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The Ponzi Scheme with Chelsea Ursin · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
0:27
Speaker 1: welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
0:30
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Uh and Ben, I don't have a
0:34
Speaker 1: bridge to sell you a bridge. Yeah, that's the old
0:37
Speaker 1: con thing that you say, is that like the Tom
0:39
Speaker 1: Sawyer like tricking me into panting your fence kind of
0:42
Speaker 1: It's there was a guy who, way back in the
0:45
Speaker 1: day would pretend to own bridges. This has actually happened
0:49
Speaker 1: more than once and then sell quote unquote sell the bridges.
0:52
Speaker 1: The bridges belonged to the people. You know, I thought
0:55
Speaker 1: it was like public work situation. Well, the guy who
0:58
Speaker 1: was doing this, people did this clearly could Hey who
1:01
Speaker 1: are you? My name is uh No, Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo
1:06
Speaker 1: Tabaldo Brown and that's our super producer, Casey Pegram. Wasn't
1:13
Speaker 1: it like the Brooklyn Bridge, specifically that that was sold
1:17
Speaker 1: to some foolhardy person. Yeah, Like that's kind of the expression, right,
1:21
Speaker 1: It's like, if you'll believe that, then I got a
1:22
Speaker 1: bridge in Brooklyn and Celia the kind of thing interesting
1:25
Speaker 1: or some waterfront property time share perhaps exactly. One of
1:30
Speaker 1: my favorite versions of that. You know what I forgot it.
1:32
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to keep going. We're doing it live.
1:35
Speaker 1: We keep going, I'll remember that scambla or we'll get back.
1:39
Speaker 1: Oh wait, we're warning. That's it nothing to do with
1:41
Speaker 1: what kind of something to do with today's episode? Uh?
1:44
Speaker 1: Do you all remember those uh those things where you
1:47
Speaker 1: could like adopt a star and you would get like
1:51
Speaker 1: a certificate of authenticity. Uh? Those things are all scams too?
1:56
Speaker 1: Really well kind of yeah, you can't really own the stars,
2:00
Speaker 1: can you know? Okay, it's like, can you paint with
2:02
Speaker 1: all the colors of the wind? I? Can you can
2:04
Speaker 1: paint with all the colors of most of them? Really? Wait,
2:07
Speaker 1: what are you strong? You wouldn't know, you wouldn't be
2:08
Speaker 1: able to see them. I M delighted to point out that. No,
2:15
Speaker 1: please Nick, but we are we are talking about um,
2:22
Speaker 1: we are talking about cons true, and we are not
2:25
Speaker 1: diving into this alone, are we know? No, we have
2:28
Speaker 1: an arbiter. He's gonna keep us from fighting over the
2:30
Speaker 1: colors of the wind. It's true, and it is Chelsea Erson,
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Speaker 1: the host and creator and sound designer and uh engineer, engineer,
2:39
Speaker 1: jordinair producer, all the things of the Amazing Dear Young Rocker,
2:43
Speaker 1: which is on the I Heart podcast network through Double Elvis,
2:46
Speaker 1: the wonderful team behind Disgrace Land and Jake Brenn and
2:50
Speaker 1: Chelsea welcome to the show. Thank you so much for
2:53
Speaker 1: having me here in humid, humid Georgia. I love to
2:57
Speaker 1: feel my skin color. That's how It's sort of like
3:00
Speaker 1: that trend resident line about how I hurt himself today
3:02
Speaker 1: to see if he still feels we feel through the
3:05
Speaker 1: sweat of our of our bodies here in Georgia. I
3:08
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, sometimes living up north, you're probably
3:11
Speaker 1: asking yourself, what would it be like to feel like
3:14
Speaker 1: I hit a wet rubber blanket every time I went outside?
3:17
Speaker 1: And now you no longer have to wonder. It's great. Yeah,
3:19
Speaker 1: It's like I can feel and smell myself in in
3:23
Speaker 1: ways I haven't thought of since August. Not to mention
3:26
Speaker 1: it is about tenfold here in this sweltering shipping container
3:31
Speaker 1: that we're sitting in right now. We are in the
3:33
Speaker 1: most humid room in the human building in the humid towns.
3:39
Speaker 1: But we have been inspired through our earlier conversations a
3:45
Speaker 1: fair Chelsea. We we want to thank you so much
3:48
Speaker 1: for coming on the show, and we have been talking
3:51
Speaker 1: back and forth about what kind of what kind of
3:54
Speaker 1: story we wanted to examine in today's episode. And I'm
3:59
Speaker 1: not sure if you know this, but our show has
4:02
Speaker 1: a history of exploring cons, scams, flim flam artists, and
4:06
Speaker 1: so on. So this idea of yours was right up
4:09
Speaker 1: our figurative alley. It's true, and it has a tie
4:12
Speaker 1: to your city of Boston, Massachusetts. It certainly does. I
4:17
Speaker 1: am from the home of maybe the birthplace of American
4:22
Speaker 1: organized crime. I don't know. Maybe New York would get
4:25
Speaker 1: really mad at me for saying that, but you know,
4:28
Speaker 1: the mafia and Boston like, we love them, We're proud
4:30
Speaker 1: of them. You were telling us a little bit about
4:34
Speaker 1: that off air. I remember the first time I went
4:37
Speaker 1: to Boston and it hit me that organized crime was
4:40
Speaker 1: very much a thing and it wasn't just stuff that
4:43
Speaker 1: you know, Scorsese had like embellished. I don't know, yeah, no, no,
4:47
Speaker 1: that's true. And I guess we're talking about today. It
4:50
Speaker 1: is organized crime. It's just a little bit like it's
4:52
Speaker 1: an organized crime enterprise of one kind of you know,
4:55
Speaker 1: and this notion of a con artist and I always
4:59
Speaker 1: was thinking like it's confidence, man, Right, that's what he's
5:01
Speaker 1: short for. And it literally I mean to correct me
5:04
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. The superpower of a con artist is
5:07
Speaker 1: is having unflappable confidence and being able to like gain
5:11
Speaker 1: your trust and convince you that he can do no
5:13
Speaker 1: wrong and just sell you a bill of goods. Right. Absolutely.
5:17
Speaker 1: As I was researching all different financial schemes, I found
5:22
Speaker 1: the one thing in common with all these different people
5:24
Speaker 1: is that they really really believe their lies, and that
5:27
Speaker 1: gets other people to believe their lies to the point
5:30
Speaker 1: where even when they get busted the people they took
5:33
Speaker 1: advantage over, like I still believe in you. You're still
5:36
Speaker 1: my hero. It's amazing to have that self esteem. I
5:39
Speaker 1: can't imagine what it's like. Yeah, I mean, it's it's
5:41
Speaker 1: it's simultaneously impressive and just like clearly very very toxic
5:45
Speaker 1: and terrible. Yeah. And today we're talking about none other
5:49
Speaker 1: than the kind of father of of this flam flam um,
5:53
Speaker 1: Carlo Pietro Giovanni Giglielmo Tabaldounzi a k a. Charles Ponzi
6:02
Speaker 1: born eighty two in Lugo, Italy. I yes, s I
6:07
Speaker 1: S Ponzi. The name will be familiar to many of us.
6:10
Speaker 1: We've heard of something called the Ponzi scheme. Charles or
6:14
Speaker 1: Carlo was was Italian, right, and it was a swindler.
6:19
Speaker 1: He also, you know, did something that a lot of
6:22
Speaker 1: con artists do, which was he was somewhat chameleon like
6:25
Speaker 1: at the time when he traveled to the United States.
