Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Zaren, How are you look at me?
Speaker 3: Over here?
Speaker 2: Please to meet president and accounted for? How you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well? I do you know what's ridiculous? I do?
Speaker 2: Cliff Young you know this is no. In nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: he was sixty one years old and he competed in
Speaker 2: what was called the Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon. Okay,
Speaker 2: this was a distance of five hundred and forty four
Speaker 2: miles what eight hundred and seventy five kilometers for those
Speaker 2: who counted clicks?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a race. Why I was called Westfield
Speaker 2: Sydney to Melbourne is because it was a race from
Speaker 2: the two largest westfield shopping centers, Westfield Parramatta in Sydney
Speaker 2: and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne. So they went from one
Speaker 2: shopping mall to the other five hundred and forty four
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That now, Young, as they said, sixty one years old,
Speaker 2: he competes in this, How does he compete? How does
Speaker 2: he show up? He shows up in overalls and work
Speaker 2: boots and he's like, I'm gonna run five hundred and
Speaker 2: four or four miles. No, there's more to that, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: How he had practiced is he'd gone out and just
Speaker 2: run to chasing sheep in like gum boots for like
Speaker 2: two three days in a row, like didn't sleep, just
Speaker 2: stayed up chasing sheep all around the pasture and the Yes,
Speaker 2: so that's how he prepared. No, So then he goes
Speaker 2: in and he and he races. He you know, he
Speaker 2: competes in the Westfield Sydney to Meldon Ultra Marathon. And
Speaker 2: when he goes the racers are presumed to like stop
Speaker 2: to sleep each night. Yeah, he doesn't. Actually, it's not true.
Speaker 2: He slept the first night, right, and so most of
Speaker 2: the racers gonna sleep for like six hours. He slept
Speaker 2: for like a couple hours, wakes up and just starts
Speaker 2: running again. And after that he realizes that there's nobody around.
Speaker 2: He's got a good lead, right, and he just keeps
Speaker 2: doing that day after day. He just decides, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna sleep for the next five hundred miles
Speaker 2: or whatever. And he finishes in first place, ten hours
Speaker 2: faster than the next runner. He wins the whole darn thing. Now,
Speaker 2: the race what it normally would took a much longer.
Speaker 2: He finished it about I think it was a couple
Speaker 2: of days, or like, let's see if I can figure
Speaker 2: out how long it was. It was like a he
Speaker 2: finished it a day long day before every anybody else
Speaker 2: had ever finished it. Like he knocked a whole day's
Speaker 2: time off of the Ultra Marathon. Yun yes, right, two days,
Speaker 2: two days faster than any previous runner had ever run it.
Speaker 3: Australians are built differently.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he ran the whole time at about a
Speaker 2: nice comfortable cruising speed of four miles per hour. He
Speaker 2: did not put himself out in the least. He just
Speaker 2: ran night and day and night and day and night
Speaker 2: and day time got to the shopping mall.
Speaker 3: He's amazing.
Speaker 2: Hero Cliff young, sixty one year old bad what a badass?
Speaker 3: I love that. That's ridiculous. I have one more little
Speaker 3: ridiculous thing before I kicked off to what's really ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh really, we.
Speaker 3: Got a message from Rude Jude Raquel, who, when asked
Speaker 3: where do you work, she said she works in Hell,
Speaker 3: which is also known as Walmart, Canada. Okay, but aside
Speaker 3: from that, she's absolutely hilarious. But here's the thing. Is
Speaker 3: there anything that you like to tell the rest of
Speaker 3: your fellow listeners. This is on the survey on our website,
Speaker 3: and she wrote, I would like to let you all
Speaker 3: know that since hearing about how it would be appreciated
Speaker 3: if brands would reach out to Ridiculous Crime if they
Speaker 3: were coming up with any mashups. I've sent messages to
Speaker 3: most major brands at this point, but still continuing informing
Speaker 3: them of this and giving them the contacts for Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 3: You're welcome, guys. It was my pleasure to do this
Speaker 3: for the rude dudes and of Corus, for Elizabeth, and
Speaker 3: most of all for Zarin. No need to thank me,
Speaker 3: so I just have to say that is the most
Speaker 3: incredible thing I've ever heard, Raquel.
Speaker 2: I respect the game.
Speaker 3: I want to like. If I get cool stuff, I'll
Speaker 3: send you some of it. We'll share. But also, Grek
Speaker 3: here will be an inspiration to all root dudes really
Speaker 3: start harassing brands so that we get I want to
Speaker 3: be able to try these things out and tell you
Speaker 3: about them, or tell you about them before they hit
Speaker 3: the market, so you're the first to know. Everybody.
Speaker 2: I would love to se.
Speaker 3: And you you need to just buck up and take it,
Speaker 3: take it like a man. No, No, it's amazing. So
Speaker 3: that's another ridiculous. Do you want to know what else
Speaker 3: is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I think I got space for.
Speaker 3: Setting the stage for many crimers and con men to come.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
Speaker 3: heist cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free. Am
Speaker 3: one hundred precent pridiculous.
Speaker 2: Damn right, I'm messed up.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to start by quoting you some poetry.
Speaker 2: Oh I like poetry, Yes, so do I.
Speaker 3: Some say we're dreamers, some say we're schemers. Some say
Speaker 3: we're fooled because we won't be their tools. I and
Speaker 3: I a winner, We're no beginner, won't be your sinner
Speaker 3: because we know jaw rules and we cares not what
Speaker 3: Babylon say or what they say. We are. They got
Speaker 3: to come, they got to come our way or they
Speaker 3: won't get far. I'm the originator, no imitator. I'm the originator.
Speaker 3: I'm the creator Babylon. So that's Jimmy Cliff laying it
Speaker 3: all out in his song Originator. I mean it's no
Speaker 3: Peter Tosh singing I Am than I Am, which is
Speaker 3: my second favorite track of his behind Stepping Razor, and
Speaker 3: then followed by his cover of Johnny Be Good Danger.
Speaker 3: As you can probably tell, I was listening to my
Speaker 3: roots reggae playlist. Where was I and I? Okay? Originator right?
Speaker 3: I thought? As I thought about the guy that I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell you about today, I kept thinking of
Speaker 3: that word, which made me think of the song, which
Speaker 3: made me put the music on. I want to talk
Speaker 3: to you today about the originata.
Speaker 2: Okay, who would that be?
Speaker 3: Today's bad guy is none other than Charles Ponzi.
Speaker 2: Oh snap, the originator, the og.
Speaker 3: Pyramid scheme, Godfather, Chucky Pond, Pond, Arthur Ponzarelli. These are
Speaker 3: the names I was coming up with for him. Okay,
Speaker 3: we need to temper all of this with some information.
Speaker 3: Ponzi didn't invent this type of scheme.
Speaker 2: It was named after him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It showed up in Charles Dickens' novels. There's a
Speaker 3: theory that Ponzi found inspiration in the crime stylings of
Speaker 3: a guy named William Miller name that's a great nickname.
