Word: ponzi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Though his proud fellow citizens like to think of him as their own Mike Hammer, Milan's Tommaso Ponzi, 37, really does not quite meet TV specifications for a private eye. Big Tom weighs 270 lbs., is a happily married homebody (three children) who has no time for slinky blondes. But otherwise, Tom is up to fictional standards. He is a proven skullbasher: in Italy's first chaotic postwar days he tangled with the Communists in (by his own estimate) 1,300 street brawls, mowing them down with a chunk of railroad track. And he has cold nerve...
...television, the cops grudgingly allow the private eyes to solve their cases for them. But, like Tom himself, Police Chief Nardone did not quite meet TV specifications. Before he knew what had happened, Tommaso Ponzi, private eye, found himself charged with impersonating an officer, violation of domicile, restraint of person and arbitrary arrest. Tom's suspects, who had admitted to being part of an estimated $500,000-a-year ring, walked out of the station free men-because the police themselves had not caught them red-handed as the law requires...
...chisel a bank is rare indeed. Last week, after a fortnight at their adding machines, red-faced country bankers in three Eastern states totted up losses of better than $800,000 as victims of one of the niftiest and most labyrinthine swindles since Boston's dapper Charles Ponzi was in his prime. The man credited with the feats of financial erring do was Earl Belle, 26, a baby-faced Pittsburgh sharpie currently residing scot-free in Rio de Janeiro. So slick was his pitch that only this spring he was interviewed by Mike Wallace as a wonder...
Storm No. 2. Hardly had the dust settled when a storm broke around another big company, the bankrupt Texas Mutual Co. Two appeals court justices accused Texas Mutual of "Ponzi-like manipulations" and called the State Insurance Commission guilty of "fraud if not criminal laxity" for not doing anything about it. Texas Mutual was organized in 1949 by Leslie Lowry, ex-mayor of Beaumont (ousted by recall), and his brother Paul. They started with $500 of their own cash and $19,500 borrowed. To expand their assets, said the court, the Lowry boys bought (with notes, no cash) a shabby...
...this, however, the fact remains that McCarthy's telegram crusade has become an issue and will probably remain one. Can anything be done to counter it? Unlike the case of Ponzi, there can indeed--if only moderate elements, the people who do not ordinarily rip off letters at the drop of a charge, will make an effort. It is a simple matter for everyone who approves of the Administration to set down their "I Like" and mail it. One would prefer that the matter not be further blown up by a handful of "I Like" and "I Don't Like...