Dark Forces

Prisoners of Wealth

Situated in the tiny village of Sag Harbor on the Long Island Sound, Martin "Marty" Grimes and his colleague, Sal Persico, are retained by a Russian oligarch to protect his financial and reputational interests. The oligarch, married to the niece of the head of the KGB directorate in Moscow, is implicated in a massive pyramid Ponzi scheme involving an international food purveyor with business in the former Soviet Union. The bank in Moscow, owned by the oligarch, is a conduit for the KGB to launder money on behalf of the political elites. When Grimes digs deeper into this scheme, he uncovers a pump-and-dump stock fraud involving the oligarch's brother-in-law. The oligarch's wife, Galina, is found dead in her hotel room in New York City. Persico, retained to defend her brother-in-law who mysteriously disappears, is considered a "person of interest" in Galina’s death.
Knowing the emotional costs and legal entanglements of conducting investigations on behalf of Russian oligarchs, Grimes attempts to remove himself from what Persico envisions as his newest moneymaking machine. Throughout these investigations, Grimes confronts moral and legal dilemmas that test his loyalty to Persico, his clients, and, ultimately, the rule of law.
Grimes presents a true-to-life tutorial on how and why con artists evade the long arm of the law with impunity. The Byzantine machinations of an overwhelmed and outdated criminal justice system confronting the psychological and economic consequences of white-collar crime are exposed. With cryptocurrency and AI technology spreading globally, the world is the con artist’s newly discovered oyster.