White Collar Crime

It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scam to an art form and raked in millions at his office in downtown Boston. Ponzi’s Scheme is the amazing true story of the irresistible scoundrel who launched the most successful scheme of financial alchemy in modern history–and uttered the first roar of the Roaring Twenties.

It looked like an ordinary email. But when she opened it, a Hong Kong housewife unwittingly uncovered a decade's old plot to blackmail her and her husband. Determined to find out who was responsible, she soon finds herself thrust into a shadowy underworld of sex, lies, and dirty money. The men who had orchestrated the plot thought that because she was a woman, she was weak. But when she began uncovering their web of deception, they realized the old adage really is true—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Los melodramas de alto vuelo son el tipo de eventos que realmente captan nuestra atención. Nos empapamos de la serie Versace, luego de la serie Getty; de la película House of Gucci y, recientemente, los fanáticos se han sumergido en Curse of the Chippendales. Todas estas historias tuvieron ascensos fenomenales a la fama, para terminar trágicamente.

A federal agent goes rogue in 1970s-era Detroit and becomes its number one heroin distributor. But also among his crimes are extortion, illegal gun sales and explosives to gangs and the Detroit Mafia, fraud, blackmail, attempt to rob an armored car, threat to bomb the airport, and more. He was a dirty fed who operated under the noses of both his agency and the police for years, but a simple mistake brought his attention to his superiors, and it took two cunning and relentless internal affairs agents to hunt him down and bring him and his gang to justice.

Forced out of the work-hard, play-hard world of Wall Street following the Crash of ’87, financial analyst Cary Cimino was determined to maintain his lifestyle of luxury and ease. Under the guidance of dubious businessman Jeffrey Pokross, Cimino embarked on an illegitimate underground career as a “financial adviser” to naïve investors. Cimino’s small-time operation soon spiraled into a large-scale crime ring when he and Pokross were reunited and met with Mafia wiseguy Robert Lino.

Pablo Escobar was the King of Cocaine, the wealthiest and most violent criminal in the world. By the 1980s his Medellin Drug Cartel was responsible for smuggling several tons of cocaine into America each and every day. The end result was hundreds of millions of dollars in cash profits.

When the City of London police raided the home of boiler room suspect and stockbroker mason's home in 2011, what came next was a roller-coaster ride from hell taking this former city boy into the bowels of one of Europe's most notorious prisons. Housing murderers, rapists, cartel members and this middle-class boy from Essex. Not Another Prison Diary tells you what happened in the aftermath of the UK's first "Wolf of Wall Street" style conviction. "Want to see inside? What about "Inside"!

These days - in the age of the internet and so called “social networking” - the seemingly bold actions of my own generation seem very mild in comparison. Now days, two kids that think they're in love send each other sexually explicit text messages - known as “sexting” - complete with nude photos taken with their cell phone cameras.

On a hot day in July 1988, Frank Casteel and his wife planned an outing on property they had recently acquired atop Signal Mountain in Tennessee. They would be celebrating their wedding anniversary. Several years later, that day's events would be rewritten. Despite crime scene contamination, a complete lack of evidence, and a span of missteps and misconduct by investigators and prosecutors, Frank would be charged and eventually wrongfully convicted of a triple homicide.

During the onslaught of legal actions during the Savings and Loans crisis of the 1980s, John Smith came to realize the extent of his employer's wrongdoing, and that he too had been one of many deceived. He discovered that you don't have to commit a crime to be convicted of one, and after years of turmoil, he discovered the relief when the FBI finally informed him 15 years after his sentencing that he should never have been prosecuted in the first place.

Johan af Donner har blivit synonym med bedragare av värsta sorten; en som stjäl från jordens fattiga för att finansiera sitt eget överklassliv. Under tio års tid svindlade han till sig nästan 8 miljoner kronor från Röda Korset och Cancerfonden, där han var en högt uppsatt chef. 2010 dömdes Johan af Donner i Svea Hovrätt till fem års fängelse. I Guldsot får man följa af Donners trygga uppväxt i villaförorten Saltsjö-Duvnäs, hans första steg in i reklambranschen och hans kometkarriär på Röda Korset och Cancerfonden. Men också hans växande kriminalitet, dramatiska kriser och självmordsförsök.

Charles Deville Wells has two loves in life: Jeannette, his beautiful French mistress, and his sumptuous yacht, the Palais Royal. At the risk of losing both, Wells stakes everything he owns at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo's world-famous casino - and in the space of a few days he breaks the bank, not once but 10 times, winning the equivalent of millions in today's money. Is he phenomenally lucky? Has he really invented an 'infallible' gambling system, as he claims? Or is he just an exceptionally clever fraudster?

From New York's foremost bail bondsman with "over $30 million on the street" comes the story of a modern-day "fixer" who walks a fine line between hustler and humanitarian with clients ranging from the rich and famous to the mafia and gangs of New York. With from-the-gut prose, Ira Judelson sheds light on the highs and lows of the bondsman life. But Judelson is no process server.

On the 29th of June, 2008, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. His crime was running the biggest-ever fraudulent scheme in US history, and probably in the history of the world. The prosecutors estimated that Madoff had committed a fraud worth $64.8 billion. Madoff was a well-respected financier, and this is why investors believed him when he promised consistent profits in return of their savings. Furthermore, he continued to fool his investors, more than 4,800 clients, for a period of over a decade.

They are battered women, grieving parents, and burglarized homeowners who responded to criminal violence by taking the law into their own hands. Their cases have struck a deep chord in American society. Are they victims of a failing judicial system or criminals themselves? True crime writer Gary Provost examines the stories of ordinary citizens who have taken on the roles of judge, jury and - sometimes - executioner.

This true story is based on two young teenage boys who, in the summer of 1968, manage to spend an equivalent of 210,000 dollars in today's money in a few short weeks, after they ran away. This true story tells how they left Kansas City for Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco, and then fate intervened, as the adventure took on a completely different direction.

It has been the public's perception that Madoff investors were all extremely wealthy and all belonged to exclusive clubs. This perception has been reinforced by the media and the powers that be. The truth is, with very few exceptions, such as Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Picower and Stanley Chais, most were average, small time investors. This is their story.

From the number one best-selling author of The Cause of Death comes an audiobook about the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure and often tragic ways humans meet their demise. A dead body without a trace of trauma; alien parasites; worms of the brain; crocodile attacks and bizarre eating disorders....In The Quick and the Dead, pathologist and self-confessed death-aficionado Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp takes listeners into a world of disease and death as he seeks answers for those who were unlucky, and those still alive to tell the tale.

Whitaker Wright led a truly extraordinary life. From his humble beginnings as an impoverished preacher, he crossed the Atlantic to prospect for gold, surviving a Native American massacre and making his fortune. When the bubble burst, he returned to England and soon became one of the world’s richest men, entertaining the Kaiser and the Prince of Wales on his steam yacht. But his downfall was as dramatic as his ascent.

In Noncompliant, Segarra chronicles her experience blowing open the doors on the relationship between the big banks and the government bodies set up to regulate them. As we mark the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, Noncompliant shows us how little has changed, and offers an urgent call for real reforms.