Speaker 3: He was a Brooklyn bookkeeper who pulled the scheme on
Speaker 3: investors back in eighteen ninety nine, and he took them
Speaker 3: for a million dollars back then. Yeah, and that's like
Speaker 3: forty million today, so you know, big time. But Ponzi.
Speaker 3: Ponzi made it his own and it carries his name
Speaker 3: to this day. Ponzi scheme. We all know what that means.
Speaker 3: Pyramid scheme. You take people's money with promises of huge
Speaker 3: investment returns and then you pay him off with the
Speaker 3: money from a new crop of dupes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Speaker 3: But Ponzi, he was amazing. He was a con man
Speaker 3: for the ages. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 3: He was born Carlo Ponzi in Parma, Italy, eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 3: and I hate that he anglicized his name to Charles Ponzi,
Speaker 3: but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 2: Investors, you gotta get it on your side. Carlo Ponzi
Speaker 2: sounds a little bit Carla Ponzi's.
Speaker 3: It rolls off the tongue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little more poetic. But I imagine in
Speaker 2: the early turn of the century it kind.
Speaker 3: Of maybe not so popular. He wasn't from some peasant
Speaker 3: family living a hard scrabble existence, and like trying to
Speaker 3: get by in a somewhat recently unified Italy. Now he
Speaker 3: was from a well off family in Parma. He went
Speaker 3: to the University of Rome and here's what he had
Speaker 3: to say about that quote. In my college days, I
Speaker 3: was what you would call a spendthrift. That is, I
Speaker 3: had arrived at the precarious period in a young man's
Speaker 3: life when spending money seemed the most attractive thing on earth,
Speaker 3: and college just wasn't for him. It was not a
Speaker 3: good fit. So he hopped on a ship and on
Speaker 3: November fifteenth, nineteen oh three, he arrived in Boston on
Speaker 3: the SS Vancouver. He only had a couple bucks on
Speaker 3: when he stepped off the boat. And it's not like
Speaker 3: other immigrant stories where people sold all that they had
Speaker 3: to buy a ticket to America and they arrived with
Speaker 3: like basically nothing and had to start from absolute scratch.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the desperation that drives people to do that, Like,
Speaker 3: it's got to be really bad where you're coming from
Speaker 3: to take that risk that's off.
Speaker 2: To then weeks at sea, I mean like probably in
Speaker 2: like steerage level. Yeah, and it's not going to be.
Speaker 3: Dope, yeah exactly. But so Ponzi, and then.
Speaker 2: We get here, you ain't got anything. You don't know anybody,
Speaker 2: most like except for maybe some people. You got to
Speaker 2: like travel into a whole other city to find.
Speaker 3: Yeah you got Yeah, you just got to find people
Speaker 3: that can help you survive, that know the language. So
Speaker 3: Ponzi like he didn't have anything when he got here,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't mean that he was broke when he
Speaker 3: got on the boat. Like he had cash, but he
Speaker 3: lost it to a card sharp on the ship, on
Speaker 3: the ship, on the ship, he told the New York Times, quote,
Speaker 3: I landed in this country with two dollars and fifty
Speaker 3: cents in cash, but one hundred million dollars in hopes.
Speaker 3: Those hopes never left me. So yeah, he may have
Speaker 3: only had a couple bucks, but he didn't look like it.
Speaker 3: And his autobiography here's how he describes himself. Quote from
Speaker 3: Tie to Spats, I looked like a million dollars just
Speaker 3: out of the mint, like a young gentleman of leisure,
Speaker 3: perhaps like the scion of wealthy parents on a pleasure tour.
Speaker 3: And that goes to show that appearances don't mean a thing.
Speaker 3: In fact, I was in a jam right there and
Speaker 3: there in an economic jam and a critical predicament at that,
Speaker 3: and five thousand miles away from home, and five hundred
Speaker 3: or more miles away from my ultimate destination in a
Speaker 3: strange country with no friends and no money.
Speaker 2: So uphill battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he said that like he looked so sharp.
Speaker 3: He went on quote. To have landed in America without
Speaker 3: money was not half as bad as having landed without
Speaker 3: the least knowledge of its language. I could not fill
Speaker 3: an office job because I did not speak or understand
Speaker 3: a word of English. What I knew of other languages
Speaker 3: did not help. Likewise, my general education was useless. As
Speaker 3: a student and a man of frail physique, I was
Speaker 3: not cut out for manual labor. Still, I had to live,
Speaker 3: and in order to earn a living, I had to
Speaker 3: work at something. So you know, I mean that's again,
Speaker 3: like when you think about I thought about that. Visiting
Speaker 3: countries where I don't know the language at all, How
Speaker 3: did you get bught? Yeah, like Slovakia, where they speak Slovakia.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make I have no point of reference. So
Speaker 3: if I got there, I'd have to like sniff around
Speaker 3: and try and find other Americans or maybe Brits, someone
Speaker 3: who spoke English and then try and like get in
Speaker 3: with that community and hope they can hook me up
Speaker 3: with something some way to survive. So anyway, so he
Speaker 3: had to live. But he also had this lust for
Speaker 3: adventure and he had a sense of cunning that couldn't
Speaker 3: be tamed. So he immediately went from Boston to New
Speaker 3: York City and he bussed tables there. He went up
Speaker 3: and down the East Coast, and he just took whatever
Speaker 3: work he could get. Then he went to Florida and
Speaker 3: became a sign painter. To Florida, Florida pub will not
Speaker 3: see that coming sign painter. Yeah, I'm just wondering, like
Speaker 3: did they give him like this is what it's supposed
Speaker 3: to say? He doesn't know what it says. He's just like, oh,
Speaker 3: put these letters in this order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if you mean the letters translate.
Speaker 3: Right of course, But like you know, I get, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: As long as they don't have any you know, tabographical
Speaker 2: or spelling errors.
Speaker 3: He's painting, he has no clue. So he the whole
Speaker 3: time all he wants is to be rich, filthy rich,
Speaker 3: and he would try anything he could. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: he was a grocery clerk. He said he was a
Speaker 3: road drummer, which I think. I don't think it means
Speaker 3: that he was like stepping in on tour with iron maidens.
Speaker 3: I think it was like tamping down soil and prep
Speaker 3: for tarmac to be applied. Oh, all the road drums
Speaker 3: are those things like where the big bear rolls at
Speaker 3: off ramps so that you hit him you don't die, Okay,
Speaker 3: But anyway, so he did that. He did sewing machine repair.
Speaker 3: H was an insurance salesman, worked in a factory kitchens,
Speaker 3: you know, And he said, quote, in some of the jobs,
Speaker 3: I lasted no time. In others I lasted longer. Often
Speaker 3: i'd be fired oftener I would quit if my own accord,
Speaker 3: either disgusted or to avoid being fired. So he went
Speaker 3: all over the place he did, like Pittsburgh, New York, Patterson,
Speaker 3: New Haven, Providence, and then he gets to Montreal, Canada. Monreal.
