Brief History of Fraud and the Antifraud Profession In 1817, the Meyer v. Sefton case involved a bankrupt estate. Since the nature of the evidence was such it could not be examined in court, the judge allowed the expert witness who had examined the bankrupt's accounts to testify to his examination. Forensic accounting professor and author Dr. Larry Crumbley considers this accountant to be the first forensic accountant in history and the beginning of forensic accounting as a profession. In 1920, Charles Ponzi planned to arbitrage postal coupons, buying them from Spain and selling them to the U.S. Postal Service, using foreign exchange rates as leverage to make a profit. In order to raise capital for the scheme, he promised outlandish returns to investors 50 percent in 90 days. Ponzi paid the first returns with the cash proceeds from those coming in later, then he personally took the proceeds from later entrants to the scheme. He was imprisoned for 40.000 people of $15 million. To this day, that type of scheme is referred to as a Ponzi scheme. In the 1920s, Samuel Insull was involved in a fraud scheme similar to the railroad and South Sea Bubble schemes, but it occurred in the electric utility business. Insull sold millions of dollars of common stock in electric utility companies to unwary investors. The stock was greatly overpriced in terms of the utilities' real assets. When the stock market collapsed in 1929. it was apparent that Insull's holding company was insolvent and had been for some time.