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".

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.