Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [98]
“Look at Ponzi!” someone yelled, and several hundred people moved toward them. The Ponzis had arrived at a ceremony to dedicate a new orphanage, the Home for Italian Children, for which Ponzi had pledged $100,000 to honor the memory of his wife’s mother, Maria Gnecco. Men, women, and children pressed forward, hoping to touch his hand and thank him for his generosity. Carnival booths dotted the grounds of the orphanage, and Ponzi’s luck still held. He won a doll for Rose and a box of candy he handed to an awestruck child. He climbed into one of the booths to play a role he was born for: carnival barker. At the urging of the crowd, he agreed to pay cash prizes. Soon dimes were pouring into the booth—it was as if Ponzi had reopened the Securities Exchange Company for investments. “Wait a minute,” he merrily called out. “I’ll have to figure out my 50 percent before I begin!”
After he inspected the orphanage, Ponzi’s greatest fun came when someone brought out a nanny goat with a sign around her neck saying BARRON’S GOAT. Ponzi posed for pictures with the confused animal. He told reporters, with his usual smile, “The weather is lovely. So is the home. The people are fine and the press is fairly good.” Narrowing his eyes, he added: “I think that five-million-dollar suit will keep Mr. Barron busy.”
The crowd cheered again as the Ponzis were driven away.
Ponzi got more good publicity that day when a Herald reporter sat down with four Ponzi agents over “their daily banquet of baked lobster” to discuss the tens of thousands of dollars they had made promoting the Securities Exchange Company. “Ponzi has solved the capitalists’ world game,” said one, Pete Brisco, a former waiter who claimed to have made $100,000 in Ponzi profits and fees. “They are trembling with fear of what he is going to do for common men, for all who will share in the great day at hand. His heart is with the people. All he does is for them.”
Ponzi spent a relatively quiet Sunday, August 1, relaxing and talking briefly with the New York moneymen thinking about buying his business. He posed at length for a still photographer and another crew of movie men, this time from Fox Film Company. With the cameras rolling, Rose and Imelde pretended to wish Ponzi well as he left home for a day of work. They stood close together on the front porch of the house, Ponzi’s right arm around Rose, his left arm around his mother. Though the camera could not capture sound, Ponzi improvised a script.
“Well, Mother, it’s time for me to go now,” he sang out. Rose played along.
“When do you think you’ll be home, dear?” she asked. Then she leaned toward him for a good-bye kiss.
“Great!” said the movie man.
When the still photographer was at work, Imelde Ponzi whispered in Italian that it seemed like a dream. She wondered if she would wake up and find the house and their wonderful new life gone.
“That is why we are having the pictures made, mother,” Ponzi answered. “So we can look at them if we find that it is a dream.”
Rose would not have minded if it had all been a dream. When the photographer, Arthur Marr, asked what she thought of her new life, she answered with a touch of melancholy. “It’s a pretty big burden,” she said, “and there are a good many hard things that go with wealth. We used to have such a nice family life, but now there is practically no home life—in spite of the beautiful home we have—and no privacy, and my husband is so busy all the time.”
For much of the day Slocum Road was jammed with cars filled with passengers hoping for a glimpse of Ponzi. Pinkerton guards shooed away the more insistent ones who approached the house on foot. Ponzi spoke a few words to reporters, telling them he hoped to resume his business within a week.