Evil Corp: Allstate Insurance, Shadow Networks, and the Corruption of a Major American City

It was a tantalizing theory.
A powerful business consultant had just told Allstate Insurance Company executives that if they were willing to do "whatever it takes," they could make big profits by essentially embezzling their customers' money. To fully test that theory, Allstate executives would eventually go in search of the perfect city. They would need a local government with few regulations, a corruptible governing class, an ignored citizenry, and a self-satisfied, malleable press.

Welcome to San Antonio, Texas.

In 2009, two cars collided at a busy San Antonio intersection. Both vehicles were insured by Allstate. It should have been a routine insurance claim. Instead, it led the author on a frightful 12-year odyssey that ultimately exposed how emboldened criminal networks use essential institutions to prey on American citizens. EVIL CORP shows how greed, arrogance, and self-interest rendered local authorities incapable of protecting citizens from organized crime in America's seventh-largest city. And it is the story of how one of the country's largest insurers devised a bizarre plot to exploit those failures in its insatiable quest for more profits and power. In this harrowing, first-person account, award-winning investigative journalist Denise McVea gives the reader a street-side view of the corruption and self-dealing that is threatening an increasingly vulnerable nation. EVIL CORP is the blistering tale of how the "worst insurance company in America" took center stage in a sprawling criminal conspiracy.

This is a true story.