[roywiggins]

I'm talking about a hypothetical scheme where you get some capital from some investors, and then go out and pump and dump penny stocks onto other people who aren't your investors, and then return your winnings as interest to your investors. You are genuinely earning money for your investors (and defrauding other people).

In a Ponzi, you can't satisfy all your investors- you literally don't have the money you say you do. Eventually it will collapse and piss off most of your investors. But if you are really good at pumping and dumping you could in theory just keep doing that until you can't make money anymore, and then close up shop with a tidy profit for you and your investors.

They're both frauds, but they're different.