Billionaire Casino

The following two paragraphs are from this Wannabe Billionaire: Arun Pudur's Tech Fortune May Be Largely Fiction:

From a Kuala Lumpur office, 38-year-old Arun Pudur is building an international business empire, or so he says. The flagship of his Pudur Corp., he says, competes with Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec and other technology giants with copycat products that he promotes as cheaper, faster and less prone to viruses. Its biggest seller is a knockoff of Microsoft Office that he says boasts 25.6 million users, including U.S. multinationals such as General Electric, Krispy Kreme, MTV and Boeing.
After software there's mining. Pudur says he bought a gold mine in South Africa in January and that he aims to become the world's third-largest platinum producer in five years.
Five years ago, he says, he began trading liquefied natural gas in East Asia. He says he and a partner are developing a beach resort, casino and water theme park in Malawi.
He says he's invested $10.2 million in Genesis Telecom, which he describes as an underwater-cable operator that will supply 30% of all Internet service to Indonesia.
All in all, Pudur Corp. claims it operates in 20 industries and 70 countries--generating $13.4 billion in revenue last year and reaping $3.6 billion in net profits.
Bloomberg had him speak in December at its ASEAN Business Summit in Bangkok. The topic: Entrepreneurship: Turning Ideas Into Global Success Stories. Earlier, Twitter included him in an e-book it published titled "Tweets From the Top," amid a collection from Asia-Pacific leaders, including South Korea President Park Geun-hye, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra.
Pudur certainly likes to call himself a billionaire, and he agrees with Wealth-X that he's worth $4 billion. As one of Pudur's tweets, hashtagged #lifelessons, says: "People buy you, your stories, your magic, never your products or services."

Now, all this looks very promising (Not!). We have got another person who will follow in the prestigious, honest and hardworking footsteps of Ambani and Adani (/s). However, there are some vital things missing....

However, Pudur's business empire--and his billions--may be largely fiction. FORBES ASIA e-mailed 25 people on a list supplied by Pudur Corp. of customers, distributor-partners and business associates. None of those who responded corroborated the supposed scale of his operation. Nearly half used Gmail, Yahoo or other personal e-mail addresses instead of company or official addresses. Some did not turn up in online searches and were invisible on professional networks such as LinkedIn and CrunchBase.
Suspicions were first raised when our reporter visited the company headquarters in December to interview Pudur. For a business putatively so large, its profile in downtown Kuala Lumpur is notably low-key. Its offices occupy just one part of the 7th floor in a 26-story building. There are no exterior signs proclaiming its presence. Inside, when a visitor wants to use a restroom, it turns out to be a facility shared with other tenants at the end of a maze of corridors. Pudur says his operation has only 132 employees, which is remarkable given that his flagship technology unit--Celframe--spent $1.6 billion on research & development in 2014, according to its latest annual report. But he says most of that work is outsourced and that there are another 13,700 "indirect" or remote workers.

If you read the article given above, you'll discover more of this person's "karnamas". All in all, this guy is just another mega-cheat and exactly like the fraud who was in the news very recently - Mr. B. R. Shetty. (You can read about him here - Two Indians and lax compliance brought trouble to UAE banks), just another pet-dog of Modi and the PR-BJP.
Now, what's amazing is that the said person is now just another Twitter troll - the blue tick one, whose sole purpose is to remove any sort of agency and influence that an Indian Muslim in the Gulf have to their disposal.
He has now resorted to doxxing Muslims living in the gulf and reporting them to the Ministry of External Affairs, India just because they were targeting the hypocrites leeching of Arab money and then posting Islamophobic content online - dehumanising the already vulnerable Indian Muslims. (Few cases like - Indian expat sacked and faces jail for insulting Islam.)
You can read here (https://twitter.com/arunpudustatus/1261663071644168192) how the degenerate takes pride in calling names to the Muslims they've doxxed - Ola/Uber, Jihadi, etc. Supposedly their aim is to deport him back to India and make him rot in prison. Like they've done recently with UAPA.
Inshallah, I don't think they'll be able to do anything to the said person as he hasn't committed any sort of crime (per UAE law) and there are enough Muslims to help him there.
Things to note here is that:

1. There is a systematic hierarchy being followed by these Indian "dharmic" patriots/trolls on reducing the Indian Muslim to nothing - so that no one is able to hear their point of view.
2. Popular social media channels like Twitter, Quora and Facebook have been completely hacked on behest of the government. A lot of times, you can see a Sanghi commenting first on any sort of post related to Islam before a Muslim.
3. They think they can go scot-free but there has been immense backlash from Muslims world-wide and this is not going well with them, therefore this supposed billionaires(lol) are being employed by the IT cell to target muslims and give impetus to the Rs. 2 per tweet troll army.
4. If you check his tweets, the said fraud has links with Vikas Pandey (twitter.com/ModifiedVikas) who once threatened SC lawyer on twitter who was fighting Ayodhya case. You can even listen to a Tedx talk by him here (check the comments and the like-dislike ratio to know how welcomed he was there)

Forgive my grammar and spelling mistakes.

