Talk:Charles Ponzi

Suspicion

Guys, I am removing the first paragraph of the subsection Suspicion, "Confederate War Veteran, Elmira Prison escapee, local hero and Augusta Georgia Accountant Berry Benson". It appeared out of anywhere, starting abruptly with a story that has nothing to do with the main theme of the article and only mentions Charles Ponzi briefly and that does not meet the Wikipedia's standards.--187.21.144.89 (talk) 00:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello. I apologize for this method of contact, I am unfamiliar with Wikipedia methods. I have come across a Tampa Tribune newspaper article from Feb 2, 1926 that details Ponzi's first visit to Tampa for the purpose of setting up an office to sell property, and propose schemes to the Mayor and Board of Trade. See https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t1.0-9/q71/s720x720/10527700_702318933173834_1306253170033730023_n.jpg. Someone may want to work in this info into this feature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.110.67.164 (talk) 00:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Untitled

"He eventually got a job in Brazil as an agent for Ala Littoria, the Italian state airline.[2] During World War II, however, Brazil sided with the Allies, and the airline's operation in the country was shut down." Why would an airline close because the government sided with the Allies in WWII?

Do I still need to put in all those tildes? Oh, here they are anyway; 04:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)04:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)04:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)04:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)220.233.10.130 (talk)

Mugshot

I think the mugshot is from Ponzi's arrest in Montreal in 1907. It may be from his stint in Alabama. He's too young here for 1920, and Zuckoff's book mentions that the Boston papers published his old Montreal mugshot next to a recent (1920) photo of him with a moustache drawn on for comparison. He definitely didn't have a moustache in the 1920s. If I can prove this I'll amend the caption. -coljac

Cleanup

I just read over the article and it seems to contain a significant amount of biased and uncited statements. Statements such as "This was a fortunate choice.." , and questions such as "why didn't Ponzi take advantage of it himself?", etc don't belong in an encyclopedia. In addition, nothing at all is cited. I'm going to put up the cleanup tag to hopefully get it improved a bit. --Dr. WTF 02:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

If you do clean this up, could you make it clearer at what point, technically, did Ponzi begin to violate the law? The article states that the arbitrage he claimed he was engaged in was legal. Yet obviously Ponzi was not actually trading in the IRCs. Did he ever? If he did initially, at what point did he stop? There is the implication that Ponzi was paying off new investors with money coming in from the old ones, as with a classic pyramid. But the article does not make this at all clear. If you read the article and did not understand pyramid schemes, it would be confusing as to at what point Ponzi began to violate the law. Please try to make this clearer – after all, it's the main point of the entire discussion. --Roricka 10:37, 15 December 2008 (ET)

"Fiduciary duty to protect their depositors they were a lasting unindicted beneficiary without direct involvement". What does this mean? It has to be re-written by someone who knows what the original author meant to say.JohnC (talk) 08:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Some comments from 2003

This page seems to have some subtle vandalism. Could someone pls check? My monitor is broken and won't display reds, so I can't see what has been altered

Seems to have? Can you be a bit more specific please? Also note the page has not changed for months ... would it really have been left for so long I wonder? Any hints would be v helpful though.

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Such as "If the cashflow faltered, the pyramid would collapse and take him to Hell with it.

Whatever."

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It's somewhat more colloquial in style than the average article, but I'd hardly call it vandalism.

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The page seems to have been vandalized by someone- the Security Exchange Company? Or is that just a coincidence....

I don't know, but I do know you're answering a 3 year old comment :) --kingboyk 13:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

TV ADVERTISING TOUTING "THIS WEBSITE"

Bruce Berman, http;//www.296crazyfox.com, and all of the others are a new switch on the pyramid scam. They all tell you "FREE" information about how to get rich quick can be yours. Log on now...

When you do, you find that you have to pay $9.95 for shipping and handling, THEN you have 14 days to look at the information FREE. If you keep it you pay MORE, (typically $39.95) and if not you have to send it back, but forfeit your initial $9.95. These are advertised on otherwise reputable TV, such as Fox, MSNBC, History Channel, Discovery, and most major outlets.