Speaker 2: At this point, I mean, do we know anything about
Speaker 2: his language skills or is he spent tiving to stick
Speaker 2: around Italian community.
Speaker 3: I feel like he's sticking around Italian communities but picking
Speaker 3: up English as he goes. He's super savvy in that sense.
Speaker 3: So he gets to Canada, he gets a job at
Speaker 3: a bank that had been formed to serve the Italian
Speaker 3: immigrant community there in Montreal, bank Zarassi, named after mister Zarassi.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a good venture, right, you know? It
Speaker 3: was not. They charged these again absolutely outrageous interest rates,
Speaker 3: and they made bad loans and they went bankrupt. And
Speaker 3: so Ponzi he's got no job now, no money, mister Zarassi.
Speaker 3: He took off to Mexico, ditched his wife and kids,
Speaker 3: and then off he goes. But like no worries, Ponzi
Speaker 3: had a plan. He started forging checks, I'll be and
Speaker 3: then he got blah busted. So he served a little
Speaker 3: time for that, and of course he was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I was set up and so they forced me to
Speaker 3: take the fall for this, and everyone's like okay, buddy.
Speaker 3: But he gets out of prison for that, goes back
Speaker 3: to the States because it was easier to get work there.
Speaker 3: So he hopped on a train and when on the train,
Speaker 3: he ran into some fellow Italians and none of them,
Speaker 3: not Ponzi or his compatriots, had travel papers. And so
Speaker 3: at this point, like Ponzi, like I said, he'd picked
Speaker 3: up some English. So he decides he's going to serve
Speaker 3: as the interpreter for them, and so they get to
Speaker 3: the border crossing Ponzi he steps up to talk to
Speaker 3: the officers and then once again he gets busted, this
Speaker 3: time with charges that he was smuggling those five Italians
Speaker 3: from Canada into the States. So he served two years
Speaker 3: for thateen ten to nineteen twelve in a federal prison
Speaker 3: in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: So he was basically a Canadian coyote.
Speaker 3: Yes. So when he got out, he went to Alabama
Speaker 3: and because apparently there were some Italians there, they were
Speaker 3: working in like mines outside of town. I don't know
Speaker 3: what the mines in Alabama are, mayonnaise.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3: So he got a job in town as like a
Speaker 3: bookkeeper and an interpreter, and he demonstrated his bravery, according
Speaker 3: to Michael Zukoff, author of Ponzi's Scheme, just like Sophie's Choice.
Speaker 2: But not.
Speaker 3: One day, there was a terrible accident at the hospital.
Speaker 3: A nurse was badly burned when a gas stove burst.
Speaker 3: Oo Ponzi was having a drink with the doctor who
Speaker 3: told him the nurse wasn't doing well, that gangreen was
Speaker 3: setting in and she needed a skin graft. The problem
Speaker 3: was that doctor couldn't find anyone who wanted to give
Speaker 3: forty to fifty square inches of skin to a stranger.
Speaker 3: Ponzi volunteered. Really huh, Later goes quote, Ponzi was on
Speaker 3: an operating table that evening doctors cut off seventy two
Speaker 3: square inches of skin from his thighs. Later he gave
Speaker 3: another fifty inches from his back.
Speaker 2: Dude, that's like for the seventy two inches, I'd be
Speaker 2: like three five by five squares.
Speaker 3: Girl, I got lightheaded, just rea the notion of But yeah,
Speaker 3: so he was a brave thing to do. After that,
Speaker 3: he worked as a librarian. But he's all bandaged up.
Speaker 3: I suppose at the medical college in Mobile, Alabama, do we.
Speaker 2: Have any understanding of why he decided to give his
Speaker 2: skin to this unknown nurse? Why not? Why not?
Speaker 3: What does he care?
Speaker 2: I'm not not sliding criticizing.
Speaker 3: I have no idea. Character, I have no idea. But
Speaker 3: I think he went to the medical college and Mobile
Speaker 3: to get free healthcare. So then he moves on, he wrote,
Speaker 3: quote from Mobile, I went to New Orleans just in
Speaker 3: time to witness the terrible hurricane of September nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: Witness is no word. I was right in the midst
Speaker 3: of it. Everything was flying, but the birds, store signs, shingles, tiles,
Speaker 3: tree limbs, galvanized iron roofs in Esplanade Avenue. The trees
Speaker 3: were bending like blades of grass. I never saw the
Speaker 3: like of it before or since. It remains the worst
Speaker 3: storm in the history of the city until Huey Long
Speaker 3: struck New Orleans. It was a little saucy. So he
Speaker 3: later moved to Wichita Falls, Texas to work as a
Speaker 3: quote foreign salesman for a motor truck company Italian. I
Speaker 3: guess nineteen seventeen, he's back in Boston, so he's done
Speaker 3: his little whirlwind tour. He comes back to Boston. There
Speaker 3: he worked as what he called, quote a foreign correspondent
Speaker 3: for an export company Fishy. And it was in Boston
Speaker 3: that he met this woman Rose, and he would go
Speaker 3: on to make her his wife. February nineteen eighteen. Her
Speaker 3: dad owned a grocery store he plans. He got a
Speaker 3: job as a clerk there, working on the books. He
Speaker 3: was not good at it, and he made a mess
Speaker 3: of everything. I'm sure his father in law loved that.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's this guy with like no skin on his
Speaker 3: leg or back, messing up the book. Married to your daughter,
Speaker 3: dear daughter, run business exactly. He's been, he's done, time,
Speaker 3: he's done. He's for human trafficking. Okay, so he's on
Speaker 3: the outs. He had to think of new money making endeavors,
Speaker 3: like one where he could be his own boss. So
Speaker 3: he came up with an idea to start an international
Speaker 3: trade journal, and the revenue would come from all the
Speaker 3: ads that he was going to sell. So he took
Speaker 3: his idea to handover trust company, hoping that they'd give
Speaker 3: him a loan a two thousand dollars to help make
Speaker 3: his dream of reality big. Nope, they did not believe
Speaker 3: in his dreams, Eric dream Kellers. So Bonzi went back
Speaker 3: to his little office and he was determined to come
Speaker 3: up with the winning plan, the move that would make
Speaker 3: him a swell a fat cat. And then one day,
Speaker 3: August nineteen nineteen, the move presented itself. While he was
Speaker 3: opening his mail. Let's stop for some ads and just
Speaker 3: like Carlo now Charles Ponzi as he would have loved
Speaker 3: because ads. Right when we come back, I'll tell you
Speaker 3: about his audacious plan.
Speaker 2: He's Aaron, how are you doing pretty well? It's some
Speaker 2: great as really great ass. Yeah you like Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Yeah, now watch this drive?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: So August nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2: I remember it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's wasn't it a great? It was? It was
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 2: I was I was looking forward to the upcoming World Series.
Speaker 2: I was rooting hard from my Chicago White Sox. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this team looks like a winner. I was in prison,
Speaker 2: you weren't, Angola, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's terrible. I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Still, the ankle from the chain gangs.
