Lying For Money

How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World

By: Dan Davies

Narrated by: Tim Paige

An entertaining, deeply informative explanation of how high-level financial crimes work, written “with verve and wit” (The Sunday Times, London) by an industry insider who’s an expert in the field.

The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds.

Financial crime seems horribly complicated, but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what’s theirs. In Lying for Money, veteran regulatory economist and market analyst Dan Davies tells the story of fraud through a genealogy of financial malfeasance, including: the Great Salad Oil Swindle, the Pigeon King International fraud, the fictional British colony of Poyais in South America, the Boston Ladies’ Deposit Company, the Portuguese Banknote Affair, Theranos, and the Bre-X scam.

Davies brings new insights into these schemes and shows how all frauds, current and historical, belong to one of four categories (“long firm,” counterfeiting, control fraud, and market crimes) and operate on the same basic principles. The only elements that change are the victims, the scammers, and the terminology.

Revealing some of the most famous frauds of the modern age, Davies explains how fraud has shaped the entire development of the modern world economy. Those “who like their true-crime stories laced with economics will enjoy these forays into the dark side” (Kirkus Reviews); this is a gripping and vivid look at modern market societies.

Fraud…can’t beat it all unless you want zero profit

Interesting case studies of old and relatively new. It got bogged down around the 2/3 mark with some obtuse economic theory. Performance was good but I thought the cadence was a bit ‘synthetic’ at times as if auto-generated.

Fascinating

This is some very smart analysis and history from an informed guy. Listen to get a deeper perspective on how fraud works and what generates it.

Recurring themes very powerful examples

I very much enjoyed the parallels the author draws between schemes perpetuated throughout time to illustrate their similarities

Not bad book. Worth listening to.

starts strong but looses something by the end. worth it for the description of how ad markets work and don't work. but is less convincing on the way they could crash in a similar way to the sub prime mortgage crash.

A masterpiece -- no lie!

The whole world of fraud in all shades and degrees is here. And, it is fun to listen to. The narrator has a sly, slinky, smirky tone that fits the subject like a glove. I read the print version first, and the audio is even better. The stories flow perfectly, one to another. Here is a graduate degree in fraud.