I Took 3 Months Off of OUMERE to Hunt the International Con Men Behind an Elite Polo Ponzi Scheme Part I: Seduced by the Flames
I Took 3 Months Off of OUMERE to Hunt the International Con Men Behind an Elite Polo Ponzi Scheme
In January of 2024, I was dating a man who I would characterize as attractive, mildly successful, deeply insecure and profoundly immature. I called him “Peter Pan” because of his refusal to grow up despite being 52 years old. Peter Pan and I met in September of 2023 in Palm Beach when I was walking my dog, Gigi, and he broke the ice by complimenting her great beauty. Peter Pan was a banker, and then became my banker. And then he became a visitor in my life for a few months.
Peter Pan talked a lot. Peter Pan talked a lot about playing polo. He had an old picture of himself on a horse in a polo player’s get up as his phone wallpaper. To me, he was a chameleon who changed to fit in with his environment. One day, he was the banker. The next, he was the drummer. Then he was the polo player. He slipped in and out of roles, taking off one costume and putting another one on. He wasn’t grounded in any identity. It seemed he cared more about the look of a life than living it.
Despite that, I said sure, because I thought it might be hot to see him on a horse. We arrived at a sprawling, beautiful polo facility in Wellington, Florida, called the Santa Clara Polo Club. The club Peter Pan found was renting a field there, a new club, called Polo United.
Standing in the polo fields of the Santa Clara Polo Club
We were approached first by a short, stocky, balding middle aged man who introduced himself as Ciro Desenzani, one of two owners of Polo United and claimed he was a professional Argentinian polo player and coach. I was immediately disturbed, not because Ciro didn’t look like he could play polo with that George Costanza physique, but because he looked like a short version of my dad. Although, Ciro had a much smaller nose. Then reaching his hand to mine was the other owner of Polo United, Michel Dorignac. Michel had grey hair, piercing eyes, and the yellowest teeth I had ever seen.
Michel also introduced himself as an Argentinian polo player, and his family name, Dorignac, famous in the polo world, along with his polo-playing history, gave credibility to this new venture. Michel’s resume was why Peter Pan chose them. He said he never heard of Ciro.
I stood on the sidelines and what I saw, riding fast on a horse, swinging a mallet, running down an open field, made me want to be out there. I had limited riding experience, but a $9,000 custom French saddle that I had been dying to dust off. I broke up with Peter Pan a week or two later for reasons that I will mention at the end, and sent Ciro a text message asking for a lesson.
No longer collecting dust
Day 1 of 191 Days
I arrived for my lesson late in the afternoon in February. Ciro and Michel were sitting under a blue Polo United tent on the side field at Santa Clara. Waiting for me was a little chestnut mare with a white blaze named Maggie. She was mine for the lesson. When I got on, I didn’t want her to move. Not a trot, not even a walk. Just stand still. There’s some disease festering in me that causes my brain to always go to the top shelf with any concern. I was sure that any sudden move from her would be the last of mine. But it wasn’t. The lesson was conducted by Michel. We walked, and I swung at the ball a few times.
After the lesson, Ciro and Michel sat me down under the tent, and the mood shifted from lighthearted to serious. Ciro did most of the talking. He explained that if I wanted to continue with their club, I needed to purchase their clinic package: 10 lessons for $5,000. $500 per lesson seemed on the high side of normal, and I was caught off guard by this fee increase since my first lesson was $300. But I would soon get accustomed to and overlook things that seemed to be outer fringes of normal with Polo United. I asked if I could pay as I went, since I was new to polo and still unsure about them. But Ciro insisted that they required a commitment if I wanted to be part of their club. Trust was a big issue for Ciro, as this demand foreshadowed. So, I showed my commitment and sent the money — though it went straight into Ciro’s personal bank account.
Snakes in the Grass
I averaged one to two lessons per week, and I noticed my comfort level on the horses improve with each session. Michel’s comfort level also improved with me. It began with him squeezing my legs suggestively, claiming it was to show me how to grip the saddle, but soon escalated to touching areas that didn’t require such cues, eventually leading to something more serious.
