Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [119]
“I do not mean in any way to imply that he is not deserving the respect of the public. But I merely ask, if he is as deserving why shouldn’t I be?”
Ponzi paused again to let that sink in. Then, to lighten the mood, he gave a half smile and announced to the reporters surrounding him: “A new paragraph.”
“The Montreal records,” he continued, “show that a man of my description was convicted of forging in 1908 and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary of Saint Vincent de Paul, and served twenty months. That is all that the public in general cares to know. However, I feel that it is also very important for the people at large to know that, although I am the man who was convicted and sentenced for that crime, I am not the man who perpetrated that crime.”
Grasping for a life preserver, Ponzi spun a fanciful tale in which he claimed to have taken the blame for a forgery committed by his former boss Zarossi, who had been enticed into the illegal act by an extortionist. Ponzi said he’d acted to save Zarossi because his boss had a wife and four children. Halfway through the complicated story, Ponzi’s lawyer, McIsaac, had heard enough; he put on his coat and hat and said he would be back later.
“I am not trying to pose as a hero,” Ponzi insisted even as he did just that. He claimed that at least two other men in Boston could vouch for his story, though he declined to name them.
Having opened the door on his second conviction, Ponzi felt compelled to address it. Again he assumed the pose of a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time Samaritan.
“My next unfortunate experience,” he began, “did not come of my own volition, but happened as a consequence of my first mistake. Released from prison without a friend, without a dollar, and without credentials—they didn’t give me anything—I tried to earn a living as best I could. Within ten days of my release I was asked to escort five Italians into the United States. I did not smuggle them in. I crossed the border on a train—openly—and was placed immediately under arrest. I didn’t dodge the consequences and I pleaded guilty. I expected leniency in view of the fact that the crime was only a misdemeanor and not a felony and that I didn’t resist conviction. Yet I was sentenced to two years at the federal prison at Atlanta, Georgia, and my sentence was the maximum ever imposed for a similar offense.
“There isn’t much more to be said. The public knows the facts and whether the same are such to make me unworthy of their confidence is for them to decide.”
Ponzi then announced that he would resign, at least temporarily, as a director of the Hanover Trust. He displayed a measure of optimism, however, by insisting that the disclosures about his past would not prevent him from paying off all Ponzi notes “within the course of a few days.”
When he had finished his statement, Ponzi waved off the reporters’ questions. He slumped back in the chair. The sparkling energy that had made him a star was spent.
Before the reporters left, Ponzi added two codas that in many ways were the truest parts of his confession. First Ponzi told the reporters that he worried that news of his prison record would lead to his deportation. But even that was not his greatest fear.
Not knowing that his mother had secretly told Rose about his prison past before their marriage, Ponzi said his biggest regret, the biggest mistake of his life, was not having told his wife about his time behind bars. His eyes filled with tears at the thought of losing Rose. Somehow, Ponzi said, he hoped to keep his prison record from her at least a little longer. He told the reporters he had ordered all the newspapers kept out of their house. “I want to keep all this news from my wife,” Ponzi said. “It would kill her.”
“My nerves can’t last forever,