CIRO
DESENZANI

The first operation was the blueprint

Before Polo United, Desenzani operated Taqueada Polo in California. Court filings, business records and former-investor accounts reviewed in the investigation describe an enterprise accused of diverting investor money, hiding financial records, accumulating unexplained charges and using new money to sustain an image the underlying business could not support.

Former participants alleged that millions of dollars disappeared through the operation while Desenzani and Cookson resisted demands for records. The investigation characterizes the structure as a Ponzi-style fraud: money entered through investors, memberships, horses and promised opportunities, while obligations were deferred, explanations changed and the appearance of success became the product.

When it collapsed, he started again

After the California enterprise disintegrated amid litigation and accusations of financial misconduct, Desenzani did not leave the business. The investigation reports that he reappeared in Wellington, Florida, operating Polo United with Michel Dorignac as the public-facing professional and Zoe Cookson again connected to payments and administration.

The location changed. The underlying model did not. Polo United sold intimacy with elite polo—private coaching, horses, memberships, matches and the promise of becoming a patron—while Desenzani pursued increasingly large commitments from clients.

Ouriel’s conclusion is blunt: Polo United was not an innocent second chance. It was the California scheme restarted in a new state, with new clients and familiar accomplices.

Every payment opened the door to a larger one

The sequence began with a $300 lesson. According to the investigation, Desenzani then refused pay-as-you-go instruction and demanded $5,000 for ten lessons. The price escalated into monthly programs, boarding fees, a proposed $50,000 membership and pressure to finance horses and competitive polo.

Part II documents an alleged ghost-horse transaction. Desenzani presented photographs that appeared to show different animals, changed the horse’s name and deposit history, and could not produce consistent veterinary or ownership information. Other members described money paid for horses or arrangements that never arrived.

These were not isolated misunderstandings. The investigation presents them as the mechanics of the con: secure trust with access, escalate the financial commitment, delay proof and change the story when challenged.

The fraud was financed with animal suffering

Former groom Cipher told Ouriel that horses went without adequate food when Desenzani ran out of money, remained confined in stalls for days and were left without timely shoeing. Horses developed colic and painful hoof problems while the operation continued selling polo.

Ouriel documented Maggie arriving in Greenwich with facial lacerations and later developing a swollen, bruised leg that Desenzani initially dismissed. Part VI also reports accounts that Desenzani had been driven out of the Indio polo community after he was allegedly caught beating horses.

The investigation does not treat this as careless management. It identifies a sustained pattern of animal abuse: horses were starved, confined, neglected, injured and allegedly beaten while being used to attract money and maintain appearances.

Workers and clients became disposable assets

Cipher said Desenzani promised immigration sponsorship or a work visa in place of proper compensation, failed to complete the process and left him without the security he had been promised. Ouriel characterizes the arrangement as trafficking and labor exploitation; no trafficking conviction is asserted here.

Clients described the same architecture of control. Housing, horses, training, status and future access remained perpetually imminent. When demands for proof became unavoidable, Desenzani blamed investors, employees, partners, Mariano Aguerre, “the lesbians” in California or anyone else available.

People mattered only while they supplied money, labor, legitimacy or protection.

A compulsive liar at the center of the con

The investigation catalogs false or contradictory claims about a Greenwich house, horse deposits, ownership, veterinary records, California lawsuits, nationality, wealth and living arrangements. The lies were sometimes elaborate and sometimes absurd, but they served the same purpose: prevent the person in front of him from walking away long enough to obtain the next payment.

Ouriel characterizes Desenzani as narcissistic, predatory and profoundly lacking in empathy. Those are the author’s conclusions rather than clinical diagnoses. They arise from the documented pattern: grandiosity, explosive rage when challenged, emotional manipulation, blame-shifting and apparent indifference to the suffering of animals and people around him.

A repeat con, not a financial dispute

Desenzani’s catastrophic polo injury ended his ability to keep the operation moving, but it did not transform what came before into a misunderstanding. The record assembled across the series describes a man who moved from one collapsed polo enterprise to another, pursued new victims and repeated the same promises, evasions and abuses.

No criminal conviction against Desenzani is asserted on this page. The absence of a conviction is not the same as the absence of a record. The investigation rests on court filings, business documents, messages, photographs and firsthand accounts from the people who paid, worked, invested and entrusted horses to him.

Its conclusion is unequivocal: Ciro Desenzani was the central con man behind Polo United, and Polo United was the Florida continuation of an operation that had already devastated people and horses in California.