Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [0]
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
“I’m the man.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I’m guilty.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Newspaper genius”
CHAPTER FOUR
“A long circle of bad breaks”
CHAPTER FIVE
“As restless as the sea”
CHAPTER SIX
“An American beauty”
PART TWO
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The almighty dollar”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“A small snowball downhill”
CHAPTER NINE
“Always reaching for the moon”
CHAPTER TEN
“I never bluff.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Like stealing candy from a baby”
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Money madness”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Master of the situation”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Even his cows couldn’t give milk.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You discovered the money!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I feel the strain—inside.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I’m not the man.”
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ON SOURCES
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY MITCHELL ZUCKOFF
COPYRIGHT
For my father
PROLOGUE
On June 9, 1920, a smooth-talking salesman named Martin Kolega went door-to-door in South Boston, Massachusetts, demon-strating a double-your-money machine small enough to fit on a sewing table. When Kolega knocked at the modest home of Mrs. Blanche Crasco, she welcomed him inside. But Mrs. Crasco was no fool. She wanted proof that the marvelous appliance worked. Kolega happily obliged.
No one could deny that the machine was a wonder. Encased in an enameled metal box, it sported flashing lights and a revolving board dotted with what looked like typewriter keys. In a darkened room, Kolega inserted into the box a hundred-dollar bill and a blank sheet of paper cut to the same size. Lights flickered, gears turned, and the box emitted a mysterious whirring sound. After a long minute of anticipation, Kolega pressed a button and, miraculously, two genuine hundred-dollar bills emerged.
Mrs. Crasco was sold.
Kolega pocketed her money—the $540 was enough for Mrs. Crasco to buy a car, but it seemed worth it for the endless stream of hundred-dollar bills the machine was sure to produce. In exchange, Kolega handed Mrs. Crasco a package wrapped in brown paper. Allowing for time to escape, Kolega warned her not to open it until nightfall, to be certain she did not expose the special duplicating paper to light. He left. She waited.
When Mrs. Crasco opened the bundle, she found a plain wooden box. Realizing that she had been duped, she called the police.
Oddly enough, a gullible newspaper reporter writing about the arrest of Kolega and an accomplice seemed to believe that Mrs. Crasco had been sold a fake version of a truly wondrous device. “It is alleged,” the reporter wrote, “that the men reserved one machine for demonstration and sold their customers dummy affairs.”
In other words, had Kolega only been kind enough to sell Mrs. Crasco a working copy of the splendid contraption, everyone would be happy and he would not be in jail.
In 1920, anything seemed possible. Especially when it came to money.
A new ethos was emerging, one that would reshape what it meant to be an American. No more pennies saved and pennies earned. Money was best when it arrived fast, easy, and in large quantities. Newspapers fueled dreams of prosperity with stories of poor girls marrying rich men, inherited fortunes from long-lost relatives, and fearless entrepreneurs who’d hit it big. The message was clear: No longer was prosperity the preserve of the well-born; even the laborer and the charwoman could aspire to the manor. All it took was the right break, the right knock at the door. And if wealth did not come knocking, go get it yourself. Plunge into dark waters in pursuit of sunken treasure. Never mind the shallow bottoms.
For promoters of instant assets, it was a time when it paid to think big. Kolega was a small-timer, quickly behind bars, his name soon forgotten. But at the same time, in the same city, a smiling, cane-twirling banty rooster of a man had