Part 9: Later Years

On 14 February 1932, Ponzi leaves prison after completing his sentence, but he is re-arrested by federal authorities as an undesirable alien. Immigration authorities had issued an order for his deportation on 28 September 1927 while still in prison.

The basis of the deportation order is a federal provision that permits the deportation of anyone guilty of a felony involving moral turpitude.

Ponzi challenges the deportation order, contending that moral turpitude is only applicable to crimes against chastity and not to his larceny conviction.

Finally, on 30 July 1934, Federal District Court in Boston upholds the deportation order, and authorities immediately deport him to Italy.

There is little information on what Charles Ponzi does in Italy after his deportation. He next returns to the spotlight in 1939, when he flies from Rome to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to work as an agent for the Italian state airline Ala Littoria. However, the airline suspends its operations during World War II, and he is left jobless. To survive, he teaches English and works as a translator for Italian companies with offices in Brazil.

He spends his final days in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro.

Ponzi in Hospital

In August 1949, an American journalist interviews him from his hospital bed, and he speaks openly and honestly about his years in Boston.

He admits that his Boston operation was a classic case of stealing from Peter to pay Paul, but he is unrepentant.

"Even if my investors never received anything in return, it was worth it at that price. I don't wish to offend them, but I had given them the best show ever staged in their land since the Pilgrims! Watching me stage a show of such magnitude was worth fifteen million dollars," he brags to the Associated Press reporter.

He dies on 15 January 1949, at the age of 67, and leaves behind $75 he has saved from a Brazilian government pension.