Wazirabad
—  City  —
Wazirabad Location in Pakistan
Coordinates: 32°45′N 74°10′E / 32.75°N 74.167°E / 32.75; 74.167
Country	Pakistan
Region	Punjab
District	Gujranwala District
Tehsil	Wazirabad Tehsil
Union councils	5
Municipal status	1867
Government
• Nazim
• Naib nazim
Time zone	PST (UTC+5)
• Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC+6)

Wazirabad (Punjabi, Urdu: وزیر آباد) is an industrial city located in Gujranwala District, Punjab, Pakistan. Wazirabad is situated on the banks of the Chenab River nearly 100 kilometres north of Lahore on the Grand Trunk Road. It is 45 kilometres from Sialkot, 30 kilometres from the district capital - Gujranwala and about 12 kilometres from Gujrat. The city of Wazirabad is the headquarters of Wazirabad Tehsil, an administrative subdivision of the district, the city is itself subdivided into 5 Union Councils.^[1] Wazirabad City is located near the south banks of the Chenab River where the picturesque Nala Palkhu, a snow stream from the Himalayas joins to this big river.

History[link]

Wazirabad, literally the city of the Wazir, was first settled in 1542 CE.^{[citation needed]} In 1636 CE Wazir Hakim Illmmudiddin, an amir of Shah Jahan constructed the first ever residential building of Wazirabad namely Musaman Burj on the bank of Palkhu Nala. During the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb another building namely Shesh Mahal at the east of Musaman Burj was built during 1705 CE.

The Sixth Sikh Prophet Guru Hargobind Sahib ji (1595–1644) Visited Wazirabad and blessed his Follower Bhai Khem Chand Ji Who was the Resident of this Town.

The town saw a decline in its population at the beginning of Sikh rule when it was taken over by Charat Singh around 1760 together with other towns in the District.^[2] but Sardar Gurbaksh Singh Warraich and his son Jodh Singh restored its glory. Maharja Ranjit Singh occupied the town in 1809 and Avitabile was appointed as the Nazim of the city. He built an entirely new town, with a straight broad bazar running through it, and side streets at right angles.^[2]

British rule[link]

During British rule Wazirabad was the headquarters of the old Wazirabad District, broken up in 1851-2, and was the site of a cantonment removed to Sialkot in 1855 on account of the unhealthiness of the place.^[2]

The municipality was created in 1867, the population according to the 1901 census was 18,069. The income during the ten years ending 1902-3 averaged Rs. 20,800, and the expenditure Rs. 21,400. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 20,800, chiefly from octroi; and the expenditure was Rs. 19,200. The town had a considerable trade in timber, which comes down the Chenab from Jammu territory, and in cloth, grain, and sugar.^[2] The smiths of Wazirabad had a reputation for the manufacture of small articles of cutlery, and the, village of Nizamabad within a mile of the town is famed for its weapons; Wazirabad was an important junction on the North-Western Railway, as the Sialkot-Jammu and Lyallpur lines both branch off here.^[3]

The Chenab river is spanned opposite Wazirabad by the Alexandra railway bridge, one of the finest engineering works of the kind in India, which was opened by Edward VII the King-Emperor when he was Prince of Wales in 1876. An important fair is held at: Dhaunkal, a short distance off. The town possessed two Anglo-vernacular high schools, one maintained by the Church of Scotland Mission, and a Government dispensary.^[3]

During the 1947 Partition the Sikh and Hindu Residents of Wazirabad Town Left and Migrated to India.

Structure[link]

Wazirabad city was divided into 4 Katras namely Ram Katra, Katra Mai, Katra Thatharian, Katra Dewanan beside a Chohatrah. Exactly in the front of the Musaman Burj Main Bazar of the City is located which is absolute wide and is about 2 kilometer long as the same ends in the south of the city at Lahori Darwaza. Beside the Main Bazar there are two more roads which are parallel to Main Bazar namely Circular Road and Collage Road with an outer road travelling beside the railway lines inside the city which starts from Lahori Darwaza and ends at the first ever underpass of Gujrawala Division to contact with the main G. T. Road.

