Book description
Financial fraud, whether large or small is a persistent feature of the financial markets. If you scratch the surface of the investment world you’ll find a continuous stream of major financial scandals which are almost unbelievable in the sheer scale of their subterfuge.
The Con Men shines a spotlight on some of these gargantuan frauds from the last 25 years. It questions how these men did it, why they did it, how there were able to get away with it, proposes strategies and tactics so that the reader can avoid being swindled.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Table of Contents
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
-
Part One A brief but efficient history of trickery
- Chapter 1 The horror stories
- Bernie Madoff
- Allen Stanford
- Could you have spotted a problem?
- Lessons from the past
- If you can’t trust the analysts and the auditors, who can you trust?
- Chapter 2 Our touching need for confidence
- Insider trading
- Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine
- Robert Vesco
- Plus ça change ...
- Chapter 3 Shiny new inventions and old tricks
- Ponzi and ‘Pump and Dump’ schemes
- The SEC and Bernard Madoff
- Further SEC investigations
- Some frauds just never go away
-
Part Two Let’s go to work: the confidence men in action
- Chapter 4 Sharks or maniacs?
- Are some financial fraudsters psychopaths?
- Routine activity theory
- Nigerian scams – a different type of fraudster altogether?
- The problem with plausibility
- Chapter 5 Yielding to temptation: the Allen Stanford story
- Offshore jurisdictions
- Good old boys
- Making sense of Stanford
- Chapter 6 Shamanagement: financial wizardry to create paper profits
- The Olympus scandal
- The man who became the ‘Man from Del Monte’
- Investors versus business shamans
-
Part Three Why we get the swindlers we deserve
- Chapter 7 Some deadly sins of investment: trusting false prophets, investing for the Apocalypse and the money illusion
- Selling the sizzle, not the steak
- Gold bugs: waiting for Armageddon
- The money illusion
- You can fool some of the people all of the time ...
- Chapter 8 Moral hazard in the system
- The LIBOR scandal
- The swindling of Jefferson County, Alabama
- Surviving the banks
- Chapter 9 Due negligence: failing to do the analysis
- Harry Markopolos and Bernie Madoff
- A word on funds and funds of funds
- Due diligence always matters
-
Part Four How to avoid being swindled
- Chapter 10 Funds are not all the same!
- The Bayou hedge fund fraud
- Avoiding hedge fund fraud
- Chapter 11 All the books are cooked: the trouble with company accounts
- Legal differences
- Corporate governance from the investor’s point of view
- Company accounts
- Crazy Eddie
- Enron
- Investors and accounts
- Chapter 12 Safer strategies
- The first line of defence against fraud
- Lower your expectations
- Asset allocation
- Afterword
- Further reading
- Index
- Imprint
Product information
- Title: The Con Men
- Author(s):
- Release date: July 2013
- Publisher(s): FT Publishing International
- ISBN: 9780273751786
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