The Con Men

Table of Contents

1. Cover
2. Title
3. Table of Contents
4. About the author
5. Acknowledgements
6. Introduction
7. Part One A brief but efficient history of trickery
   1. Chapter 1 The horror stories
   2. Bernie Madoff
   3. Allen Stanford
   4. Could you have spotted a problem?
   5. Lessons from the past
   6. If you can’t trust the analysts and the auditors, who can you trust?
   7. Chapter 2 Our touching need for confidence
   8. Insider trading
   9. Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine
   10. Robert Vesco
   11. Plus ça change ...
   12. Chapter 3 Shiny new inventions and old tricks
   13. Ponzi and ‘Pump and Dump’ schemes
   14. The SEC and Bernard Madoff
   15. Further SEC investigations
   16. Some frauds just never go away
8. Part Two Let’s go to work: the confidence men in action
   1. Chapter 4 Sharks or maniacs?
   2. Are some financial fraudsters psychopaths?
   3. Routine activity theory
   4. Nigerian scams – a different type of fraudster altogether?
   5. The problem with plausibility
   6. Chapter 5 Yielding to temptation: the Allen Stanford story
   7. Offshore jurisdictions
   8. Good old boys
   9. Making sense of Stanford
   10. Chapter 6 Shamanagement: financial wizardry to create paper profits
   11. The Olympus scandal
   12. The man who became the ‘Man from Del Monte’
   13. Investors versus business shamans
9. Part Three Why we get the swindlers we deserve
   1. Chapter 7 Some deadly sins of investment: trusting false prophets, investing for the Apocalypse and the money illusion
   2. Selling the sizzle, not the steak
   3. Gold bugs: waiting for Armageddon
   4. The money illusion
   5. You can fool some of the people all of the time ...
   6. Chapter 8 Moral hazard in the system
   7. The LIBOR scandal
   8. The swindling of Jefferson County, Alabama
   9. Surviving the banks
   10. Chapter 9 Due negligence: failing to do the analysis
   11. Harry Markopolos and Bernie Madoff
   12. A word on funds and funds of funds
   13. Due diligence always matters
10. Part Four How to avoid being swindled
    1. Chapter 10 Funds are not all the same!
    2. The Bayou hedge fund fraud
    3. Avoiding hedge fund fraud
    4. Chapter 11 All the books are cooked: the trouble with company accounts
    5. Legal differences
    6. Corporate governance from the investor’s point of view
    7. Company accounts
    8. Crazy Eddie
    9. Enron
    10. Investors and accounts
    11. Chapter 12 Safer strategies
    12. The first line of defence against fraud
    13. Lower your expectations
    14. Asset allocation
11. Afterword
12. Further reading
13. Index
14. Imprint