One evening after a lesson, Ciro and Michel sat me down again, and once more, the mood shifted. This time, Ciro told me I should buy a polo horse. I knew the horse sales pitch was coming — Peter Pan had warned me. “What about Maggie?” I asked, even though I hadn’t ridden her since that first lesson, she was still on my mind. Ciro spoke for a while about her virtues. Michel stayed quiet the whole time, sipping his mate (a kind of Argentinian tea), as he always did. When I asked how much, Ciro responded, $50,000. Michel finally spoke, almost guiltily, he looked down at his drink and said, “That’s a good price.” Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but I already owned three racehorses, and I wasn’t about to spend more money on another horse. I said no.
Saying no to Ciro never seemed to stick. A few days later, he texted me again, opening with flattery about how happy he was to have me on the Polo United team and how we could finally connect OUMERE, my cosmetics company, to the polo world through him, a favor I neither asked for or needed.
He shifted quickly to pitching another horse: a mare named Tully, he attempted to boast about her origin by claiming she was purchased from a man named Memo Gracida, a name that meant nothing to me because I didn’t know who he was. Ciro claimed Tully was even better than Maggie and would fast-track my polo progress. The price? $50,000, though he really wanted $70,000. If I trusted him with my future in polo, he’d bring her from California.
The [attempted] sale of Tully
Something seemed strange about this sale. I found it odd that Ciro would drop the price by $20,000 so quickly. I wondered why he wasn’t selling her to a professional, which raised questions in my mind about the sale. I said no, sensing that there was more to the story than I was being told. Later, I would discover I was right — Tully wasn’t his to sell.
I didn’t hear anything more about the horse after that. A few days later, Ciro texted, asking for my company website. Soon after, he texted to me an advertisement he made, featuring himself, in a polished sponsorship pitch for an upcoming “tournament” Polo United was supposedly hosting. He was offering me the chance to put my OUMERE logo on a prize-giving podium and polo team shirts — for $10,000.
The problem was, this “tournament,” as far as I could tell, would be nothing more than the Polo United students, a few beginners, playing at our “school” with no real audience or meaningful media coverage. Ciro presented the sponsorship as prestigious, but based on what I saw, I doubted whether it would attract the major exposure he promised. It seemed to me that Ciro wasn’t just running a polo club; he was running a hustle.
Again, I said no, and Ciro said he would “think of a plan”.
Well, that plan was to now have me pay $7,000 for another month with Polo United, marking the second of many increases in fees. Like before, this seemed on the outer limits of normal. Framed as along the lines of , “You’ve graduated from the clinic; now it’s time to get serious about polo” which seemed strange to me.
I wasn’t sure about the payment, but one night after practice a few days later it was just me and Michel, alone. The sky darkened and only the moon lit up the field. As we packed up the Polo United tent, Michel started telling me a story about how a woman once invited him to her mansion under the guise of a party. When he arrived, it was clear there was no party — it was a setup, and he was the only guest. The woman had invited him there to seduce him. Michel described, in graphic detail, how much he enjoyed certain sexual acts but insisted he wasn’t interested in doing them with her. However, he hinted that if it had been someone else, he would have gone along with it. It was at this point I felt that the purpose of this story was to test my boundaries, now I was the one being set up and seduced. I could see Michel making a forward gesture to pull me in and at that very moment the bright lights of a truck beamed onto the field as it pulled right in front of us. It was Ciro and the groom “Cipher” there to pick up the tent.
The Unseen Hand
I sent the payment, but I didn’t send it directly to Ciro. A woman named Zoe Cookson messaged me through WhatsApp to arrange the payment. The odd detail about Zoe was, I had never met her. None of us in Polo United had. She never came to the field, never called anyone (as far as I knew), and only existed in these quick, transactional WhatsApp messages. It was strange that someone who seemed to handle all the money for Polo United was so elusive. She was a looming figure I couldn’t quite place in this growing puzzle.
Message from Zoe Cookson after my first Polo United lesson
A week later, I was thrown into a match with another beginner, Karen, the only other member of Polo United that I had any meaningful interaction with at that point. Everyone else on the field was a professional. Throughout my lessons, I did whatever they asked, but I had one rule: I use my saddle. When Ciro told me to get on a grey horse, I said the horse needed my saddle, and he shot back that there wasn’t enough time to change equipment. I told him that was ridiculous — this “league” was supposed to be for Karen and me to learn, and pointed out how everyone was on the sidelines tacking their horses at the moment.
That’s when Ciro cracked. He threw a full-blown tantrum, the first time he let the mask slip in front of me. He cried out in his high pitched nasally voice about how he makes the rules, flailing his little arms and making a scene. I let him finish his fit, and then I said “ I use my equipment or I’m leaving.” As soon as I started walking away, he begged me to stay and told the groom to tack the horse with my saddle.
