1. Charles Ponzi's aliases included Charles Ponci, Carlo, Benny Broncko and Charles P Bianchi.
73 Facts About Charles Ponzi
1. 2.
In reality, Charles Ponzi was paying earlier investors using the investments of later investors.
3.
Charles Ponzi's scheme ran for over a year before it collapsed, costing his "investors" $20 million.
4.
Charles Ponzi was born in Lugo, Emilia-Romagna, Kingdom of Italy on March 3,1882.
5.
Charles Ponzi told The New York Times he had come from a family in Parma.
6.
Charles Ponzi's ancestors had been well-to-do, and his mother continued to use the title "donna", but the family had subsequently fallen upon difficult times and had little money.
7.
Charles Ponzi took a job as a postal worker early on, but soon was accepted into the University of Rome La Sapienza.
8.
Charles Ponzi's family encouraged him to do the same, with the intention of returning his family to its former socio-economic status.
9.
Charles Ponzi quickly learned English and spent the next few years doing odd jobs along the East Coast, eventually taking a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, where he slept on the floor.
10.
Charles Ponzi managed to work his way up to the position of waiter, but was fired for theft and shortchanging customers.
11.
In 1907, after several years of failing to achieve success in the US, Charles Ponzi moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank located on Saint Jacques Street started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city.
12.
Charles Ponzi stayed in Montreal and, for some time, lived at Zarossi's house, helping the man's abandoned family while planning to return to the US and start over.
13.
Charles Ponzi was caught and spent two years in Atlanta Prison.
14.
Charles Ponzi completed his prison term following Morse's release, having an additional month added to his term due to his inability to pay a $50 fine.
15.
Thereafter Charles Ponzi continued to travel around looking for work, and in Boston, he met Rose Maria Gnecco, a stenographer, to whom he proposed marriage.
16.
Charles Ponzi was unable to sell this idea to businesses, and his company failed soon after.
17.
Charles Ponzi took over his wife's family's fledgling fruit company for a short time, but to no avail, and it, too, failed shortly thereafter.
18.
Charles Ponzi set up a small office at 27 School Street, Boston, in the summer of 1919 attempting to sell business ideas to contacts in Europe.
19.
Charles Ponzi received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the advertising catalog which included an international reply coupon, leading Ponzi to find a weakness in the system which, at least in principle, gave him an opportunity to make money.
20.
Charles Ponzi first tried to borrow money from several banks, including the Hanover Trust Company, but they were not convinced, and its manager, Chmielinski, refused to lend him money.
21.
Subsequently, Charles Ponzi set up a stock company to raise money from the public.
22.
In January 1920, Charles Ponzi started his own company, the "Securities Exchange Company", to promote the scheme.
23.
Charles Ponzi paid them promptly, the very next month, with money obtained from a newer set of investors.
24.
Charles Ponzi set up a larger office, this time in the Niles Building on School Street.
25.
Charles Ponzi began depositing the money in the Hanover Trust Bank of Boston, in the hope that once his account was large enough he could impose his will on the bank or even be made its president; he bought a controlling interest in the bank through himself and several friends after depositing $3 million.
26.
Charles Ponzi was indiscriminate about whom he allowed to invest, from young newspaper boys investing a few dollars to high-net-worth individuals, like a banker from Lawrence, Kansas, who invested $10,000.
27.
Charles Ponzi subsequently realized that changing the coupons to money was logistically impossible.
28.
However, Charles Ponzi found that all the interest payments returned to him, as investors continued to re-invest.
29.
Charles Ponzi lived luxuriously: he bought a mansion in Lexington, Massachusetts, and maintained accounts in several banks across New England besides Hanover Trust.
30.
Charles Ponzi bought a Locomobile, the finest car of that time.
31.
Charles Ponzi initially purchased two first-class tickets to Italy for a delayed honeymoon with Rose but instead decided to change them to bring his mother from Italy to the US in a first-class stateroom on an ocean liner.
32.
Charles Ponzi lived with Ponzi and Rose for some time in Lexington, but died soon after.
33.
On July 31,1920, Charles Ponzi told Father Pasquale Di Milla, the director of the Italian Children's Home in Jamaica Plain, that he would donate $100,000 in honor of his mother.
34.
Charles Ponzi bought a macaroni company and part of a wine company in an attempt to gain profits that could be used to repay the investors of his IRC scheme.
35.
The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but it did prompt people to begin asking how Charles Ponzi could have gone from being penniless to being a millionaire in a short span of time.