Education[link]

Here in the small town, there are many educational institutions in public and private sectors.The results of the private schools are always better than the government schools. Govt schools are Govt Public high School (Ghulaam Qader),Govt High School Nizamabad, Govt MC Famous private schools include.The Educators Shaheen Junior Model School Musamman Burj, Mumtaz Grammar School, Sir Syed Pilot School.latif model high school is the first English medium high school for boys and girls.Garden Public School is the best English medium school in Wazirabad. Muslim Hands International is the only International NGO working in Wazirabad. It has educational and community development projects in Wazirabad where needy and orphans are provided services free of cost. Moulana Zafar Ali Khan Govt Degree College Wazirabad one of the major institute of Govt Sector of this area and the current principle of this college is famous religious scholar Prof. Dr. Mohammad Asif Hazarwi (PHD)

There is also a Women Government Degree College and a government MC Girls high school Muslim hands technical training center, City Science College Imperial public High School Now the improvements have been seen in the field of education in Wazirabad. Many other new schools and colleges have been opened especially in the private sector. These schools include Arham Educational Heights School, S.Z Elahi model school and Allied schools. The newly opened college is Punjab college which is having the campuses both for the females and males. The newly opened is Jamea tul Madina University Near Hawa Memorial Hosptaial & Faizan e Madina Maddrissa 3 Branchs (Dawat e Islami Wazirabad) The newly opened Technical college is " Dilawar Institute Of Technology " for boys.

Notable people[link]

• Zafar Ali Khan (Companion of Quaid e Azam & Famous Journalist of Pakistan Movement)
• Moulana Abdul Ghafoor Hazarwi Chishti (Former President Jamiat-e-Ulamai Pakistan & Spiritual Leader of Pakistan Movement)
• Hamid Nasir Chattha (Former Speaker of National Assembly)
• S. A. Rahman (5th Chief Justice of Pakistan)
• Atif Aslam (Singer)
• Ata ul Haq Qasmi (Columnist)

Karkunan e Tahreek e Pakistan personalities of tehseel are given bellow.

1. Salma Tasdduq Hussain 2. Iftkhar ullah Khan 3. Hakeem Inayat ullah Naseem Sohdervi 4. Shareef toosi 5. Abdul Hameed Khokhar 6. Khalid Akhter Afghani

Important Scholars

1. Moulana Abdul Ghafoor Hazarwi 2. Mufti Abdul Shakoor Hazarwi 3. Hafiz Abdul Manan 4. Fazal Elahi Wazirabadi 5. Abdul Sattar Hamid 6. Abdul Majeed Sohdervi

some other important people of tehseel  r these manoo bhai, shafqat tanveer mirza, mahasha krishan, babu bral, hakeem rahat naseem sohdrvi, hakeem shehbaz awan kamali,ahmed yar maralvi, saleem kashir, qazi sarfraz husain, ilyas ghuman,manzoor wazirabadi(Punjabi poet) tahir wazirabadi .noon meem rashid saim ali karnali, krishan chander,razia but,sheraz manzoor sagar, abdur rasheed araqi. mehmood ahmed kashmiri, kamran azam sohdrvi. lakht e hasnen. bhai kanhya lal,aseer abad etc. belong to wazeerabad tehseel

• Nizamabad, Pakistan

References[link]

Coordinates: 32°45′N 74°10′E / 32.75°N 74.167°E / 32.75; 74.167 (tareekh e wazeerabad, kamran azam sohdrvi

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Sibtul Shah, alias Double Shah (Urdu, Punjabi: ڈبل شاہ; born 3 March 1964), was a teacher who started a financial scam, a Ponzi scheme, in Pakistan. Syed Sibtul Hassan Shah is a resident of Pak town - a lower middle class area - in Wazirabad, a tehsil of Gujranwala.^[1] He was born in Koloke, a small town of Sambrial Tehsil, in Sialkot District, Punjab.

He is a BSc and BEd and was a science teacher at Government High School, Nizamabad until 2005. After taking leave from his job, he went to Dubai where he stayed for about six months. Upon his return, he left his job and approached his colleagues and neighbours, asking them to give him their savings, which he would return in double in just 15 days. The first person to trust him was his next-door neighbour who owned a marble business named Javed Marble Factory.He was followed by many of Shah’s colleagues. As promised, their investments were doubled in 15 days.^[1]

This was a Ponzi scheme where investors were offered 100% return on their investment in just 15 days, later extended to 70 days. His Ponzi Scheme was at its peak when it was exposed by daily The Nation Lahore in an investigative piece published on the front page on April 6, 2007.[1] Double Shah was arrested by the Gakkhar police on 13 April 2007 from his Nizamabad house on charges of Rs. 30,000 robbery. He is now in the custody of the National Accountability Bureau. The first case was logged against him with other 18 persons by the local police under the Anti-Terrorist act, and only one person was released on bail by the judge of the Anti-Terrorist court, in Gujranwala, Pakistan. His co-accused, Ijaz Cheema, was released on bail. The amount of money that he earned during his 18 months of business was over Rs. 70 billion (almost USD 1 billion).

