in hopes, and those hopes never left me", he later told The New York Times. 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. Ponzi managed to work his way up to the position of waiter, but was fired for theft and shortchanging customers. Move to Montreal and Banco Zarossi In 1907, after some years of failing to do well in the U.S., Ponzi moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank located on Saint Jacques Street started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city. By this time, Ponzi had a winning personality and spoke English, Italian, and French, which Zuckoff says helped him get the job at Banco Zarossi. It was at Banco Zarossi that Ponzi first saw the scheme of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" (which subsequently would be called a Ponzi scheme). 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 U.S. 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 Damien Fournier, a director of the company. Confronted by police who had taken note of his large expenditures just after the forged check was cashed, Ponzi held out his wrist up and said, "I'm guilty". He ended up spending three years at St. Vincent-de-Paul Federal Penitentiary, a bleak facility located on the outskirts of Montreal [Inmate #6660]. Rather than inform his mother of his imprisonment, he posted her a letter stating