Write to them to complain.

Look at my webpage http://www.otgadventures.com/Links.htm for more of these links.

Citations?

This page seems severely undercited. 156.56.41.63

The citation style I used is pretty legit, I used it on Matsuo Basho's page too. Shii (tock) formerly Ashibaka 21:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Article seems more like story

This article seems a lot more like some story meant to entertain rather than a serious means of communicating information. The amount of detail is applauded, but sometimes it seems like there is too much of it; "He slept on the floor of the restaurant as he had no other place to live, but managed to work his way up to the position of waiter," and other such lines. Details like this are 1. extremely specific and therefore susceptible to being incorrect and 2. sounds like the tragic tale of some tramp living a destitute life in the big city, which most of us have probably heard in some version or another. Comments like "Ponzi was unfazed" are grammatically simple and detract from the sense of reading an encyclopedia, and may be better if it was merged with the following sentence; i.e. "Unfazed, Ponzi..."

So, in essence, lines that make the article seem like a story, whether through use of language more suitable in a story (like "There he met an Italian girl, Rose Gnecco, who was swept off her feet by Ponzi's charm." and "Gnecco's love for Ponzi remained unswayed.") or through overly specific detail (like "Charles Morse convinced doctors he was dying by eating soap shavings, and was released early," which has little or no bearing on the rest of the article) should either be removed or merged with other sentences to remove the sense of bias. >>In the time it took you to write that, you could have edited half the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.151.53.222 (talk) 04:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand how old the previous comment is, and of course I agree with the author, but wanted to add that any information old enough became a story. Sometimes, if you remove the story there is nothing left. So instead of considering 'encyclopedic' something backed by authority let use the things that are backed by consensus. Or even just get away with the term, record information of any quality and let the reader sort them out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.23.230.187 (talk) 01:11, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Interesting source

The article says this: "On July 26 the [Boston] Post started a series of articles that asked hard questions about the operation of Ponzi's money machine. The Post contacted Clarence Barron, the financial analyst who published the Barron's financial paper, to examine Ponzi's scheme. Barron observed that though Ponzi was offering fantastic returns on investments, Ponzi himself wasn't investing with his own company. Barron then noted that to cover the investments made with the Securities Exchange Company, 160,000,000 postal reply coupons would have to be in circulation. However, only about 27,000 coupons were actually circulating."

The does not seem completely correct if I read this scan of a NY Times article of July 27, 1920. 81.242.188.159 (talk) 10:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Not Pyramid Scheme

There is some confusion in here about Ponzi schemes vs. Pyramid schemes. There are differences between them. Basically, a Ponzi scheme pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. This can work for a time with only moderate growth. A pyramid scheme rewards investors for getting new ones, and for the new ones getting new ones, etc. It needs exponential growth to sustain itself, which is why they collapse so spectacularly.

I've often wondered, where did Charlie Ponzi's money go? They never recovered more than a fraction of it. He never said. Judging from how he lived the rest of his life, HE didn't seem to have it, or to access it at least. Hmm. Good material for a novel or two. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigmac31 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation

How to you pronounce Ponzi? Does it rhyme with Fonzy? (like of Happy Days?) 68.92.197.157 (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that's exactly how it sounds, rhymes with Fonzy. --Chasingsol^(talk) 21:48, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Italian z sounds like English ts rather than z. Grassynoel (talk) 03:35, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Isn't it just double 'z' (zz) that's pronounced "ts" ? BMJ-pdx (talk) 04:38, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Huh?

Can someone clear this up: "Charles W. Morse convinced doctors Ponzi was dying by eating soap shavings, and was released early." This makes it seem like Morse at the soap shavings and was released, when it probably intends Ponzi. Not clear what role Morse plays in this. 192.234.99.1 (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It was an ironic charge

I don't see the reference actually giving Ponzi a pass on this (Charles_Ponzi#Prison_and_later_life) Yet I find this an interesting thought. It is possible that it was not against the law to do what he did, at the time he did it, except in a broad interpretation of the concept of fraud. In other words, you can postpone executing a business plan, especially when "happily" giving people their money back in the mean time. Failure to generate a return on investment, and taking any amount of money out of a business as salary... these things are not automatically illegal.Carlw4514 (talk) 19:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Birthplace?