Go ahead and type “I lost all my money at the casino” on a random search engine. You will see hundreds of results – this is one of the common search phrases of all gamblers. We all play, we all win, but we also all lose: Lost money at casino is a situation that will happen to you too sooner or later.
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Since we cannot escape from it, let’s try to look at this problem from different angles: Why did we lost a lot of money at casino? How can we cope with lost money at casino situation? And more importantly, how to get back money lost at casino, is it possible? In this article, you will find the answers to these questions and more.
Why You Lose Money at the Casino
Casinos can be a great pastime. They have something for everyone. If the thrill of spinning slots isn’t your thing, maybe you’d prefer doubling down at the blackjack table. When you win, it feels awesome; that’s the appeal that brings people to the casinos in the first place.
While it’s fun to win, we all have our losing streaks. Sometimes we lose a lot. I once lost $100 in 10 minutes at a video poker machine. We’ve all heard of the house edge, but is it possible to increase your own edge? We’re about to shed some light on the situation. With a little luck, you’ll be able to turn your fortune around. Here’s why you lose money at the casino.
Your Bankroll Management Isn’t What It Should Be: Managing your bankroll is the most important thing you can do at the casino. We all want to bet big on the games. After all, the bigger the bet, the bigger the win. The problem is you can’t guarantee a win every time. You can’t even guarantee a win every dozen games. If you have a bankroll of $60 and lose three $20 bets, you just blew through your whole budget in two minutes.
Take into consideration how long you want to play. If you’ve got a bankroll of $60, why not split it into smaller bets of $1 per hand? At least this way, you’ll get to play 60 rounds and stand a stronger chance of winning. The rewards may be smaller, but you’ll get a lot more entertainment playing two hours than two minutes.
You’re Playing the Wrong Games: This may seem like a silly thing to say, but you might be playing the wrong games. If you’re losing every time, you might want to try something new.
When you’re selecting a casino game, it’s important to consider the house edge. In general, finding a game with a lower house edge gives you better chance of winning. If you’re used to luck-based games like slots or roulette, you might want to try skill-based games like blackjack or video poker.
In fact, video poker is a really good choice for machine players. Slot machines can vary in regard to house edge, ranging between a low of 5% and a high of 30%. With Jacks or Better video poker, you will recover 99.54% of your money throughout your lifetime. Add in a lifetime of comped drinks, and you’ve made out like a bandit.
You’re Using a Failing Strategy: Many people search for casino game strategies. You’ve probably done it yourself at one time or another. The problem with a lot of strategies is that you either have to be an expert player with a spreadsheet of numbers in your head, or you need a massive bankroll.
Don’t fall into the mindset of thinking, “Well, if I use this system, it’s bound to work in the end.” We do not recommend counting cards or increasing your bet after every loss. Unless you’re a billionaire with a near-unlimited bankroll, those are losing strategies. Unless you have unlimited money, you cannot beat the house, period.
Casinos know these strategies don’t work. You can almost see the curt smile on the dealer’s face as you double your bet again and again. Instead of using a strategy like this, manage your bankroll in the ways noted earlier. Be smart about it.
You’re Trying Too Hard to Regain Losses: While there are some skill-based games, casinos are all about luck. You’re going to suffer losses along the way. Even professional gamblers cannot guarantee they’ll always win, because gambling relies on a certain amount of luck. Don’t let a loss or a losing streak get to you.
It’s common for players to suffer a loss and then start throwing out higher bets without thinking. You need to remain logical and, again, manage your bankroll effectively. Casino gaming should be fun. If you get angry or stressed, it’s time to stop. Don’t throw away everything you have left in an attempt to get even. It’s not going to work. Never has, never will.
Cope With Gambling and Casino Loss
Coping with gambling loss can be challenging, especially if you are a beginner. Believe it or not, this can be as hard as grieving for the loss of a relative. In order to cope with your gambling losses, you must first accept that losing is perfectly normal while gambling. Everybody loses, even professional players. So accepting that losing money gambling is not the end of the world is important: This happens to every player out there. But if this is especially hard for you and you feel an urge to keep gambling, you may have an addiction problem. In this case:
Stop gambling immediately. There is no such thing as “less gambling” for addicts. You must stop gambling, period. Take advantage of the responsible gaming practices of online casinos. You can put self-exclusions on your account and limit your budget, game time, and even the game categories you can play. Use these tools to limit yourself.
Do not try to cover your losses by playing more games. We said “stop gambling” for a reason. The majority of addicts keep gambling because they think that “playing one more game will cover all of their losses”. This is wrong and a dangerous approach. If you continue to gamble, you may lose more: There is no guarantee that you will win this time. And continuing the same habit will just make the problem bigger.
Face the consequences. Losing money at gambling will have lots of consequences, especially if you surpassed your budget. Your stress levels will increase and you will have problems in relations with your loved ones. Almost 99% of addicts try to hide their losses but this will just make everything worse. Talk to your loved ones, make sure they know about the situation, and face the consequences. Yes, it will be hard but it is mandatory: Recognizing your problem and sharing it with your loved ones is the first (and most important) step of coping with gambling losses.
Get professional help if needed. No matter where you live, you can find an organization that is ready to help you with your problem. It can be Gamblers Anonymous, Gam Care, or Problem Gambling CA – there are professionals out there who are ready to help you, free of charge. Join one of these programs and don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Once again, the suggestions above apply to addicts – not casual gamblers. If you are fine with the fact that losing is a part of gambling and there is no way to avoid it, there is no problem: As long as you respect your budget and control yourself, gambling can be a fun hobby.
Will A Casino Give Your Money Back?
And now, let’s continue with the obvious question: How to recover lost money from casino? Is this possible? Can you still take something back for lost money at casino?
The short answer is no. And you already know this: No casino (or online casino) will refund your money just because you lost. Remember that these are called “games of chance” for a reason. The operators do not guarantee any winnings and you cannot take your losses back. Do you go to the betting booth after losing a sports bet and ask for your money back? It is the same principle: Lost money online casino (or land-based casino) won’t be refunded, period.
There is only one scenario in which the answer to how to recover lost money in casino question is yes: Fraud. If your account is hacked and a third party used your balance to play games, then yes, the casino may choose to refund your losses. However:
This is not mandatory. The casino may not choose to refund your losses even if you can prove that your account is hacked. Proving a hack is harder than you think. The majority of players who lost try to use this excuse, and we do not know even a single case where the casino accepted a hack really happened.
Hire a Funds Recovery Expert: Best Way to Recover Lost Money At Casino
You may be tempted to use a chargeback. But you know how chargeback option works: If you used a credit card to pay for something, you can always put a chargeback order and get your money back – as long as you did not receive the goods. In this case, the refund is done by the bank itself, not the merchant. So, is this a way to recover lost money at casino?
Simply put, no. Chargeback feature is useful, but only if you did not receive something for the payment you made. When such a claim is issued, the payment provider asks the merchant to send the proof of delivery. If you purchase a PC, for example, and the seller cannot prove that the delivery is made, sure, you can get your money back. Only a funds recovery expert will be able to help you recover money lost in casino.
Only a Funds Recovery Expert Can Help You Recover Your Money
The same thing goes for e-wallet payments too. They are even pickier than the banks, and we do not know of a single case where the e-wallet provider accepted the chargeback claim for gambling losses.
Overall, the best method that works everytime is hiring a Funds Recovery Expert, and the funds recovery expert we have personally used and recommend is - [email protected]. The answer to how to recover lost money in casino question is still “you can’t”. Use the chargeback bonus if you want constant refunds – that’s the only thing you can do. So send your request via email to - [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

