Boston Post series (1920)
report
July-August articles that compared advertised profits with coupon-market size. The Pulitzer file treats them as the civic investigation of record.
Compared with Madoff or Enron, the surviving paper is thinner and more worn. What remains is still enough for a completed criminal story.
The items below are the public pillars cited in later encyclopedias and court definitions.
Exhibits
Barron's coupon arithmetic
report
Published analysis that the world's reply-coupon float could not generate the returns Ponzi was paying. A finance-press document, not a police confession.
Investor notes
exhibit
Short-term notes promising fixed high returns in 45 days. They are the contractual face of the intake the courts later called larceny and mail fraud.
Federal mail-fraud plea (1920)
judgment
The November 1920 guilty plea and five-year sentence are the first completed federal judgment.
Massachusetts larceny record
judgment
The 1925 conviction after a 1922 mistrial is the state-law judgment that kept him in custody after the federal term.
Postal circulars on IRCs
document
Official descriptions of what International Reply Coupons were for. They establish that the instrument was real and that its purpose was postage, not a scaled investment engine.
How strong is the record?
Public arithmetic85
The coupon-versus-cash mismatch was shown in 1920 and has not been seriously reversed.
Criminal judgments88
Federal plea and state conviction are historical fact.
Surviving ledgers55
Full modern forensic reconstructions do not exist at Madoff scale; totals are contemporary estimates.
Biographical later years60
Florida and Brazil chapters are thinner and more anecdotal than the Boston docket.
The evidence problem is archival thinness, not doubt that the 1920 notes were paid from new money.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.