6:29
Speaker 1: When he became known in the nineteen twenties. Uh, it
6:32
Speaker 1: was as a more americanized name as Charles Ponzi. But
6:36
Speaker 1: you know, as you pointed out, no, he changed that
6:39
Speaker 1: because he wanted people to trust him. Charles Ponzi. I
6:45
Speaker 1: feel like, almost like we're starting a roast. What to say?
6:48
Speaker 1: What to say about so much to say his beginnings
6:53
Speaker 1: are interesting because he grew up like his family were
6:56
Speaker 1: considered some form of like gentry like kind of nobility.
7:01
Speaker 1: Somewhat they it's sort of like, used all their money
7:04
Speaker 1: up by the time he was of age. But his
7:07
Speaker 1: mother still like the phrase I used was spinning castles
7:11
Speaker 1: in the sky. Never heard that one before, basically mean
7:15
Speaker 1: living beyond their means, and this idea of you know,
7:17
Speaker 1: oh we're still rich, we deserve this lifestyle. So he
7:20
Speaker 1: was raised with this entitlement that I think really carried
7:24
Speaker 1: over into that belief you're talking about, which is such
7:27
Speaker 1: an important quality that he had. And he's a really
7:29
Speaker 1: multi faceted character. We'll get into some of that, but yeah,
7:32
Speaker 1: so let's move on from kind of maybe when he
7:35
Speaker 1: immigrated to the US Boston. I'm I've had a lot
7:42
Speaker 1: of coffee today. So yeah, he's on the s S
7:44
Speaker 1: Vancouver and he has one of those this is a thing.
7:48
Speaker 1: We don't know if we can trust this guy, but
7:50
Speaker 1: he has one of his very American dreamy stories. Uh.
7:53
Speaker 1: He saw a lot of Italian guys around his age
7:56
Speaker 1: go to the US and return wealthy, right, and so
7:59
Speaker 1: he's where he is, like, you know, I got into
8:02
Speaker 1: this country with two dollars and fifty cents in cash
8:05
Speaker 1: and one million dollars in hopes. It's beautiful. Yes, I
8:10
Speaker 1: mean that if it's true. I believe the one million
8:13
Speaker 1: dollars in hopes part. But how do you quantify how
8:16
Speaker 1: do you put a dollar amount on hopes? I know, right?
8:18
Speaker 1: What what? What price do you put on a dream?
8:21
Speaker 1: But before he even came to the U S. I
8:23
Speaker 1: think he was doing a bunch of sneaky stuff in Italy, right,
8:26
Speaker 1: His family was like what are you doing? Pickpocketry and
8:29
Speaker 1: the like, you know, just like kind of petty crimes, right,
8:32
Speaker 1: and and uh, he was escalating really right, this was
8:35
Speaker 1: another move in his con Now, we do have to
8:38
Speaker 1: point out he's a very, very clever man. He did
8:41
Speaker 1: not know English when he got here. He picked it up,
8:45
Speaker 1: he quickly learned it, and he initially he's probably still
8:50
Speaker 1: like stealing the odd wallet and you know, slick talk
8:53
Speaker 1: and someone. But he initially was just working a bunch
8:56
Speaker 1: of like I don't want to say dead end jobs,
8:59
Speaker 1: but like odd ups, whatever you could get, like dishwashers,
9:02
Speaker 1: but things that he clearly thought were beneath him, right
9:05
Speaker 1: as an aristocrat and having that entitlement you mentioned earlier.
9:09
Speaker 1: So we know who he is now, right, But we
9:12
Speaker 1: also know this guy probably had that moment where he's like,
9:15
Speaker 1: I'm better than this. I'm not going to be a
9:17
Speaker 1: dishwasher all my life. I'm tired of sleeping on the
9:20
Speaker 1: floor of this restaurant. I got to come up with
9:22
Speaker 1: something big. So what what what happens? Well, he did
9:27
Speaker 1: a couple of goofy things. I know he went to
9:29
Speaker 1: Canada at one point and he worked for a bank
9:32
Speaker 1: and he like stole some old ladies money out of
9:35
Speaker 1: her bank account and went to jail for that. And
9:39
Speaker 1: he loves lying so much that he wrote to his
9:41
Speaker 1: parents and was like, Yeah, I'm gonna be working at
9:43
Speaker 1: this jail for three years, so you're gonna get a
9:47
Speaker 1: lot of letters from here. And then he got out.
9:48
Speaker 1: I think he went to jail like a few times
9:51
Speaker 1: before he did his most famous dupe. So he decided
9:55
Speaker 1: he would get into arbitrage. I think I said that right,
9:59
Speaker 1: and I see that right. Okay, that's the first time
10:01
Speaker 1: I've said that out loud and feeling smart. So arbitrage,
10:06
Speaker 1: for the uninitiated, is when you basically buy some stuff
10:11
Speaker 1: on the cheap and you sell it for more money.
10:13
Speaker 1: And it could be like it could be currency, like
10:16
Speaker 1: doing a currency exchange, getting it in a country where
10:19
Speaker 1: the dollar is weak and then exchanging it for US
10:21
Speaker 1: currency that was stronger or whatever. But he decided to
10:24
Speaker 1: do it with these things called postal coupons, which I
10:28
Speaker 1: don't think exists anymore. And they're stamps. They're not stamps
10:32
Speaker 1: like you use them to get stamps. Somehow, I still
10:37
Speaker 1: don't it's like an old thing. But I didn't know
10:39
Speaker 1: about it either they're they're called postal reply. So I
10:44
Speaker 1: think the idea is it's sort of a converter, like
10:47
Speaker 1: of you know, currency, and and he capitalized on the
10:50
Speaker 1: exchange rate being weaker in European country. So his idea was, Okay,
10:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go over to Europe, buy a bunch of
10:57
Speaker 1: these coupons at a lower rate, and then shape change
11:00
Speaker 1: them for stamps in the States, and then exchange the
11:04
Speaker 1: stamps for more money. He was getting them in Spain, right,
11:07
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, But ran into this issue of like,
11:10
Speaker 1: oh I don't have all these stamps and stamps don't
11:13
Speaker 1: equal money, Like you can't trade stamps in the bank
11:16
Speaker 1: for cat never totally made sense anyway, but people believed
11:20
Speaker 1: that it would somehow make millions of dollars the power
11:24
Speaker 1: of belief. I'm just so excited because for years I've
11:27
Speaker 1: been trying to think of the most petty crime that, like,
11:30
Speaker 1: the most petty crime you could actually get in trouble for,
11:33
Speaker 1: and a new stamp fraud was the thing. But this
11:35
Speaker 1: is the first time I've found someone who managed to
11:37
Speaker 1: do it. I guess that ten percent vague he was
11:40
Speaker 1: getting was was worth it. Or what how did it
11:43
Speaker 1: work out? He didn't even ever really get many of them,
11:48
Speaker 1: never even really from what I read, he never actually
11:51
Speaker 1: bought thousands of these things. He looked into it, never
11:54
Speaker 1: actually did it, but got investors to believe he was
11:57
Speaker 1: going to use their money to go over to your
12:00
Speaker 1: and buy all the stamps because it's like it's it's
12:01
Speaker 1: such a novel sounding idea that it's like, oh, it's genius. Yeah,
12:05
Speaker 1: it's great. Yeah, because he was he was like offering
12:10
Speaker 1: a return on investment that was just like unprecedented, a
12:14
Speaker 1: k a. Too good to be true. But he kept
12:16
Speaker 1: it going for so long, and I think it's again
12:20
Speaker 1: it's like he's an interesting character. He. I think he
12:23
Speaker 1: believed that he was gonna make good on it eventually,
12:27
Speaker 1: kind of you know where he was like, Oh, I'm
12:28
Speaker 1: not really scamming anybody. I'm just you know, trying to
12:32
Speaker 1: figure things out and I can't get those cubans. Later sure,
12:35
Speaker 1: but then enough people handed him enough money that he
12:38
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I could just keep getting money and
12:41
Speaker 1: do nothing. Really quickly to backtrack to a previous job
12:45
Speaker 1: that he had at a bank. He worked at this bank,
12:48
Speaker 1: and one of his managers or the owner of the
12:51
Speaker 1: bank I believe, was doing a very similar con where
12:54
Speaker 1: he was basically using other depositors money to pay like
13:00
Speaker 1: interest to other depositors, and he kept doing that for
13:04
Speaker 1: so long. The bank eventually went bankrupt because it's not sustainable.
