Suspicion Grew
Of course, the unimaginable amount of money that Ponzi was making, and the lavish lifestyle it allowed him to live, caught the attention of the press. Notably, Clarence Barron of The Boston Post had done some calculations. Barron established that it would take around 160 million IRCs to cover all the investments in Charles Ponzi’s Securities Exchange Company.
This might be fine, except only around 27,000 coupons existed in the entire world. Barron, who would later go on to work for The Wall Street Journal, and to be president of the Dow Jones, also noted that Ponzi had not personally invested in his own scheme. He printed an article in The Boston Post which would quickly make things very difficult for Charles Ponzi.