Speaker 3: Terrible, but it is great. I learned a lot. I
Speaker 3: learned a lot about the world, and I learned a
Speaker 3: lot about me.
Speaker 2: Well said, well said Charles Ponzi.
Speaker 3: Carlo Chucky Ponds. Yeah, Carlo, he remember he's sitting at
Speaker 3: his desk. Yeah, he opens the mail in his little
Speaker 3: business office, and he's desperate to cook up a healthy
Speaker 3: revenue stream. Remember he tried to launch a trade journal,
Speaker 3: even put out like early messaging about it, like he
Speaker 3: didn't get the loan, but he, you know, started trying
Speaker 3: to work on it. But someone in Spain didn't know
Speaker 3: that the whole thing had fallen flat and that he'd
Speaker 3: kind of given up. The letter that he opened was
Speaker 3: from a businessman in Spain who wanted to know more
Speaker 3: about his.
Speaker 2: Journal International Trade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like news of the demise hadn't made it over
Speaker 3: there yet, and the guy was really polite, so he this.
Speaker 3: This Spaniard sent the equivalent of a self address stamped
Speaker 3: envelope with his request. H only this was an international
Speaker 3: postal reply coupon. So here's how PONSI tells it.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Sorting my correspondence, I noticed a letter from Spain. It
Speaker 3: had an international reply coupon pinned to the corner. The
Speaker 3: letter merely asked for a copy of the Trader's Guide,
Speaker 3: which was his journal that didn't take off, and the
Speaker 3: coupon had been enclosed in prepayment of postage. I'd seen
Speaker 3: and used coupons before I knew what they were. It
Speaker 3: had been issued by a Spanish post office, but corresponded
Speaker 3: in every detail with the coupons issued by other countries.
Speaker 3: At the top, the value appeared in Spanish and read
Speaker 3: thirty centavos. The main legend appears on the face and
Speaker 3: the reverse of the coupon in several languages. It said
Speaker 3: this coupon may be exchanged at any post office of
Speaker 3: any country in the Universal Postal Union for a postal
Speaker 3: stage of the value of twenty five centimes or its equivalent,
Speaker 3: So in essence, it's prepaid postage or a voucher for
Speaker 3: it in whichever the country the.
Speaker 2: Person very very cheap travelers check that you can cash
Speaker 2: at any post office.
Speaker 3: Well, so inspiration struck Carlos Ponzi. This is it's arbitrage, right,
Speaker 3: You're using price differences and conversions to make a profit. Okay,
Speaker 3: because it's nineteen nineteen, so World War One is over.
Speaker 3: People have made it through the flu. It was tough
Speaker 3: in the US, but it was nothing compared to the
Speaker 3: devastation in Europe. The economy is there tanking, and so
Speaker 3: that meant that a lot of the currencies over there
Speaker 3: were seriously devalued. So these coupons, though they didn't hewe
Speaker 3: to the exchange rates and adjust for inflation. So buying
Speaker 3: them in Europe was for someone in the US getting
Speaker 3: them at a steep discount. So that thirty Centavos stamp
Speaker 3: was worth five cents in the USA, and that was
Speaker 3: a set rate fixed by an international treaty. So basically
Speaker 3: you're looking at a ten percent profit if you buy
Speaker 3: in Spain and redeem in the US. Makes sense, Yeah,
Speaker 3: thirty five cents at a time, according you could buy
Speaker 3: for five cents exactly according to Smithsonian magazine, which we
Speaker 3: love quote, purchasing coupons in countries with weaker economies could
Speaker 3: increase that margin substantially. He reasoned, it should be possible,
Speaker 3: then to make a financial killing by buying huge quantities
Speaker 3: of these coupons in certain overseas countries and redeeming them
Speaker 3: in countries with stronger currencies.
Speaker 2: So he was pulling like a George Soros versus the
Speaker 2: Bank of London currency swamps.
Speaker 3: So totally totally and it's like it's shady, but it's.
Speaker 2: Not illegal, yea of England.
Speaker 3: But sow now for the details. How do you get
Speaker 3: the coupons in bulk?
Speaker 2: How, Elizabeth, how do you get the coupons in bulk?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. How do you redeem them here
Speaker 3: for cash?
Speaker 2: And how do you red see them for cash here?
Speaker 3: Zaron, you're thinking of all the good questions. How do
Speaker 3: you ship what could be a very heavy load of
Speaker 3: these things from Europe to the US without eating up
Speaker 3: all the profits?
Speaker 2: And these could be a very heavy load. How do
Speaker 2: I ship them from Europe to here without eating up
Speaker 2: all my profits?
Speaker 3: That's a really good question.
Speaker 2: These are concerns I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't think of these. You're a really good investor.
Speaker 2: I have a business mind, you know what.
Speaker 3: Thought Charles Ponzi. Yeah, we'll figure all that out later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, details he needed.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm big picture. I'm going to get that
Speaker 3: big picture rolling.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about profits.
Speaker 3: Step one, create a company, and thus Charles Ponzi's endeavor,
Speaker 3: Securities Exchange Company.
Speaker 2: Was born. Security Exchange Company.
Speaker 3: Run it a little bit close to the bone there, Zarin, Yeah,
Speaker 3: close your eyes. Oh yeah, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 3: You own a pizzeria in Boston's North End, and today
Speaker 3: business is a little slow. That's unusual. Your place is
Speaker 3: generally pretty crowded, but today is the day after the
Speaker 3: last day of the four day Fisherman's Feast of the
Speaker 3: Madonna Delsa Corso our Lady of help. People are tired
Speaker 3: and they've used up their spending money. So you're just
Speaker 3: in your shop ready to mix up some dough for tomorrow.
Speaker 3: You always let it sit overnight. That's your secret. Outside
Speaker 3: in the streets, some kids are playing stickball. It's a
Speaker 3: lazy summer afternoon. There are laughter and shouts. Bring you
Speaker 3: great joy. It's life affirming, creating food for people while
Speaker 3: children frolic outside. You're healthy and strong and thankful for it.
Speaker 3: You've lived through a lot. You came to this country
Speaker 3: with nothing. You grew this business with hard work and determination.
Speaker 3: You lost a sun to the blood soaked, muddy trenches
Speaker 3: of World War One. You were honored recently by the
Speaker 3: Neighborhood Society for all you do for the less fortunate
Speaker 3: among you. You've known dark times, but you have faith.
Speaker 3: It's love and generosity and empathy and integrity that gets
Speaker 3: us through. Those are the things that went out in
Speaker 3: the end, you think, even when it doesn't feel like it.
Speaker 3: The door to your shop creaks open. You turn and
Speaker 3: see a man in the doorway. He's a clean cut
Speaker 3: guy and a light suit and a straw boater hat
Speaker 3: on his head. He wears a flour in his lapel.
Speaker 3: He gives you a sly conspiratorial grin as he walks
Speaker 3: in signora. He says you nod. He approaches your counter
Speaker 3: and you see he's carrying a notebook in some papers.