External links[link]

• dailytimes.com.pk
• khaleejtimes.com
• Chowrangi

References[link]

Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif (Urdu: میاں محمد شہباز شریف)
Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, PML(N)
15th Chief Minister of Punjab Province
In office 31 March 2009 – Incumbent
President	Asif Ali Zardari
Prime Minister	Yousaf Raza Gillani
Governor	Latif Khosa Salmaan Taseer
Preceded by	Dost Muhammad Khosa
Constituency	Bhakkar, Punjab Province
Majority	Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N)
In office 20 February 1950 – 12 October 1950
President	Muhammad Rafiq Tarar Farooq Leghari Wasim Sajjad
Prime Minister	Navaz Scharif
Governor	Shahid Hamid Zulfiqar Ali Khosa
3rd President of Pakistan Muslim League (N)
In office September 30, 2002 – July 27, 2011
Vice President	Ghaus Ali Shah
1st Executive Vice President of Pakistan Muslim League (N)
In office October 12, 1950 – September 30, 2002
President	Kalsoom Nawaz Sharif
Personal details
Born	Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif 1950 (age 61–62) Lahore, Punjab Province, West-Pakistan
Nationality	Pakistani
Political party	Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N)
Spouse(s)	Begum Nusrat Shahbaz (1973–1993) Aaliya Honey (1993–1994) Tehmina Durrani (2003 – Present)
Residence	Chief Minister House, Lahore (official)
Occupation	Politician
Profession	Businessman
Religion	Islam

Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif (Punjabi, Urdu: میاں محمد شہاز شریف, born 1950) is a well-known Politician of Pakistan. He is the brother of Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Minister of Pakistan. He is the chief minister of Pakistan's most populous province Punjab since 2008. Previously, he held this position from 1997 to 1999, when Pervez Musharraf removed his government on grounds of corruption and hijacking He, along with his entire family, went into was exile until return to Pakistan in late 2007.

Family[link]

Mian Shahbaz Sharif is the second son of Mian Muhammad Sharif. He is a joint owner of Ittefaq Group. He played a vital role in the success of Ittefaq Group. Shahbaz Sharif's first marriage was with his cousin Nusrat Shahbaz (نصرت شہباز) in 1973, with the approval of his father, the late Mian Muhammad Sharif. They have two sons Hamza Shahbaz and Salman, and three daughters. Hamza Shahbaz is in politics and is a member of the National Assembly. Salman Shahbaz, educated at college, concentrates mainly on business. Shahbaz Sharif's second marriage was with Aaliya Honey (عالیہ ہنی) in 1993–94. They have one daughter, Khadija. He divorced her while in exile in Saudi Arabia. It is claimed that Shahbaz Sharif has a third marriage with Tehmina Durrani but he never publicly admitted it. This is the third marriage for both of them. Tehmina Durrani second marriage was with another well known politician Mustafe Khar (uncle of Hina Rabbani Khar). He also married (4th marriage) a young bureaucrat, Kalsoom Hayi who was earlier wife of a police officer and is mother of three children, in May 2012. It is claimed that Shahbaz Sharif pressurized the officer to give divorce to his wife so that he can marry her. ^[1]

First term Chief Minister of Punjab[link]

He was considered a strict and demanding administrator as the chief minister of Punjab. He received some criticism because he took charge of the office when his brother was the Prime Minister of Pakistan^{[citation needed]} He was ousted along with his brother in the 1999 military coup, which brought Pervez Musharraf to power.^[2]

Exile[link]

Shahbaz Sharif lived in exile in London with his brother as a result of a deal he and his brother made with Pervaiz Musharraf, the exiled former Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif after coming from Saudi Arabia. Although Sharif brothers denied the existence of any deal, but the deal papers were made public in 2008. He once tried coming back to Pakistan following a High Court decision that he was free to come back whenever he wanted. On May 11, 2004 his plane landed at Allama Iqbal International Airport Lahore but he was arrested and again deported to Saudi Arabia within a few hours.

