Crime Con

Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later. Personally wiped out and seeking to uncover the truth about a collapse that brought the pastoral country to its knees, he became the lead investigator into some of the largest financial crimes in the world. This work helped Iceland to famously become the only country to jail its bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

Real rock stars do truly insane thing and invite truly insane things to happen to them: murder, drug trafficking, rape, cannibalism and the occult. We allow this behavior. We are complicit because a rock star behaving badly is what's expected. It's baked into the cake. Deep down, way down, past all of our self-righteous notions of justice and right and wrong, when it comes down to it, we want our rock stars to be bad. We know the music industry is full of demons, ones that drove Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, and Sid Vicious and that consumed the Norwegian black metal scene.

When Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth began their romance, they unknowingly set in motion a diabolical plot that would end with them murdered in their own home, Hayworth holding their mercifully unharmed infant. Chris was a CIA agent who was concerned about Jenelle. Seeing the cyberbullying she had endured, and worried for her safety, Chris got in touch with Jenelle's protective parents and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Payne and Hayworth were a danger to Jenelle.

In The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed, renowned MM expert Jay Margolis and New York Times best-selling author Richard Buskin finally lay to rest more than 50 years of wild speculation and misguided assertions by actually naming the screen goddess's killer. At the same time, they use the testimony of eyewitnesses to describe exactly what took place inside her house on Fifth Helena Drive in Los Angeles's Brentwood neighborhood.

For twenty years, Tony Sales was Britain's biggest fraudster. From cloning credit cards and identities to emptying cash machines and being a confidence trickster, Tony knew how to make money. Charming, funny and bright, Sales could make people believe whatever he wanted them to. Soon he was living a millionaire lifestyle: fast cars, hotels and holidays. As analogue crime turned digital, Sales adapted his skills and became a prolific online fraudster, quickly identifying and exploiting loopholes and weaknesses in the system.

The art world is one of the most secretive of global businesses, and the list of its crimes runs long and deep. Today, with prices in the hundreds of millions for individual artworks, and billionaires' collections among the most conspicuous and liquid of their assets, crime is more rampant than ever in this largely unregulated universe. Increased prices and globalization have introduced new levels of fraud and malfeasance into the art world—everything from "artnapping," in which an artwork is held hostage and only returned for a ransom, to forgery and tax fraud.

When reclusive millionaire artist Robert Indiana died in 2018, he left behind dark rumors and scandal, as well as an estate embroiled in lawsuits and facing accusations of fraud. Here is the true story of the artist’s final days, the aftermath, the deceptive world that surrounded him, and the inner workings of art as very big business.

A true story detailing the events surrounding the murder of wealthy North Carolinian Lieth von Stein. The case seemed cold until police followed a trail leading to von Stein's stepson, a smart young man who was obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons and wrapped up in drugs.

The first of a trilogy, this collection features 16 of the world's most outrageous scams and hoaxes. They all really happened and were taken from firsthand accounts, newspaper reports, or historical documents found in public libraries. They date as far back as the late 1800s, but most are more recent. However, you won't find any defrauded widows or orphans in these stories. The victims are institutions or corporations quite capable of defending themselves, and the crooks who match wits with them are just as savvy. You could almost call it a fair fight!

Former district attorney Jeanine Pirro was cast as the bad guy 15 years ago when she reopened the cold case of Kathleen Durst, a young and beautiful fourth-year medical student who disappeared without a trace in 1982, never to be seen again. Kathie Durst's husband was millionaire real estate heir Robert Durst, son of one of the wealthiest families in New York City - but though her friends and family suspected him of the worst, he escaped police investigation.

Is it still possible to fake your own death in the 21st century? With six figures of student loan debt, Elizabeth Greenwood is tempted to find out. So she sets off on a foray into the world of death fraud, where for $30,000 a consultant can make you disappear - but your suspicious insurance company might hire a private detective to dig up your coffin...only to find it filled with rocks.

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy, which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man.

From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best - or worst.

In this 2018 New York Times Notable Book,Paige Williams "does for fossils what Susan Orlean did for orchids" (Book Riot) in her account of one Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia—a story "steeped in natural history, human nature, commerce, crime, science, and politics" (Rebecca Skloot).

Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.

The OneCoin global cryptocurrency fraud stole tens of billions of dollars from ordinary people around the world. Unlike Madoff or Enron, who relieved the world’s wealthiest investors of their cash, the exploiting genius of the OneCoin scam was targeting the poorest people in the world, the “unbanked”—those who struggled to live or get mainstream banking support. The arrogant assumption was that the downtrodden wouldn't have the means or will to fight back. They didn’t reckon on Jen McAdam—a teenage mother, young grandmother, and modern-day Erin Brockovich.

While the mainstream media protects the innermost circles of the establishment, this audiobook reveals the harrowing truth of elite child molesters and the calculated methods they employ to conceal their horrific activities, which often span decades.

In 2016, on stage at Wembley Arena, Dr. Ruja Ignatova promised her followers a financial revolution. The future, she said, belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And the Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptoqueen vowed that she had invented the Bitcoin Killer. OneCoin would not only earn its investors untold fortunes; it would change the world. By March 2017, more than $4 billion had been invested in OneCoin in countries all around the world. But by October 2017, Ruja Ignatova had disappeared, and it slowly became clear that her revolutionary cryptocurrency was not all it seemed.

A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers, to African despots, to French movie stars.

A shocking exposé of Volkswagen's fraud by the New York Times reporter who covered the scandal. In mid-2015 Volkswagen proudly reached its goal of surpassing Toyota as the world's largest automaker. A few months later, the EPA disclosed that Volkswagen had installed software in 11 million cars that deceived emissions-testing mechanisms. By early 2017 VW had settled with American regulators and car owners for $20 billion, with additional lawsuits still looming.