Lying for Money

Dan Davies

Language: English

Publisher: Scribner

Published: Mar 9, 2021

Description:

An entertaining, deeply informative explanation of how high-level financial crimes work, written by an industry insider who's an expert in the field.
The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds.

Financial crime seems horribly complicated, but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what's theirs. In Lying for Money, veteran regulatory economist and market analyst Dan Davies tells the story of fraud through a genealogy of financial malfeasance, including: the Great Salad Oil swindle, the Pigeon King International fraud, the fictional British colony of Poyais in South America, the Boston Ladies' Deposit Company, the Portuguese Banknote Affair, Theranos, and the Bre-X scam. Davies brings new insights into these schemes and shows how all frauds, current and historical,...