Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [121]
Ponzi had one last flickering hope: He could preserve the life he had built if he could somehow cover the liabilities counted by Pride’s audit, which was scheduled to be revealed at noon on Friday.
As he walked, a thought occurred to him, one he wanted to share with the public. He asked his guards to summon two reporters he knew were keeping vigil nearby. But by the time they’d arrived he had changed his mind and momentarily lost his bearings.
“Get away from here!” Ponzi shouted.
“One of your guards said you wanted to see a reporter,” one of the newspapermen said.
“I made two statements today—that’s enough,” Ponzi answered. He pulled out his blue steel pistol and began waving it in the air.
“My guards’ power is limited, but mine is unlimited,” he yelled. “When I shoot I hit. Get away or there’ll be some tall shooting.”
Of all Ponzi’s concerns, none had shaken him more than his belief that Rose had been unaware of his prison record and would now think less of him. But early the next morning, Thursday, August 12, he learned the truth: Rose confessed that she had known all along and had loved and married him regardless. Relief swept over him. He regained the composure he had lost the night before.
His personal fears resolved, it was time to confront the rest of his worries. Since Monday, Ponzi had been thinking about the preview he had been given of Pride’s audit. Even with the Securities Exchange Company’s maddening bookkeeping system, the diligent accountant had calculated that Ponzi’s liabilities were about $7 million, maybe more. Ponzi had spoken briefly with Pride again on Wednesday, and it appeared that this would be the figure facing him at the showdown set for Friday in the federal prosecutor’s office.
During the two weeks since Pride had begun his tally, Ponzi had done everything possible to marshal his resources. He had closed his far-flung bank accounts, pooled his money in Hanover Trust, and gathered the certificates and titles to the stocks, bonds, and real estate he had purchased during his shopping spree. Repeatedly, he’d tried to cash his certificate of deposit by selling it at a discount to another bank, but there had been no takers. Ponzi had also sought help cashing the certificate from Thomas W. Lawson, a legendary Boston stock speculator and longtime enemy of Clarence Barron’s. Lawson’s fame derived in part from a book he’d written called Frenzied Finance, about stock market abuses. An endorsement from Lawson would go a long way. But Ponzi was too late. Weeks earlier, Simon Swig of Tremont Trust had approached Lawson for his opinion on Ponzi, and Lawson had concluded that it was almost certainly a swindle. Even if Lawson had agreed to help Ponzi turn his certificate of deposit into cash, his assets totaled only $4 million—$3 million shy of Pride’s number.
As the Friday deadline approached, Ponzi’s slim hopes of closing that gap disappeared. His last chance was his plan to temporarily “borrow” assets in the vaults of Hanover Trust. But the bank commissioner had unwittingly foiled that far-fetched idea by seizing the bank and locking its doors. Time was fast running out.
If Ponzi had any doubts about what would happen next, he needed only to look at the screaming headline atop the front page of that morning’s Post:
ARREST IN PONZI CASE MAY BE MADE TODAY
Below were four photographs that made Ponzi cringe. Two were twelve years old—the grim-faced mug shots from his Montreal forgery arrest. Below those were two recent photographs of the smiling Ponzi, but a Post illustrator had added a mustache on one “for the purpose of comparing it with his Canadian pictures,” the caption read. Inside the paper was the latest sketch by Ritchie, titled “Ready to Burst.” Cartoon images of four men—Gallagher, Pride, and the two Allens—stood atop the federal building and the State House using spears to poke holes in a balloon labeled “The Ponzi Get-Rich-Quick Bubble.”
Ponzi knew what