Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [8]
“Ah, Mr. Ponzi!” the man called. “Want to put in two thousand?”
“Mister,” Ponzi shot back, “if you’ve got two thousand you’d better hang on to it for bail. There’ll be a couple of police inspectors down to see you in a few moments.”
Not waiting for a reply, Ponzi whirled around and returned to his office. Soon, Inspector Cavagnaro strode through the door. He wanted to help, but he explained to Ponzi that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by the Old Colony gang. He had no cause for arrest. Still, Ponzi could be pleased that Cavagnaro’s presence had put the Old Colony crowd on notice that they were being watched and that Ponzi had friends in high places. That would have to do until the Pinkertons could get busy with their investigation. All Ponzi needed was a little time. He had figured out how to turn this soon-to-be-exhausted gold mine into a permanent mint, one that would make him as rich and respected as the Brahmins who ran this town. At least that was the plan. In the meantime, he could not let anything derail him.
Investors kept pouring into the office the rest of the day, and by the time Ponzi locked the doors after six that night he had taken in more than $200,000. That did not include the receipts from his two dozen similarly overwhelmed branches. It was his best day since he had birthed his brainstorm the previous summer.
As Ponzi sat back in the Locomobile for the ride home to Lexington, the basement-level presses of the Post began rumbling to life once more. By coincidence, the newspaper’s offices were only a hundred yards away from the Securities Exchange Company, around the corner on Washington Street, a Colonial-era cow path known as Newspaper Row. If he had stayed in the city a few more hours, Ponzi could have picked up a copy of the Boston Sunday Post still warm and inky. This time the story about him would be at the very top of the front page, with a headline set in bold type. It would have photos, too, not only of him but also of his wife, his mother, the scene outside 27 School Street, and his fabulous Lexington home.
But the glorious tide that had carried him so far, so fast, was threatening to overwhelm him. The Post’s Sunday story would not be as flattering as the one that had appeared this morning. It would signal the Post’s rising doubts about his honesty and rally authorities to intensify their sluggish investigations. Ponzi was about to get a run for his money.
Postcard of S.S. Vancouver, the ship that brought Ponzi from Italy to America in 1903.
Peabody Essex Museum
CHAPTER TWO
“I’M GUILTY.”
Ponzi’s moment of success had been decades in the making. The thirty-eight years that preceded that Saturday in July 1920 were notable mostly for setbacks, misadventures, and persistent failures in pursuit of riches.
He was born March 3, 1882, in Lugo, Italy, an ancient crossroads town populated by merchants and farmers, in a fertile plain sandwiched between Bologna and the Adriatic Sea. Ponzi’s parents were living with his widowed maternal grandmother in an apartment at No. 950 Via Codalunga, a curving road lined with three-story stone buildings. It was a decidedly working-class neighborhood; down the street was the ghetto where Lugo’s large Jewish population had been required to live since the 1700s. At the other end of the street was the Church of Pio Suffragio, a gloomy sanctuary filled with baroque stuccos of cherubs and frescoes depicting the deaths of saints. Stained-glass windows high on the walls allowed only dim shards of light to fall on the narrow wooden pews. Ponzi’s parents, Oreste and Imelde Ponzi, brought him there to be baptized, anointing him with names chosen to honor his maternal and paternal grandfathers: Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi.
The family was comfortable but far from wealthy, richer in name and reputation than in savings. Ponzi’s father was descended from middle-class tradesmen and hoteliers but he was employed in Lugo as a