Ponzi's Scheme
The True Story of a Financial Legend
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
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By:
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Mitchell Zuckoff
About this listen
You’ve heard of the scheme. Now comes the man behind it. In Mitchell Zuckoff's exhilarating book, the first nonfiction account of Charles Ponzi, we meet the charismatic rogue who launched the most famous and extraordinary scam in the annals of American finance.
It was a time when anything seemed possible - instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury - and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scam to an art form and raked in millions at his office in downtown Boston. Ponzi’s Scheme is the amazing true story of the irresistible scoundrel who launched the most successful scheme of financial alchemy in modern history - and uttered the first roar of the Roaring 20s.
Ponzi may have been a charlatan, but he was also a wonderfully likable man. His intentions were noble, his manners impeccable, his sales pitch enchanting. Born to a genteel Italian family, he immigrated to the United States with big dreams but no money. Only after he became hopelessly enamored of a stenographer named Rose Gnecco and persuaded her to marry him did Ponzi light on the means to make his dreams come true. His true motive was not greed but love.
With rich narrative skill, Mitchell Zuckoff conjures up the feverish atmosphere of Boston during the weeks when Ponzi’s bubble grew bigger and bigger. At the peak of his success, Ponzi was taking in more than $2 million a week. And then his house of cards came crashing down - thanks in large part to the relentless investigative reporting of Richard Grozier’s Boston Post.
In Zuckoff's hands, Ponzi is no mere swindler; instead he is appealing and magnetic, a colorful and poignant figure, someone who struggled his whole life to attain great wealth and who sincerely believed - to the very end - that he could have made good on his investment promises if only he’d had enough time. Ponzi is a classic American tale of immigrant life and the dream of success, and the unexpectedly moving story of a man who - for a fleeting, illusory moment - attained it all.
©2005 Mitchell Zuckoff (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Zuckoff...tells Ponzi's story amicably and briskly, and keeps the complicated financial intricacies understandable." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Zuckoff's biography of Ponzi is meticulously accurate, based on memoirs and newspaper accounts of the day, weaving the story of the rise of this small-time Italian immigrant with that of Richard Grozier, second-generation editor of the Boston Post." (Booklist)
“For Charles Ponzi, a poor Italian immigrant with big dreams and grand schemes, the streets of America truly were paved with gold. In Mitchell Zuckoff’s hands, the get-rich-quick saga of Ponzi is a portrait of America in the Roaring Twenties - a time of innocence and greed, of rogues, rascals, and reformers. It’s hard not to root for Ponzi as he tiptoes along a financial high wire of his own creation, high above his immigrant investors cheering him on and the Boston Brahmins hoping for him to fall. Zuckoff spins a tale rich in intrigue, corruption, betrayal - and love. It is a story that resonates today, in an age of financial scandals ranging from Enron to Martha Stewart.” (Mike Stanton, author of The Prince of Providence)
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By: Jonathan Eig
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Prince of Darkness
- The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire
- By: Shane White
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily-white business world, he married a White woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally he set his White contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them.
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Not A Nice Man, But A Smart One!
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The Teapot Dome Scandal
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The Teapot Dome scandal of the early 1920s was all about oil - hundreds of millions of dollars� worth of petroleum. When the scandal finally broke, the consequences were tremendous. President Harding's legacy was forever tarnished, while �Oil Cabinet� member Albert Fall was forced to resign and was imprisoned for a year. Others implicated in the affair suffered prison terms, commitment to mental hospitals, suicide, and even murder.
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Harding's return to normalcy: corruption
- By Paul on 03-05-08
By: Laton McCartney
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Satan's Circus
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- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
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They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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The Wizard of Lies
- Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
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- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.
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The best of 3 madoff books
- By Angela willis on 03-18-13
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The Hellhound of Wall Street
- How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance
- By: Michael Perino
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....
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Great Story
- By Lynn on 03-22-11
By: Michael Perino
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Titan
- The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 35 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
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He makes Bill Gates look like a Pauper!
- By Rick on 11-04-13
By: Ron Chernow
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The Bettencourt Affair
- The World's Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris
- By: Tom Sancton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Heiress to the nearly 40-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the 14th wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At 94, she was embroiled in what has been called the Bettencourt Affair, a scandal that dominated the headlines in France. Why? It’s a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families, set in the most romantic city - and involving the most glamorous industry - in the world.
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A Juicy Chronicle
- By Jean on 10-24-17
By: Tom Sancton
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Once in Golconda
- A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1928
- By: John Brooks
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Once in Golconda is a dramatic chronicle of the breathtaking rise, devastating fall, and painstaking rebirth of Wall Street in the years between the wars. Focusing on the lives and fortunes of some of the era's most memorable traders, bankers, boosters, and frauds, John Brooks brings to vivid life all the ruthlessness, greed, and reckless euphoria of the '20s bull market, the desperation of the days leading up to the crash of '29, and the bitterness of the years that followed.
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A must read for investors
- By Brad Gillespie on 06-07-15
By: John Brooks
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Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
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Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
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American Lightning
- Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.
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very interesting popular history
- By D. Littman on 11-28-08
By: Howard Blum
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Bad Paper
- Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld
- By: Jake Halpern
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Jake Halpern introduces us to a former banking executive and a former armed robber who become partners and go in quest of "paper" - the uncollected debts that are sold off by banks for pennies on the dollar. As Halpern shows, the world of consumer debt collection is a wild and unregulated shadow land, where operators may misrepresent a debtor's situation, make illegal threats, and even lay claim to debts that are not theirs to collect in the first place.
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An Examination of Bad Debts; its Buyers & Sellers
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-16
By: Jake Halpern
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The Match King
- Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals
- By: Frank Partnoy
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged.
