Tired of wandering the aisles at Walgreens trying to find the best deals?
Well, we've got something that'll make your shopping experience a whole lot sweeter. Introducing Drop, the app that rewards you with free gift cards just for doing your everyday shopping, whether it's groceries, toiletries, or your favorite snacks. With Drop, every purchase earns you points towards fantastic rewards.
Download the Drop app now. Use code DROP55 when you sign up to get $5 in points. High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at highfivecasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at highfivecasino.com. High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary, void or prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumberfivecasino.com.
High Five Casino. There are moments in life that are so special that you have to capture them and save them forever. They are one of those once in a lifetime events, like your baby's first steps, the first time you bring your family pet home, or your daughter's first dance performance. With iPhone 15 Pro, more storage means you don't have to delete anything that can become a lasting memory one day.
And it's important to be able to share these moments with family members who weren't there to see them in person. Store more, share more. Connect with iPhone 15 Pro on AT&T. Get iPhone 15 Pro on AT&T and get an iPad and Apple Watch for 99 cents per month each. AT&T.
Connecting changes everything. Limited time offer. Require 0% APR 36 month agreement on each. Well-qualified customers. Other terms and restrictions apply.
See att.com for details. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. eBay Motors is here for the ride. With some elbow grease, fresh installs, and a whole lot of love, you transformed 100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that's all your own. Brake kits, LED headlights, whatever you need, eBay Motors has it. And with eBay Guaranteed Fit, it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time, every time, or your money back. Plus at these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash.
Keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck. I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. With family cannolis.
And spins mean everything. Now you want to get mixed up in the family business. Introducing The Godfather at ChampaCasino.com. Test your luck in the shadowy world of The Godfather slot. Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me. Play The Godfather, now at ChampaCasino.com. Welcome to the family. VTW Group, no purchase necessary.
Avoid wear prohibited by law. See terms and conditions 18 plus. And we return to our American stories. Up next, the story of the man who lent his name to a scheme you may well know, but the man you don't. We're talking about Charles Ponzi, here to tell the story is John Small, the man behind the podcast right about now.
Take it away, John. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scheme where all the returns are paid to earlier investors using the money that was contributed by newer investors. So basically what you do is you pay the investors of your Ponzi scheme with the money from the new investors.
So it's a constant cycle. You have to keep on getting new investors in and the money that the new investors put in, you use to pay your old investors. Ponzi schemes have been around forever, but they weren't really called Ponzi schemes until Charles Ponzi came around, probably much to his disappointment. He was actually born Carlo. He was a poor Italian immigrant and he came from like a working class family, but he always had a chip on his shoulder about being not as rich as he thought he should be. And he always thought he was much richer than he actually was. When he turned 18, he got in his head that he wanted to go to America because at that time Italians were hearing that America like the streets were paved with gold.
This is a time of great prosperity in America and not so much prosperity in Italy. And so his parents raised enough money, $200 for him to take a boat to Boston. He was supposed to have some spending cash, but being Charles Ponzi, he basically gambled all that spending cash away on the boat, lost everything. So when he arrived, he was a penniless Italian immigrant and he spent many years traveling up and down the coast of America doing all sorts of odd jobs. Like he was a grocery clerk. He was a factory hand. He was a dishwasher. He painted signs.
He was a nurse. He did a million things. And he always, he was one of those guys that always had like a get rich quick scheme that he would try to do.
And then it would fail like miserably every single time. One of the most important events to remember in the pre Ponzi scheme, Charles Ponzi life is when he went up to Montreal, because this would come back to haunt him later, but he was working at Montreal for a shopping company, just kind of a labor type job. And he walked into his boss's office and he saw a checkbook, blank checks, and he decided to write himself a check and he cashed it. And he went out and bought a nice new suit with his stolen money. And the cops immediately nailed him. And he was arrested and thrown in jail, but in jail, he met a bunch of other Italian immigrants and he developed a scheme where he was going to sneak them into America from Montreal. They paid him some money to do that. And that did not go well.
They were totally busted at the border. And Charles Ponzi again was arrested. And this time he was thrown in jail and a penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. So he spent all this time in prison again, came out of prison, penniless.
At this point, he's really frustrated. He wants to make money. He moves back up to Boston where he originally started his American adventure. And he meets this woman named Rose, who becomes his wife. And Rose introduces him to some members of the Boston community that help him out a little bit, give him some money, lend him some money. So suddenly he's got some money in his hands.
And it's during this period of his life that he just comes up with a scheme, the one scheme that actually works for him. There used to be this thing called international reply coupons. And this is because if you send somebody a letter, say from Italy to America, and you wanted them to return your letter, you would include this international reply coupon in the letter.
And that would enable them to buy a stamp that would be accepted in Italy because at the time you couldn't put a stamp on a letter and have it go to Italy without paying Italy some money. He felt like because the exchange rates were so different between what was happening in Italy and other countries in Europe and America, that he could buy these coupons and then kind of cash in on the exchange rate. So that was basically the scheme.
That was the original scheme. And so he opened up this thing that he called a security exchange commission. And he basically told people, hey, invest with me and I'll give you some really good return. And he would pay them back with some of the money that he would make through this coupon scheme that he had going on. And he got some investors, some people kind of started putting money in because they were interested and it sounded legit. And he found that the more investors he had, the more money he had to pay back the initial investor. So without even really knowing it, he was starting what would later be called the Ponzi scheme.
