Billionaire Mark Cuban once ran a Ponzi scheme from his dorm room: 'That's how I paid for my junior year of college'

Before you knew him as an investor on Shark Tank, the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, or just one of the richest people in the world, Mark Cuban was hustling in humble—and sometimes sketchy—ways.

To pay his way through junior year of college at Indiana University in the early 1980s, Cuban set up a “chain letter” in his dorm, he told the San Francisco Standard ’s Life in Seven Songs podcast . He started by approaching one person and asked them to give him $100, starting the Ponzi scheme or “scam” as he called it.

Cuban told that person “I’m going to take $50 of that. And here’s a list of 10 names. We’re going to send 50 bucks to whatever dorm room that this person at the top of the list is. Then we’re going to take their name off the list and put your name at the bottom. So w