I love the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was my fav growing up. Since then, I've founded several startups, was employee #3 at a $65m VC firm in SF, and realized that there is a similar phenomenon to what Robert Kiyosaki is talking about in Rich Dad Poor Dad currently occurring in Silicon Valley.
Let's tastefully call this phenomenon: Rich Founder Poor Founder.
The point of entrepreneurship is freedom. Yes it’s to build cool shit and innovate and all that, but at the end of the day the sort of person who becomes an entrepreneur is usually doing it because they want freedom to control their day and work on the things they care about.
A lot of people go out and start their first business and try to make it a venture backed startup. That’s the wrong move. That’s like going to the gym and trying to bench 250 lbs on day one. It’s not that you can’t build up to that, it’s just not the right move today. I think the right move is to start a business that can make you $100k+ per year in profit. It doesn’t matter if it can’t scale past that, it’s about building that foundation to give you the freedom to try new things. Fail at those new things and it doesn’t matter as you have that financial foundation. It could be something as simple as a consulting or a services business, or a digital product like a course, newsletter or subscription podcast. Anything that is high margin, simple and enabled by the internet.
VC’s may shit on lifestyle businesses but at the end of the day they collect a 2% yearly management fee regardless of their success and typically have a great lifestyle (once their fund size is above $100m AUM).
Ask yourself what’s an easier path to wealth and freedom?
‍Path 1: Venture backed startup
90% chance of $0.
Small personal income until scale, IPO or liquidity event.
Massive dilution. Most founders end up owning 5%-20%. $500m market cap = $25m-$100m for founder(s).
OR
Path 2: Lifestyle business
50% - 75% chance of success.
Pay yourself whatever you want out of profits over time.
If you can bootstrap your way to $300k/yr in profit and invest half of that ($150k/yr) at 10%/yr for 20 years = $9.6m + $150k/yr salary to enjoy your life with your family and friends. After 20 years, you can choose to sell that business or automate it and let it ride but with $9.6m invested in a conservative portfolio paying out 5% annually = $480k/year in interest or $40k/mo for you to live off without ever touching the principal nor sacrificing quality of life.
The definition of rich is having passive income that’s greater than your burn. I’m pretty sure we can all comfortably live off $40k/mo without ever having to leave the house.
But wait this isn’t a fair analysis as venture backed startups typically reach scale or a liquidity event in 10 years and you did 20 years for the lifestyle business. Fair, I’m sure after 10 years most of us can comfortably live off $20k ish/mo without ever having to work or touch the principal investment.
Most entrepreneurs start with one goal in mind: freedom. If you value freedom, you should have one goal for your first company, and that’s to build a lifestyle business that can produce $100k+/yr of personal income. It can be boring and it doesn’t have to scale. It sets yourself up for the foreseeable future and then you can afford to take big swings. Forget startups. Forget venture capital. Build something that gets you in the game and makes you a living first.‍
I think VCs may underestimate the extent to which mainstream entrepreneurship is a key input to outliers and moonshots. So many successful billionaire founders had a “never worry about rent again” moment via an exit in a much more boring business before swinging for a home run.
Elon Musk — before sending rockets into space and revolutionizing the auto-industry, Elon Musk was broke building Zip2 (online city guides for newspapers) before he netted $22m on the sale. Source
Patrick & John Collison — built Auctimatic: auction management software for small Ebay sellers, and sold it for $5m before going on to found Stripe, valued at $36b. Source
Mark Cuban — Before building and selling Broadcast.com for $5.7b and buying the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban built a services business called MicroSolutions and sold it for $6m. Source
Mike Bloomberg — now worth $60b, Mike Bloomberg had a nice “never think about rent again” exit at 39 when Salomon was acquired by Phibro in 1981; he received $10 million. Bloomberg said “The Salomon Brothers did me the two greatest favours in my life. They hired me and they fired me.” Source
Daniel Ek — Spotify isn’t Ek’s first success. Daniel Ek became a self-made millionaire at age 23, before even putting a single thought into Spotify. At 23, Daniel Ek “retired” after he sold his online marketing company Advertigo to Swedish digital marketing firm TradeDoubler in a deal worth $1.25 million.
Alex Tew — started the Million Dollar Homepage to raise money for his university education. He sold 1 million pixels on a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid on his website for $1 per pixel. He ended up making $1,037,100 USD before founding the billion dollar meditation app, Calm.
Austin Allred — co-authored the growth hacking textbook Secret Sauce, which became a best-seller and provided him the personal seed money to build Lambda School, valued over $150m.
And countless others: Ev Williams (Blogger), Pincus (freeloader, support.com, tribe), Travis
Kalanick (Red Swoosh), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr), Jason Fried & DHH (37 Signals services business) etc.
All of these entrepreneurs built more of a lifestyle business or had a smaller liquidity event before they built a rocket (figuratively and literally for Elon). There is no greater security than knowing that no matter what risks you take, you have a business or enough cash in the bank to pay for your livelihood.
If you start by building a lifestyle business it will force you to build a product or offer a service that customers actually want. It forces you to create a monetization plan and it forces you to build a real business. By starting a lifestyle business it forces you to create something you’re passionate about and build an actual business that will actually help attract VC if that’s the path you choose to go down.
Renowned value investor and Warren Buffett mentor, Ben Graham, once said: “In the short-run, the stock market is a voting machine. But in the long-run, it is a weighing machine.”
AKA in the short term the market may value hype and narrative, but in the long term it always values real traction, revenue, earnings and margins.
We’re seeing this play out in the venture market today. In the last few years you may have heard startups raising at eyebrow lifting valuations and hiring large masses of employees. But behind the curtain their P&L is f*cked! They have little to f*ck all for revenue and huge expenses.
Founders often get attached to valuations and forget that when they sell the business, the weighing machine is the only thing that matters. The buyer has to have a way to pay themselves back, either via earnings, a future sale or strategic synergies.
Your venture valuation is irrelevant. Venture valuations aren’t backed by fundamentals and their funds have been compared to a ponzi scheme. Build a lifestyle business where results, traction, revenue, margins and earnings are the things that matter because at the end of the day, the numbers have to work with the weighing machine.
Pro tip: If you’re bootstrapping, you can still take advantage of venture capital by using all the VC subsidized software available on the market.
The internet is the greatest leveler of access to entrepreneurship society has ever seen. There is far too much focus on raising venture capital and creating 100–1000x outcomes and not nearly enough on leveraging the internet to empower entrepreneurs to build profitable and sustainable software-enabled lifestyle businesses.
TL;DR 'Rich Founder' is someone who creates a sustainable 'lifestyle business' with a high probability of success. 'Poor Founder' is someone who thinks they need to raise venture capital, a fancy office, big staff and a bunch of resources to succeed. Rich Founder has a probability of success and enjoys his/her life. Poor Founder is miserable and might as well go to a Casino and put it all down on Red 5.
As for my shameless plug: Here's a FREE community and resource hub to help more people become 'Rich Founders'.

