The Pretender: Martin Frankel and the Lost Millions (A Wall Street journal book) [Hardcover]

For starters, Frankel would never make it as a character in a novel; he and his even temporary success are just too unlikely. He was, indeed, vastly knowledgeable about the financial world he moved into. He was good at picking successful trades. But besides being generally amoral, his great fault as a trader was an almost comic one: he could not trade. Once he had accounts and investments to make, he froze. But he must have talked a good game to get financiers interested in him, and women interested in his sadomasochistic hobbies. Instead of making money on trades, he was essentially making it by looking constantly for new investors so that he could pay off the most recent ones and could continue to produce bogus quarterly reports which showed how many millions he was pulling in. He used the services of a celebrity priest to try to tap the vast resources of the Catholic Church in what would have been for him a huge money laundering scheme. Instead, of course, the house of cards eventually fell down, taking Frankel with it, along with real con men and other conned men.

Pollack's story is of one spectacular financial crime of the nineties. There is no pedantry here about how such crimes are to be avoided, but it is frankly amazing that regulators and usually savvy business investors allowed themselves enough laziness or greediness to be convinced by a very unappealing character. It was a time of the dot.com phenomenon, and "the millionaire next door." There never has been a time when get-rich-quick schemes weren't there, ready to take money from the credulous. Frankel's story, however, with remarkable details, cameos from famous politicians and businessmen, and silly sexual exploits, represents a unique, diverting, and worrisome contemporary variation on the theme.

Frankel was a shy, slight built man with minimal self-confidence. While very young, he developed an interest in the stock market and performed substantial research. Living in a small Ohio town, this took on somewhat of a mystique and people assumed he knew more than they did and would entrust him with money. Amazingly, once he had this money, he complained of "traders block" and executed very few trades. Oh well, there was still something else he could do with the money. Spend it. Amazingly, this guy parlays this Ponzi scheme into an insurance empire all the time spending the investments of the companies. It's absolutely amazing he was able to do this.

Even more bizarre, the goober then develops an interest in S&M sex. Well, since he has no social skills, he puts ads in alternative newspapers. When he meets the girls and none resemble Playmates, he quickly moves through them but keeps them on payroll. Imagine a Mormon and his wives but he isn't married and all them women want to marry him for money. What a crazy cast of characters!!!!

This book will make you want to be a thief once you see how easy it was for this idiot. The writer did an excellent research job consistent with her past as a Wall Street Journal reporter. I recommend this book if you like business "whodunits".