13:09
Speaker 1: But Ponzi saw this trick and he was able to
13:12
Speaker 1: apply it to this uh postal coupon situde. Very old trick.
13:16
Speaker 1: I guess it. It goes back to like the beginning
13:20
Speaker 1: of civilization, Like as long as people have had money,
13:22
Speaker 1: they do the Hey, give me your money, I'll give
13:26
Speaker 1: you a bunch of it back, and it'll just magically increase.
13:31
Speaker 1: But eventually you run out of new money and you
13:33
Speaker 1: get caught. Takes money to make money, right, Sean, you
13:36
Speaker 1: don't keep it moving. The old robbing Peter to pay
13:40
Speaker 1: Paul scam. I don't know where Mary is in all
13:43
Speaker 1: of this. Oh Mary, Mary was robbing Peter to pay Paul.
13:47
Speaker 1: Oh there you go, like implied, that makes perfect sense,
13:50
Speaker 1: which will be interesting later. No spoil So we do
13:54
Speaker 1: have to say, though, I love that you point out
13:57
Speaker 1: his inspiration in the bank. He was also inspired or
14:00
Speaker 1: by other con artists at the time. I don't know
14:02
Speaker 1: if it's the benefit or retrospect here. But it feels
14:05
Speaker 1: like it was just way easier to con people. They
14:07
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, they didn't have a phone where
14:09
Speaker 1: they could check on your postal reply coupons. Right, there
14:13
Speaker 1: was no Google. And also banks were just very unregulated.
14:17
Speaker 1: If you just had some cash, you could be like
14:19
Speaker 1: I have a bank. Now. You just buy an office
14:22
Speaker 1: space and people come in and give you their money,
14:24
Speaker 1: and then you have a bank, and that was it.
14:26
Speaker 1: Which I just you know what, I'm not afraid of
14:29
Speaker 1: asking the dumb questions here, just just to be like,
14:32
Speaker 1: we can't do that anymore. Right. I haven't tried to
14:36
Speaker 1: open a bank myself, but I believe there are many
14:38
Speaker 1: regulations I can't do, like a pop up bank like
14:41
Speaker 1: you were doing a Panini place or something like Panini
14:44
Speaker 1: Place and bank love it. I think you should go
14:47
Speaker 1: for it. You're on board. Thinks you have a million
14:49
Speaker 1: dollars with dreams to deposit and I can turn your
14:53
Speaker 1: one million dollars into two million. Dot well you know what,
14:58
Speaker 1: let me say, I can turn it into about sixty
15:00
Speaker 1: one dollars worth of post will reply coupons. Because that's
15:03
Speaker 1: where that's where ponds landed ultimately when they finally audited
15:09
Speaker 1: his company's assets. Uh. And this this comes to us
15:12
Speaker 1: from a great, a great book, Ponzi The Boston Swindler.
15:21
Speaker 1: So what on earth possessed the guy? You know, we've
15:24
Speaker 1: seen in the past that there are some people who
15:27
Speaker 1: just seemed to love Connie. They're almost like Christopher Nolan's
15:32
Speaker 1: version of the Joker, where it's about sending a message
15:35
Speaker 1: instead of the money. But this guy, I feel like
15:38
Speaker 1: he enjoyed it personally. But I feel like he also
15:42
Speaker 1: wasn't just um, as you would say Nol, an agent
15:44
Speaker 1: of chaos. I feel like he definitely did want to
15:47
Speaker 1: turn profit at the end of the day. Right, Yeah, Well,
15:50
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it's tied to that American
15:52
Speaker 1: dream you were mentioning. He wanted to be like the
15:55
Speaker 1: Italian immigrant American dream. And that's also what I think.
16:00
Speaker 1: A lot of his investors were also Italians, and so
16:03
Speaker 1: they probably liked that he was still speaking Italian. They
16:06
Speaker 1: trusted him for that reason, and so he wanted to
16:10
Speaker 1: prove a point. He went and bought a mansion with
16:12
Speaker 1: a heated pool, which wasn't a thing that existed at
16:14
Speaker 1: that time, and he wanted to be like, yeah, like
16:17
Speaker 1: the next Christopher Columbus or something of his community, and
16:21
Speaker 1: that's that's how they saw him. There was even a
16:23
Speaker 1: quote I heard in this history documentary about this where
16:27
Speaker 1: someone was saying, he's the greatest man alive, and what
16:31
Speaker 1: about Christopher Columbians, Like Christopher Columbius discovered America, But Charles
16:35
Speaker 1: Ponzi invented money. Because that's the thing. He was beloved
16:40
Speaker 1: because as far as everyone was concerned, he was like
16:43
Speaker 1: being a really good steward of his community. He was
16:45
Speaker 1: helping people. A lot of the people that were giving
16:47
Speaker 1: them his life their life savings were not wealthy people,
16:51
Speaker 1: and so that was a big deal for these folks
16:53
Speaker 1: to be able to turn that kind of profit around
16:55
Speaker 1: so quickly. And again he was paying these returns with
17:01
Speaker 1: like he would get new investors and pay the old
17:04
Speaker 1: investors when they demand their returns or not demand. It
17:07
Speaker 1: was just a I don't know how that worked, Like
17:08
Speaker 1: when you call in your I don't want to take
17:09
Speaker 1: my money out. It's like when you want to cash
17:11
Speaker 1: your stocks out or whatever. Then he would pay them
17:13
Speaker 1: their returns with the new money. And he had so
17:16
Speaker 1: many people in the system that it kept escalating by
17:20
Speaker 1: the he ran this for about a year, and by
17:22
Speaker 1: the end of it, he had taken in around twenty
17:26
Speaker 1: million dollars ben should we inflation calculator that really quick?
17:29
Speaker 1: Why don't we let's see, sir, a drum roll just
17:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna imagine there's a drum roll here. Yeah, yeah,
17:41
Speaker 1: and the results are in. Thanks for that wonderful drum roll, Chelsea. Uh,
17:46
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars nineteen twenty is equal to this number
17:51
Speaker 1: is so big that it's kind of difficult to read.