It was actually a really good deal for people. At the time, if you just like put $100 in a bank, you might make like $5 in interest by the end of the year. But with Ponzi, he was giving like 50% interest. So all of a sudden there were like lines outside of the security exchange commission office in Boston because he was able to give people such incredible returns. In February of I think 1919, he recorded $5,290 from just 17 investors. In March, he had 110 investors and he was making $25,000. By May, he was earning $30,000 a week to be adjusted for inflation.
He was baking about $400,000 a week. And people, you know, the investors would just hang in there. So the more investors he had, the more money he had in the pot. And then when people wanted to eventually take their money out, he had enough to pay them back and to pay them this incredible returns. Everybody was super suspicious of this.
Like, how could this possibly be? And at one point they sent some cops over to figure out what was going on and the cops were so impressed that they invested. They stopped their investigation and started putting money in this thing. So by the end of the year of him opening up the security and exchange commission, he had made like $2.5 million. He had 7,800 customers, offices in Boston, he had them in New Hampshire and Vermont, all over New England. He was so rich at this point that he was able to buy his own bank, which was called Hanover Trust. And he moved into this mansion and really became like a real kind of personality. Charles Ponzi was only five foot three, I think like 130 pounds, but huge huge personality. And he would kind of walk around with these really fancy tailored suits. He had a cane with a gold top that he used. You know, he wanted to be PT Parham, like the greatest showman on earth.
You know, you can imagine this very poor immigrant suddenly living the life that he always dreamed of living. It was just very intoxicating for him. And the media started paying attention. So the Boston Post, which was sort of like one of the tabloids of the time, there was a guy that was running it named Richard Grozier, who was basically like the opposite of Charles Ponzi. He was really like Boston Brahmin. He went to Harvard and his son decided that he was going to make his name by bringing Charles Ponzi down. Ponzi sort of kind of fell for this trap.
He would agree to do interviews because he was so outspoken and loved to like hear his name and see his name in print and love to give a good quote. And Grozier kept digging and digging and digging into Ponzi's life. And eventually, he found out a bit about what happened up in Montreal, and that Ponzi was actually a criminal. And that's when things started to unravel. The feds started to investigate what he was doing. And they started looking into his bank accounts and realizing that this was not on the up and up. People started panicking because suddenly they're worried that they're going to lose their money that they invested. And there starts to be a run on the Security Exchange Commission. And Ponzi, you know, eventually can't keep up with the run.
It puts him in a lot of trouble. Amazingly, he is able to pay back most of the people that invested with him. And some people even gave the money back. But he still went to prison. He went to prison for four years for this investment fraud. And he got out on good behavior.
The state charged him with fraud. So he had to go back to prison. But during his appeal for this case, he got out on bail and he decided to go on the lam because Ponzi never did things the easy way.
So while he was on appeal, he went to Tampa Bay where he hoped to escape back to Italy on a freighter. And he shaved his head and he grew a mustache. And he wore the sailor's cap and he assumed this completely different identity to escape America. He also faked a suicide.
He had some friends leave his clothes on a beach with a suicide note. But none of this worked because being Charles Ponzi and being a big mouth while he was on the freighter, going back to Italy, he told someone who he really was. And eventually the police found out and they entered the boat and they arrested him and they brought him back to Boston. Eventually he was deported. Rose divorced him and he moved to Brazil in his very later years, tried a bunch of different businesses which completely failed. And on his deathbed, he ultimately confessed to a reporter that the whole thing was a scheme, that his security exchange commission was never a real business and that it was all a lie. He came clean and he actually wrote a confession letter to Rose too. I guess it was very important to him to tell the truth.
He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1949 in a poor charity hospital in Brazil. And he had only $75 in his pocket. And a special thanks to John Small, who's the man behind the podcast Right About Now, which offers a glimpse into the lives and stories of successful authors. A classic story of an American get rich quick schemer here on Our American Stories. Tired of boring lunches? Picture this. You're at Chipotle ordering the same old burrito bowl.
But wait, there's more excitement in store than just guac. Introducing Drop, the ultimate rewards app. Just link your card, dine at your favorite restaurants and you'll learn points to get free gift cards from tons of brands. It's like getting paid to eat. Hungry for savings? Download the Drop app now and use code Drop44 to kickstart your rewards journey with $5 in points.
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. eBay Motors is here for the ride. With some elbow grease, fresh installs and a whole lot of love, you transformed 100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that's all your own. Brake kits, LED headlights, whatever you need, eBay Motors has it. And with eBay Guaranteed Fit, it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time, every time, or your money back. Plus at these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash.
Keep your ride or die alive at eBayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. It's time for today's Luckyland horoscope with Victoria Cash. Life's gotten mundane, so shake up the daily routine and be adventurous. With a trip to Luckyland, you know what they say, your chance to win starts with a spin. So go to Luckylandslots.com to play over 100 social casino style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.
Get lucky today at Luckylandslots.com. If you're a smoker or dipper looking to make a change, you really only need one reason to do it. But with Zinn nicotine pouches, you can find many. Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch.
It's made with only six simple ingredients. Plus, Zinn is the only nicotine pouch with a 10-day hassle-free trial. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zinn. Find yours in online or in a store near you at zinn.com slash find. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