President of Pakistan Muslim League (N)[link]

Mian Shahbaz Sharif was elected President of PML (N) on 3 August 2002 while in exile in Saudi Arabia. He was re-elected President of PML(N) for a second term on 2 August 2006.

Return to Pakistan[link]

In August 2007, Supreme Court of Pakistan gave its verdict which allowed Nawaz Sharif to return to Pakistan.

On September 7, 2007, judge Shabbir Hussain Chatha ordered police to arrest Shahbaz Sharif, brother of Nawaz Sharif and produce him before the court, after the hearing in Lahore. The court ruled that "Shahbaz Sharif should be arrested (at) whichever airport he lands at." Nawaz Sharif too faces detention on the pair's planned return from exile to Pakistan on September 10, 2007, to challenge President Pervez Musharraf's 8-year military rule.^[3]

His brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif changed return plans at the last minute.^[4][5]

Sharif was not allowed to participate in the 2008 elections because of allegations against him. His son Hamza Sharif was supposed to run from a NA seat in Lahore but due to the death of a candidate the elections were postponed.

Second term as Chief Minister[link]

On 8 June 2008, Shahbaz Sharif was elected as Chief Minister of Punjab, receiving 265 votes from the members of the 371-seat provincial assembly. He was the only candidate, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q boycotted the vote. Speaking after his election, he called on Musharraf to resign.^[6] He won a vote of confidence on 9 June, receiving 266 votes.^[7]

His second term as Chief Minister lasted until 25 February 2009, when a three-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, headed by Justice Moosa K. Leghari, declared him ineligible to contest elections, took away his seat in the Punjab Assembly, and thereby removed him from office.^[8] On 31 March 2009, a five-member larger bench of the Supreme Court granted stay order on an earlier decision of the apex court, in which Mian Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif were disqualified from holding public office. As a result, Shahbaz Sharif returned to office as Chief Minister. From 31 March 2009, Sharif has continued to hold the office of Chief Minister, as a result of the longest 'stay order' in Pakistani legal history. This has added to the belief that the Supreme Court and the Judiciary continues to support the Sharif brothers at the expense of the legal process.

See also[link]

• Nawaz Sharif
• Muhammad Sharif
• Hamza Shahbaz
• Ittefaq Group
• Lahore
• Punjab, Pakistan
• Politics of Pakistan
• Punjab Educational Endowment Fund

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Shahbaz Sharif at Twitter
• Pml(N)Official website
• Interview with Shahid Masood on Geo TV (in Urdu) – 16 June 2007

Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949), commonly known as Charles Ponzi, was an Italian businessman and con artist in the U.S. and Canada. His aliases include Charles Ponei, Charles P. Bianchi, Carl and Carlo. Born in Italy, he became known in the early 1920s as a swindler in North America for his money making scheme. Charles Ponzi promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage.^[1][2] In reality, Ponzi was paying early investors using the investments of later investors. This type of scheme is now known as a "Ponzi scheme". Ponzi was probably inspired by the scheme of William F. Miller, a Brooklyn bookkeeper who in 1899 used the same scheme to take in $1 million.^[3]

Early life[link]

Parts of Charles Ponzi's life are somewhat difficult to determine and understand, owing to his propensity to fabricate and embellish facts. He was born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi in Lugo in 1882. He told The New York Times that he had come from a well-to-do family in Parma, Italy.^[3] He took a job as a postal worker early on, but soon was accepted into the University of Rome La Sapienza. His friends considered the university a "four-year vacation," and he was inclined to follow them around to bars, cafés, and the opera.

Arrival in America[link]

On November 15, 1903, he arrived in Boston aboard the S.S. Vancouver. By his own account, Ponzi had $2.51 in his pocket, having gambled away the rest of his life savings during the voyage. "I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me," he later told The New York Times.^[3] He quickly learned English and spent the next few years doing odd jobs along the East Coast, eventually taking a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, where he slept on the floor. He managed to work his way up to the position of waiter, but was fired for shortchanging the customers and theft.

Ponzi aka "Charles Bianchi" under arrest circa 1910

In 1907, Ponzi moved to Montreal and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city. Zarossi paid 6% interest on bank deposits – double the going rate at the time – and was growing rapidly as a result. Ponzi eventually rose to bank manager. However, he found out that the bank was in serious financial trouble because of bad real estate loans, and that Zarossi was funding the interest payments not through profit on investments, but by using money deposited in newly opened accounts. The bank eventually failed and Zarossi fled to Mexico with a large portion of the bank's money.