17:54
Speaker 1: So give me a second. I'm just gonna getta figure
17:57
Speaker 1: this out right, Uh to gred and fifty nine million
18:01
Speaker 1: dollars a little bit over that, a little bit over
18:04
Speaker 1: cents as well. It's it's the counting. Yeah, that's that's
18:07
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Um. So okay, we're getting a little ahead
18:11
Speaker 1: of ourselves because it took a little time for the
18:13
Speaker 1: scheme to kind of unravel. Um. And a big part
18:17
Speaker 1: of what happened was one of his earliest investors was
18:20
Speaker 1: this furniture magnate maybe them giving him too much credit there,
18:23
Speaker 1: furniture dealer let's call him, yes, entrepreneur Joseph Daniels. He
18:30
Speaker 1: was one of Ponzi's first investors, and he sued him
18:35
Speaker 1: for one and a half million dollars because he claimed
18:38
Speaker 1: that what he had given him was seed money and
18:40
Speaker 1: that he had a claim in this whole business because
18:44
Speaker 1: it was a business, like he bought a building, he
18:47
Speaker 1: had an office, he was he had sales, he had
18:50
Speaker 1: a line out the door every day because who wouldn't
18:52
Speaker 1: want to double their money? Offered coffee and donuts every day,
18:56
Speaker 1: which somehow convinced everyone he was legiti would have gone
18:59
Speaker 1: just for the if you're doing, if people like you,
19:01
Speaker 1: if you give him food. He was so popular that
19:04
Speaker 1: a copycat company sprung up right next to him just
19:07
Speaker 1: to pick off people out of his line, like offering
19:10
Speaker 1: like this similar service. Because you know, there's one thing
19:13
Speaker 1: that scams attract its other scamsters who are like, I
19:16
Speaker 1: want to get in on that. Uh, that that action,
19:19
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what happened. Well, let's pay a picture
19:21
Speaker 1: too of how he builds this empire, because again, you know,
19:25
Speaker 1: it's almost cliche to say it, but it was a
19:28
Speaker 1: different time and in a way he was very informal.
19:30
Speaker 1: He cultivated this image of success, this aristocratic kind of
19:36
Speaker 1: vibe for lack of a better word, and he would
19:38
Speaker 1: go to neighborhood cafes. He would show up at the
19:41
Speaker 1: budget ball and you know, he would glad hand and
19:45
Speaker 1: he would always be kind of white rabbit Alice Wonderland style,
19:48
Speaker 1: in a little bit of a hurry, and he would
19:51
Speaker 1: he would be your friendly guy who's good with money,
19:53
Speaker 1: who could give you a little advice, you know, for free,
19:56
Speaker 1: just like, Hey, here's what I would do, um, and
19:59
Speaker 1: I guess some big opportun you know, I could help
20:01
Speaker 1: you out if you want. Oh, chucks, though, I gotta
20:03
Speaker 1: go meet a client. How about I come back next Thursday.
20:06
Speaker 1: And in meantime, tell your mother, I said, Hi, you know,
20:08
Speaker 1: how's she doing good? And then he would come back.
20:11
Speaker 1: And so he built this rapport because people didn't originally
20:15
Speaker 1: feel like they were working with an investor. They felt
20:19
Speaker 1: like they were working with their friend who was good
20:22
Speaker 1: at investment. Right. And then once that expands to the building,
20:26
Speaker 1: once that expands to uh, this this sales associate operation.
20:31
Speaker 1: You know, at some point most of the actual investment
20:34
Speaker 1: pitches that were happening in the Ponzi scheme were by
20:37
Speaker 1: people he had trained and not himself, and he was
20:39
Speaker 1: giving them a ten percent commission when they have more people,
20:43
Speaker 1: and then those sales agents would recruit people they called
20:46
Speaker 1: sub agents, and those sub agents got a five percent commission,
20:49
Speaker 1: just like a kick back in any nice mafia family.
20:54
Speaker 1: That's how you do it, if you're gonna do it right,
20:56
Speaker 1: you know, kickback has gotta go all around, so people
20:58
Speaker 1: watch your back, so no one's like ratting out on you, right,
21:01
Speaker 1: because everyone's got to get their little their little taste. Um.
21:03
Speaker 1: But again, like from the start, all of us was
21:06
Speaker 1: based on this unflappable kind of confidence that the guy had.
21:11
Speaker 1: He always wore nice suits, even if he couldn't really
21:13
Speaker 1: afford it, he would make it happen. And it was
21:16
Speaker 1: all about the optics of like, look at me, I'm
21:18
Speaker 1: an upstanding business person listening to this pitch. It's the
21:21
Speaker 1: deal of a lifetime. You'd be stupid if you didn't
21:23
Speaker 1: do it. And people went for it, and he really
21:26
Speaker 1: built it into this crazy critical mass that was going
21:30
Speaker 1: to come screeching to an absolute halt. Yeah, by the
21:33
Speaker 1: time this Daniels lawsuit comes into play, Ponzi has a mansion,
21:39
Speaker 1: he's got servants, he's got some dope cars, haven't talked
21:42
Speaker 1: about his wife yet, have we No, we haven't talked
21:44
Speaker 1: about Rose, and we really should. We really should, because
21:47
Speaker 1: she was not so into this, uh, this bougie lifestyle.
21:51
Speaker 1: She wanted a little bit more of a simple life,
21:53
Speaker 1: and he even had to take it down a peg
21:55
Speaker 1: from what he originally wanted, like mansion style, because she
21:58
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I don't really need you know,
22:00
Speaker 1: the ten story. Let's go with the five stories. Is
22:03
Speaker 1: it just twelve rooms enough? Yeah? Exactly. I don't know,
22:06
Speaker 1: I'm shaking. Just two servants, don't need a whole team
22:08
Speaker 1: of servants. But it wasn't really her thing. But she
22:11
Speaker 1: really loved the guy, and she stood by him, even
22:13
Speaker 1: when we get into some of the uh kind of
22:15
Speaker 1: the fall from Grace kind of stories coming up. Yeah,
22:18
Speaker 1: and I guess she gave him eight dollars of her
22:21
Speaker 1: own money too. That makes her complicit kind of right, Like,
22:27
Speaker 1: if your husband's rich, shouldn't you not have to give
22:30
Speaker 1: him any money? I don't know, but yeah maybe. I mean,
22:34
Speaker 1: you know, every relationship is its own country, so we
22:37
Speaker 1: can't really judge too harshly. So we know that in
22:41
Speaker 1: July he was also getting a lot of press right in,
22:46
Speaker 1: got some good press, and he really worked that PR
22:50
Speaker 1: magic he did, you know, like the coffee and donuts
22:53
Speaker 1: and the hey, how's your mom? Whatever. He also hired
22:56
Speaker 1: the Boston PD to stand outside is off this to
23:00
Speaker 1: like look official, like, oh, there must be millions and
23:04
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in here because we have the police,
23:07
Speaker 1: and those are the people you trust, so you gotta
23:09
Speaker 1: trust me and people. I saw that and said, how
23:12
Speaker 1: do I get in there? How do I get part
23:14
Speaker 1: of that money? You know? And he also had the
23:17
Speaker 1: press on his side too. He's a PR genius. There
23:22
Speaker 1: was one article from the Boston Post that literally read
23:27
Speaker 1: it had a feature on him right and said, uh,
23:30
Speaker 1: Charles Ponds. He doubles the money within three months, fifty
23:34
Speaker 1: interest paid in forty five days, thousands of investors. And
23:37
Speaker 1: then then he leans into this rags to riches American
23:40
Speaker 1: dream story and he's like, okay, I have you know.
23:44
Speaker 1: I came here with what was it to fifty or something?
23:48
Speaker 1: And then I said million dollars of dreams. And in
23:51
Speaker 1: the Boston Post they also do another thing that they
23:53
Speaker 1: help him do a thing that a lot of confidence
23:55
Speaker 1: artists do, which is uh, lie about the very least
24:00
Speaker 1: exaggerate their personal worth. So the Boston Post is like,
24:03
Speaker 1: this guy is worth eight point five mill just not true.
24:07
Speaker 1: That guy from The Apprentice, he did that a lot. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: that's the orange guy. He's not, you know, technically, technically
24:17
Speaker 1: it's makeup, I think, Do you think so? I don't
24:19
Speaker 1: think he's actually orange. Well it's spray tan, ye doesn't.
