Charles Ponzi

Charles Ponzi, born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi in Lugo, Italy, in 1882, is the swindler whose name became shorthand for a whole species of fraud. In the early 1920s he promised North American investors returns of 50 percent in forty-five days, dressing the con in the plausible language of postal-coupon arbitrage. In truth he simply paid earlier investors with the money of later ones, and when the scheme collapsed after little more than a year it had cost his victims some 20 million dollars. He did not invent the deceit, but he embodied it so completely that it now carries his name. A chart describes temperament and never excuses the choice to defraud thousands, which was his alone. Read only analytically, his Pisces Sun in the fourth house speaks to a persuasive, boundary-blurring, illusion-spinning quality, the mirage-maker who can make others believe. The Virgo Moon in the tenth lent a meticulous surface of numbers and plausible detail, worn publicly. A Scorpio Ascendant completes the picture of a chameleon mask, magnetic and hard to read, that filtered scrutiny at the door. The gifts were real; he bent them to theft.