Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [114]
Attorney General Allen intensified his new offensive by urging Ponzi note holders to visit an office he had set up in the State House to collect their names, addresses, and amounts invested for some undisclosed future use in the investigation.
The moves by the two Allens had their desired effect. By the time Ponzi stepped out of his meeting at Gallagher’s office, the presses were already running on the afternoon papers declaring him in crisis. To escape the firestorm, Ponzi rushed to the tenth floor of the Hanover Trust building, where he holed up in the empty offices of the C & R Construction Company, in which he held a controlling interest. By six o’clock, just as the heat of the day had begun to break, Ponzi invited the reporters to join him.
When they arrived, Ponzi sat nibbling on the remnants of a box lunch and sipping ginger ale. A bottle of milk was nearby, no doubt to coat the lining of his ravaged stomach. He was well dressed as always, but reporters noticed something different: His smile had lost its radiance.
“I have played fair with everybody,” he began. “I have paid out to date all I could pay out, regardless of the attacks and impediments thrown my way by the state authorities, meaning Attorney General Allen and Bank Commissioner Allen. I do not propose to take issue with either official until after the investigation. But since it has developed that the above two mentioned gentlemen are not working for the interests of the people, but they are rather furthering the plans of the bankers against the people, I think that the time has arrived to make some revelations. Attorney General Allen, to begin with, has shown very little interest in what I was doing up to the time that I invited an investigation. In my opinion, it is the duty of a public official to prevent an alleged criminal from taking money, not from stopping him when he is paying that money out.”
Reporters read him the attorney general’s statement and Ponzi scoffed: “All I told Attorney General Allen was bull and it has kept him busy. If I see him again I will tell him some more bull which will keep him busy for two months.”
When the reporters stopped laughing, Ponzi turned his attention to the bank commissioner, insisting he had more than enough money to cover any overdraft, either from his certificate of deposit or from accounts in other banks. But Ponzi claimed the commissioner’s action would force him to stop paying investors at least until he had proved his solvency to Pride.
“That I am solvent there is not the slightest doubt in anybody’s mind. Why should then my investors be delayed in receiving payments which are rightfully theirs when I have cash available to pay them?”
Ponzi urged the public to rise up “and demand the removal or dismissal of public officials who not only have proven inefficient in the performance of their duties, but who have also overstepped their authority for reasons which are undoubtedly open to criticism.”
“I am sick and tired of the whole mess,” he declared flatly.
Several times as he spoke, Ponzi was interrupted by the shouts of newsboys on Washington Street, carried ten floors skyward by the warm breeze: “Ponzi stopped!” they cried. “Ponzi stopped!”
Ponzi had grown to like several of the newspapermen who had followed him around nonstop for two weeks. In his moment of need, he appealed to them as little guys just like him. “Don’t you fellows knock me, for I am fighting in a desperate game, and if I win you will be benefited and interested as much as me,” he implored them. “I am a fighter and I shall stay with the devils to the end, for I am sure you fellows are