24:23
Speaker 1: Does it wash off? That's my question? Or permanent? I
24:26
Speaker 1: don't know. There's a really upsetting picture of him where
24:28
Speaker 1: his hair is kind of back and you can see
24:30
Speaker 1: the scene side. It looks like a weird skin mask,
24:33
Speaker 1: like a Hannibal lectric kind of situation. But we digress.
24:38
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, he did get some good press
24:39
Speaker 1: at first. He did have this pr machine that was
24:43
Speaker 1: led by a guy by the name of William McMasters,
24:45
Speaker 1: who was his publicist. He will come into play very shortly,
24:49
Speaker 1: but as you would think would happen in a situation
24:51
Speaker 1: like this where he didn't really have an out. He
24:53
Speaker 1: didn't really have like a plan for the future. He
24:56
Speaker 1: was just kind of like spinning his wheels until he
24:58
Speaker 1: figured something else out, which wasn't really gonna happen. Um
25:02
Speaker 1: people started looking into it, and they're like, huh, this
25:04
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't really add up. He's claiming he's got all
25:07
Speaker 1: this money in circulation. There's only twenty seven thousand total.
25:11
Speaker 1: I mean, like you know, like, uh, the number of
25:13
Speaker 1: postal reply coupons is a finite amount. There's only so
25:17
Speaker 1: many circulating in the same way like there's so much
25:19
Speaker 1: cash circulating or you know, bonds or whatever have you.
25:22
Speaker 1: So they they this is known. He's saying, wait a minute,
25:24
Speaker 1: So he'd had to be moving around a hundred and
25:27
Speaker 1: sixty million of these postal coupons in order to pay
25:32
Speaker 1: back the amount of money that he's got invested. There's
25:35
Speaker 1: only twenty seven thousand postal reply coupons in the whole world.
25:39
Speaker 1: That doesn't doesn't make any sense. Uh. And Clarence Barron,
25:42
Speaker 1: who was the owner of the Wall Street Journal and
25:45
Speaker 1: then you know, founded Magazine, he's the one who kind
25:48
Speaker 1: of started to look into this and started, you know,
25:50
Speaker 1: turning over some some stones. And then his pr man
25:55
Speaker 1: himself McMasters, he saw through it as well because he
25:59
Speaker 1: was not on the scam. He was just this guy's
26:02
Speaker 1: the golden boy, like he's he can do no wrong.
26:03
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make some money and be a part of this.
26:06
Speaker 1: He started to see through it as well, and he
26:08
Speaker 1: was quoted and saying this about his boss. The man
26:13
Speaker 1: is a financial idiot. He can hardly add. He sits
26:17
Speaker 1: with his feet on the desk, smoking expensive cigars and
26:20
Speaker 1: a diamond holder and talking complete gibberish about postal coupons.
26:25
Speaker 1: What a life. There's another thing, Baron notes. Clarence Baron
26:29
Speaker 1: notes in that article where he says, Okay, I'll look
26:33
Speaker 1: back through the stories, the ponds. He tells these newspapers
26:36
Speaker 1: that love him, and he says that when people ask
26:39
Speaker 1: what he does with his winnings, he says that he
26:42
Speaker 1: invests like any other investor, real estate, stocks, bonds. And
26:47
Speaker 1: then Baron has that moment it will click click light
26:50
Speaker 1: bulb moment where he goes, hang on, hang on, hang on,
26:54
Speaker 1: CP If if your scheme is so good and you
26:58
Speaker 1: can consistently make a five deeper sent profit, what the
27:01
Speaker 1: hell are you doing putting your money in stuff like
27:05
Speaker 1: regular investments that make nowhere near that much? Like what? What?
27:08
Speaker 1: What gives? And that's a question that people can't answer,
27:12
Speaker 1: and it doesn't jibe with the carefully constructed Ponzi image, right, right,
27:18
Speaker 1: that's when it starts falling apart. Yeah, that's right. It's like, um,
27:25
Speaker 1: just I think about a month after that line that
27:28
Speaker 1: you mentioned, the from McMasters, regulators raid Ponzi's office and
27:33
Speaker 1: they're looking for millions of postal reply coupons stamp fraud.
27:39
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, what do you call the
27:41
Speaker 1: stamp people phil itists? Yeah? Yeah, right, memory, Yeah, yeah,
27:46
Speaker 1: you did not have massive hoarded stashes of these things
27:50
Speaker 1: because he never really bought any in the first place.
27:52
Speaker 1: Boom they all right, So the s hits the f
27:59
Speaker 1: ponz had has used the mail to talk to people
28:03
Speaker 1: about their quote unquote investments, and when you mess with
28:06
Speaker 1: the mail, that gives you mail fraud charges. These are
28:09
Speaker 1: these are only some of the many charges he goes
28:12
Speaker 1: down for. Ultimately, he's charged with eighty six different things
28:16
Speaker 1: in two different indictments. He pleads guilty to one, and
28:21
Speaker 1: he gets off with what I think is kind of
28:23
Speaker 1: a brief prison sentence. What is It's like five years
28:30
Speaker 1: white collar crime. It's uh the way to not due time.
28:35
Speaker 1: Heynemonic there, Yeah, that's not the word at all, just
28:39
Speaker 1: a rhyme to remember things. That's what I thought neemonic
28:43
Speaker 1: was like letters that like Easter or something. I think
28:46
Speaker 1: any memory trick isneumonic Johnny Nemonic. Yeah, that's America. Yeah,
28:51
Speaker 1: it was a film Reeves. Oh yeah, yeah, sort of
28:54
Speaker 1: a future Internet. He was always sort of building towards
28:57
Speaker 1: the matrix, you know. He was, Yeah, I'm really glad
29:00
Speaker 1: they didn't give that to Will Smith. Oh that's right.
29:03
Speaker 1: Will Smith rejected it. I think you learned something new
29:08
Speaker 1: on ridiculous history every time, or at least something ridiculous. Um.
29:12
Speaker 1: But here's the thing too, Like he knew that from
29:16
Speaker 1: the start the steaks were hot lower for these white
29:19
Speaker 1: collar crimes. The rules didn't apply to the wealthy, and
29:22
Speaker 1: it's that same entitle man. There is a really interesting
29:25
Speaker 1: detail about Ponzi. I just want to bring up because
29:27
Speaker 1: I was saying how he's kind of a complicated figure.
29:29
Speaker 1: He did a really selfless thing before all of this stuff.
29:33
Speaker 1: There was a nurse or somebody in his community who
29:36
Speaker 1: was horribly burned in a fire and needed this really
29:39
Speaker 1: intense skin graft, and he donated all of this skin
29:43
Speaker 1: from the backs of his legs to like do skin
29:45
Speaker 1: graphs on this woman. And he had to be in
29:48
Speaker 1: the hospital for like three months to recover from this.
