Palihapitiya, the king of SPACs, developed six SPACs,
    five of which merged into new stocks that each lost
    at least 70% of their value. He reportedly made $750m 
    from selling his shares

Sounds like they "worked" exactly as intended for this guy - he makes a stack of cash and retail investors get the shaft.

Exactly. Here, buy shares in this company has no product, no service, nothing. We pinky-promise to make you rich.

Works just as well as any other scheme to separate suckers from their money.

A reminder that ‘financial engineering’ is just another term for fraud.