Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons [Paperback]

Just who was the man whose name has become synonymous with the classic “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” scam in which money from new investors is used to reward earlier ones?  In December 1919, he was an unknown thirty-eight-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with a borrowed two-hundred dollars in his pocket.  Six months later, he was Boston’s famed “wizard of finance,” lionized by the public and politicians alike.  Based on exclusive interviews with people who knew Charles Ponzi, lent him their money, and exposed him, Donald Dunn’s Ponzi recreates both one of America’s most notorious and colorful financial con artists and the mad money-hungry era in which he thrived.No swindler in history has operated with more style than the legendary figure colorfully chronicled in this book” —Washington Post

Packed with details and color and yielding a narrative that flows as easily as that of a good pulp novel.” —Chicago Daily News
“Ponzi was superb at his game and following his financial twists and turns is lots of fun.” —San Francisco ExaminerDONALD DUNN, a former longtime Business Week editor, lives in New York.1



Almost as soon as August, 1919, gave way to September, a brisk and swirling wind hurried into Boston. It tore the leaves, which had only just begun to turn color, from the maple and sycamore trees in the quiet suburbs. Then it raced through the narrow streets of the business district with force enough to lift the heavy ankle-length skirts of secretaries and shopgirls an inch or two, exposing a glimpse of black stocking to the appraising gaze of nearby males, and all too frequently compoundinlcC