THE NEW YORK TIMES

AUGUST 7,2004

Il corso di laurea dell'università di L'Aquila e Francesco Sidoti sono stati citati varie volte sul New York Times, come si può facilmente controllare sul motore di ricerca del New York Times. In particolare segnaliamo la citazione sulla prima pagina, nel giorno 8 luglio 2005, immediatamente dopo i tragici attentati terroristici a Londra. In questa sede riportiamo soltanto la prima volta, la prima citazione.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 7, 2004 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Foreign Desk; THE SATURDAY PROFILE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1244 words

HEADLINE: One Eye in Italy's Keyholes, the Other on the Future

BYLINE: By JASON HOROWITZ

DATELINE: ROME

BODY:


THE bright office is rife with clues pointing to Miriam Tomponzi's investigative zeal.

There is an assortment of magnifying glasses lying on the desk; scores of cameras, some with submarine lenses, glaring out from a glass display case; and a wide variety of walkie-talkies and cellular phones planted like flowers near the windows.

But to understand fully the extent to which being a private detective is ingrained in Ms. Tomponzi's bones, one has to know about the listening device she bonded to her now ex-husband's tooth, with the help of a conspiratorial dentist.

''It heard everything, the chewing and the saliva. But if there had been one suspicious breath, one I love you, I would have heard it,'' she said, adding that she presented him with the tapes but never bothered to listen to them herself. Their marriage survived that moment, but she had made her point. ''He said I could never catch him. It was a challenge.''

And what better challenge for a glamorous gumshoe than to live and work, snoop and sift in Italy, where Ms. Tomponzi, 52, is the country's most recognizable private investigator. In this land of dirty politics and Vatican intrigue, paramours and Parmalat financial scandals, Ms. Tomponzi's long and colorful resume singles her out as much as her flamboyant dress, milky voice and long sweeps of aqua eye shadow.

For 32 years, she has been president of Tomponzi Investigations, which is among the largest detective companies in Italy. The company, which Ms. Tomponzi said grossed more than $100 million last year, has more than 1,400 associates around the world.

But after straining to eavesdrop and squinting through keyholes for so long, Ms. Tomponzi is expanding her empire through the somewhat unorthodox route of the classroom. In October she plans to open the Tomponzi Academy, a private sleuthing school whose graduates will be encouraged to open Tomponzi franchises internationally.

''It's a dream I've always had,'' she said. ''To bring the Tomponzi name out into the world.''

FOR such an ambitious undertaking it is hard to imagine a more fitting instructor.

Ms. Tomponzi speaks five languages and has developed such a nose for corporate fraud that she professes to having smelled something rotten at Parmalat, the dairy giant, two years before everyone else did. (She did not report her suspicions, she said, because no one paid her to take the case.) She has collected windsurfing trophies and equestrian titles, and has parachuted from an airplane 180 times.

''All of this helped me with on-the-job infiltration,'' she said.

Ms. Tomponzi has been a scourge to more than just philandering husbands. She says she has been shot at by terrorists, kidnapped by smugglers and nearly slashed by drug dealers.

''There was a drop of blood on my neck,'' said Ms. Tomponzi, recalling with a shiver the knife held to her throat during an undercover investigation earlier in her career. ''Now, maybe I wouldn't do it,'' she said, referring to undertaking perilous assignments. ''Back then I wanted to show that I could.''

That competitive edge propelled her to the top of her field, but some critics charge that her greatest talent is self-promotion.

''In Italy, it's impossible not to know her,'' said Francesco Sidoti, professor of criminology at the University of L'Aquila, who teaches what he claims is the country's only detective course. ''Private investigators are usually discreet and private. Instead, Miriam has a public profile.''

When Miriam Tomponzi says she has detective work in her DNA, it is more than an idle boast or marketing ploy. She is the daughter of Italy's archetypal trench-coat-and-fedora private detective, Tom Ponzi (known as Peeping Tom Ponzi), who in 1948 founded the company she now runs. She grew up outside Milan in a house with floors covered with mats for judo practice, pistols and rifles displayed on the walls and a large safe filled with secret dossiers and plenty of transmitters and listening devices to play with.

But the fact that she changed her last name to Tomponzi four years ago shows that there is also plenty of marketing savvy in those genes.

''There were too many Ponzis,'' she said of the imitators, who are many. Plus, the connotations of the name haven't been so great since Charles Ponzi created the infamous Ponzi scheme, the classic and still popular method of fraud in which early investors are paid off handsomely by the investments of latecomers, who are left holding the bag.

The name change has afforded her something of a celebrity status and has given critics more reason to harrumph about her public relations sense. In July, for example, they scoffed when she appeared on Italian television alongside the sons and daughters of famous actors and gave tips on Italian radio about how to avoid exposure during an extramarital affair.

''Don't come home with a bouquet of flowers. Be careful of telephone messages and practice lying in the mirror,'' she said. ''Get rid of any telling tics. Always smile.''

Not everyone appreciates the high-profile advice. ''Sure, she's a good-looking woman with college graduates and a lot of others working for her in a fancy Rome office,'' said Giancarlo Servolini, a private investigator and retired Carabinieri general who is an adviser to one of the country's largest detective associations. ''Instead, we work in the trenches.''

Ms. Tomponzi insists that she, too, gets her hands dirty, and adds that her TV appearances would go largely unnoticed if she did not have such a receptive audience.

''There has always been a lot of intrigue in Italy. Lots of power games. People don't trust each other, and we've found that they are right not to,'' said Ms. Tomponzi, saying that at least 95 percent of her clients' suspicions turn out to be true. ''Resorting to an investigator to solve problems has almost become as common as calling the family doctor.''

The bulk of her workload these days involves corporate espionage, but about 15 percent is dedicated to investigations of suspected infidelity. She said that instant messaging has brought about something of a revolution in furtive flirting. ''Before you had to whisper in the bathroom,'' she said. ''Now, you don't have to say a word.''

MS. Tomponzi said that female intuition was crucial to her success, explaining that ''the lack of physical power made us clever, seductive.'' She has applied those charms to a broad swath of Italian society.

She has ventured into the testosterone-charged world of Italian soccer, where she caught some players betting against their own teams, and has scrutinized Vatican cardinals, because her father taught her ''a private investigator must have courage even to investigate the pope.''

She has spied on Italian officials more than once, but she has refused all invitations to take part in politics, unlike her father, who was a stolid supporter of the Italian right.

''I don't like politics, it's too dirty,'' she said. ''An investigator should look for the truth. Politics does exactly the opposite.''

That investigative spirit has motivated Ms. Tomponzi for her entire life. Before she fully committed herself to being a detective and passing on her knowledge to a new generation of sleuths, she studied criminology in Cambridge, dabbled in journalism and studied financial fraud in Switzerland.

''At first, I didn't want to do this work,'' she said. ''Then I wanted to do it on my own terms. Then it became my passion.''



URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: MIRIAM TOMPONZI -- ''Resorting to an investigator to solve problems has almost become as common as calling the family doctor.'' (Photo by Sandro Michahelles for The New York Times)

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 2004