Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [104]
Although outwardly Ponzi seemed a carefree bon vivant, privately his fears were mounting and his stomach was churning. The revived run—more than $400,000 paid on Monday alone—and the continued suspension of income-generating investments were depleting his bank accounts. He knew that the moment he could not pay a claim, his enemies would swoop in and seek a court order shutting down his business and declaring him bankrupt. If that happened, his reputation and his popularity—his two main assets, really—would be destroyed. The big house, the fancy car, and all the trappings would, as his mother feared, disappear as if they had all been a dream.
Ponzi had come too far to allow that, so he resolved to take action on two fronts. In the short term, the lawsuit by furniture dealer Joseph Daniels had frozen bank accounts containing roughly $700,000. Needing that money to survive until new money arrived, Ponzi resolved to redouble his efforts to settle the suit. In the longer term, it was time to speed up plans to launch a huge new company. He would offer stock to the public in a conglomerate combining all the ideas he had been tossing around in his mind—from profit sharing to banking, importing to steamship lines. The Securities Exchange Company would pass into history, and the Charles Ponzi Steamship Company would rise from its ashes. He gathered the reporters to explain his plans.
“After this investigation has shown that I am on the level, if I should open again, such a tremendous amount of money would blow in that I doubt if I should be able to accept such a large amount and continue to pay 50 percent in forty-five days,” Ponzi said. “I am planning an organization for an investment syndicate capitalized at one hundred million dollars, and eventually to be capitalized at two hundred million, in which subscribers would receive conservative monthly interest plus quarterly, semi-annual, or yearly dividends. This capital is to be invested in industrial enterprises by acquiring control, also in a chain of banks throughout the United States and the world, to be operated on a profit-sharing basis, also in an exporting and importing company affiliated with my banks and having under control steamship lines plying between Boston and all foreign countries.”
Burnishing his man-of-the-people image, Ponzi insisted that the profit sharing would extend to all aspects of the business and include not just stockholders but also his workers. And lest anyone suspect he was tiring of Boston, he declared that the city would be the company’s world headquarters, “as Boston is my city.” Ponzi hoped to begin taking investments in the new company by the end of the week, no later than the following Monday. He did not explain his haste, but it was clear that he hoped the torrents of fresh cash from prospective stockholders would be more than enough to cover all the liabilities Pride tallied. Ponzi would use some of the new money to pay the last outstanding notes of the Securities Exchange Company, and with the remaining loot Ponzi could start anew as a millionaire banker, shipping magnate, import-exporter, and perhaps even anti-Prohibition politician. It would take steel nerves and split-second timing, a prison-defying leap from the carousel to the brass ring. But it was Ponzi’s big chance. He was determined to take it.
Ponzi’s more immediate plan was a very public night out with his family. He took Rose, his mother, Rose’s sister Mary, and her husband, Rinaldo Boselli, who worked as a Ponzi agent, to Keith’s Theater on Washington Street.