A Ponzi scheme, simply defined, is where the schemer uses funds invested by one person to pay off (or provide a return) for an earlier investor. Such schemes require a continual supply of new investors, and when they run it, the schemes collapse.
Bernie Madoff is the best modern-day example of how a Ponzi scheme works, and he ran his for decades before it finally caved in thanks to the 2008 economic crash. People who had been content to leave their "returns" with Bernie started getting margin calls as the markets imploded, so they asked Bernie for redemptions he didn't have the funds for. That's what caused him to come clean, because there was no way to hide it any longer.
Buying shares in a company with no revenues and then selling them to someone else at a higher price is not a Ponzi scheme. That falls under the "greater fool" theory of economics -- there's always a bigger fool who can be parted from his money.
As was pointed out, Enron is a great example of what you're talking about -- they published totally fabricated financial statements that people then used as the basis to invest, only to learn later that it was all a lie.