Once I was on the field, Michel rode up to me and I told him, “I shouldn’t be here” Michel just scoffed and said, “It’s fine.” They gave me a horse that wouldn’t move.
They didn’t want to let me use my equipment, they didn’t give me a horse that I could ride, and they didn’t teach me the rules. This match wasn’t about learning, it was about putting on a show to justify the price hike and to give Ciro and Michel an opportunity to play at a prestigious club. Even the pros on the other team and referee noticed the lack of structure, they gave Karen and me tips on hitting, cantering and where to go. Meanwhile, Ciro and Michel were on the other side of the field, off in their own world, playing with each other.
The two of them seemingly went off into that world for a couple days, because after the match I didn’t hear from either of them. Then out of the silence, a message from Ciro. It was another one of his slick image advertisements, this one was titled the “Pro-Pool League” and the new cost to stay in the club: $50,000.
I responded back, can I sleep in the barn too?
We Meet Again, My Friend
Instead of spending that $50,000 on a 7 month “annual membership” I decided to buy Maggie, albeit for a lower price than originally offered. I had been riding other horses for almost two months, and I always thought of her, even though I only rode her that one time, my first time. I wanted to get better at polo quicker, I wanted to play matches better, and I wanted to be faster. Maggie was the answer.
April 11th, Maggie was waiting for me at the field and at that point, I hadn’t cantered yet. Cantering is a big step in riding — it’s faster than a trot but slower than a sprint, and it represented a psychological barrier for me. I just hadn’t been able to do it. I got on Maggie, trotted her to the far corner of the field, and stared across to the other side where the Polo United tent stood, with Ciro sitting there, not paying attention, scrolling away on his phone. I wanted to do it.
I held the reins in my left hand, the mallet in my right, and decided it was time. I leaned forward, squeezed my legs, and she took off. The thought of cantering moved from my mind to her legs, and we were on the run. I realized as she’s going about 15 mph, the fastest I have ever moved on a horse, that I didn’t exactly know how to get her to slow down, so I just figured she is either going to stop or keep going. The blue tent got closer and closer and I thought we were going to go right through it, but she just naturally slowed down and stopped a few feet from the tent. Ciro looked up at us from his cell phone, and we turned around and did it all over again. Although he said nothing at the time, months later Ciro told me he got goosebumps watching that moment.
When we first took flight
What marked the last day of riding any other horse also marked the end of anything that could be characterized as meaningful instruction I would receive in my remaining four months with Polo United. From that day forward, it was just Maggie and me, riding every day — just the two of us. Maggie became my teacher, showing me how to play polo.
“Don’t Leave.”
Michel at this time seemingly decided to stop teaching me polo and start teaching me something else: his sexual history. One evening, we were sitting around — Ciro, Michel, Karen, a younger member in his 20s named Juan and me — when Michel pulled his chair close and asked if I wanted to hear a story. He then shared how, a few years ago, a woman invited him to join her and her husband for an “experience.” That experience, as he described it, was her taking him to the backseat of her car for oral sex while her husband watched from the front seat mirror.
Later that night, Michel and I were chatting on WhatsApp and he asked me if I liked sex, which led to him admitting he wanted to “jump” on me that night when we were alone in the dark and that he felt that we would have an amazing sexual connection together.
Sunday, April 21st marked the last big professional match of the polo season in Wellington: La Dolfina vs. Valiente. Our group — Karen, Ciro, Michel, myself, and Andi, another woman in the club — headed to the National Polo Center. It was a hot, humid day in South Florida, and by the last chukker (period in polo matches), my red dress was soaked from a passing sun shower.
National Polo Center, Wellington Florida
After the match, Michel asked me to drive over to his barn. Not only had he been staring at me the entire match, the sexual tension between us had been building for weeks.
I think he wanted to know the answer to his earlier question. I thought this was it. But then, he told me to have Andi come along too, which threw me off the scent.
When I arrived at the barn, I expected something to happen, but instead, he just showed me around like he was giving a tour. Then Andi arrived, and Michel suggested dinner at a nearby restaurant.