Speaker 3: You can't stand these traveling salesmen. Yes, you say. He
Speaker 3: tells you that he has an investment opportunity for you,
Speaker 3: something that will generate huge profits. You roll your eyes
Speaker 3: and then purse your lips. Kavoy. You make the pinched
Speaker 3: finger hand jester to go with your comment. No, no,
Speaker 3: the man says, hear me out, he begs. He introduces himself,
Speaker 3: Charles Ponzi. He tells you that he has a business
Speaker 3: that buys and sells stamp coupons from Europe. That each
Speaker 3: converted stamp makes a profit, a big one. He does
Speaker 3: this at volume, which allows for and necessitates investors, but
Speaker 3: he also brings in the big bux. He wants to
Speaker 3: give you an opportunity to get in on it, because
Speaker 3: you're such a pillar of the community. He's coming to
Speaker 3: you first. You stare at him. You ask him how
Speaker 3: exactly is he going to sell these stamp coupon things
Speaker 3: for cash? Ponzi says he can't tell you that part.
Speaker 3: That's the proprietory sauce, he says. You quickly and loosely
Speaker 3: put the back of your cupped hand under your chin,
Speaker 3: and then sharply flick it out and forward the sign
Speaker 3: for f out of here, ah, Signora, Ponsi says, wait
Speaker 3: until you hear the numbers. He tells you fifty percent
Speaker 3: interest in ninety days. Ponsi smiles at you. That's a
Speaker 3: spice of meat the ball, he says. What you respond? Nothing,
Speaker 3: He says, just a line I'm trying out. He hands
Speaker 3: you a slip of paper with investment categories on it.
Speaker 3: You scan the list and you sigh. You could go
Speaker 3: in at the lowest level you can afford that and
Speaker 3: a fifty percent return. Mom Mama, you tell him to
Speaker 3: count you in, and then you reach under your apron
Speaker 3: and into your pocket for some cash. Ponzi opens his
Speaker 3: notebook and enters you into his ledger. You won't regret this, Signora,
Speaker 3: he says. The kids outside are erupped into cheers, their
Speaker 3: ball soaring to the air and the stick back clattering
Speaker 3: on the pavement. You certainly hope this Ponzi fellow is right.
Speaker 3: So Zarin and and apologies to the beautiful Italian American community.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you apologize.
Speaker 3: I do those things with love.
Speaker 2: Oh you talking about what the accent? Okay, I didn't
Speaker 2: know which part was the offensive part.
Speaker 3: I do it with love. I don't know any better.
Speaker 3: I'm not you know whatever.
Speaker 2: You gotta be like me. Filled with so many ethnicities
Speaker 2: you can't be accused of insulting anyone. But I'm like,
Speaker 2: I cover like four continents. Bro, So who you coming at?
Speaker 3: Admiration because I'm mad that I'm not Italian American?
Speaker 2: Typical French answer.
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 2: French so I can do these things.
Speaker 3: So, Sarah, by nineteen twenty, thousands of people had put
Speaker 3: money into Ponzi's you know scheme, So they wanted that fast,
Speaker 3: easy money, and those who got in on the ground
Speaker 3: floor like you did, actually got paid out.
Speaker 2: Look at us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but not because the stamps were turning a profit
Speaker 3: because like what stamps? You were paid out with the
Speaker 3: cash from the next round of dupes. Ah. So the
Speaker 3: first round of investors.
Speaker 2: He wasn't trading any stamps in. He's like, why busy
Speaker 2: up myself with all that? I just wanted to cast
Speaker 2: tail in hand.
Speaker 3: That's the proprietary sauce right there. That was his exact word.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, sauce because no.
Speaker 3: So okay, So the first round of investors they're loving it,
Speaker 3: like this is fantastic.
Speaker 2: Because now they have the second round money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so they start spreading their message of six
Speaker 3: success at the hands of the financial wizard of School Street,
Speaker 3: and eventually around forty thousand people got in on it.
Speaker 3: What forty thousand, that's a lot of zero, that's a
Speaker 3: lot of zeros. They came from all walks of life.
Speaker 3: So there were a lot of working class Italian.
Speaker 2: Immigrants I figured primarily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were politicians, oh, priests whoa yeah.
Speaker 2: Like taking like the donations and giving them or like
Speaker 2: their own little how do they have money?
Speaker 3: Walking around money? And then according to NPR, two thirds
Speaker 3: of the Boston Police Department were investors.
Speaker 2: Dark laughter.
Speaker 3: Even his own wife kicked in. Wife, she and eight
Speaker 3: of her relatives were in deep for more than sixteen
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. That's like two hundred and sixty six thousand
Speaker 3: dollars today.
Speaker 2: He did not like that family, like her dad heard friends.
Speaker 3: So a lot of these people quote reinvested when they're
Speaker 3: payout time came because they wanted to just keep it growing.
Speaker 3: And that was a relief for Ponzi because then he
Speaker 3: didn't have to hand over any cash yeah back, yeah,
Speaker 3: So he went around telling people that he had this
Speaker 3: crazy network of employees, agents all over Europe, buying up
Speaker 3: the stamp coupons, shipping him over to his offices in
Speaker 3: Boston and Maine and New Jersey, and then once they
Speaker 3: were here, Ponzi would work his magic, you know, cash
Speaker 3: him in, get the big bucks. And this is I'm
Speaker 3: sure you know, not true. I do know. There were
Speaker 3: no agents, no postal coupons. I mean there were some.
Speaker 3: The truth is that he had like sixty one dollars
Speaker 3: worth of him in his life. He was yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: In less than a year, Ponzi had raised fifteen million dollars. Damn,
Speaker 3: it's like two hundred and fifty million dollars today, in
Speaker 3: like eight months.
Speaker 2: Eight months.
Speaker 3: He took the money in Wow, and he made sure
Speaker 3: to spend it so like he bought himself a twelve
Speaker 3: room mansion. He had a team of servants, a wardrobe
Speaker 3: of expensive bespoke suits. He walked around with a gold
Speaker 3: handled cane. Okay, his wife dripping in diamonds that like
Speaker 3: she paid for it exactly. And the cars he had
Speaker 3: multiple cars, including a locomobile.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah you know what that is.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure.
Speaker 2: I can't make a look. I just love the name locomobile.
Speaker 2: It was crazy car.
Speaker 3: It was famous for how finely tuned and expertly engineered
Speaker 3: it was. It was like a pure luxury and horse power.
Speaker 2: It was like the luxury Subaru back then.
Speaker 3: You're a funny guy. It was well engineered car, well
Speaker 3: engineered at the time. It was the most expensive car
Speaker 3: in the country.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, more than like a Dusenburger and the other ponds.
