When HBO’s The Wizard of Lies airs on Saturday, starring Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff, it will be just the latest moment in the century-spanning history of the scheme that earned Madoff a 150-year prison sentence. It all began with Charles (or Carlo) Ponzi, a five-foot-two-inch Italian immigrant in Boston, who, in 1920, landed in jail for defrauding about thousands in the Northeast of at least $15 million — or about $190 million in today’s dollars — over the course of just eight months. Ponzi scheme started with “postal reply coupons,” which could be used to buy a stamp in any country in the world.