29:50
Speaker 1: So it's strange because I really do somewhere in the
29:52
Speaker 1: back of my mind, I'm like, he really wasn't trying
29:56
Speaker 1: to screw people over. He was just had this almost
30:00
Speaker 1: sociopathic kind of positivity or whatever mind. He probably really
30:05
Speaker 1: was helping people and that's part of it. He did
30:08
Speaker 1: that and probably felt like all the rest of it
30:10
Speaker 1: was worth it. And I mean, you watched interviews with
30:13
Speaker 1: made Off and he says, yes, I'm very remorseful for
30:17
Speaker 1: all the people's lives I ruined. And he just says
30:19
Speaker 1: it in a monshone like that, and You're like, really,
30:21
Speaker 1: are you And they asked him, don't didn't you, you know,
30:24
Speaker 1: feel like you were going to get caught? And I
30:26
Speaker 1: never thought about it. These people just that's how they
30:29
Speaker 1: do it. They just really don't think about it, and
30:31
Speaker 1: they think they're helping people. They've convinced themselves. And now
30:36
Speaker 1: we know now fast forward twenty right, um, we know
30:40
Speaker 1: that the biggest contribution Charles Ponzi ultimately makes to society
30:45
Speaker 1: is the concept of the Ponzi scheme, right, and he
30:48
Speaker 1: gets a lot of credit for it, so which so
30:50
Speaker 1: that it's named after him. But in our earlier conversations. Chelsea,
30:57
Speaker 1: you did some dickie and you've got a plot twist
31:00
Speaker 1: for us today. Is that correct? I sure do. Um.
31:04
Speaker 1: I just want to add one PostScript because I think
31:07
Speaker 1: my favorite part about Ponzi is that after this he
31:11
Speaker 1: went back to Italy made friends with Mussolini, who sent
31:15
Speaker 1: him to Rio de Janeiro to run an airline because
31:18
Speaker 1: he loved him so much, and that's where he died. Wow. Yeah,
31:23
Speaker 1: he kind of got away with it. Then he got
31:25
Speaker 1: away with everything. People just loved him. But anyway, he
31:29
Speaker 1: was his really interesting character. He did really well at
31:32
Speaker 1: this with the help of the press. But did he
31:36
Speaker 1: invent the scheme that is named after him. Absolutely not.
31:42
Speaker 1: A Ponzi scheme is an ancient structure and he wasn't
31:46
Speaker 1: even the first person in Boston to pull it off.
31:55
Speaker 1: Forty years before Ponzi, there was Mss Sarah how she
32:04
Speaker 1: is just as interesting as Pondsi, if not way more
32:07
Speaker 1: for other bizarre reasons. So she, like Ponzi, she targeted
32:14
Speaker 1: a group of people, a minority. Instead of Italian American immigrants,
32:20
Speaker 1: it was single women because in the eight hundreds women
32:26
Speaker 1: couldn't really do anything with their money. If they were
32:29
Speaker 1: married or they were still living with their father, those
32:32
Speaker 1: men would take their money and do whatever they wanted
32:35
Speaker 1: with it. But if they were a single woman, they
32:38
Speaker 1: owned their own money, but they couldn't start a business.
32:41
Speaker 1: They couldn't really do much. The only thing they could
32:43
Speaker 1: do is put their money in a bank. And so actually,
32:47
Speaker 1: at that time, most of the shareholders in the country
32:51
Speaker 1: where women, strangely, because that's like the one thing they
32:53
Speaker 1: could do is like sit at home and invest, I guess.
32:56
Speaker 1: So these women were referred to as unprotected females. And
33:00
Speaker 1: Sarah how was one of these people. She was divorced
33:04
Speaker 1: and she had been working as a fortune teller and
33:09
Speaker 1: she decided to just start the first bank for women
33:13
Speaker 1: in Boston, and she called it the Ladies Deposit Company.
33:19
Speaker 1: I think the tagline was like a bank run by
33:21
Speaker 1: women for women or something like that. Pretty inspiring, right,
33:24
Speaker 1: if you're the target demo, you're reading this at home,
33:27
Speaker 1: you're thinking, finally, because the patriarchy is terrible, right, Most
33:33
Speaker 1: banks wouldn't accept unprotected women's money because it was in
33:36
Speaker 1: small amounts. They were like, this is worthless. And she said,
33:39
Speaker 1: here I am, I'm going to help you invest your
33:41
Speaker 1: money and in a few months, I will double it
33:46
Speaker 1: for you. And her reason for doubling the money wasn't
33:51
Speaker 1: buying stamps or anything weird. It was well, it's actually
33:56
Speaker 1: even weirder. She said that a Quaker charity wanted to
34:00
Speaker 1: help single women and was just gonna like give them
34:04
Speaker 1: money for putting their money in the bank. It really
34:07
Speaker 1: was founded on absolutely nothing. But again, there was no regulation.
34:10
Speaker 1: She just could open a bank by herself. I'm telling you, guys,
34:14
Speaker 1: Fanini bank, pop up, get in on the ground. We
34:18
Speaker 1: do accept payments in a postal reply coupons. But but yeah,
34:23
Speaker 1: you're right, And it's it's interesting because there's such an
34:26
Speaker 1: exploitation of desperate times here that that very weird explanation
34:32
Speaker 1: doesn't give people pause. No one stops to say, hey,
34:36
Speaker 1: if these this quake rew organization or these people are
34:39
Speaker 1: so great, what why don't they just give people money? Right?
34:44
Speaker 1: And it's I can see how it's kind of spun
34:46
Speaker 1: is like maybe we're um, maybe we're advancing equality or something,
34:51
Speaker 1: but it already feels convoluted. You know, you would feel
34:54
Speaker 1: like philanthropists, if they're doing something for charity, wouldn't be
34:59
Speaker 1: a little more like a traditional charity. Well, the thing
35:02
Speaker 1: too is like she immediately drew people's attention because what
35:07
Speaker 1: she was doing was so radical, and so she got
35:09
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty nasty press around her. Um. There
35:14
Speaker 1: was a headline, I believe in the Boston Herald. The
35:19
Speaker 1: headline was Mrs Howe's unsavory record and did God forbid
35:23
Speaker 1: claim that she was born out of wedlock? Uh and
35:26
Speaker 1: rent away at the age of fifteen to marry a
35:29
Speaker 1: quote Indian physician. This is really offensive, you guys are
35:32
Speaker 1: gonna say, because I think it really paints a picture
35:34
Speaker 1: of the time who was referred to as her quote
35:37
Speaker 1: dark skinned Othello. Um, just really muck raiky type garbage,
35:43
Speaker 1: you know. And it wasn't because they thought she was
35:45
Speaker 1: doing anything illegal. It was just because she was a
35:48
Speaker 1: woman who dared to be successful and to to provide
35:52
Speaker 1: a service that women needed. But that's what makes her
35:56
Speaker 1: story all the more upsetting, because she really was being
36:00
Speaker 1: completely duplicitous and like caying these people who were in need,
36:04
Speaker 1: who are looking to her like her own people, like
36:07
Speaker 1: you know, she should have been protecting, right right, Women
36:09
Speaker 1: from all over the country were sending her money. She
36:12
Speaker 1: even opened a second branch in New Bedford. She wanted
36:15
Speaker 1: to open more offices in New York and she probably
36:19
Speaker 1: could have gotten to that point if the press hadn't
36:22
Speaker 1: been so suspicious of her from the beginning. I mean
36:24
Speaker 1: the fortune teller thing, yes, but also yeah, she's just
36:29
Speaker 1: a single woman, a divorced single woman, and even worse,
36:32
Speaker 1: someone who was married to someone who wasn't white. So
36:35
Speaker 1: that's very very suspicious if that was even true. We
36:38
Speaker 1: don't know much about her, but yeah, the press was
36:42
Speaker 1: really on her immediately, and they tried really hard to
36:45
Speaker 1: get into her bank and interview her, but she wouldn't
36:48
Speaker 1: allow a man even in the lobby, and so reporters
36:51
Speaker 1: were dressing up as women to try to get in
36:53
Speaker 1: and talk to her. And she had I guess, the
36:56
Speaker 1: equivalent of thirteen million dollars today in today's money in
37:01
Speaker 1: her bank at the height of her success. I just
37:03
Speaker 1: want to point out too, that she was doing the
37:06
Speaker 1: exact same things as pond Z before ponz and he
37:11
Speaker 1: was lionized for it. Like she would also try to
37:14
Speaker 1: get give off an aura or a vibe of wealth.