Speaker 3: He paid thirteen thousand, six hundred dollars cash for his
Speaker 3: And that's like paying today two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars for here.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's an expense.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know whatever, one of those super yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, a superclm like that. He's also like touring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was more of a touring. So let's save
Speaker 3: Bentley or Aybach or one of those. He went into
Speaker 3: real estate investment. He picked up rental and commercial property
Speaker 3: in Boston. Smart he bought stock in banks. In fact,
Speaker 3: according to Smithsonian Magazine quote, he arranged a takeover of
Speaker 3: Hanover Trust, the same bank that had turned down his
Speaker 3: loan application a previous year. It's like boom year later,
Speaker 3: he's all big mistake, big huge, So he's pulling in
Speaker 3: millions of dollars a month from his investors. He's drunk
Speaker 3: on it all. It was the manifestation of the dream
Speaker 3: that he had when he first a lit from the
Speaker 3: Atlantic and stepped on the shores of you know, the
Speaker 3: storied streets of Boston. Yes, and with that money came attention,
Speaker 3: and attention is not the best for a con man.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break, and upon our return, I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you about how spoiler alert, it all falls apart.
Speaker 3: Zaren Elizabeth, Oh, Zaren. We got Charles Ponzi, Carlos big
Speaker 3: dog in it around rolling in dough, living the high life.
Speaker 3: But that much money so quickly draws attention.
Speaker 2: Yes, one does wonder how how?
Speaker 3: And before you know it, regulators are coming looking around
Speaker 3: and things didn't make sense. Basic question one. Let's see
Speaker 3: the stamps.
Speaker 2: We contacted the Europeans. They're not selling any extra stamps.
Speaker 3: Someone from the state came to him and this guy
Speaker 3: was in charge of busting loan sharks. Oh like, excessive
Speaker 3: interest in all that, the Ponzi's interest scheme worked the
Speaker 3: other way, and so he had to explain to the dude, no,
Speaker 3: I'm the one paying out I'm not a loan shark.
Speaker 3: And the guy's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Okay,
Speaker 3: So sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, but could I get in on that?
Speaker 3: This is all about stamps? So what did the Post.
Speaker 2: Office have to say about my curiosity?
Speaker 3: Right? According to Smithsonian, the Post Office quote insisted it
Speaker 3: was impossible for anyone to do what Ponzi claimed to
Speaker 3: be doing. Postal authorities today say the same thing, although
Speaker 3: International Postal replied coupons are available at post offices where
Speaker 3: there is demand for them, regulations make speculation in them impossible.
Speaker 2: It seems like that it's not impossible, more like improbably
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Seems like if you did
Speaker 2: it on the you did it on the sly, if
Speaker 2: there's any discrepancy between what they're worth over hear and
Speaker 2: what they're worth over there right right now, you buy
Speaker 2: enough of them all of a sudden you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how you make.
Speaker 3: Well, you'll see this. Yeah. So they begin an investigation,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 2: It seems like they should be able to track it
Speaker 2: really easily at both ends, like are you buying extra stamps?
Speaker 2: Are you selling extra stamp.
Speaker 3: Their investigation didn't go anywhere because there were no stamp coupons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 3: The post office they were more interested in, like, how
Speaker 3: are you cashing these supposed stamps, not whether or not
Speaker 3: they existed and they should be getting them right. But
Speaker 3: even so they're saying, like, you're supposed to be just
Speaker 3: getting a US stamp. You're not supposed to be getting cash.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought you could trade them in for cash.
Speaker 3: No, you just like, Oh, I've got this thing, now
Speaker 3: I can put a US stamp on it.
Speaker 2: Oh that was my mistake.
Speaker 3: How do you get the car? Are you then selling
Speaker 3: the stamps? But how does that work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Then that it would be impossible.
Speaker 3: The post Office couldn't figure out how does this work?
Speaker 2: As you have somebody wants to buy a lot of
Speaker 2: stamps from But you know that.
Speaker 3: Was it wasn't a problem because Ponzi didn't know how
Speaker 3: it worked either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, what's That's why he didn't go through
Speaker 2: with the.
Speaker 3: Whole big skin. Then Ponzi got sued, and then not
Speaker 3: by an investor, by someone who actually loaned him money
Speaker 3: in the beginning and now wanted a piece of the company.
Speaker 3: So Ponzi. He's like, look, I paid that loan back
Speaker 3: a long time ago. Get off my back. You cannot
Speaker 3: have any part of this. As litigation moved forward, the
Speaker 3: court decided to go ahead and freeze his assets. Oh no,
Speaker 3: well they got everything sortied because they're like, this is
Speaker 3: really confusing.
Speaker 2: That's bad for a scheme named after Charles Ponzi.
Speaker 3: So, according to NPR quote, and this causes a mini panic.
Speaker 3: Thousands of ter showed up at Ponzi's office. It's like
Speaker 3: a scene out of a bank run. They're all demanding
Speaker 3: their money back.
Speaker 2: At least he has a legitimate reason. He's like, they
Speaker 2: froze my assets.
Speaker 3: That's how he could do it. Is it's very wobbly.
Speaker 3: So now though we're July nineteen twenty, the Boston Post
Speaker 3: newspaper wants in on this because they see all this
Speaker 3: these investigations and people are upset, so they start their
Speaker 3: own investigation. They want the scoop, and they brought in
Speaker 3: this financial journalist named Clarence Barron no relation to John Baron,
Speaker 3: Thank you. Baron ran the numbers and assuming one could
Speaker 3: make a little money by cashing in these coupons, the
Speaker 3: volume necessary to create the kind of wealth Ponzi was
Speaker 3: enjoying was just too much.
Speaker 2: She'd be like a billion stamp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, barn calculated that Ponzi would have had to sell
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty million coupons in order to have
Speaker 3: what he had. But here's the thing. In the whole
Speaker 3: wide world, there were only twenty seven thousand coupons.
Speaker 2: That's my question. This is something that's well documented, like
Speaker 2: these stamp sales.
Speaker 3: As the as the kids say, the math ain't mathew.
Speaker 3: So Baron he also caught something else. He noticed that
Speaker 3: Ponsi wasn't invested in his own scheme, Like his investments
Speaker 3: were all in stocks and bonds and the state. Yeah,
Speaker 3: regular stuff, and he's getting maybe a five percent return.
Speaker 3: But if he's running fifty percent return on investment on
Speaker 3: the stamps, and why isn't he loading his money into it?
Speaker 2: Good point.
Speaker 3: So then Baron he's like, hey, post office, quick question,
Speaker 3: tell me more about these stamps and how often they're used.
Speaker 3: And the post office is like, you know, they don't
Speaker 3: get used very often at all. These are not common.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't.
Speaker 3: We need never see them. And so he's like perfect,
Speaker 3: and then send the story hits the front page, July
Speaker 3: twenty six, nineteen twenty and it was the first in
Speaker 3: a series of pieces.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Right, uh and this this would have been curtains for
Speaker 3: any other con but not Chuck Ponzi.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: See, Ponzi was a true con man, a confidence man.
Speaker 3: He was magnetic, he was charismatic. He was a character
Speaker 3: like no other, and he had an effect on people.
Speaker 3: So as a result, his supporters and investors just didn't
Speaker 3: believe the stories in the paper. Fake news.
Speaker 2: I've heard about how this plays out.
Speaker 3: They could explain everything away, however preposterous. Was the guy's
Speaker 3: making him money? He must be legit. He's a good businessman.
