Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [111]
As Ponzi regaled Santosuosso on Sunday afternoon with his auto-hagiography, Rose Ponzi walked into the parlor. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Dinner was waiting on the table and here her husband sat, still in his robe, talking to the Post reporter. Fiercely private, longing for his attention, Rose had been frustrated for days—she missed their old life, and she abhorred people staring at her in the streets, shops, and theaters of Boston. She turned to Santosuosso and delivered a statement of her own: “I would much rather that he was a bricklayer working eight hours each day and undisturbed by anyone in the evenings and on Sunday than to have all the wealth he has brought to me.”
Later that day, a telegram arrived at the Post building from the newspaper’s correspondent in Montreal with information that seemed to fill one of the gaps Ponzi had left in his story. A man who went by the name “Charles Ponsi, alias Bianchi,” had been convicted of forgery while working for the Banco Zarossi in Montreal. Santosuosso called Ponzi’s home to ask if he was the same man. Ponzi scoffed—that was ridiculous. Santosuosso persisted: Were you in Canada when this took place? Yes, Ponzi said. But what did that prove? Santosuosso pressed on: Did you work at Banco Zarossi?
“I might have,” said Ponzi, ending the conversation.
Grozier, Dunn, and their reporters were tempted to run the story the next morning. But Ponzi had more lives than a cat, surviving the attacks by Barron and the Post, the relentless runs, the unceasing investigations, and the McMasters exposé, without breaking a sweat or losing his grin. This time the Post was determined to finish the job. Grozier called for his ace reporter, Herb Baldwin, and gave him a mission: Get to Montreal as fast as you can. And bring some photographs of Ponzi. Find out if the forger and the financier are one and the same.
The moment Santosuosso posed the question, Ponzi knew he could not avoid being revealed as a forger. And he was certain of one thing: “Exposure spelled ruin.” By denying he was Bianchi/Ponsi, Ponzi hoped to delay the Post story for at least a few days. By then, Pride’s audit might be complete and, if he could tap a new vein of luck, somehow he might be able to prove his solvency.
His plans on that front had not progressed much further than an unexpected influx of cash or a scheme to “borrow” whatever he needed from the Hanover Trust. But in light of how long Pride’s audit was taking—approaching two weeks—there was a growing possibility that the accountant was stymied by Ponzi’s admittedly chaotic system of bookkeeping. The index-card system designed by eighteen-year-old Lucy Meli might be having the unintended benefit for Ponzi of frustrating Pride from determining the true extent of his liabilities. If Pride came up with an artificially low figure, Ponzi might have enough money on hand with his $1.5 million certificate of deposit to demonstrate solvency. Or if that was not enough, Ponzi might be able to cobble together cash from several accounts, sell the stock he had accumulated, and secretly “borrow” a bit from Hanover Trust to cover Pride’s artificially deflated number. Even without taking money that did not belong to him from the Hanover vaults, Ponzi estimated that his holdings had a collective value of roughly $4 million.
Success on that front would mean vindication in the eyes of the public and perhaps even the authorities. And that might give him enough of a shield to weather the storm that would surely follow the Post’s disclosure of his criminal past.
He arrived in Boston early the next morning, Monday, August 9, seeking to focus attention on the question