37:17
Speaker 1: You know, she was always dressed to the nines. Uh.
37:19
Speaker 1: She was incredibly intelligent, and she you know, when the
37:24
Speaker 1: media took shots at her, she took shots back right.
37:27
Speaker 1: There was a newspaper that critiqued her bank, and she said,
37:31
Speaker 1: you know, the fact is, my dear man, you really
37:33
Speaker 1: know nothing of the basis, means, or methods on which
37:35
Speaker 1: our affairs are conducted. And when shut up in the
37:38
Speaker 1: meshes of your savings bank notions, you attempt an exposition
37:41
Speaker 1: of the impossibility of our existence. You boggle and flounder
37:44
Speaker 1: about like a bat in a fly trap, which is
37:47
Speaker 1: like a hardcore murdering via words, you know what I mean.
37:52
Speaker 1: Like she she that's a SmackDown. That's a SmackDown back
37:55
Speaker 1: in this time. And she was a tough Boston broad
37:58
Speaker 1: and that's inspiring too. You know, if we're if we're
38:01
Speaker 1: her potential banking clients who don't know we're victims, then
38:06
Speaker 1: you would think, finally, someone standing up to these I'll
38:10
Speaker 1: just say this might be skirting the line because we're
38:13
Speaker 1: family show, but she's standing up to people who are
38:15
Speaker 1: being a bunch of dicks, and it's hard to get
38:18
Speaker 1: mad at that bunch of dicks being dicks. There we go, So,
38:22
Speaker 1: as you said, she reaches this height of financial success
38:27
Speaker 1: for her. But this can't last forever, right, It's unsustainable. Right.
38:33
Speaker 1: The money will run out. There will not be enough
38:36
Speaker 1: money to pay these returns at some point. And the
38:39
Speaker 1: press knew that, and why they didn't realize that about
38:42
Speaker 1: Ponzi is mind boggling. I mean, their problem with hers.
38:46
Speaker 1: She went from you know, this poor divorced fortune teller
38:49
Speaker 1: to a rich person in six months or whatever. Same
38:52
Speaker 1: with Ponzi, but he was celebrated for it. Yeah, I
38:55
Speaker 1: think maybe because of his gender, maybe, and something to
38:59
Speaker 1: do with it if I that he wore a suit
39:01
Speaker 1: instead of address. I think it really freaked people out
39:04
Speaker 1: that this woman was like daring to go against the
39:06
Speaker 1: status quo, and we were immediately suspicious of her and
39:09
Speaker 1: started digging into her business. Whereas Ponzi, it took forever
39:12
Speaker 1: for them to even think anything was up. Everyone wanted
39:15
Speaker 1: to support him, and they thought he was just the best.
39:17
Speaker 1: He was cheered when he'd like gout of his limo,
39:19
Speaker 1: you know, And no one from what I saw in
39:23
Speaker 1: the articles about Ponzi from back in the day said
39:26
Speaker 1: much about his appearance beyond he had nice suits and
39:29
Speaker 1: nice cars and nice furniture and whatever. But once the
39:33
Speaker 1: reporters start getting on house case. You know, they say
39:39
Speaker 1: she is short, fat, very ugly, and so illiterate as
39:42
Speaker 1: to be unable to write an English sentence or to
39:45
Speaker 1: speak without making shameful blunders. Another article said she's cross eyed,
39:51
Speaker 1: all kinds of things about how she looks, which I
39:54
Speaker 1: don't understand how that has anything to do with her
39:56
Speaker 1: ability to be a banker, because at the time, like
39:59
Speaker 1: I said, you could just open a bank, so who
40:02
Speaker 1: cares if you're ugly. You know, it reminds me of
40:04
Speaker 1: another story we did on Stuff they Don't want you
40:06
Speaker 1: to know, our other show about marm Mandel Bomb, who
40:09
Speaker 1: was like this kind of madam of like New York
40:12
Speaker 1: crime syndicate things, Queen of Fences, and she had a
40:17
Speaker 1: school for pickpockets to teach. She was almost like a
40:21
Speaker 1: real life Fagan from Oliver, Like, had this kind of
40:24
Speaker 1: like all her little kind of urchins that would suit
40:26
Speaker 1: send out and you know, they would uh graduate from
40:30
Speaker 1: like pickpocketing to safe cracking, and you know, it was
40:33
Speaker 1: almost like an X Men school for petty crime. Um.
40:37
Speaker 1: But she was bashed in the press in that same way,
40:40
Speaker 1: and they took pot shots at her appearance and and
40:42
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and uh, it's just really interesting the
40:45
Speaker 1: way the press was so gross and cruel back in
40:49
Speaker 1: those days. I mean, not that it's not it'd be
40:51
Speaker 1: nice if it were past tense, right right, But we
40:54
Speaker 1: still see this now. And Chelsea you you shared a
40:58
Speaker 1: some fantastic research, uh with us from a historian, Robinholsart,
41:04
Speaker 1: who talks about the weird amnesia that our culture has
41:10
Speaker 1: about Sarah Howe. Because if we're looking at it, it
41:13
Speaker 1: should be called a house scheme, right, and not a scheme.
41:16
Speaker 1: She was just as successful, and she actually did it
41:19
Speaker 1: for longer. She did it for three whole years. Yeah,
41:22
Speaker 1: so she did it longer. She's more successful. Um. Yeah,
41:26
Speaker 1: she opened multiple branches, multiple branches. She did it in
41:31
Speaker 1: spite of opposition from society rather than with the aid
41:35
Speaker 1: of society at the time. So what happens to what
41:39
Speaker 1: what happens to her at the end? What what would
41:42
Speaker 1: we call her legacy? What do we I mean we
41:45
Speaker 1: know so little about her early life for sure? Does
41:49
Speaker 1: she fade out of history? Does she I don't know
41:53
Speaker 1: exactly about her death, but I do know, like PONSI,
41:56
Speaker 1: she went to prison for not very long three years
42:00
Speaker 1: and three years later, when she got out, she started
42:02
Speaker 1: another bank, the Woman's Bank, and did the same thing,
42:06
Speaker 1: and she did that for two more years. How she
42:09
Speaker 1: was allowed to do that, I really do not understand.
42:13
Speaker 1: It's in the same town, and as far as I know,
42:16
Speaker 1: she didn't change her name or anything, so she didn't
42:19
Speaker 1: learn a lesson. Like all Ponzi scheme people, she probably
42:23
Speaker 1: had no remorse and honestly felt like she was helping
42:26
Speaker 1: women with this. Eventually she got caught again, um, and
42:31
Speaker 1: then she went back to her earlier scheme of fortune telling.
42:35
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe she actually was clairvoyant and that wasn't
42:38
Speaker 1: a scheme, But I think she was probably still swindling people,
42:42
Speaker 1: but using the same skills, reading people, appealing to their emotions,
42:47
Speaker 1: getting them to trust her, and predicting probably things like
42:52
Speaker 1: you're gonna make a million dollars some day or whatever. Yeah,
42:56
Speaker 1: people like that kind of fortune, you know what I mean.
42:59
Speaker 1: And people are sort of paying for the feeling of success,
43:04
Speaker 1: you know, they want that million dollars worth of dreams.