Speaker 3: Maybe they hadn't seen the money yet, but others were
Speaker 3: raking it in.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're just jealous.
Speaker 3: My time is going to come. I'm going to be
Speaker 3: a thousand ear pretty soon. I'll be a fat cat,
Speaker 3: a fat kit, according to a piece on Ponzi by
Speaker 3: CNN Quote. In fact, the morning that the Post ran
Speaker 3: Baron's report, investors lined up around the block outside his
Speaker 3: office in an attempt to give him more money. It
Speaker 3: was advertising, even after they'd been told they'd been scammed.
Speaker 3: Ponsi later boasted that he'd taken in a million dollars
Speaker 3: in new investments the day the.
Speaker 2: Report ran, just keep someone there to accept the money
Speaker 2: and get on a boat and go and go.
Speaker 3: Ponzi hated the press. They drove him into a rage,
Speaker 3: like you're a terrible person and a terrible reporter, the
Speaker 3: most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. You're a stupid person,
Speaker 3: one of the worst reporters. A horror show. Get yourself
Speaker 3: a new job. I doubled the size of it, you
Speaker 3: dumb person. Quiet piggy. That that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Those are the kind of things I can barely imagine this.
Speaker 2: Really someone talked to the press like that.
Speaker 3: Could you imagine?
Speaker 2: That's wild?
Speaker 3: Would you imagine that? Ponsi's publicity guy was a former
Speaker 3: journalist named William McMasters, and he had an idea.
Speaker 2: Big Bill McMaster, Billy Mix.
Speaker 3: Ponzie, according to McMasters, could just tell the US Attorney's
Speaker 3: office that they can take a look at his books
Speaker 3: and they could bring in an auditor and everything, and
Speaker 3: that he McMasters is like, look, tell them that you'll
Speaker 3: halt investments on July twenty sixth, and that you won't
Speaker 3: take anything in until the Audit's done, and for some
Speaker 3: reason Ponzie went for it. He's like, you know, I
Speaker 3: think you're right. It's a really good August second, the
Speaker 3: Post blew everything up. They ran a copyrighted first person
Speaker 3: account that stated Ponzi was quote hopelessly insolvent. The person
Speaker 3: who gave the account.
Speaker 2: William McMaster, the inside man, he wrote.
Speaker 3: He wrote, quote, he is over two million dollars in
Speaker 3: debt even if he tried to meet his notes without
Speaker 3: paying any interest. If the interest is included in his
Speaker 3: outstanding notes, then he is at least four million, five
Speaker 3: hundred thousand in debt. So now people are starting to
Speaker 3: believe the news reports. They start running up on Ponzi's
Speaker 3: office on School Street. Ponsi stuck with the fake news
Speaker 3: line of reasoning, and then he took it to the
Speaker 3: next logical level. How soon, Yep, I'm gonna sue everybody.
Speaker 3: I'm suing the paper. I'm suing McMasters to me, sue
Speaker 3: you exactly, According to the Boston.
Speaker 2: I just suit it.
Speaker 3: Boom everyone sooned, according to the Boston Globe quote. On
Speaker 3: August tenth, Ponzi gave a luncheon address at Boston's Hotel
Speaker 3: Bellevue for the Kiwanis Club, which had invited him for
Speaker 3: a quote battle Royale with a mind reader named Joseph Dunnagher.
Speaker 3: What the idea is that Dunnagher would quote throw the
Speaker 3: x ray of clairvoyance on the subtle brain of the
Speaker 3: little Italian and reveal what he found to the audience bitches,
Speaker 3: Which is weird.
Speaker 2: This is so weird. The scientific races spiritual. It's like
Speaker 2: we've merged everything.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of weird to have a mentalist at
Speaker 3: like a dining event where everything is crumbling around him.
Speaker 3: Who does that? Well, okay, so here's the thing the
Speaker 3: crowd only wanted to hear from Ponzi. Of course, the
Speaker 3: mind reader never got to do his thing.
Speaker 2: Really, sitting drinking water.
Speaker 3: Ponzi took audience questions for hours. According to Smithsonian quote,
Speaker 3: Ponzi audaciously implied that he dealt directly with foreign governments
Speaker 3: in order to purchase the vast quantities of coupons needed
Speaker 3: to support his enterprise. Because the governments from whom he
Speaker 3: bought coupons profited themselves, they naturally would not care to
Speaker 3: reveal the exact nature of their business, explained, we're all getting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then on August eleventh, the Boston Post let loose
Speaker 3: more of the dirt that they dug up. They let
Speaker 3: it be known that Ponzi had served two terms in
Speaker 3: prison between nineteen oh eight nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: He was running Italians out of Canada.
Speaker 3: Five head of Italians out of Canada. This was another
Speaker 3: blow to the public image, and this is when people
Speaker 3: started to turn on him. The audit wrapped up on
Speaker 3: August twelfth, nineteen twenty, and he was now officially announced
Speaker 3: as seven million dollars in the red. Yeah. Regulators charged
Speaker 3: into his office, searched the place. You will not be
Speaker 3: surprised to hear that they didn't have stamp coupons in there.
Speaker 2: No, not even the sixty one dollars worth I think
Speaker 2: he spent that.
Speaker 3: Charles Ponzi was arrested August twelfth, nineteen twenty, charged with
Speaker 3: eighty six counts of mail fraud. Oh we say this
Speaker 3: a lot. You mess with interstate or the mail, you're
Speaker 3: gonna get burned.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, federal. In twenty years in charge, sometimes it
Speaker 2: gets ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Ponzie used the mail to let his investors know how
Speaker 3: their investments were doing. So boom mail fraud. Six banks
Speaker 3: crashed because of his false race banks, including the one that.
Speaker 2: He took over Boston, please like exactly.
Speaker 3: Investors got back thirty cents on the dollar. Ooh yeah.
Speaker 3: There were some delusional ones who didn't turn their notes
Speaker 3: into the government. They thought that Ponzie was somehow going
Speaker 3: to pay them out, that he'd pull through this and
Speaker 3: come out on top. Ponzi did not come out on top,
Speaker 3: unless you count getting your name on everything same recognition.
Speaker 2: He did it for exposure exactly.
Speaker 3: He was found guilty, sentenced to five years in federal
Speaker 3: prison years five years, that's it. He served about three
Speaker 3: and a half before being released. But then he was
Speaker 3: facing additional state charges in Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: I was wondering.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So while he was out on bail trying to
Speaker 3: appe heal the Massachusetts stuff, he went down to Florida
Speaker 3: and pulled some scams. He started calling himself Sharpond and
Speaker 3: he was selling swamp lands.
Speaker 2: Oh that at the time in Florida. That was the move.
Speaker 3: As Smithsonian tells it. Quote, he was quickly arrested and
Speaker 3: convicted of fraud. He jumped bail when he learned that
Speaker 3: the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had upheld his conviction
Speaker 3: in that state.
