Burning Bellatorum

The Story of a Forty Million Dollar Fraud and Its Priceless Lessons for Investors and Entrepreneurs

By: Chris Bentley

Narrated by: Peter Drew

Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

On April 9, 2021, Chris wrote an email to his stakeholders, admitting having squandered millions of investor dollars as the CEO of Bellatorum Resources, a Texas-based energy fund.

Burning Bellatorum is a brutally honest story written down in Chris’ own words as he reflects upon his journey, explains his decisions, and articulates exactly why and how he orchestrated the fraud. With Bellatorum’s story as the backdrop, he brings to light invaluable lessons for novice to intermediate investors, fund managers, and entrepreneurs, reminding them of their core responsibilities and fine-tuning their mindsets in the fundamentals of wealth.

Part-memoir and part-manual, Burning Bellatorum is both a riveting tale and a handy guide, reinforcing and summarizing sensible investment and business practices that listeners ought to follow. With the hope of preventing others from making the same mistakes, Chris answers many common “how-to” questions with anecdotes and insights from his journey.

Burning Bellatorum provides its listeners with caution and inspiration, leaving them with actionable takeaways, specifically to preserve wealth, scale businesses efficiently, spot management irregularities, and prevent fraud.

Download and listen today.

Narrated by the author.

©2022 Chris Bentley (P)2022 Chris Bentley

Great book on ethics, risk, and accountability!

I love this book! Chris Bentley shares his journey from serving in the United States Marine Corps to leading a multi-million dollar company in the oil and gas industry, explaining the mistakes he made which eventually led to his downfall. As I read it, I could feel the stress build with each illegal decision the author made, knowing he was digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble. Bentley explains his decisions, providing insight into ethical dilemmas he faced to keep the company afloat, while accepting full responsibility for his actions. He also opens up to share his struggle with mental health and suicide throughout this experience, while providing inspiration to the reader. The lessons in this book are invaluable for investors and future entrepreneurs, but they're also applicable to all of us.

Amazing Story and Very Educational

Amazing story of a proven leader. I know this is just a bump in the road and very exciting to what the future holds for you my friend.

Learn from this man’s failure

It takes courage to admit wrong-doing and even more so, to talk about it. Chris puts his story in very sobering light and his account of it, in hopes that he’ll reach some people with the same moral dilemma is respectable. We all have moments of weakness that may cause us to fall prey to our own ego and internal demons. This book talks about it and it talks about trying to avoid it and what could be done if he had to do it over again. It offers a lot of nuggets of wisdom for the would-be entrepreneur or investor or CEO, or like me, just a regular person trying to constantly evaluate myself and my place on this earth. I urge anyone who is a fan of business, self-help, discipline and continuous improvement to read (or listen) to this book. I’m a fan of Chris’s honest and sincere tone, appreciate that he’s a war veteran and fellow Marine. Let us believe in forgiveness and redemption in this life, not be so hard on others or ourselves.

Great read for all investors!

I enjoyed the story with the initial background of the beginning and the rise and fall of the company. The following chapters consist of educational content that are helpful for all potential investor, fund manager and entrepreneurs. Definitely, worth reading. This book should be a mandatory for business school.