By: Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies - May 30, 2020
Read the article here: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/05/30/who-are-the-secret-puppet-masters-behind-trumps-war-on-iran/
On May 6th, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside our conflicts to face down the common danger of the Covid-19 pandemic.
So what is it about Iran that makes it such a target of hostility for Trump and the neocons? There are many repressive regimes in the world, and many of them are close U.S. allies, so this policy is clearly not based on an objective assessment that Iran is more repressive than Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other monarchies in the Persian Gulf.
The Trump administration claims that its “maximum pressure” sanctions and threats of war against Iran are based on the danger that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. But after decades of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and despite the U.S.’s politicization of the IAEA, the Agency has repeatedly confirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
If Iran ever did any preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it was probably during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when the U.S. and its allies helped Iraq to make and use chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians. A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, the IAEA’s 2015 “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues” and decades of IAEA inspections have examined and resolved every scrap of false evidence of a nuclear weapons program presented or fabricated by the CIA and its allies.
If, despite all the evidence, U.S. policymakers still fear that Iran could develop nuclear weapons, then adhering to the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), keeping Iran inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and ensuring ongoing access by IAEA inspectors would provide greater security than abandoning the deal.
As with Bush’s false WMD claims about Iraq in 2003, Trump’s real goal is not nuclear non-proliferation but regime change. After 40 years of failed sanctions and hostility, Trump and a cabal of U.S. warhawks still cling to the vain hope that a tanking economy and widespread suffering in Iran will lead to a popular uprising or make it vulnerable to another U.S.-backed coup or invasion.