Ponzi stayed in Montreal and, for some time, lived at Zarossi's house helping the man's abandoned family, while planning to return to the United States and start over. As Ponzi was penniless, this proved to be very difficult. Eventually he walked into the offices of a former Zarossi customer Canadian Warehousing and, finding no one there, wrote himself a check for $423.58 in a checkbook he found, forging the signature of a director of the company, Damien Fournier. Confronted by police who had taken note of his large expenditures just after the forged check was cashed, Ponzi held out his hands wrist up and said "I'm guilty." He ended up spending three years in the prison St. Vincent-de-Paul near Montreal. Rather than inform his mother of this development, he posted her a letter stating that he had found a job as a "special assistant" to a prison warden.

After his release in 1911 he decided to return to the United States, but got involved in a scheme to smuggle Italian illegal immigrants across the border. He was caught and spent two years in Atlanta Prison. Here he became a translator for the warden, who was intercepting letters from mobster Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo. Ponzi ended up befriending Lupo. It was another prisoner who became a true role model to Ponzi: Charles W. Morse. Morse, a wealthy Wall Street businessman and speculator, fooled doctors during medical exams, poisoning himself by eating soap shavings, toxins that left his body as quickly as the doctors left his bedside. Morse was soon released from prison. Ponzi completed his prison term following Morse's release, having an additional month added to his term due to his inability to pay a $500 fine.

Origin of the term "Ponzi scheme"[link]

After Ponzi's release from prison, he made his way back to Boston. There he met Rose Maria Gnecco, a stenographer, whom he asked to marry. Though Ponzi did not tell Gnecco about his years in jail, his mother sent Gnecco a letter telling her of Ponzi's past. Nonetheless, she married him in 1918. For the next few months, he worked at a number of businesses, including his father-in-law's grocery, before hitting upon an idea to sell advertising in a large business listing to be sent to various businesses. Ponzi was unable to sell this idea to businesses, and his company failed soon after.

A few weeks later, Ponzi received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the catalog. Inside the envelope was an international reply coupon (IRC), something which he had never seen before. He asked about it and found a weakness in the system which would, in theory, allow him to make money.

The purpose of the postal reply coupon was to allow someone in one country to send it to a correspondent in another country, who could use it to pay the postage of a reply. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where redeemed; if these values were different, there was a potential profit. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost of postage in Italy expressed in U.S. dollars, so that an IRC could be bought cheaply in Italy and exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions, after expenses and exchange rates, was in excess of 400%. This was a form of arbitrage, or profiting by buying an asset at a lower price in one market and immediately selling it in a market where the price is higher, which is not illegal.

Seeing an opportunity, Ponzi quit his translator's job to set his scheme in motion. He borrowed money and sent it back to relatives in Italy with instructions to buy postal coupons and send them to him. However, when he tried to redeem them, he ran into an avalanche of red tape.^{[citation needed]}

Undaunted, Ponzi went to several of his friends in Boston and promised that he would double their investment in 90 days. The great returns available from postal reply coupons, he explained to them, made such incredible profits easy. Some people invested and were paid off as promised, receiving $750 interest on initial investments of $1,250.

Soon afterward, Ponzi started his own company, the "Securities Exchange Company,"^[4] to promote the scheme. He set up shop in a building on School Street. Word spread, and investments came in at an ever-increasing rate. Ponzi hired agents and paid them generous commissions for every dollar they brought in. By February 1920, Ponzi's total take was US$5,000, (approximately US$54,000 in 2008 dollars). By March, he had made $30,000 ($328,000 in 2008 terms). A frenzy was building, and Ponzi began to hire agents to take in money from all over New England and New Jersey. At that time, investors were being paid impressive rates, encouraging others to invest. By May 1920, he had made $420,000 ($4.59 million in 2008 terms).

He began depositing the money in the Hanover Trust Bank of Boston (a small bank on Hanover Street in the mostly Italian North End), in the hope that once his account was large enough he could impose his will on the bank or even be made its president; he bought a controlling interest in the bank through himself and several friends after depositing $3 million. By July 1920, he had made millions. People were mortgaging their homes and investing their life savings. Most did not take their profits, but reinvested.

