-flipping doesn't exactly require the Internet, but podcasting, well, that's another story. And the podcasting helped him widen the net that enabled him to pull off - for a while, at least - his Ponzi scheme.

Alas for Motil, a couple of months ago, the SEC caught up with him, and he's now charged with defrauding 50 investors of $11M. 

The agency said in a news release that Motil, the host of "The Cash Flow King" podcast, encouraged investors to buy promissory notes that he said were backed by first mortgages on homes in Ohio.

Motil's attorney did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

The SEC said Motil told investors that he would generate quick profits for them as he renovated, resold, refinanced or rented out the properties they helped him buy.

Motil promoted the investments as low-risk and high-return, according to the SEC.

However, the SEC said that instead of investing the money, Motil used the funds to pay "returns" to other investors — a classic Ponzi scheme pattern — and also used money to rent a lakeside mansion and buy courtside season tickets to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. (Source: NBC News)

Motil may be a Ponzi schemer, but with a scam value of $11M, he's no Charles Ponzi, whose Roaring Twenties swindle screwed people out of what would be $220M in total's value. And then there's Bernie Madoff. Matthew Motil may have styled himself as the Cash Flow King, but Bernie - with a defraud total of around $65B - is the all time Ponzi King.

Still, as schemers, embezzlers, and conmen go, Matthew Motil is plenty fascinating. 

For one thing, he's an author. And on Amazon, there's quite the author bio:

Dr. Matt Motil is a real estate entrepreneur, best-selling author, and host of the Cashflow King Podcast. He has worked with hundreds of investors from all over the world and helped them to grow massive wealth and passive income through remote real estate investments. After spending almost 20 years in the construction industry starting as a union laborer, working his way up to senior project management, he escaped the middle-class trap, utilizing rental real estate. Dr. Motil stopped teaching higher education when he realized he was simply helping people become better employees and now teaches people how to do exactly what he did, use real estate investing to fire their bosses forever!

My favorite part here is that "Dr. Motil stopped teaching higher education when he realized he was simply helping people become better employees and now teaches people how to do exactly what he did."

Stopped teacher higher education? Huh?

Reminds me of the guy running the Scientology intake meeting I went to with a friend one bored Friday night when we were in college. We could barely contain ourselves - the original ROFLMAO - when the guy running it said that "I'd of went through college in two years if I'd had Scientology." Clearly not an English major. (He also said that, because he was on his way to becoming an Operating Thetan, he could recognize that there were people in the audience who were hostile to Scientology. If he needed Scientology to figure out that my friend and I weren't prospective Scientologists, he definitely needed to go back to college.)

Then there's the Dr. Motil thang. What kind of doctor, pray ell, is Dr Motil a doctor of? And where did he get his degree. Probably at the same college of knowledge where he taught higher education.

His book is called Man on Fire: Lessons From a Perpetual Burnout on Creating Alignment for Success, which is thus blurbed:

Man on Fire is written for anyone that knows their life hasn't reached their fullest potential. Written by someone who has failed repeatedly on the path to alignment and success.Part autobiography, part how-to book, Dr. Matt Motil shares his journey navigating the road of a wanna-be real estate investor, perpetual burnout, and closet entrepreneur. Providing lessons learned along the road as an employee while constantly searching and striving for momentum that ultimately was only achieved after pursuing his passions in real estate.This book is filled with real-world examples of battling and overcoming the 9-to-5 grind, toxic coworkers, childhood illness, cancer, and countless failed attempts at gaining momentum to ultimately creating alignment, blasting through plateaus and designing a life worth living. Everything in this book is derived from first hand experiences gained through real life struggles.

Creating a Ponzi scheme is, I suppose, an example of blasting through a plateau. So's going to prison for running a Ponzi scheme. But that's probably not a design for a life worth living 

Naturally, Motil's book is self-published. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm likely going to be taking that route with the novel I'm working on. Maybe getting his book out is how he spent some of his Ponzi proceeds. That an paying off the educational loans for earning the right to call himself Dr. Motil.

Ah, the Internet. Imagine what Charles Ponzi could have done with it?