43:08
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny. We did an episode not too
43:10
Speaker 1: long ago about Houdini and how he every city he
43:13
Speaker 1: would go to, he would like basically out these mediums
43:17
Speaker 1: and like these uh you know, fake clairvoyance. And he
43:20
Speaker 1: had a woman that worked for him who the episode
43:23
Speaker 1: was about, who was kind of his like detective, who
43:25
Speaker 1: would go secretly to the towns before he got there
43:28
Speaker 1: and you know, poses like a person getting a reading
43:32
Speaker 1: and the real work, and she did all the legwork
43:34
Speaker 1: to figure out the tricks they were using, and then
43:36
Speaker 1: if they're his show, he would call them out. Like
43:39
Speaker 1: his mother had passed and there was a period where
43:41
Speaker 1: he really believed in psychic abilities and then when he
43:43
Speaker 1: realized it was all, you know, scam, it really offended
43:47
Speaker 1: him on a very like personal level. So he took
43:49
Speaker 1: it as this like cause to like, I'm gonna expose
43:52
Speaker 1: all of you frauds. Pretty interesting. So it probably would
43:54
Speaker 1: have been right around that time. So with this in mind, Uh, Chelsea,
44:00
Speaker 1: what do you think we should do in the modern
44:02
Speaker 1: day when we hear people refer to these kinds of
44:06
Speaker 1: scams as Ponzi schemes. I have to be honest, you know,
44:09
Speaker 1: I'm I am to a degree defending the legacy of Sarah,
44:14
Speaker 1: how but we do have to mention, Okay, she's technically
44:17
Speaker 1: one of the she's a bad She's an antagonist technically, right,
44:21
Speaker 1: because she didn't actually help these people, though she may
44:24
Speaker 1: have inspired them. But where where does this leave us?
44:27
Speaker 1: Are we gonna Are we and all our fellow listeners
44:29
Speaker 1: going to be the people at house parties when we
44:31
Speaker 1: hear the phrase Ponzi scheme? Are we going to be
44:33
Speaker 1: the actualities? Yeah? Well, you know there's this feeling that, well,
44:40
Speaker 1: in any area, there's always the man who's the symbol
44:45
Speaker 1: for greatness and achieving whatever it was, and then there's
44:49
Speaker 1: always some unsong woman who did it first and wasn't
44:53
Speaker 1: recognized and was torn to shreds in the press. But
44:58
Speaker 1: maybe that's good because people don't assume women are gonna
45:04
Speaker 1: pull off great things, even great crimes. They don't assume
45:08
Speaker 1: a woman will take advantage of trust in this way
45:12
Speaker 1: we think of women is more trustworthy. Right, So maybe
45:17
Speaker 1: in honor of all of the women out there starting
45:21
Speaker 1: their own Ponzi schemes right now, we keep Sarah how
45:25
Speaker 1: on the down low and let them, you know, get
45:27
Speaker 1: that heated pool for a little while. I think that's
45:30
Speaker 1: a pretty solid takeaway. Beautiful, beautiful, thank you so much
45:35
Speaker 1: for coming on this show. Now I'm gonna admit it.
45:38
Speaker 1: I thought Ponsi was the Ponzi scheme originator. Yeah, this
45:41
Speaker 1: is this, This is new information. You went down like
45:43
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia rabbit hole and came up with some gold.
45:47
Speaker 1: He has a more fun name too, so I get
45:50
Speaker 1: that much is in a name. And speaking of names,
45:54
Speaker 1: I want to shout out one more time your podcast,
45:58
Speaker 1: Dear Young Rocker. Could you share with our fellow listeners
46:02
Speaker 1: the best way to find the show? Well, it's available
46:07
Speaker 1: on all the podcast places, including the I Heart radio app.
46:11
Speaker 1: You knew that, Yes, And there is a Dear Young
46:13
Speaker 1: Rocker dot com website that has lots of fun pictures
46:17
Speaker 1: and more information about me and all the episodes, So
46:20
Speaker 1: check that one out. And I'm also on Instagram at
46:22
Speaker 1: Dear Young Rocker. Yeah, please do check it out. It's
46:25
Speaker 1: a really great show. Um very much kind of a
46:28
Speaker 1: personal um memoir almost of like your current self talking
46:34
Speaker 1: to your younger self about how to kind of navigate
46:36
Speaker 1: all the crazy emotions and trials and tribulations of being
46:41
Speaker 1: kind of an outsider in high school and sort of
46:43
Speaker 1: coming into your own as a creative person and as
46:46
Speaker 1: a human adult. Yeah. For you know, anyone who's ever
46:50
Speaker 1: felt like a weirdo. UM, it's for you, but they'll
46:54
Speaker 1: take our word for it. Check it out today, don't
46:56
Speaker 1: delay while you're on the internet of the ending Chelsea
47:00
Speaker 1: and following dear young Rocker. You can also check out
47:04
Speaker 1: my trustee co host and I as individuals on our
47:07
Speaker 1: own uh versions of Ponzi schemes social media. I'm been
47:12
Speaker 1: bulling on Instagram and I've been bullying hs W on Twitter.
47:15
Speaker 1: You can find me exclusively on Instagram at how Now
47:18
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. Big thanks to Chelsea for being our guests today.
47:22
Speaker 1: Thank you so much so it's a pleasure. Huge thanks
47:25
Speaker 1: to super producer Casey Pegram for always being our Huckleberry
47:30
Speaker 1: are our main guy, um. Big thanks to Christopher haciotas
47:33
Speaker 1: here in spirit as always, Jonathan Strickland, the notorious quister
47:37
Speaker 1: and also a person of interest UM who may have
47:41
Speaker 1: been doing some schemes like this in his time away
47:43
Speaker 1: from the show. Who knows it feels like classic strict
47:45
Speaker 1: and really told you this before a real sketch here
47:48
Speaker 1: D and D alignment. He would be lawful evil so
47:51
Speaker 1: he has a stickler for rules and technicalities. Why do
47:54
Speaker 1: we feel like I'm warning you about this guy? Watch
47:56
Speaker 1: out for him. So um, we also want to think,
48:01
Speaker 1: of course, Gabe, who is going to be a period
48:03
Speaker 1: on the show. We've got some more special guests lined up,
48:06
Speaker 1: and we want to hear from you in the meantime.
48:09
Speaker 1: What is what is your favorite villain that has been
48:12
Speaker 1: forgotten by history? What's the most ridiculous con you've heard of?
48:16
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, wherever and
48:19
Speaker 1: tell us about it. Heck, what's your favorite con episode
48:21
Speaker 1: we've done here on this show. I feel like we've
48:23
Speaker 1: been doing a ton of them lately. We have that
48:24
Speaker 1: Diamond con. I think we actually did an episode on
48:27
Speaker 1: the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge? Did we really,
48:29
Speaker 1: George Parker? I think we did. How do I not
48:32
Speaker 1: remember this? I don't know? Man? Um, what kind of
48:35
Speaker 1: con can you get away with? I'm slipping here? Oh,
48:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um. Maybe something something corona based, Probably
48:42
Speaker 1: something social media based. You get enough followers, get people
48:46
Speaker 1: to think you're, you know, a chic or something. I
48:50
Speaker 1: guess this has recently happened. You just kind of put
48:53
Speaker 1: on the costume and people will let you into their
48:56
Speaker 1: exclusive hotels and parties and on their jets. Nice. Nice,
49:01
Speaker 1: I almost want to cut that part out so we
49:03
Speaker 1: can try it before people learn about it. But in
49:07
Speaker 1: the meantime, tune in for our next show, where we'll
49:10
Speaker 1: have more strange tales, particularly No, you're you're so much
49:15
Speaker 1: better at ending the show. Yeah, I think so, Thanks,
49:18
Speaker 1: but I appreciate the vote of confidence. I just usually
49:20
Speaker 1: say we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
49:30
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
49:32
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.