Lost Manuscript Unmasks Details Of Original Ponzi
In the summer of 1920, William H. McMasters, one of Boston’s top publicists, was in a pickle. A new client, a dapper and charming Italian immigrant named Charles Ponzi, was raking in millions on promises to pay investors 50 percent interest in 45 days.
“If he was everything he claimed, I would have a client such as no man ever had in the publicity field,” Mr. McMasters wrote in a newly found and never published memoir. But, he reflected, “if he was crooked or deluded, I must make up my mind to have him stop taking the money from the public.”
As fate would have it, Mr. McMasters decided that Ponzi was indeed a fraud and wrote a newspaper exposé in The Boston Post...
Mr. McMasters remained convinced of his service to humanity — “I do not anticipate that another Charles Ponzi will ever appear in the financial world,” he wrote.
Now that bittersweet narrative, so far known only in fragments, has emerged...
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“If he was everything he claimed, I would have a client such as no man ever had in the publicity field,” Mr. McMasters wrote in a newly found and never published memoir. But, he reflected, “if he was crooked or deluded, I must make up my mind to have him stop taking the money from the public.”
As fate would have it, Mr. McMasters decided that Ponzi was indeed a fraud and wrote a newspaper exposé in The Boston Post...
Mr. McMasters remained convinced of his service to humanity — “I do not anticipate that another Charles Ponzi will ever appear in the financial world,” he wrote.
Now that bittersweet narrative, so far known only in fragments, has emerged...