Con Artists Memoir

Guilty Admissions weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with preschool; nonstop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.

This novel take on the history of wine reveals that, whether by adding toxic sweeteners or passing off counterfeit bottles, wine fraud is abundant—and as old as wine itself. Vintage Crime will intrigue even the most sated of wine drinkers with its juicy tales of deception, raising interesting questions along the way: what counts as wine, why do we drink it, and what makes a wine truly authentic?

After Kevin Corley’s military career came to an ill-fated end, he answered another call of duty, unaware that he was walking into a ruse orchestrated by one of the government’s most enterprising agents. John Leonard was posing online as an underworld figure to entrap those who were predisposed to crime. When he lured Lieutenant Corley into his scheme, he didn’t know how wrong it would go. And Corley had no idea he had so much left to lose.

For more than 60 years, Southern Californians entrusted the bodies of their loved ones to the Sconce family's Lamb Funeral Home. But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. Featured on ABC-TV's Nightline.

On the 24th of February 1994, police knocked on the door of an aging house in the English town of Gloucester. They'd come to serve a search warrant in the case of a missing girl - the daughter of the house's inhabitants. What they uncovered would shock the world: decades of child abuse, an underground torture chamber, and a burial ground containing the bodies of the spent victims of the torture - including that of the missing daughter.

When Mark Kilroy vanished while on spring break in Matamoros, Mexico, the search for the missing pre-med student led to a gruesome discovery on a lonely stretch of land called Rancho Santa Elena: a mass grave containing Mark's mutilated corpse along with the remains of thirteen other people. The investigation uncovered how the victims were brutally killed at the hands of drug trafficker and cult leader Adolpho Constanzo, known by his followers as El Padrino, or The Godfather.

On December 9, 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her Durham, NC home. Her scalp was laced with deep incisions, and her blood was strewn from outside to inside the house. The sinister truth of that night turned her murder into North Carolina's most enigmatic criminal case, capturing media attention across the globe.

He was a cunning Berkeley Law grad who lost his job and hatched a con. Then he got rich and ran fast on an outlandish Adderall-fueled rush of stolen cash, multiple identities, and a euphoric fantasy of success. A Ponzi scheme was exposed, and a prominent Manhattan hedge fund imploded. Enterprising intern and financial wizard-in-training Gerti Muho saw it as an opportunity. He had insider knowledge and a knack for fraud, embezzlement, and identity theft. His steady supply of falsified prescriptions helped. Muho was on a luxury high. His luck seemed bottomless.

Learn about investment traps with an insight into fraudulent Ponzi Schemes with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series. A Ponzi scheme is an illegal business practice. Investors are recruited into a Ponzi scheme and offered excellent returns over time for little or no risk. The operator of a Ponzi scheme relies on further recruitment of investors to accumulate funds. Earlier investors are repaid with later investor's money. They have also been described as Pyramid Schemes.

It is often difficult to comprehend what makes a person kill. But when they kill and then commit further acts of depravity on their victim, it gives a whole new meaning to wrongdoing. In volume three of the True Crime Stories, we examine murderers who have all displayed the same gut-churning, wicked twist - each of them ate their victims. Each of these violent killers is examined in detail, including their backgrounds, the crimes they committed, and how they were brought to justice.

The dust had yet to settle on the global financial crisis in 2009 when an unlikely Wharton grad set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. At the centre of this fraud was Jho Low--a character so preposterous he seems made up. Federal agents who helped unravel Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme say the Jho Low affair, when its full contours become known, will become a textbook case for tracking transnational fraud in the modern age.

In this fifth volume of his True Crime series, Germany's bestselling True Crime author, Adrian Langenscheid, unleashes a heart-pounding, addictive reading yet again. A breathtaking and deeply harrowing portrait of the human abyss, it arouses powerful emotions with its chilling, matter-of-fact descriptions. Free from sensationalism, eighteen True Crime short stories retell some of the most spectacular French criminal cases in recent decades. A gripping collection of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, abuse, fraud, betrayal, and theft accounts that take the reader to the limits of the bearable.

The six true-crime stories included in this collection are dark and chilling, and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

Bobby and Cheryl Love were living in Brooklyn, happily married for decades, when the FBI and NYPD appeared at their door and demanded to know from Bobby, in front of his shocked wife and children: “What is your name? No, what’s your real name?” Bobby’s thirty-eight-year secret was out. As a Black child in the Jim Crow South, Bobby found himself in legal trouble before his 14th birthday. Sparked by the desperation he felt in the face of limited options and the pull of the streets, Bobby became a master thief.

When Speaker Newt Gingrich greeted Dr. David Lewis in his office overlooking the National Mall, he looked at Dr. Lewis and said: "You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?" "I know," Dr. Lewis replied, "I just hope to stay out of prison." Gingrich had just read Dr. Lewis' commentary in Nature, titled "EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics".

A Jacket Off the Gorge peels back the layers of the criminal mind, revealing a fascinating look at one man's struggles within himself and with others. Jon's story raises questions about incarceration versus rehabilitation, lack of mental health treatment for offenders, and abuses by those we entrust to uphold the law.

Napoleon famously observed that "history is a set of lies agreed upon", and Edward Steers Jr. investigates six of the most amazing frauds ever to gain wide acceptance in this engrossing book. The controversies that Steers presents show that there are two major factors involved in the success of a hoax or forgery - greed and the desire to believe.

This is the story of an unforgivable con man. Vulnerable families were his prey. His promise was an impossible dream and a lie. Peter Candlewood understood the system. That’s how he could commute prison sentences and reunite hopeless families with incarcerated loved ones. For a price. Except there was no Candlewood. No hope. Just a lowly Texas con artist who bet on the desperate - and won. And he wasn’t working alone. The multimillion-dollar deception cost the betrayed more than their savings.

If you’re familiar with the previous books in the True Crime Case Histories series, you already know that I start each book with a brief warning. Real true crime is not for everyone. The stories in this book represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. Television crime shows and news articles often skip the gruesome parts of true crime stories. The real details are just too grisly for the average viewer or reader.

Shortly after John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, he was tracked down and shot by authorities - that's what was officially reported, anyway. Lawyer Finis L. Bates, however, decided to set the record straight when he reported that in 1870 his acquaintance "John St. Helen" revealed himself to be none other than Booth living under an alter ego. Bates' version of the story is this: a hushed-up escape led Booth to 38 years of secret identities and an eventual suicide in an Oklahoma hotel. In this historical text, Bates unpacks the surprising truth about this infamous assassin.