United against a Nuclear Iran and the Counter Extremism Project

One of the key organizations promoting and pushing hostility towards Iran is a shadowy group called United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI). Founded in 2008, it was expanded and reorganized in 2014 under the umbrella of the Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU) to broaden its attacks on Iran and divert U.S. policymakers’ attention away from the role of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other U.S. allies in spreading violence, extremism and chaos in the greater Middle East.
UANI acts as a private enforcer of U.S. sanctions by keeping a “business registry” of hundreds of companies all over the world—from Adidas to Zurich Financial Services—that trade with or are considering trading with Iran. UANI hounds these companies by naming and shaming them, issuing reports for the media, and urging the Office of Foreign Assets Control to impose fines and sanctions. It also keeps a checklist of companies that have signed a declaration certifying they do not conduct business in or with Iran. Proving how little they care about the Iranian people, UANI even targets pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations—includingBayer, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories—that have been granted special U.S. humanitarian aid licenses.

Where does UANI get its funds?

UANI was founded by three former U.S. officials, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and Mark Wallace. In 2013, it still had a modest budget of $1.7 million, nearly 80% coming from two Jewish-American billionaires with strong ties to Israel and the Republican Party: $843,000 from precious metals investor Thomas Kaplan and $500,000 from casino owner Sheldon Adelson. Wallace and other UANI staff have also worked for Kaplan’s investment firms, and he remains a key funder and advocate for UANI and its affiliated groups.
In 2014, UANI split into two entities: the original UANI and the Green Light Project, which does business as the Counter Extremism Project. Both entities are under the umbrella of and funded by a third, Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU). This permits the organization to brand its fundraising as being for the Counter Extremism Project, even though it still regrants a third of its funds to UANI.
CEO Mark Wallace, Executive Director David Ibsen and other staff work for all three groups in their shared offices in Grand Central Tower in New York. In 2018, Wallace drew a combined salary of $750,000 from all three entities, while Ibsen’s combined salary was $512,126.
In recent years, the revenues for the umbrella group, CEPU, have mushroomed, reaching $22 million in 2017. CEPU is secretive about the sources of this money. But investigative journalist Eli Clifton, who starting looking into UANI in 2014 when it was sued for defamation by a Greek ship owner it accused of violating sanctions on Iran, has found evidence suggesting financial ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That is certainly what hacked emails between CEPU staff, an Emirati official and a Saudi lobbyist imply. In September 2014, CEPU’s president Frances Townsend emailed the UAE Ambassador to the U.S. to solicit the UAE’s support and propose that it host and fund a CEPU forum in Abu Dhabi. Four months later, Townsend emailed again to thank him, writing, “And many thanks for your and Richard Mintz’ (UAE lobbyist) ongoing support of the CEP effort!” UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan has formed a close relationship with Emirati ruler Bin Zayed, and visited the UAE at least 24 times. In 2019, he gushed to an interviewer that the UAE and its despotic rulers “are my closest partners in more parts of my life than anyone else other than my wife.”
Another email from Saudi lobbyist and former Senator Norm Coleman to the Emirati Ambassador about CEPU’s tax status implied that the Saudis and Emiratis were both involved in its funding, which would mean that CEPU may be violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to register as a Saudi or Emirati agent in the U.S.
Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy has documented the dangerously unaccountable and covert expansion of the influence of foreign governments and military-industrial interests over U.S. foreign policy in recent years, in which registered lobbyists are only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to foreign influence. Eli Clifton calls UANI, “a fantastic case study and maybe a microcosm of the ways in which American foreign policy is actually influenced and implemented.”
CEPU and UANI’s staff and advisory boards are stocked with Republicans, neoconservatives and warhawks, many of whom earn lavish salaries and consulting fees. In the two years before President Trump appointed John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, CEPU paid Bolton $240,000 in consulting fees. Bolton, who openly advocates war with Iran, was instrumental in getting the Trump administration to withdraw from the nuclear deal.
UANI also enlists Democrats to try to give the group broader, bipartisan credibility. The chair of UANI’s board is former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, who was known as the most pro-Zionist member of the Senate. A more moderate Democrat on UANI’s board is former New Mexico governor and UN ambassador Bill Richardson.
Norman Roule, a CIA veteran who was the National Intelligence Manager for Iran throughout the Obama administration was paid $366,000 in consulting fees by CEPU in 2018. Soon after the brutal Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khassoghi, Roule and UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and Roule then played a leading role in articles and on the talk-show circuit whitewashing Bin Salman’s repression and talking up his superficial “reforms” of Saudi society.
