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In America, Carlo became Charles, and at times he found it useful to adopt a new last name: Bianchi, or “white,” which fit his fair complexion. English spellings of Italian names were not yet standardized, and he was also known as “Ponsi,” “Ponci,” and “Ponse.” He grew a mustache that sat on his upper lip like a bottlebrush. With the new names and new look came a new language. Soon he was as fluent in English as he was in Italian and French, and with his new tongue he began seeking jobs more suited to his dreams.

In July 1907, he scraped together a few dollars for a train ticket to Montreal, arriving at the magnificent Gare Bonaventure with no baggage and a single dollar in his pocket. Ponzi walked up Rue Saint Jacques, Canada’s Wall Street, past ornate eight- and ten-story bank and insurance buildings that were the skyscrapers of their day. Not two blocks from the train station he saw the sign of an Italian bank, Banco Zarossi. Calling himself Charles Bianchi, he made himself as presentable as possible and walked confidently through the door. Five minutes later he was hired as a clerk. Ponzi/Bianchi was delighted. After four years of menial labor, he finally had a job that complemented his skills and fit his self-image. Never mind that it was just the sort of job he had rejected as beneath him in Italy.

Canada was in the midst of an immigration wave of Italians, many of them brawny young men from the south of Italy who sought jobs in the coal mines of Nova Scotia and clearing forests for the Canada Pacific Railway. Nominally based in Montreal, they would be away from the city for months at a time. They needed a safe place to send their paychecks, but their business held little appeal for the British and Scottish financiers who lorded over Rue Saint Jacques. Banco Zarossi was one of several Montreal banks that had sprung up to fill the void.

The bank’s owner, a jolly man named Luigi “Louis” Zarossi, had formerly been in the cigar business. But as soon as he’d entered the world of finance he’d been intent on beating his competitors. It was a daunting task, largely because another Italian bank, located almost directly across the street, was owned by the notorious Antonio Cordasco, the city’s richest and most powerful padrone. The padrone system of labor bosses was in full flower at the turn of the century in North American cities with large Italian immigrant populations. At its center were native Italians who formed relationships with companies seeking unskilled laborers, then established themselves, sometimes through force, as the men to see for jobs, housing, loans, travel papers, and everything else they could control. Cordasco was that man in Montreal. He ruled an extensive network of agents and subagents in his native country and Canada who kept business humming, workers coming, and cash flowing. At a parade three years before Ponzi’s arrival in Canada, Cordasco had himself fitted with a crown and declared the “King of Montreal’s Italian Workers.”

But Zarossi had an idea. Cordasco’s bank and others catering to immigrants paid depositors 2 percent interest on their accounts. It was a simple system: the banks invested in Italian securities that paid 3 percent, then gave 2 percent to depositors and kept 1 percent for costs and profits. Zarossi announced that he would pay depositors the full 3 percent, plus another 3 percent as a bonus, for an unheard-of 6 percent. Asked how he could do it, Zarossi tapped into the public’s widespread suspicions that greedy bankers paid pennies on the dollar while keeping huge profits for themselves. His largesse was possible, he claimed, because he would share his bank’s earnings more fairly with his depositors. Cordasco was furious. Dubious, too. Cordasco considered it impossible to pay such returns. He kept quiet, but he suspected that Zarossi would be paying one man with another man’s money, an age-old fraud known as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

As months passed and business boomed at Banco Zarossi, Ponzi impressed his boss with