36.
The next business day after this article was published, Charles Ponzi arrived at his office to find thousands of Bostonians waiting to give him their money.
37.
Charles Ponzi was under investigation by Massachusetts authorities, and, on the day the Post printed its article, Ponzi met with state officials.
38.
Charles Ponzi managed to divert the officials from checking his books by offering to stop taking money during the investigation, a fortunate choice, as proper records were not being kept.
39.
Charles Ponzi's offer temporarily calmed the suspicions of the state officials.
40.
Barron observed that though Charles Ponzi was offering fantastic returns on investments, Charles Ponzi himself was not investing with his own company.
41.
Charles Ponzi paid out $2 million in three days to a wild crowd outside his office.
42.
Charles Ponzi canvassed the crowd, passed out coffee and doughnuts, and cheerfully told them they had nothing to worry about.
43.
However, McMasters quickly became suspicious of Charles Ponzi's endless talk of postal reply coupons, as well as the ongoing investigation against him.
44.
Charles Ponzi later described Ponzi as a "financial idiot" who did not seem to know how to add.
45.
The story touched off a massive run, and Charles Ponzi paid off in one day.
46.
Allen's suspicions were further aroused when he found out a large number of Charles Ponzi-controlled accounts had received more than $250,000 in loans from Hanover Trust.
47.
Charles Ponzi ordered two bank examiners to keep an eye on Ponzi's accounts.
48.
Charles Ponzi orchestrated an involuntary bankruptcy filing by several small Ponzi investors.
49.
Amid reports that he was about to be arrested any day, Charles Ponzi surrendered to federal authorities and accepted Pride's figures.
50.
Charles Ponzi was charged with mail fraud for sending letters to his marks telling them their notes had matured.
51.
Charles Ponzi was originally released on $25,000 bail and was immediately re-arrested on state charges of larceny, for which he posted an additional $10,000 bond.
52.
Attorney General Allen declared that if Charles Ponzi managed to regain his freedom, the state would seek additional charges and seek a bail high enough to ensure Charles Ponzi would stay in custody.
53.
Charles Ponzi's investors were practically wiped out, receiving less than 30 cents to the dollar.
54.
In two federal indictments, Charles Ponzi was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud and faced life imprisonment.
55.
Charles Ponzi concocted a scheme which, on his counsel's admission, did defraud men and women.
56.
Charles Ponzi was released after three-and-a-half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 state charges of larceny, which came as a surprise to Charles Ponzi; he thought he had a deal calling for the state to drop any charges against him if he pleaded guilty to the federal charges.
57.
Charles Ponzi sued, claiming that he would be facing double jeopardy if Massachusetts essentially retried him for the same offenses spelled out in the federal indictment.
58.
In October 1922, Charles Ponzi was tried on the first 10 larceny counts.
59.
Since he was insolvent, Charles Ponzi served as his own attorney and, speaking as persuasively as he had with his duped investors, was acquitted by the jury on all charges.
60.
Charles Ponzi was tried a second time on five of the remaining charges, and the jury deadlocked.
61.
Charles Ponzi was found guilty at a third trial, and was sentenced to an additional seven to nine years in prison as "a common and notorious thief".
62.
In September 1925, Charles Ponzi was released on bail as he appealed the state conviction.
63.
Charles Ponzi fled to the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, and launched the Charpon Land Syndicate, seeking to capitalize on the Florida land boom.
64.
Charles Ponzi was indicted by a Duval County grand jury in February 1926 and charged with violating Florida trust and securities laws.
65.
Charles Ponzi appealed his conviction and was freed after posting a $1,500 bond.
66.
Charles Ponzi traveled to Tampa, where he shaved his head, grew a mustache, and tried to flee the country as a crewman on a merchant ship bound for Italy.
67.
Charles Ponzi asked for a full pardon from Massachusetts Governor Joseph B Ely.
68.
Charles Ponzi had not wanted to leave Boston, and Ponzi was in no position to support her in any event.
69.
Charles Ponzi eventually got a job in Brazil as an agent for Ala Littoria, the Italian state airline.
70.
Charles Ponzi spent the last years of his life in poverty, working occasionally as a translator.
71.
Charles Ponzi's health deteriorated and in 1941 a heart attack left him considerably weakened.
72.
Charles Ponzi's eyesight began failing, and by 1948 he was almost completely blind.
73.
Charles Ponzi died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the Hospital Sao Francisco de Assis of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, on January 18,1949.