More recently, amid a growing outcry from Congress, the UN and the European Union to ease U.S. sanctions on Iran during the pandemic, UANI chairman Joe Lieberman, CEPU president Frances Townsend and CEO Mark Wallace signed a letter to Trump that falsely claimed, “U.S. sanctions neither prevent nor target the supply of food, medicine or medical devices to Iran,” and begged him not to relax his murderous sanctions because of COVID-19.
This was too much for Norman Roule, who tossed out his UANI script and told the Nation, “the international community should do everything it can to enable the Iranian people to obtain access to medical supplies and equipment.”
Two Israeli shell companies to whom CEPU and UANI have paid millions of dollars in “consulting fees” raise even more troubling questions. CEPU has paid over $500,000 to Darlink, located near Tel Aviv, while UANI paid at least $1.5 million to Grove Business Consulting in Hod Hasharon, about 10% of its revenues from 2016 to 2018. Neither firm seems to really exist, but Grove’s address on UANI’s IRS filings appears in the Panama Papers as that of Dr. Gideon Ginossar, an officer of an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands that defaulted on its creditors in 2010.

Selling a corrupted picture to U.S. policymakers

UANI’s parent group, Counter Extremism Project United, presents itself as dedicated to countering all forms of extremism. But in practice, it is predictably selective in its targets, demonizing Iran and its allies while turning a blind eye to other countries with more credible links to extremism and terrorism.
UANI supports accusations by Trump and U.S. warhawks that Iran is “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” based mainly on its support for the Lebanese Shiite political party Hezbollah, whose militia defends southern Lebanon against Israel and fights in Syria as an ally of the government.
But Iran placed UANI on its own list of terrorist groups in 2019 after Mark Wallace and UANI hosted a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York that was mainly attended by supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Kalqh (MEK). The MEK is a group that the U.S. government itself listed as a terrorist organization until 2012 and which is still committed to the violent overthrow of the government in Iran – preferably by persuading the U.S. and its allies to do it for them. UANI tried to distance itself from the meeting after the fact, but the published program listed UANI as the event organizer.
On the other hand, there are two countries where CEPU and UANI seem strangely unable to find any links to extremism or terrorism at all, and they are the very countries that appear to be funding their operations, lavish salaries and shadowy “consulting fees”: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Many Americans are still demanding a public investigation into Saudi Arabia’s role in the crimes of September 11th. In a court case against Saudi Arabia brought by 9/11 victims’ families, the FBI recently revealed that a Saudi Embassy official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, provided crucial support to two of the hijackers. Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families whose father was killed on September 11th, told Yahoo News, “(This) demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”
The global spread of the Wahhabi version of Islam that unleashed and fueled Al Qaeda, ISIS and other violent Muslim extremist groups has been driven primarily by Saudi Arabia, which has built and funded Wahhabi schools and mosques all over the world. That includes the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles that the two 9/11 hijackers attended.
It is also well documented that Saudi Arabia has been the largest funder and arms supplier for the Al Qaeda-led forces that have destroyed Syria since 2011, including CIA-brokered shipments of thousands of tons of weapons from Benghazi in Libya and at least eight countries in Eastern Europe. The UAE also supplied arms funding to Al Qaeda-allied rebels in Syria between 2012 and 2016, and the Saudi and UAE roles have now been reversed in Libya, where the UAE is the main supplier) of thousands of tons of weapons to General Haftar’s rebel forces. In Yemen, both the Saudis and Emiratis have committed war crimes. The Saudi and Emirati air forces have bombed schools, clinics, weddings and school buses, while the Emiratis tortured detainees in 18 secret prisons in Yemen.
But United Against a Nuclear Iran and Counter Extremism Project have redacted all of this from the one-sided worldview they offer to U.S. policymakers and the American corporate media. While they demonize Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as extremists and terrorists, they depict Saudi Arabia and the UAE exclusively as victims of terrorism and allies in U.S.-led “counterterrorism” campaigns, never as sponsors of extremism and terrorism or perpetrators of war crimes.
The message of these groups dedicated to “countering extremism” is clear and none too subtle: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are always U.S. allies and victims of extremism, never a problem or a source of danger, violence or chaos. The country we should all be worrying about is – you guessed it – Iran. You couldn’t pay for propaganda like this! But on the other hand, if you’re Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and you have greedy, corrupt Americans knocking on your door eager to sell their loyalty, maybe you can.