Speaker 2: See, I'm telling you, as soon as they people started
Speaker 2: sniffing around before he got bad, Bill McMasters, he should
Speaker 2: have gone to Canada and then cut loose, go west
Speaker 2: of the Yukon, go over to Asia on a slow
Speaker 2: boat to China exactly.
Speaker 3: So, now that he had both Florida and Massachusetts after him,
Speaker 3: he ran to Texas and he got a job there
Speaker 3: working on an Italian freighter, hoping to make it to
Speaker 3: the Monderlands. Okay, but the ship stopped in New Orleans
Speaker 3: and he got picked up by the long arm a law. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they took him to Massachusetts. He's started his prison sentence there.
Speaker 3: He got out in nineteen thirty four and was immediately
Speaker 3: deported to Italy. They're out of here. And it turns out,
Speaker 3: I mean, he had never bothered with American citizenship.
Speaker 2: He never got the papers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why do all the paperwork? That's stupid.
Speaker 2: And they know who he was who?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to let's not forget about Rose.
Speaker 2: Oh right, what happened with that? And her father, who
Speaker 2: must be believed in him.
Speaker 3: He told her that he was going to get work
Speaker 3: in Italy and then she could go and join Yeah,
Speaker 3: she would send for her.
Speaker 2: You got to see beautiful Parma.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She waited two years to hear from him and
Speaker 3: then just gave up. She got a divorce. And so
Speaker 3: what was Ponsi doing while Rose waited?
Speaker 2: What was he doing while Rose waited? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: I can tell you that I can satisfy that curiosity
Speaker 3: you have. There are two accounts. One is that he
Speaker 3: got a job in finance, which is rich even better
Speaker 3: as where Mussolini's government finance ministry, Yeah loved him, oh
Speaker 3: oh god.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then that account says that they found out he
Speaker 3: wasn't so good at finance, and so he made a
Speaker 3: run for it and got on a steamship headed to Brazil.
Speaker 3: Donald Dunn, author of Ponzi. That's an exclamation plant.
Speaker 2: So not Donald Duck Dunn from the Steve the Colonel
Speaker 2: croppers Man.
Speaker 3: No, No, no, just records right, No, just Donald Dunn.
Speaker 3: He wrote Ponzi, The Boston Swindler. He said that Ponzi
Speaker 3: got help from a cousin of his in the Italian
Speaker 3: Air Force who was a friend of Mussolini's.
Speaker 2: That sounds more legit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And apparently Ponzi was able to parlay that into
Speaker 3: a job with an airline that had recently started up
Speaker 3: running flights between Italy and Brazil, and he did that
Speaker 3: from nineteen thirty nine until December nineteen forty one, which,
Speaker 3: as you know, is when the US entered World War two. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the Brazilian government cut off the airline because they
Speaker 3: found out the airline was moving strategic supplies from Brazil
Speaker 3: to Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we can't have that.
Speaker 3: Pick aside. So Ponzi was stuck in Brazil.
Speaker 2: Oh, he'd flown over there and he's like damn it.
Speaker 3: But he settled in. He was into it, and over
Speaker 3: the years, like he got a job teaching English and French,
Speaker 3: and then he worked as an interpreter for an Italian
Speaker 3: importing firm. He died in a charity hospital in Rio
Speaker 3: de Janeiro on January eighteenth, nineteen forty nine. Wow, he
Speaker 3: died penniless, seventy five dollars to his name, and that
Speaker 3: was to pay for his burial. Huh, nothing else, Zaren,
Speaker 3: what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: I can't believe that's the end of the line for him, Like,
Speaker 2: penniless in Brazil. I did not see that coming at all.
Speaker 2: I do love how people refused to believe that he
Speaker 2: had conned them, even when they were presented with the evidence.
Speaker 2: Then how about more evidence, Okay, how about this evidence.
Speaker 2: They're like, nope, nope, and nope.
Speaker 3: It's the cult, the cult of Ponzi.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm as somebody who's been a fan of
Speaker 2: con men and con artists since I was a wee lad.
Speaker 2: I still marvel at the suckers who believed them. I
Speaker 2: understand the con artist, I don't understand their victims. I know,
Speaker 2: which is I don't know what to say about that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's your ridiculous take with Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: I wonder what became of or if he ever knew
Speaker 3: the poor Spanish guy who kicked it all off with
Speaker 3: by sending the stamp and being like, oh yeah, tell
Speaker 3: me more about your magazine, And he's like, whatever do
Speaker 3: you think?
Speaker 2: Like I ever saw the newspaper recognize the name? I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I've just the publisher of my trade magazine.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that Ponzi would have figured something
Speaker 3: out one way or another. But it's interesting, Like, I
Speaker 3: wonder whatever became of him. Yeah, Dave, I'd like a
Speaker 3: talkback now.
Speaker 2: I think, Oh, that sounds delicious. Here you go.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I would hi Elizabeth and Aaron and
Speaker 3: all the gang at ridiculous crimes. This is really for Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Sorry Saron, but I just want to let you know
Speaker 3: that my sister and I also love nine one one.
Speaker 3: We also watched Lone Star, and we also could not
Speaker 3: get through the first episode of Nashville. It was just
Speaker 3: really bad. So I completely agree with you. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: You have a great day. Bye. Thank you. See like you,
Speaker 3: you're like me. We have tastes. We appreciate the original
Speaker 3: Mississippe and the camp of Lone Star. But yeah, o god,
Speaker 3: the Nashville one's.
Speaker 2: Terrible, uninspired. I'd say yeah, I just say terrible, yeah,
Speaker 2: because Lone Star isn't particularly good, but it's good at
Speaker 2: not being particularly good exactly it commits to its bite,
Speaker 2: couldn't even commit to the bit that it said it was.
Speaker 2: It's like, look, this is what we're gonna do, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're not doing that.
Speaker 3: And I gotta say nine one one is getting really
Speaker 3: bad flu as you like to say, cured by Diane
Speaker 3: exercise and love of good friends. But thank you, thank
Speaker 3: you for backing me up on that. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: That's it for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 3: Blue Sky on Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod.
Speaker 3: You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and
Speaker 3: please please please leave a talkback on the iHeart app
Speaker 3: reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 3: Zarah Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Cousten, creator of
Speaker 3: the Cousten Scheme, where you come up with exactly the
Speaker 3: right music and sound effects for any occasion. Our ridiculous
Speaker 3: assistant is confused Spanish postal worker Terry Maldonado. Fong research
Speaker 3: is by ever Trusting investor Marissa Brown and Guy who
Speaker 3: is desperate to run into Ponzi in a dark alley,
Speaker 3: Jabari Davis. The theme song is by Italian Freighters Skipper
Speaker 3: Thomas Lee and Italian Airline Stewart Travis Dutton post wardrobe
Speaker 3: is provided by Botany five hundred. Producer Dave Cousten's wardrobe
Speaker 3: is by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and
Speaker 3: makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are recalcitrant
Speaker 3: publicist Ben Bollen and dogged financial reporter No Brown.
Speaker 2: Gig Clime say it one more time Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
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