Easy Money: the Charles Ponzi Story – an 'enlightening' podcast

"Do we really need another story of a scammer?" said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. We're "overloaded" with "tawdry tales" of con artists pulling off ever more elaborate schemes on their unsuspecting victims.

But Apple's first original scripted podcast doesn't take "any pleasure in the gullibility" of Charles Ponzi's doomed investors. Nor is it a "straightforward" story about the "dangers of fraudsters". At its heart, "Easy Money" is a compelling "character study" of an Italian immigrant who travelled to America in the early 20th century with a simple goal: "to make his fortune".

When he found himself "on his uppers", with a new wife to support and no job, Ponzi "spied an opportunity". After spotting that he could buy international postal reply coupons in one country and then redeem them in another with a better rate of exchange, he started to recruit investors, promising high return with low risk.

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Over a nine-month period, he swindled thousands of investors out of millions of dollars, using new investments to pay off the old, while pocketing money for himself and splashing out on a lavish lifestyle. "He had created what became known as a Ponzi scheme."

It's an "enlightening and entertaining" podcast series, said Rick Kogan in the Chicago Tribune. "Deeply researched and stylishly written" by Matt Hickey and Kevin Hynes, and "hosted with considerable charm" by former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Maya Lau, it's filled with "fascinating" details.

The "polished" production features dramatized sections, with a cast including US comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco as Ponzi. While it centres on a "colourful, wide-reaching criminal", the series also draws on a collection of recently discovered letters to delve into the con artist's "touching" relationship with his wife Rose. By the end, I even started to feel a "grudging respect" for him.

Mixing documentary with drama "often falls flat", said the FT's Sturges. But "Easy Money" is "effective in getting under the skin of its protagonist", portraying him "less as an out-and-out villain" than a "charismatic man" who made "one bad decision after another and quickly got out of his depth".