Where was Ponzi born? Lugo Italy, or Palma Italy? Wm (talk) 18:39, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Photo altered?

The photo used in the opening paragraph appears to be a composite of a background and a body with the superimposition of another person's head. This photo did appear at a New York Times on-line edition article [1] as per the photo file credits, but it appears to be a jpg manipulation. Look at the lighting on the clothes and hands and compare it to the lighting on the face. What do others think?--TGC55 (talk) 16:02, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. From the viewer's POV, the lighting of his face appears to be coming from the left and slightly above, whereas the shadows cast by his hands and the sheets of paper tucked into the corner of the desk set, as well as the bright reflection on the wing of his left collar, clearly show there is a bright source of illumination from the right and above. The discrepancy between the lighting of the right side of his face (as perceived by the viewer) and the adjacent collar on the same side is particularly glaring; I don't think it can be explained away even if we assume two separate lighting sources.

In addition, it seems to me that the head is circa 15% wider and taller compared to the body than would be the case in a person of normal proportions.

68.102.53.29 (talk) 03:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Your analysis is much more detailed than mine and agrees with my observations. I was initially surprised that the photo made it through the New York Times editorial process, but I guess that nothing should surprise me today. I further suggest that the photo be changed to another Ponzi photo. Further comments and suggestions?--TGC55 (talk) 12:13, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

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Bgranat says on March 30, 2010: I see two light sources. The pieces of paper are making a shadow on the desk, and the top paper is making a shadow on the paper below it. Just an observation. Bgranat (talk) 05:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

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The photo is not altered. Lighting environments are more complex than the author of the comment think. At that time Caucasians where statistically shorter and this particular one happen to had a big head. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.23.230.187 (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

It is not just his out of proportion head that looks like it was clumsily pasted in, it is quite a few other features in the photograph. The chequebook too looks like it was pasted in, it has a very jagged edge to it, slightly blurred like a clumsy attempt was made to smooth the low resolution image of the chequebook into the background. The table towards the inside of his elbow also looks like it was crudely pasted in, exactly the same way. And some of the cheques, torn from the book on the table, they again look like they were pasted in but this time with no effort made to disguise their obviously jaggedy low resolution edges. I think the photo is a fake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.162.173.150 (talk) 00:23, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Name of Ponzi's Company

See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9806E6D91E31E433A25756C1A96E9C946195D6CF for the possible origin of the error in the company name that appears in the Wikipedia article. The typesetter apparently capped a generic term ("securities exchange company") at the end of the third paragraph in that article, and someone ran with that error. I've changed to the name used once in the article and used in the NY Times article. Bgranat (talk) 04:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Ponzi's company was called the Securities Exchange Company. The Old Colony Foreign Exchange Company was a rival company set up in the same office building as Ponzi's. It was shut down after Ponzi's and the men arrested. I will change all mention of this company in the article later (I'm not usually a wiki editor) and provide the source link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.86.78 (talk) 10:16, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Find additional references, both of you, before changing anything. Anonymous editor, you have already been edit-warring by making and re-making unreferenced changes. This is against Wikipedia's rules. Per the WP:V policy, both of you are going to have to dig up additional clear references for your positions. Until that time, the article stays as-is (an unclear reference is better than no reference). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

-Nope I haven't touched the article at all yet, I'm assuming its someone else. I am aware of the rules of changing at least and I'll come back with the reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.7.197.216 (talk) 22:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

-In fact, my reference is listed in the Further Reading section of the page- Zuckoff, Mitchell (2005), Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, New York: Random House, ISBN 1400060397

From reading the Wiki rules, this seems an acceptable source of evidence, but perhaps someone can clarify and confirm for me?

Here are 2 additional resources which I think qualify as an acceptable references-
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802E6DB1E30E633A25754C2A9619C946195D6CF
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1800.html

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.7.197.216 (talk) 22:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Am I confusing something?