I suffered through this meal that lasted just short of an eternity, and it was getting late. Michel drove us back to his barn, and now it was close to 10:30 p.m. We were standing outside, the property was pitch black, no lights, just the moon and stars above and the dirt road near the trailers. Andi said she was ready to head out and offered to lead the way from the dark and isolated barn. I figured it wasn’t going to happen, shrugged and said “ok” quickly. Michel stood there, scowled, then walked off into the dark toward the pasture. Andi drove off, expecting me to follow. I walked to my car and my phone buzzed. It was a text from Michel: “Don’t leave.”
1 a.m., I drove home on an empty country road. The drive was about 35 minutes, and my mind didn’t have one thought. My brain had become an old TV left on after midnight, stuck on a channel that had run out of programming, just broadcasting static.
Three days later, I went to the field. Michel wasn’t there, but Ciro was. After I rode Maggie alone, as I had gotten used to doing, Ciro sat me down. He told me that he and Michel had decided to give me the $50,000 club membership for free, framed as a reward for my effort in polo and because, in his words, I was “nice with a good heart.” At first, I was beyond flattered. I thought it was an incredibly generous gift — $50,000 for a polo membership, something everyone else had to pay for, but not me.
Then I started to realize the timing of it all. My mind had a flashback to Sunday night, I think I pulled a piece of hay still stuck in my hair. Then I thought to myself, $50,000…not a bad stud fee.
And that was the complicated dynamic between Michel and me. He made himself available to me when there was a payment needed, or when there was a horse to be bought, or eventually when I discovered his and Ciro’s deep dark secrets. But other times I may have been given a “gift” seemingly in exchange for sex, like the $50,000 membership into the club. Throughout my entire time with Polo United, I never could quite figure out who was the prostitute in the whole situation, me or Michel.
Sugar Daddy
Ciro kept bringing up Polo United’s need for a “patron.” The patron embodies the very essence of what polo is. Polo isn’t just a sport; it’s an elite, money-driven universe that operates on a level of exclusivity and wealth beyond any other sport. Unlike most sports, where athletes are selected based on talent alone, polo allows wealthy patrons to essentially buy their way onto a team. These patrons don’t just fund the team — they play on it too, often regardless of skill. In high-level polo, the patron doesn’t just fund the team’s operations; they invest in horses, fields, and sometimes even full-time staff like grooms, veterinarians, and coaches.
This unique arrangement gives the patron a kind of prestige that can’t be bought in any other sport. Polo allows them to bask in the glory of not just business success (or whatever else made them wealthy) but athletic triumph as well. Polo is the oldest sport — the sport of kings — and the patron is, in a way, a modern-day king on the field.
At first, I didn’t understand why Ciro appeared so fixated on finding a patron for Polo United. We weren’t a professional team — we were a learning club. If anyone here was good enough to play at a professional level, they wouldn’t be taking lessons from Ciro — they’d be out there getting paid to play. And a real patron, one with the wealth and ambition to fund a team, wouldn’t waste their money on a club filled with beginners. They’d hire legitimate professionals to win high-profile matches.
Ciro, from what I saw, was a coach, not a player. He was always on the sidelines, yelling and critiquing, but never actually playing in professional matches. I never saw him in any big name tournaments or heard of him belonging to a team. I assumed he simply wasn’t good enough to play professionally — unlike Michel, who still occasionally played in real matches. As the saying goes, those who can’t do, teach.
But then Ciro let something slip. One day, while venting his frustrations, he admitted that he wasn’t being contacted to play — only to coach. He seemed genuinely dismayed by this, as if it had become a personal failing. I suspect, though, that this was a performance. I doubt anyone was contacting him to coach either. It felt like he wanted us to believe he was still desirable in the polo world. That’s when I realized it wasn’t likely that his obsession with finding a patron was about making Polo United a successful business. How I saw it, Ciro didn’t want a patron to fund the club — he wanted one to fund him, to get him back on the field, not stuck on the sidelines. Polo United seemed to be his vehicle to find a wealthy benefactor who could make that happen.
The ever increasing fees started to make sense, this was Ciro’s search for the highest bidder, the person to sit atop the tip of the pyramid. I believed he was looking for someone to bankroll his dream of playing in high-level polo matches, traveling the world and putting him in the spotlight as a star player. And along with that dream, he needed someone to finance his entire lifestyle — just like he had tried to get me to do with his sponsorship pitch. How I saw it, Ciro wasn’t just looking for a patron. He was looking for a sugar daddy.
