There's some oddities in the WP timeline. Nov 1, 1920 goes to jail. Spends 3.5 years in jail. Released and then "almost immediately" indicted by the state. Challenges indictment, it goes to Supreme Court, settled on Mar 27, 1922. How could he spend 3.5 years in jail between those dates when there aren't 3.5 years between those dates?
Now that you've uncovered these irregularities, we can blow this Wikipedia scandal wide open!
"Mostly??"
Yes, it's actually totally wrong. If you read carefully though, I'm not reporting Ponzi's story as it happened, but as I heard it for the first time from an econ professor, which may or may not have been pulling our legs.
The story claimed Venetian which implies Italian. He was actually born about 70 miles away, but that was still in Italy. And he swindled lots of people.
That is why I said "mostly".
Ha! I knew something was fishy in that econ class. :)
Thanks a lot though. This is far more sinister than I suspected.