Financial Serial Killers: Inside the World of Wall Street Money Hustlers, Swindlers, and Con Men - Hardcover

Ajamie, Tom; Kelly, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1616080310 ISBN 13: 9781616080310

Publisher: Skyhorse, 2010

Synopsis

By using true tales of thieves, swindlers, and fraudsters at work, Financial Serial Killers illustrates how these perpetrators get their hooks into investors' wallets, savings accounts, and portfolios—and never let go. The worst financial crisis since the great depression revealed that thousands of mom and pop investors had lost millions to so-called Mini-Madoffs. They are the thieves and conmen who had used phony financial acumen to steal investors' money, wipe out savings, and damage lives.

Financial Serial Killers reveals the cons—from the grand to picayune—advisers cultivate with their victims—relationships that are essential to the fraud. Take the story of Lillian, the little old lady who invested with Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. After her husband died, she thought her family's treasure of $24 million in stock controlled by Buffett was safe. It was—until a family relative introduced the eighty-nine-year-old grandmother to a pair of unscrupulous insurance agents who convinced her to reinvest her savings in life insurance—decimating her nest egg while padding the agents' pockets. Lillian's story, as well as other accounts of deceit and fraud are the core of Financial Serial Killers. Readers will learn how to better protect their family's wealth and savings after reading this book.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Ajamie is one of the top trial lawyers in the United States and has a long track record of successfully suing financial criminals both domestically and internationally. He has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars—including the largest stock arbitration award in U.S. history, $429 million—from fraudulent individuals, corporations and organized criminal organizations. Ajamie has provided insight and analysis on corporate and financial crimes for leading media outlets, including ABC, CNN, CNBC, NPR, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and Newsweek. He lives is Houston, Texas.  

Bruce Kelly is the news editor for InvestmentNews, the leading trade publication for the investment advice business. An award winning journalist, Kelly writes about Wall Street, securities regulation, brokerage firms, and fraud, and was covering the collapse of Ponzi schemes and damage to investors more than a year before Bernie Madoff admitted his $65 billion fraud in December 2008. He lives in New York City, New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

Ajamie, a top securities lawyer, and Kelly, news editor for Investment News, team up to recount true tales of financial frauds throughout history, which make for addictive if depressing reading. Ajamie's expertise in commercial litigation gives the reader an inside look at the complex strategies financial advisers, insurance agents, and even family members employ to fleece hapless individuals, focusing on the false emotional bonds con artists create with their victims in order to take advantage of them. For those who can wade through occasionally disjointed prose with some very jarring changes in tone, there are valuable lessons for readers who want to protect themselves from being swindled. In the wake of the Madoff scandal and the financial excesses that led to the recession of the past two years, this book will appeal to many readers angered by the financial services industry, the failures of the regulatory authorities, and rogue advisers.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1616080310
• ISBN 13: 9781616080310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320