Craig Glazer was an ordinary college student when he planned and successfully executed his first fake sting to get back at some drug dealers who had robbed him. The rush he got from the experience led him and a crew of 11 accomplices to mastermind a two-year, 33-sting spree that stretched coast to coast, posing as everything from local police to IRS agents and hotel managers. Glazer and Donald Woodbeck, his partner in crime, sniffed out some of the...

Provides a detailed account of the life of Bernie Madoff and his sixty-five-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, examining interviews and details from court filings, lawsuits, and government investigations, and discussing the suicides, fractured families, and other personal disasters that have occurred since Madoff's downfall in 2009.

"On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship-...

"A thrilling true crime caper, bursting with colorful characters and awash in '70s glamour, that spotlights the FBI's first white-collar undercover sting 1977, the Thunderbird Motel. J.J. Wedick and Jack Brennan--two fresh-faced, maverick FBI agents--were about to embark on one of their agency's first wire-wearing undercover missions. Their target? Charismatic, globetrotting con man Phil Kitzer, whom some called the world's greatest swindler. From...

Ferdinand Ward was the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. Through his unapologetic villainy, he bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and ran roughshod over the entire world of finance. Arriving in New York at the age of 21, armed with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, he made himself the business partner of the former president. He turned out to be a complete fraud, his entire life marked by dishonesty, cowardice, and contempt for anything...