Sugar Daddy, whose real is name Alex Meshechok, came into Polo United from, what seemed to me, a mysterious background. 50’s, tall, an accent that sounded eastern European and with a mood that switched as often as the woman on his arm. The women cycled frequently, and every week he brought a different woman to the club. The women in Polo United disliked Alex Meshechok for many reasons, this being one of them. I actually never had a problem with his free love polyamorous lifestyle because, from what I could tell, they were all consenting adults, and it seemed mutually beneficial: the women got to ride in his (my opinion financed) Bentley, go to the polo field and on fancy trips, and he got the benefit of their “company”.
It seemed like Ciro quickly seized the opportunity to cater to Sugar Daddy Meshechok’s alleged wealth, offering him special treatment. We had a practice match on the field on Saturday and after everyone left Ciro mentioned to me that he had charged Sugar Daddy $6,000 for that hour of us running around on the field. The rest of us paid far, far less for the same thing.
Ciro and Michel gave Meshechok preferential treatment in the club such as choice seating at our parties and unlimited ass kissing whenever possible, and in exchange they enjoyed various benefits such as invitations to his parties, dinners and weekend excursions. The exclusivity of these invitations to just Ciro and Michel seemed strange. We were a club that Ciro and Michel pushed for a shared experience, yet they ran off to Meshechok’s fun outings on their own and purposefully excluded everyone else from the club. Karen later told me that at our end-of-season party, Alex shouted obscenities at her while Ciro and Michel stayed silent. This blatant imbalance of respect was permitted by the members at the top of the Polo United customer pyramid.
Dine with the devil, have a long spoon
Despite all the flattery Ciro and Michel lavished on Alex to his face, they were quick to criticize him behind his back — and eventually throw him under the bus. But it wasn’t just him — no one in the club was spared from their ridicule. They mocked Alex for his vocal habits while riding, and Ciro openly predicted that he would never improve at polo, claiming he’d eventually give up and just focus on toning at the gym once he couldn’t hit the ball far enough. In a moment of pettiness, Ciro even admitted he found Alex to be grossly unattractive and couldn’t understand why he got so many women. I think he missed the key detail of how they were acquired. Michel, not missing a beat, asked if I found Alex attractive, because his jealousy couldn’t help but slip through
A new rider, “Jax,” became the target of Michel’s jokes, mocked for being stiff on the horse and possibly homosexual. Karen was constantly criticized by Ciro for her heel position, and even a child wasn’t immune to their snide remarks as they poked fun at her for riding too hard on the horse. No one escaped their judgment.
Their derision was directed at the very things we were supposed to be learning and improving. And the ones who were supposed to be teaching us were the very ones ridiculing us. It was as though they resented us for being beginners that they needed to teach.
Their words weren’t just harsh criticisms, they carried an underlying message. Ciro and Michel made it clear — fall short of their expectations, and you wouldn’t just be ridiculed, you’d be out. The threat of exclusion loomed over everyone, a silent warning that your place in the club was never guaranteed.
I remember the first time they wielded the threat of exclusion to keep me in the club. Ciro mentioned how he and Michel had “kicked out” Peter Pan after his lesson package was up. According to Ciro, Peter Pan wasn’t serious about polo and just wanted to “stick and ball.” Michel added, with a smirk, that he was “so weird.” While I couldn’t argue with the “weird” part — everyone seemed to agree on that description of Peter Pan — I didn’t realize they were supposedly casting members out of the club.
Later, I found out that Peter Pan hadn’t been kicked out at all. He had quit because Ciro and Michel weren’t logging his hours (or anyone else’s for that matter, including my own) which he needed to maintain his handicap with the USPA and to play in actual tournaments. But Ciro and Michel twisted the story, likely to keep me in line. I believe the agenda behind this Peter Pan parable was to keep me on edge, to let me know that if I didn’t meet their standards — whether it was Ciro’s financial demands or Michel’s more personal ones — I could be the next to go.
A polo handicap is a passport to the world— Winston Churchill
Or maybe they wanted me to think someone else was always next to be cut. One day, after riding Maggie alone, I returned to the tent where Ciro and Michel were sitting, and the air felt heavy. Ciro sighed and said, “What are we going to do about Karen?” I asked what he meant, and he said he didn’t like Karen’s vulgar mouth, referring to some crude jokes she had made at a party the week before. Specifically, he seemed bothered by her talking about “the vagina,” a body part I suspected Ciro didn’t like for reasons beyond the joke itself — but more on that later.