Ponzi was bringing in cash at a fantastic rate, but the simplest financial analysis would have shown that the operation was running at a large loss. As long as money kept flowing in, existing investors could be paid with the new money. This was the only way Ponzi had to pay off those investors, as he made no effort to generate legitimate profits.^[5]

Ponzi lived luxuriously: he bought a mansion in Lexington, Massachusetts, with air conditioning and a heated swimming pool, and he maintained accounts in several banks across New England besides Hanover Trust. He also brought his mother from Italy in a first-class stateroom on an ocean liner. She died soon afterward.

Suspicion[link]

Ponzi's rapid rise naturally drew suspicion. When a Boston financial writer suggested there was no way Ponzi could legally deliver such high returns in a short period of time, Ponzi sued for libel and won $500,000 in damages. As libel law in those days placed the burden of proof on the writer and the paper, this effectively neutralized any serious probes into his dealings for some time.

Nonetheless, there were still signs of his eventual ruin. Joseph Daniels, a Boston furniture dealer who had given Ponzi furniture which he could not afford to pay for, sued Ponzi to cash in on the gold rush. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but it did start people asking how Ponzi could have gone from being penniless to being a millionaire in so short a time. There was a run on the Securities Exchange Company, as some investors decided to pull out. Ponzi paid them and the run stopped. On July 24, 1920, the Boston Post printed a favorable article on Ponzi and his scheme that brought in investors faster than ever. At that time, Ponzi was making $250,000 a day. Ponzi's good fortune was increased by the fact that just below this favorable article, which seemed to imply that Ponzi was indeed returning 50% return on investment after only 45 days, was a bank advertisement that stated that the bank was paying 5% returns annually. The next business day after this article was published, Ponzi arrived at his office to find thousands of Bostonians waiting to give him their money.

Despite this reprieve, Post acting publisher Richard Grozier and city editor Eddie Dunn were suspicious and assigned investigative reporters to check Ponzi out. He was also under investigation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on the day the Post printed its article, Ponzi met with state officials. He managed to divert the officials from checking his books by offering to stop taking money during the investigation, a fortunate choice, as proper records were not being kept. Ponzi's offer temporarily calmed the suspicions of the state officials.

Collapse of the scheme[link]

By this time, Ponzi was seeking another deal to get him out of trouble, but time was running out. On July 26, the Post started a series of articles that asked hard questions about the operation of Ponzi's money machine. The Post contacted Clarence Barron, the financial analyst who published the Barron's financial paper, to examine Ponzi's scheme. Barron observed that though Ponzi was offering fantastic returns on investments, Ponzi himself was not investing with his own company.

Barron then noted that to cover the investments made with the Securities Exchange Company, 160 million postal reply coupons would have to be in circulation. However, only about 27,000 actually were. The United States Post Office stated that postal reply coupons were not being bought in quantity at home or abroad. The gross profit margin in percent on buying and selling each IRC was colossal, but the overhead required to handle the purchase and redemption of these items, which were of extremely low cost and were sold individually, would have exceeded the gross profit.

The stories caused a panic run on the Securities Exchange Company. Ponzi paid out $2 million in three days to a wild crowd outside his office. He canvassed the crowd, passed out coffee and donuts, and cheerfully told them they had nothing to worry about. Many changed their minds and left their money with him. However, this attracted the attention of Daniel Gallagher, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Gallagher commissioned Edwin Pride to audit the Securities Exchange Company's books—an effort made difficult by the fact his bookkeeping system consisted merely of index cards with investors' names.

In the meantime, Ponzi had hired a publicity agent, William McMasters. However, McMasters quickly became suspicious of Ponzi's endless talk of postal reply coupons, as well as the ongoing investigation against him. He later described Ponzi as a "financial idiot" who did not seem to know how to add.

The dénouement for Ponzi began in late July, when McMasters found several highly incriminating documents that indicated Ponzi was merely robbing Peter to pay Paul. He went to his former employer with this information. The paper offered him $5,000 for his story. On August 2, 1920, McMasters wrote an article for the Post declaring Ponzi hopelessly insolvent. The article claimed that while Ponzi claimed $7 million in liquid funds, he was actually at least $2 million in debt. With interest factored in, McMasters wrote, Ponzi was as much as $4.5 million in the red. The story touched off a massive run, and Ponzi paid off in one day. He then sped up plans to build a massive conglomerate that would engage in banking and import-export operations.