In Prison and Later Life it reads At the urging of his wife, on November 1, 1920, Ponzi pleaded guilty to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale. Then it says He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

The next paragraph begins with He was released after three and a half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 Massachusetts state charges of larceny. That would be May 1924, if I'm reading and computing correctly.

But the paragraph goes on to state The case, Ponzi v. Fessenden, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. On the 27th of March, 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that plea bargains on federal charges have no standing regarding state charges.

Which sounds as if his suit and the Supreme Court ruling occurred well before he was released early from his five year sentence.

DrYattz (talk) 04:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Dates of incarceration and litigation are confusing.

Am I confusing something?

In Prison and Later Life it reads At the urging of his wife, on November 1, 1920, Ponzi pleaded guilty to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale. Then it says He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

The next paragraph begins with He was released after three and a half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 Massachusetts state charges of larceny. That would be May 1924, if I'm reading and computing correctly.

But the paragraph goes on to state The case, Ponzi v. Fessenden, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. On the 27th of March, 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that plea bargains on federal charges have no standing regarding state charges.

Which sounds as if his suit and the Supreme Court ruling occurred well before he was released early from his five year sentence.

DrYattz (talk) 04:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Death

What is the point of the "Supported by .." stuff? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.92.186 (talk) 18:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Titanic-sized ships; actual reasons for infeasibility

The article says:

"Though Ponzi was still paying back investors (mostly from money from subsequent investors), he had not yet figured out a way to actually change the IRCs to cash. He also subsequently realized that changing the coupons to money was a logistical impossibility. For example: for the initial 18 investors of January 1920, for their $1800 investment, it would have taken 53,000 postal coupons to actually realize the arbitrage profits. For the subsequent 15,000 investors that Ponzi had, he would have had to fill Titanic-sized ships with Postal coupons just to ship them to the United States from Europe. However, Ponzi found that all the interest payments returned to him, as investors kept re-investing."

18 investors = 53,000 coupons
15,000 investors ≈ 44,000,000 coupons
These coupons were presumably fairly small pieces of paper, but being generous let's say that they were A4-sized, say 5g
44,000,000 coupons @ 5g = 220 tonnes
That's a lot, but Titanic-sized ships? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.191.155.95 (talk) 17:36, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. Furthermore, the actual reasons for the infeasibility of the otherwise clever arbitrage scheme were twofold:

1. The required number of IRCs simply didn't exist.

2. Converting the IRCs to cash (back in the U.S.) was not legal. Ponzi contemplated black-marketing them to businesses that used a lot of postage, but I don't think he implemented that.

If I can find my book on Ponzi (for a reference), I'll make the corrections.

BMJ-pdx (talk) 04:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Carlo, not Charles

I remember reading in a well-sourced book on Ponzi that he never legally changed his name from Carlo, for fear of having to reveal his Montreal check-forging and his later immigrant-smuggling convictions. Unfortunately I cannot recall the book or its author.

If anyone can verify a reference, the name of this article should be changed to "Carlo Ponzi". BMJ-pdx (talk) 04:01, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Ponzi Really Win a Libel Lawsuit?

It says that Ponzi sued an individual who is not specifically named for libel and won $500,000. There is no source for this. I can’t find any source for this and I’m starting to doubt it’s true. There are articles online that mention the judgment, but their source seems to be this Wikipedia article. I searched on Westlaw for any legal articles that mentioned a libel (or defamation) lawsuit Ponzi won and found nothing indicating Ponzi ever filed a libel lawsuit and won. If anyone has more specifics I would love to know. And I think the Wikipedia article either should provide more information and a source or be corrected. 2603:8000:8F00:3EAE:1CCC:2C22:510A:1C2D (talk) 02:07, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced claim about requests to invest money received while in prison

I've removed this unsourced claim added 7 years ago, even though it makes a great factoid and has spread around the internet.

"Remarkably, during his various prison terms, Ponzi continued to receive Christmas cards from some of his more gullible investors, as well as requests from others to invest their money—from his prison cell."

If it is true hopefully it can be sourced and added back, but a cursory search didn't turn anything up. Nukeychess (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Added by an IP in this edit with no explanation. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)