Now, I know Michel had clearly enjoyed those jokes, but I played along. I told Ciro, “Karen’s nice, so if you’re worried about her making those kinds of jokes in front of potential clients, just talk to her about it.” Days later, Ciro informed me that Michel had convinced him to let Karen stay in the club. Karen later told me her husband had paid them the $50,000 membership fee.
A Secret in California
Ciro said he needed to go to California. He had briefly discussed with us all that he had a polo club there named Taqueada. In fact, many of my payments for Polo United were paid to the Taqueada account, per Zoe’s instructions. Ciro told us that many years ago, he had left Argentina to create this grand polo club in California. He claimed that, with the help of Michel’s visits to the club, it had grown significantly with many members, and throughout our conversations, he and Michel insisted that the club was still in full operation, just without Ciro leading it. He said he had left it in the hands of a manager while he focused on Polo United in Florida.
Michel Dorignac and Ciro Desenzani at Taqueada Polo, Gilroy California
Ciro didn’t speak fondly of the Taqueada club, referring to it as a burden he was trying to offload. He painted a chaotic picture, saying the club had been waged against by “angry lesbians,” disgruntled former clients supposedly waging a man-hating vendetta against him. He added that the club was rife with vulgar women who were unserious about polo, with one allegedly sleeping with everyone in the club and others causing so much trouble that the police had to be called. According to Ciro, the problems began after he left to start Polo United, suggesting that it was jealousy over his departure. He was going back, he said, one last time to sell the club and finally be rid of it.
I hadn’t thought to Google Ciro until now, but when I did, the first thing that popped up was a lawsuit by someone named “Midnight Rose”, who sued Ciro in 2020 for an unpaid debt. The name immediately sounded familiar. Back in April, Ciro had vented his frustrations with Karen for not paying that $50,000 membership fee when it was first proposed. He told me Karen and her husband had looked him up online and asked about “Midnight Rose.” Ciro was livid, repeating “Midnight Rose, Midnight Rose, Midnight Rose” in that nasally, high-pitched voice he uses when he’s frustrated. He didn’t explain the lawsuit to me and got angry that Karen didn’t trust him. He went on a rant about not wanting anyone’s business or money if they didn’t trust him. Trust is Ciro’s hot button, and he gets overly sensitive when people don’t blindly give it.
When I first saw the Midnight Rose lawsuit pop up on Google, I brushed it off. I had always believed that lawsuits were just the price of doing business, especially anything having to do with horses. But the more I thought about it, the more the lawsuit stuck in my mind. What really happened there, and why did he get so angry when Karen brought it up? Was the “talk” about tossing Karen out of the club a punishment for her bringing it up? For the first time I started wondering what else Ciro wasn’t telling us.
Ciro left for California and returned days later with several horses. One of those horses was Tully — the same one he had tried to sell me months before. Transported across state lines, possibly without permission.
Then Came the Last Days of May
Around this time, Ciro and Michel began talking about their plans for the summer. The polo season was winding down in South Florida as the temperatures rose, and most players were preparing to head to the Northeast. Michel, having played at Mashomack Polo Club for nearly two decades, followed his usual routine of migrating there in early June and staying through September. Now, it seemed, Ciro saw an opportunity to join this elite polo circuit. He mentioned that Polo United had secured a spot at the prestigious Greenwich Polo Club, home of the East Coast Open, marking his entry into one of the most high-profile polo environments in the country. Ciro boasted this was the first time an outside club would be permitted in, but he didn’t explain how he got Polo United, an unregistered unknown club, into Greenwich.
The Greenwich Polo Club
Ciro wanted me to go, and I said I would, not for the entire 3 months, but maybe for a few weeks. He was glad that I could go and said he would arrange for a house for me to stay in, likely with himself and a groom he was bringing in from Argentina, an alleged long time friend named Carlitos.
On May 25th, we had our final match of the season before Polo United packed up and headed north. Although I had come a long way in the past three months — now able to canter, hit the ball, score a few goals, and keep up in a faster-paced game — I still couldn’t shake this looming sense of dread that settled over me every time I approached the field.
