Ponzi's Scheme Quotes

“Of all the get-rich-quick magnates that have operated, Ponzi is the king.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“The hitch, Ponzi understood, would be getting cash for the stamps he bought with the coupons. One possibility would be to sell the stamps at a slight discount to businesses that used large amounts of postage, giving them a bargain on a necessary item while still maintaining huge profits for Ponzi. Another hurdle would be figuring out how to buy and transport the enormous numbers of coupons necessary to turn a significant profit. But those crucial details would wait for another day.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“But the pull of newspapering was strong. Eighteen months later, Grozier moved to New York and became personal secretary to Joseph Pulitzer, the Hungarian-born editor of the New York World and a journalism legend in the making. Pulitzer pioneered a formula of compelling human-interest stories, social justice crusades, and sensational battles with William Randolph Hearst and the New York Journal. Under Pulitzer, the World became the most profitable and most copied newspaper in the nation. Edwin Grozier had a front-row seat, and he was in thrall to Pulitzer: “I never saw anyone to equal him. His mind was like a flash of lightning, illuminating the dark places.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“Desperate, Ponzi sent a cable to Italy appealing to the dictator Benito Mussolini. No help there either, making Ponzi one of the rare topics on which Coolidge and Mussolini agreed. Ponzi was returned to Texas to await extradition, a process”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“When New Yorkers went to the polls a few weeks later, election officials came across the names of two unexpected write-in candidates for state treasurer: John D. Rockefeller and Charles Ponzi.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“In the remarkable seven months since it had opened for business, the Securities Exchange Company had amassed thirty thousand investors and $9.6 million. All Ponzi had to do to keep them satisfied was to pay them nearly $15 million in return.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“To himself, Ponzi rationalized the difference between his Securities Exchange Company and copycat upstarts: “Perhaps my activities were not entirely within the law,” he allowed. “But my intent was honest. I was in a critical position and I had fallen into it without any intention to do wrong. Now that I was in it, I was trying my hardest to pull myself out of it, without hurting my investors.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“A variation of Get Rich Quick schemes was robbing Peter to pay Paul, or benefiting one person at the expense of others. The origin of the phrase is open to dispute, but one account traces it to the 1500s in England, when the lands of Saint Peter’s Church at Westminster were sold to fund repairs at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“His debts approached three thousand dollars and, as Ponzi liked to say, his only assets were his hopes.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“Securities Exchange Company”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

“I kept up the bluff, hoping that I might eventually hit upon some workable plan to pay all of my creditors in full.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend