Introduction

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.