Ponzi

Carlo always felt as though he was destined for something bigger than this. He was born in the Kingdom of Italy, which had just become an independent nation, in 1882.

Carlo's family had once been wealthy, but by the time he was born, the good times were long gone. Still, he managed to attend university in Rome, but he probably spent more time partying than studying.

The United States looked like the land of milk and honey at the turn of the 20th century, and immigrants from all over Europe were making their way across the pond, emigrating in record numbers for the time. Carlo decided this adventure was for him, and he changed his first name to something more familiar to American ears: Charles.

Charles Ponzi arrived in the US in 1903, wandering from job to job to make ends meet. The evidence suggests that Charles’s work wasn’t entirely above-board. Eventually, he worked as a bank teller in Montreal, where the bank eventually failed. Did Charles have anything to do with it? Tough to say…