Mary Grozier CHAPTER ELEVEN “LIKE STEALING CANDY FROM A BABY” Day after day throughout June, furniture dealer Joseph Daniels had watched streams of people troop down Hanover Street, walk past his store, and climb the stairs next door to the North End branch of the Securities Exchange Company. Several months had passed since Daniels had last spoken with Ponzi, who had repaid Daniels’s two-hundred-dollar loan in full and who had no interest in seeing him again. At their last encounter, Ponzi had told Daniels that his plan to wring profits from postal coupons had been a dud, which was technically true. But Daniels did not trust Ponzi. If the Securities Exchange Company was a bust, why would Ponzi open a second Boston office, and why would happy investors be lining up to trade cash for Ponzi notes? A plan formed in Daniels’s mind. He reasoned that the small loan he had given Ponzi the previous December must have been the seed money for a successful enterprise. Surely he was entitled to more than simple repayment of principal and interest.
