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. Rather than inform his mother of his imprisonment, he posted her a letter stating that he had found a job as a "special assistant" to a prison warden.