Trouble came from an unexpected quarter—Massachusetts Bank Commissioner Joseph Allen. An initial investigation into Ponzi's banking practices found nothing illegal, but Allen was afraid that if major withdrawals exhausted Ponzi's reserves, it would bring Boston's banking system to its knees. When Allen found out a large number of Ponzi-controlled accounts had received more than $250,000 in loans, he ordered two bank examiners to keep an eye on Ponzi's accounts. On August 9, they reported that enough investors had cashed their checks on Ponzi's main account there that it was almost certainly overdrawn. Allen then ordered Hanover Trust not to pay out any more checks from Ponzi's main account. He also orchestrated an involuntary bankruptcy filing by several small Ponzi investors. The move forced Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen to release a statement that there was little to support Ponzi's claims of large-scale dealings in postal coupons. State officials then invited Ponzi note holders to come to the Massachusetts State House to furnish their names and addresses for the purpose of the investigation. On the same day, Ponzi received a preview of Pride's audit, which revealed Ponzi was at least $7 million in debt.

On August 11, it all came crashing down for Ponzi. First, the Post came out with a front-page story about his activities in Montreal 13 years earlier—including his forgery conviction and his role at Zarossi's scandal-ridden bank. That afternoon, Bank Commissioner Allen seized Hanover Trust after finding numerous irregularities in its books. Although the commissioner did not know it, this move foiled Ponzi's last-ditch plan to "borrow" funds from the bank vaults after all other efforts to obtain funds failed.

With reports that he was due to be arrested any day, Ponzi surrendered to federal authorities on August 12 and was charged with mail fraud for sending letters to his marks telling them their notes had matured.^[6] He was originally released on $25,000 bail, but after the Post released the results of the audit, the bail bondsman withdrew the bail due to concerns he might be a flight risk.

Magnitude of losses[link]

The news brought down five other banks in addition to Hanover Trust. His investors were practically wiped out, receiving less than 30 cents in the dollar. His investors lost about $20 million in 1920 dollars ($225 million in 2011 dollars);^[7] as a comparison, Bernie Madoff's similar scheme that collapsed in 2008 cost his investors about $13 billion, 53 times the losses of Ponzi's scheme.^[8]

Prison and later life[link]

In two federal indictments, Ponzi was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud, and faced a lifetime in jail. At the urging of his wife, Ponzi pleaded guilty on November 1, 1920 to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale, who declared before sentencing, "Here was a man with all the duties of seeking large money. He concocted a scheme which, on his counsel's admission, did defraud men and women. It will not do to have the world understand that such a scheme as that can be carried out ... without receiving substantial punishment." He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.^[9]

He was released after three and a half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 Massachusetts state charges of larceny,^[1] which came as a surprise to Ponzi; he thought he had a deal calling for the state to drop any charges against him if he pleaded guilty to the federal charges. He sued, claiming that as a federal prisoner he could not be tried by the state. The case, Ponzi v. Fessenden, made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. On March 27, 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that plea bargains on federal charges have no standing regarding state charges. It also ruled that Ponzi was not facing double jeopardy because Massachusetts was charging him with larceny while the federal government charged him with mail fraud, even though the charges implicated the same criminal operation.

In October 1922, he was tried on the first ten larceny counts. Since he was insolvent, Ponzi served as his own attorney and, being as persuasive as he had been with his duped investors, the jury found him not guilty on all charges. He was tried a second time on five of the remaining charges, and the jury deadlocked. Ponzi was found guilty at a third trial, and was sentenced to an additional seven to nine years in prison as "a common and notorious thief." ^[9]

After word got out that Ponzi had never obtained American citizenship (despite having lived in the United States for most of the time since 1903), federal officials initiated efforts to have him deported as an undesirable alien in 1922.^[10]

Ponzi was released on bail as he appealed the state conviction, and fled to the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida and launched the Charpon Land Syndicate ("Charpon" is an amalgam of his name), offering investors in September 1925 tiny tracts of land, some under water, and promising 200% returns in 60 days.^[1] In reality, it was a scam that sold swampland in Columbia County.^[11] Ponzi was indicted by a Duval County grand jury in February 1926 and charged with violating Florida trust and securities laws. A jury found him guilty on the securities charges, and the judge sentenced him to a year in the Florida State Prison. Ponzi appealed his conviction and was freed after posting a $1,500 bond.

