Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [94]
Ponzi took a few missteps of his own in his talks with reporters. This day, they came to haunt him in the person of his old nemesis, furniture dealer Joseph Daniels, whose million-dollar lawsuit was still pending. When the courthouse opened, a lawyer for Daniels amended his case to put a claim on Ponzi’s stock in Hanover Trust, J. R. Poole Company, the Napoli Macaroni Manufacturing Company, and several other firms. Ponzi had bought some of the stock in other people’s names expressly to avoid attachments by Daniels or anyone else, but he had defeated his financial disguise by describing his holdings to reporters. Daniels’s case also came before Judge Wait, who ordered a hearing on the motion the following week.
On another front, the county prosecutor, Joseph Pelletier, announced that he was opening an investigation of Ponzi’s rival, the Old Colony Foreign Exchange Company and its president, a forty-five-year-old former court stenographer from Georgia named Charles Brightwell. Ponzi had gotten his wish—his competitors were feeling as much heat as he was—but he was too busy to enjoy it.
When he returned home to Slocum Road, Ponzi found a Post reporter staking out his house. Ponzi rewarded him with a tantalizing bit of information: He was thinking about selling the Securities Exchange Company for $10 million. “I was in conference with a big banker from New York today,” Ponzi told the Post man, “and he made me this offer for my business. I have not decided to accept it or not.” Ponzi would not disclose the man’s name or affiliation, but he had in fact received just such an inquiry. Whether it would become reality remained to be seen, but at the moment it was useful in his effort to maintain his credibility. Best of all, Ponzi thought, if he could somehow pull it off he might have found a way to cover his liabilities without robbing his bank.
The next morning, Friday, July 30, the Post thought it had an even bigger scoop, which it trumpeted in a front-page headline:
EXTRA COUPON PLAN IS EXPLODED
New York Postmaster Says Not Enough in Whole World to Make Fortune Ponzi Claims
The story—printed entirely in bold type—quoted New York Postmaster Thomas G. Patten as declaring that Ponzi’s claims were “impossible” because far too few postal reply coupons existed to create an $8 million fortune. Patten either did not know or did not say how many coupons were in existence worldwide, but he said New York kept only twenty-seven thousand on hand at any time—worth about fourteen hundred dollars—because the demand was so small.
A separate front-page story gave the Post an opportunity to vent its growing frustrations at Ponzi’s continued survival and prosecutors’ apparent inaction. “Federal, state, and local investigations of Ponzi’s get-rich-quick scheme failed yesterday to bring any tangible results,” the story derisively began. The Post also turned to ridicule, printing its first editorial cartoon about the situation. The paper’s celebrated cartoonist, William Norman Ritchie, caricatured Ponzi as a dashing little moneybags with cash bursting from his pockets and a dollar sign for a tie clasp. Surrounding him were stereotypical European officials begging him in fractured English to solve their financial problems. An Italian cartoon figure, with a silly crown and a sash labeling him “King,” implored, “Signor Ponzi, the Old Home Lire Is ina D’Hole. Will You Taka D’Job of Minister of Finance?”
Yet neither the Post’s stories to date nor its latest scoop about the New York postmaster’s assertion seemed to be having any lasting effect. If anything, Ponzi appeared to be gaining more fans. Fewer than forty people were waiting when the Bell-in-Hand doors opened.