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Easy Money podcast review: Ponzi exposed

This intriguing tale of the life and crimes of Charles Ponzi frustratingly omits his early life

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Easy Money podcast review: Ponzi exposed

It’s not always desirable to become a household name. Early 20th-century white-collar criminal Charles Ponzi is synonymous with lies, cons and financial deception; his legacy is to have baptised a money-grabbing scheme that most people, even if they can’t explain it, know is a very bad thing. But what of the man behind the scam? New eight-part podcast Easy Money aims to delve into Ponzi’s life, balancing an investigation into his actions and motives with dramatised reconstructions of key moments along his path to notoriety. 

Episode one opens with host Maya Lau introducing Scott Gnecco, great nephew of Ponzi’s ex-wife Rose who left him a cache of letters from Ponzi, many addressed to ‘my dear little girl.’ Interestingly, Gnecco reveals that Rose wanted them to be destroyed after her death, but this is breezed over by Gnecco’s claim that they are ‘part of history.’ Throughout the episode, you sense a rigour and a genuine curiosity from Lau who cites as her research newspaper articles, court records, memoirs and biographies. And it is a colourful listen, shot with swing music and snappy dialogue in the dramatised sections.

But the decision to start the story in 1919, when Ponzi was 37 and had already been jailed twice for fraud and trafficking, feels odd in a bio podcast. It’s as if we’re missing some of the key backstory that demonstrated his growing appetite for crime. This is, however, an opening with both intrigue and gloss, that (a little like the man himself) hooks you in.

All episodes of Easy Money are available now.

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