Maggie and Me playing polo at the Santa Clara Polo Club
The match, meant to showcase our progress, felt more like a facade, with no one really prepared to play properly. As we lined up on the vast, Florida sun-scorched Santa Clara fields, the first chukker started at a slow pace, and I tried to focus on precision. By the second chukker, things escalated. Maggie grew more distressed, yanking at her chest and pulling forward. I struggled to control her as she bolted toward the boards, while everyone else rested on the sidelines. Later, I learned Maggie shouldn’t have played more than 2 chukkers.
In the third chukker, just as I stole the ball and was about to pass, another member cut across the line, a dangerous, illegal move. I had to pull Maggie up to avoid a collision. The referee blew the whistle, but Ciro and Michel, who should have been guiding the game, were on the other side of the field. After the match, I took care of Maggie while the other horses weren’t even hosed down.
Amid all the chaos, Ciro kept reassuring me about our move to Greenwich, promising that he was securing a house for me. He made it sound like everything was under control, offering vague but confident responses whenever I pressed for details: “We’re working on the house, it’ll be ready soon,” or “Just finishing up — I want it to be perfect for you.” I trusted him, thinking there was no reason to lie about something as straightforward as renting a house, especially since I would eventually find out the truth.
Then, just 10 days before we were set to leave, Ciro finally admitted the truth — there was no house. There never had been. And to save himself, he lied and said he never promised me a house in the first place, acting as though I was the one who had misinterpreted things.
Ciro’s manipulation stepped up when he asked me to come to the field one day — he wanted to show me the horses he’d brought back from California. It was clear in my mind he had another agenda: he wanted me to buy one of these horses and bring it up to Greenwich alongside Maggie. A sale would put money in his pocket, and boarding two horses meant even more. He was particularly eager for me to try a grey horse named Chardonnay, which he boasted was one of his best — smooth canter, quick turns, an all-around top polo horse.
As Cipher warmed the horse up, Ciro casually remarked, “He’s a terrible rider, he thinks I’m going to get him a visa, but I’m never going to.” This was just another glimpse of the pervasive dishonesty Ciro wielded so freely — one that would later unravel on a much larger scale.
To Ciro, everyone was a terrible rider. One day he told me that that Adolfo Cambiaso, the greatest living polo player, was a talentless polo hack, underserving of his fame who needed his instruction to improve. But it was Ciro’s remark about the visa that truly disturbed me. Cipher had mentioned to me weeks earlier that Ciro was supposedly working on getting him a work visa. The implication was that this was part of their arrangement — likely in lieu of proper payment. Ciro’s offhand comment about never intending to follow through sounded far more sinister, something that bordered on exploitation — if not human trafficking.
I got on Chardonnay and this clearly was not a top polo horse like Ciro described. Slow, older, lazy, boxy canter. I wanted off. I went back to the barn and told Ciro I didn’t want to buy Chardonnay. He lost his mind, first with the childish repeating of phrases such as “I thought you wanted to buy a horse” incessantly. Then crying that I ruined his day. Followed by a complete mental breakdown. I told him I wasn’t going to be spoken to like that and I left the field.
Cipher then disappeared. I didn’t see him at the barn the next day, or the day after that. I had seen him every day since I began back in February and now he was gone, without a trace.
The next day Ciro left for Greenwich and the horses went up with him.
I knew something was dark and wrong with the entire polo operation at this point. Strange horse sales, an odd “club” with an even odder price structure, the seduction of one owner, the psychopathy of another, and a vanishing groom to top it off. I didn’t know entirely what was going on, but I knew one thing for certain: Ciro was an abnormality: a deeply disturbed man that wasn’t to be trusted. And what was worse, was that Maggie was now there in Greenwich with him. I needed to get up there.
Next time, Part II: A Tale of Two Ciros
Resources
If you have been victimized or were witness to a crime the following resources are available to report it
FBI Tip Line: https://tips.fbi.gov/home
Security and Exchange Tip Line: https://www.sec.gov/submit-tip-or-complaint/tips-complaints-resources/report-suspected-securities-fraud-or-wrongdoing
ICE Tip Line: https://www.ice.gov/tipline
IRS Tip Line: https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-3949-a
Human Trafficking Hotline: https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en/report-trafficking
Disclaimer:
The resources provided are for individuals seeking to report crimes or suspicious activities. No assumptions or conclusions are drawn about the guilt or innocence of the individuals mentioned unless proven by a court of law. This information is intended to assist those who may have been affected in reporting their experiences to the appropriate authorities.
Topics: Ciro Desenzani, Michel Dorignac, Polo, Polo United, Taqueada Polo