White Collar Crime

Drowning in debt and facing almost certain bankruptcy, John Darwin did the unthinkable—he paddled out to sea in his red canoe and disappeared. After a massive search and rescue operation failed to find his body, he was assumed dead, lost in the bleak North Sea. But everything was far from what it seemed. Nearly six years later, after John miraculously returned from the dead with a strange tale of 'amnesia' and sporting a suspicious golden tan, the police and the press were desperate to discover the truth behind his remarkable resurrection.

We live in a period of sweeping corruption - and a golden age of whistle-blowing. Over the past few decades, principled insiders who expose wrongdoing have gained unprecedented legal and social stature, emerging as the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct - and the citizenry's best defense against government gone bad.

In the world of high finance, multibillion-dollar Wall Street banks greedily guard their secrets. Enter Robert Kerbeck, a working actor who made his real money lying on the phone, charming people into revealing their employers’ most valuable information. In this exhilarating memoir that will appeal to fans of The Wolf of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can, unsuspecting receptionists, assistants, and bigshot executives all fall victim to “the Ruse.”

Den of Thieves tells, in masterfully reported detail, the full story of the insider-trading scandal that nearly destroyed Wall Street, the men who pulled it off, and the chase that finally brought them to justice. Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions.

Celebrated YouTuber and podcaster Ben Armstrong delivers the extraordinary and compelling story of the rise and fall of FTX and its well-known founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Tracking the history of crypto exchanges from the original Mt. Gox to FTX and Binance, the author describes the history of fraud that has characterized much of the industry. Armstrong outlines the history of Alameda Research, FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, including a first-hand account of what he saw in the Bahamas when the indicted crypto titan was extradited from his home to face dozens of criminal and regulatory charges.

In June 2007, the FBI informed the NBA that one of its referees, Tim Donaghy, was the subject of a probe into illegal gambling. Within months, the public knew the broad outlines of a scheme involving Donaghy betting on games he officiated with a coconspirator, longtime Donaghy acquaintance and professional gambler Jimmy "Baba" Battista. They were joined in the scandal by a mutual childhood friend, Tommy Martino. By November 2008, each man had pleaded guilty to charges relating to the conspiracy and was in federal prison.

It was the corporate collapse that appeared to come out of nowhere. In late 2001, the Enron Corporation—a darling of the financial world, a company whose executives were friends of presidents and the powerful—imploded virtually overnight, leaving vast wreckage in its wake and sparking a criminal investigation that would last for years. Kurt Eichenwald transforms the unbelievable story of the Enron scandal into a rip-roaring narrative of epic proportions.

When a band of backwoods hunters crash a corporate retreat in the wilderness, executives find themselves held hostage by men who will do anything to get the largest ransom in history. The corporate big shots hadn't wanted junior exec Jake Landry there. But now he's the only one who can save them.

The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal - the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including its biggest event, the World Cup.

Former Wall Street whiz and current convict Mickey Steinberg is nearing the end of his three-year sentence at Yankton - the cushy country club prison where he's enjoyed celebrity status - and he's ready to get out and get back on top. He doesn't have the resources he once did, but he's already hatched a new plan to sell a forgery of a stolen Van Gogh painting through the shady underground art market. He and his new partner, the smooth-talking Paul Reece, have a mark in mind: The sleazy con-man art dealer who swooped in on Mickey's beloved ex-wife after he was locked up. But with his old partner, Jack Grass, hell-bent on revenge and his pre-prison life closed to him, it won't be easy.

Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers - both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.

Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief - until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library.

Based on extensive insider interviews and participation, acclaimed author Ben Mezrich's Straight Flush tells the captivating rags-to-riches tale of a group of University of Montana frat brothers who turned a weekly poker game in the basement of a local dive bar into AbsolutePoker.com, one of the largest online companies in the world. But then the U.S. Department of Justice placed a bull's-eye on Absolute Poker. Did they fold - or double down and ride their hot hand?

In the spirit of Evicted, Bait and Switch, and The Big Short, a shocking, heart-wrenching investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern-day robber barons who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working and middle class - among them, Donald Trump and his inner circle.

Susan Ronald reveals in this stranger-than-fiction-tale how Hildebrand Gurlitt succeeded in looting in the name of the Third Reich, duping the Monuments Men and the Nazis alike. As an "official dealer" for Hitler and Goebbels, Hildebrand Gurlitt became one of the Third Reich's most prolific art looters. Yet he stole from Hitler, too, allegedly to save modern art. Hitler's Art Thief is the untold story of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who stole more than art - he stole lives, too.

Today's high-flying, high-rolling conglomarateurs and corporate raiders are a tame lot compared to their immediate predecessors. The most notorious of these is Robert Vesco, the Kingfish himself, who in 1973 fled the United States accused of looting $250 million from Investors Overseas Services. Now, in this riveting account, noted author Arthur Herzog tells the astounding story of this high school dropout from Detroit, who parlayed cunning, ambition, a brilliant mind, and above all, other people's gullibility and money into a vast financial empire.

In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victims - including friends and family - out of billions of dollars in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons?

Discover the shocking truth behind the relentless wave of crypto scams that have plagued the digital financial landscape. The Crypto Scammers is a gripping exposé that delves deep into the twisted world of deceit, murder, and financial manipulation, unraveling the intricate web of fraud, money laundering, NFT schemes, pump and dump tactics, and the seedy underbelly of dirty crypto exchanges.

The second in a trilogy, this collection features 18 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!

Der Financial-Times-Journalist Dan McCrum hat getan, wofür eigentlich Wirtschaftsprüfer und Finanzaufsicht zuständig sind: Er hat den größten Betrug der DAX-Geschichte aufgedeckt. Die Geschichte klingt filmreif: Wirecard, neben SAP das einzige deutsche Tech-Vorzeigeunternehmen, wird gehypt und übertrifft sogar den Börsenwert der Deutschen Bank. Der bargeldlose Zahlungsverkehr von Onlinegeschäften und Kreditkarten scheint ein überzeugendes Geschäftsmodell, eine Banklizenz eröffnet weitere Möglichkeiten.

For years, Monsanto declared that their product Roundup, the world’s most widely used weed killer, was safe. But that all changed in 2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) analyzed data from scientific studies and concluded that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was probably carcinogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disagreed, other regulatory agencies got involved, and scientists clamored to understand the link between glyphosate and cancer.