Ponzi traveled to Tampa,^[11] where he shaved his head, grew a mustache, and tried to flee the country as a crewman on a merchant ship bound for Italy. The ship, however, made one last American port call; he was caught in New Orleans and sent back to Massachusetts to serve out his prison term.^[1] Ponzi served seven more years in prison.

In the meantime, government investigators tried to trace Ponzi's convoluted accounts to figure out how much money he had taken and where it had gone. They never managed to untangle it and could conclude only that millions had gone through his hands.

Ponzi was released in 1934. With the release came an immediate order to have him deported to Italy. He asked for a full pardon from Governor Joseph B. Ely. However, on July 13, Ely turned the appeal down.^[12] His charismatic confidence had faded, and when he left the prison gates, he was met by an angry crowd. He told reporters before he left, "I went looking for trouble, and I found it."

Rose stayed behind and later divorced him in 1937,^[13] as she did not want to leave Boston. Rose, who later remarried, eventually became the bookkeeper for the New Cocoanut Grove Inc, the parent company of Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub.^[3][14][15]

In Italy, Ponzi jumped from scheme to scheme, but little came of them. He eventually got a job in Brazil as an agent for Ala Littoria, the Italian state airline.^[2] During World War II, however, Brazil sided with the Allies, and the airline's operation in the country was shut down. During that time, Ponzi also wrote his autobiography.^[16]

Death[link]

Ponzi spent the last years of his life in poverty, working occasionally as a translator. His health suffered. A heart attack in 1941 left him considerably weakened. His eyesight began failing, and by 1948, he was almost completely blind. A brain hemorrhage paralyzed his right leg and arm. He died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the Hospital São Francisco de Assis of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on January 18, 1949.^[2]

Supported by his last and only friend who spoke English and had notions of Italian, the barber Francisco Nonato Nunes, was how Ponzi granted one last interview to an American reporter, telling him, "Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."^[3][17]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ponzi, Charles (1936), The Rise of Mr. Ponzi (Autobiography) (Public domain), ISBN 978-2-9538012-1-7, http://pnzi.com 
• Dunn, Donald (2004), Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons (Library of Larceny) (Paperback), New York: Broadway, ISBN 0-7679-1499-6 
• Zuckoff, Mitchell (2005), Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, New York: Random House, ISBN 1-4000-6039-7 
• The History Channel. "In Search of History: Mr. Ponzi and His Scheme". February 9, 2000. (AAE-42325, ISBN 0-7670-1672-6)
• Sobel, Robert (1968), The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920's, New York: Norton, ISBN 0-393-09817-6 
• Kalbfleisch, John (2009), Ponzi scheme: the Montreal link., Montréal: The Gazette 

Mazhar Abbas is a Pakistani journalist. He is deputy director of ARY News Television, the second 24-hour after geo, bilingual news channel in Pakistan, and the secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists. He is also brother of DG ISPR Major General Ather Abbas.^[1]

Abbas, who has worked as a journalist for nearly thirty years, has received multiple threats as a result of his work. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Mohajir Rabita Council, a political group in the southern Sindh province allied with the MQM, put Abbas on its "hit list". After protesting the closing of three independent TV channels for their reporting on demonstrations against President Musharraf, Abbas was charged by police in early 2007. In May 2007, he and two other journalists found white envelopes containing bullets placed on their cars.^[1]

Working as an Agence France Presse correspondent, Abbas covered the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, South Asia Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal.^[1]

In 2007, he won an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The award is given for journalists who show courage in defending press freedom in the face of attacks, threats or imprisonment.^[2] He also won the 2009 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.^[3]

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Mazhar Abbas - TV journalist, Pakistan - Awards - Committee to Protect Journalists". Cpj.org. 2007-11-27. http://cpj.org/awards/2007/abbas.php. Retrieved 2012-02-02. 
2. ^ "CPJ To Honor Five Journalists". Committee to Protect Journalists. 24 September 2007. http://www.cpj.org/awards/2007/awards-release07.php. Retrieved 12 May 2011. 
3. ^ "AWARDS: Mazhar Abbas of Pakistan wins Missouri Honor Medal". SAJAforum. 2009-08-06. http://www.sajaforum.org/2009/08/awards-mazhar-abbas-wins-medal.html. Retrieved 2012-02-02. 

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