Not a pure Ponzi scheme
Because that would have meant no investing at all, just shuffling money around from entering investors to departing investors and keeping a whole lot of it for himself.
Ribotsky was definitely making investments, but were those investments generating revenue? If he was paying off departing investors not with money generated by the investments but only by new money that was coming in, then it was a de-facto Ponzi scheme. And the investments he was making were like window dressing.
It's like network marketing. Is it a Ponzi scheme? Not technically because they are selling products. But, you could say that the marketing is a cover for the pyramiding.
I guess it's all a matter of degree. But, if it can be shown that Ribotsky was closing few deals- and I mean recouping very little of the money he lent out and showing a profit- if there was very little of that going on, then it was, in effect, a Ponzi scheme.