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excellent Depression era history-biography
- By Donovan R. on 06-17-10
By: Frank Partnoy
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The King of Content
- Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sumner Murray Redstone, once feared as the “mad genius” of media who would dump his CEOs for mere wobbles in his companies’ stock price, had built one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers constructed to ensure that he always maintained control. Today he controls 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion.
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Feels biased. Well researched, but not engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-19
By: Keach Hagey
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The Money Culture
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
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Not the normal great Michael Lewis
- By Me on 05-12-12
By: Michael Lewis
What listeners say about Ponzi's Scheme
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Spec
- 02-17-20
An Odyssey, a Love Story, a Comedy and a Tragedy
An odyssey read by one of the best, portrays a figure larger than fictitious heros and more tragic than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If you like incredulity that is true, a love story that is always just out of reach and an ending that begs the question, “what if”, then this is a no miss for you. Happy listening!
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Overall
- Jean
- 06-26-10
Fascinating!
This book was such a good read. I really didn't know what to expect, you actually feel quite sorry for Ponzi in the end. He had such good intentions, but you know what they say about "good intentions".
From start to finish I just couldn't put this book down.
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1 person found this helpful
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- RDP
- 01-03-15
Actually made a human out of Ponzi.
What made the experience of listening to Ponzi's Scheme the most enjoyable?
The way Mitchell Zuckoff takes these characters who you believe to be secondary or tertiary in nature to the story and develps them as if they were major players. The research that was presented in the book was scrupulousw and masterful. It takes you from having Ponzi being a poor immigrant bon-vivant with dreams and ambitions much larger than life to an enterprising businessman/scoundrel that still has a heart of gold. I still don't understand his donation of skin to someone he did not know... almost as if he was buying "postal coupons" for heaven. All I had heard or read about Ponzi to date has been negative, this book opened up a human window into the person.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The reporters and editors of the Post, who believed enough on themselves to risk embarrassment and finacial ruin exposing Ponzi.
Which scene was your favorite?
Ponzi discovering the International Postal reply coupons and the follow up scheme.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
If there was, I suppose the arrival of Ponzi's mom at Boston.
Any additional comments?
An excellent, well researched book Thank you Mr. Zuckoff.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 04-01-06
Interesting
Everyone has heard of the term Ponzi Scheme, and this book details his life. Very entertaining, great reader. Ponzi was a nut.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Robert
- 05-20-12
Surprise yourself! Sympathize with a crook!
Where does Ponzi's Scheme rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
About the second or thrid best book I've listened to.
Who was your favorite character and why?
It is hard not to sympathize with Charles Ponzi, who had a brilliant idea put forgot to put the paperwork in the mail. And forgot to do the real work too. But by selling his efforts as "Helping the little man", became everyone's hero.
What about Grover Gardner’s performance did you like?
His reading speed is brilliant, and the subtle way in which he emphasizes important quotes makes listening very easy and entertaining.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Chris
- 02-15-10
Loved It
I always like reading about how certain phrases or actions get into society. This one was very intriguing and at times I felt sorry for Ponzi. He started out with honest motives but got in over his head. An interesting story that puts a friendly face on one of the most ridiculed ways of thievery.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jeffrey D Gawrys
- 06-20-16
Mitchell Zuckoff does it again - Great Listen
The first book I read by Mr. Zuckoff was "13 Hours in Benghazi." By coincidence I next read "Lost in Shangri-La." I then picked up a third book entitles "Frozen in Time." It was at this point I look at the author's name and realize that I had just read three of Zuckoff's books in succession... by accident. He is a wonderful writer and is able to bring which story to life in a way that is rather poetic. His work flows from one chapter to the next and makes you want to continue on in discovery of what comes next. When starting this latest book "Ponzi's Scheme," I was wondering how he could possibly hit 4 home runs in a row. Well, he didi. I listen to the book in less than 3 days, sometimes repeating chapters because of so much information. I can't wait to see what he releases next. In a very short time, he has become one of my top 3 authors. Bravo. and very well done.
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Overall
- Robert
- 01-20-09
Excellent if you like history and business
This book is excellent. As this book provides the color of the 1900 - 1920's in Boston, it provides an entertaining account of the flawed optimist Charles Ponzi rags to riches to rags story. Nicely written and well read.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- S. Jackson
- 04-15-10
A Business Biography that Reads Like Novel
I really enjoyed listening to this book. The author doesn't overdo the coverage on any part of Ponzi's life, or spend time going over pointless antidotes that don't serve the purpose of illustrating either a pivotal moment or the character of Ponzi. As a result, the story moves along at a really nice pace and is never too slow or boring.
The narration was also really good - as good as it gets in my opinion. Some narrators are really boring to listen to, but this guy (Grover Gardner) did such a great job I felt that his narration added to the interest of the story. Some narrators sound like they just got woken up from a nap to do a reading, but Gardner's treatment is upbeat and lively.
I felt listening to this book was time well spent and worth the purchase/credit.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Illinois Jim
- 01-25-19
Overly Kind Story of Ponzi
I enjoyed this story of the infamous Ponzi. His name is, of course, associated with financial scams. The author gives a gentler view of Ponzi. He doesn't make excuses for the fraud that is perpetrated, but he glosses over the real harm caused to Ponzi's victims. Instead of spending time discussing the horrible impact on those who lost money, he instead gives a few humorous quips from those who managed to find some hint of humor in their loss. It seems obvious from the book that the author wants to make Ponzi a fallible human rather than an evil mastermind. The narrator does an excellent job taking us back in time and I would love to hear more readings from him. He definitely adds to this audio book's value.
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