Milton Public Library

Empire of deception, from Chicago to Nova Scotia : the incredible story of a master swindler who seduced a city and captivated a nation, Dean Jobb

eng

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non fiction

Empire of deception

electronic resource

dictionaries

Dean Jobb

from Chicago to Nova Scotia : the incredible story of a master swindler who seduced a city and captivated a nation

In the tradition of bestselling books like The Devil in the White City and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, Empire of Deception combines investigative journalism and captivating storytelling to examine one of the greatest con men of the twentieth century. It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it more mad than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. As Model Ts rumbled down Michigan Avenue, gang war shootings announced Al Capone's rise to underworld domination. Bedecked partygoers thronged to the Drake Hotel's opulent banquet rooms, corrupt politicians held court in thriving speakeasies, and the frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people (who should have known better) to invest as much as $30 million-upwards of $400 million today-in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama. It was an ingenious deceit, one that out-ponzied Charles Ponzi himself, who only a few years earlier had been arrested for a pyramid scheme. Leo had a good run-his was perhaps the longest fraud in history-and when his enterprise finally collapsed in 1923, he vanished. The Cook County state's attorney, a man whose lust for power equaled Leo's own lust for money, began an international manhunt that lasted almost a year. When finally apprehended, Leo was living a life of luxury in Nova Scotia under the assumed identity of a book dealer and literary critic. A salacious court hearing followed, and his mysterious death in a Chicago prison rivaled the rest of his almost too-bizarre-to-believe life. Destined to become an instant historical true crime classic, Empire of Deception is timeless and riveting

adult