This is my third list for this sub. I hope you enjoy it.
ART THIEVES, FORGERS, SMUGGLERS.
The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason. A true story about the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and how they conspired to cheat their clients out of millions of dollars.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace. The most expensive bottle of wine and the conflicting reports about its history. This is a book that would enchant wine conessi… conues… lovers.
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser. Author Ulrich Boser looks at the unsolved art theft case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant. Grant Hadwin, a logger-turned-activist, fells a unique 165 feet Sitka spruce in an act of protest. John Vaillant takes the readers into the heart of North America’s last great forest to find out why he did that.
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by Susan Ronald. Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art thief, or as he put it himself, an ‘official dealer’ for Hitler and Goebbels. But he stole from the Jews and Nazis alike. This book was published after his hoard was recently (2013) discovered which created an international furor.
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart. This book is about the art theft at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The suspect, a gangster named Martin Cahill, played cat and mouse with police for years.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. When you think about stealing some valuable art, do maps come to your mind? Then this book is for you. Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr. stole numerous centuries-old maps from research libraries in US and Canada.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne. Han van Meegeren became so much adapt at forging Vermeer paintings that it is said that even professional experts would find it difficult to point out his works from the originals. He earned more than $50 million by selling his forgeries – and he even swindled the Nazis.
The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy. Reptile smuggling is a big “business”. The author, a federal agent, suspected a reptile business owner of being a major smuggler and he started investigating. It was not as simple as it sounds because at one point he was chased by a mother alligator and even bitten by a python.
The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver. A 2500 year old cup made by the Greek master Euphronios which depicted the fall of Troy gets stolen and sold (along with 3 other such vessels). Then due to the questionable practice of some art dealers, no one can track down its last known owner.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. With nothing better to do, the author embarks on a journey to discover a Caravaggio painting which was lost to time two hundred years ago.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. John Charles Gilkey stole rare books not because he wanted to make profit as most thieves do, but because he loved books. I guess if you want to call yourself a book-reader but don’t actually want to say… read a book, you could just steal them and show them off to your friends. But who are we to question the wisdom of “booklovers”, right?
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. If you thought that stealing maps is a weird “job” to have, how about stealing a rare breed of flower? We all know about the Tulipomania that gripped Netherlands in the 1630s. But this is a modern tale, and the book is perhaps one of the most popular ones on this list.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman. This book is about Robert K. Wittman, FBI’s founder of the Art Crime Team and his undercover missions around the world to rescue various pieces of stolen art.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury. You could have a Jackson Pollock lying around in your basement, but if you can’t prove that the piece is real, you might as well use it as a table cloth (I might have exaggerated there a bit, but you get the point). John Myatt, a struggling artist, and John Drewe, a conman who knew the importance of Provenance in the art world, duped many people and museums by creating a fake paper trial that seemed to prove that the art was a real thing and not a forgery. So much so that the experts believe that there might still be some fake paintings created by Myatt displayed in prominent places as the real thing.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. Dolnick writes about the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and the subsequent investigation that took place to track it down.
Selling Hitler by Robert Harris In mid-eighties, Hitler’s diaries were “discovered” and many experts fell for the con. The backpeddling many did when it was revealed that the diaries were not real is really amusing to read about.
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty by Craig Welch. This book is about the poaching of a larger-than-life clam – a Geoduck, to be precise, and the subsequent chase from the wildlife police to nab the poacher.
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood. This book provides a sweeping history of thefts of various priceless antiques.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The twelve panel oil-painting of the Mystic Lamb is the most frequently stolen artwork in the world. It was stolen 13 times. One wonders whether they could have guarded it a little better after the first couple of times, you know. Anyway, this book describes the events of each theft.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith. Two reptile smugglers compete against each other to conquer the illegal trade for themselves. The funny thing is, the Zoos stood against them in the courts, but they had no problem buying rare fauna from the two smugglers, sometimes simultaneously.
Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel. A massive fire destroyed wines worth $250 million in a California warehouse, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. It was done by a conman named Mark Anderson, who rented storage space at the same warehouse. This book tells why he did that and also goes into the surprisingly bloody history of wine trade in California. (reads well with cranberry juice).
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. On August 21, 1911, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa tucked inside his coat (should have painted it bigger, eh Vinci?). I am not going to spoil this book for anyone. Read it if you want to know whether Mona Lisa was recovered or was lost to time forever.
CARTELS, GANGS, UNDERWORLD.
American Desperado: My Life --- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright. Jon Roberts, who starred in documentary Cocaine Cowboys tells his story to the journalist Evan Wright in this book. Roberts smuggled drugs to Miami for the Medellin Cartel (which will feature many times in this category).
At the Devil’s Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel by William C. Rempel. This is Narcos Season 3, basically. Remember the family guy who gets involved with the Cali Cartel and mops around for the whole season even though he had an unbelievably hot wife who was clearly out of his league? That character was based on Rempel. And if I must say so, the book is more compelling than that season of Narcos. Nothing can beat Agent Pena, though.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill. The story of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger – the head of the Irish Mob in Boston - who became an informant for the FBI and chaos ensued. Depp plays Whitey Bulger in the movie adaptation with a soggy tortilla glued to his face as make-up.
Blow: How a Small -Town Bay Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All by Bruce Porter. Another book where Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie adaptation. This book is about George Jung, who after meeting Carlos Lehder, started selling cocaine in the United States through Medellin Cartel.
Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare by Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell. Paul Keany was caught smuggling half-a-million euro worth of cocaine into Venezuela. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Now, prisons everywhere aren’t exactly fun places to be, but Los Teques where Keany was incarcerated was nothing short of hell on earth.
Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Junichi Saga was a doctor by profession. A patient, who was a former Yakuza, recounted his life story before him. Saga recorded the conversations, and broke doctor-patient confidentiality by writing this book.
Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire by Mark Bowden. A dentist named Larry Lavin builds the foundation for a cocaine empire in the United States.
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley. Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent, goes undercover for six years to infiltrate the Mafia. Do watch the movie too, it is Depp’s last movie without weird make-up.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. Journalist Ioan Grillo has written, arguably, the definitive book on Mexican drug cartels. Why he is still alive is anybody’s guess.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh, who was a sociology grad student at the time, infiltrated one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs. This is one of a kind type of book.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This book is about the Italian Crime Network called Camorra in Naples, Italy. Due to his intensive investigative journalism which exposed lot of insider information about the crime syndicate, author Saviano still has to live under constant police protection.
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry. This is a recent book, where the author Alex Perry looks inside the ruthless Calabrian Mafia of Italy and three women who want to save their own and their children’s lives. This is a fascinating and courageous look into an aspect of the Mafia which is often overlooked by most.
Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most Wanted Drug-Lord by Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century. Remember when Joaquin Guzman was caught for the first time and then he escaped and then he was caught again for good? Yes? Then read this one. But this book only focuses on the operation that nabbed him for the first time. I must warn you though – the author, Andrew Hogan – is really really in love with himself and it seeps into his writing.
The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel by Robert Mazur. Mazur went undercover and actually became a money launderer for Pablo Escobar. This book is more about how bankers actively helped to launder the drug money and how Mazur helped to bring them down.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. This is the best book about tracking and eventually killing Pablo Escobar. And as Walter Jr. pointed out to Walter White, it focuses on the good guys, not the bad ones. Good companion book to Pablo Escobar: My Father written by Escobar’s son.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. The author stays inside San Pedro jail for months with a drug smuggler to chronicle his tale. This is one of the most popular books written on cocaine smuggling.
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny. This is a thorough investigation into organized crime worldwide which accounts for 1/5th of total GDP of the world. This book would please readers who are into extensively researched true-crime history books, not so much a casual reader (inb4 - I just read 5 pages of McMafia and wow… just wow).
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker. Edward Bunker had had an eventful life. Incarceration for two and a half decades, being on FBI’s most wanted list, and being a crime novelist. This is his autobiography.
Mr. Nice by Howard Marks. Howard Marks started dealing dope in small quantities while he was studying at Oxford – as you do – and then eventually graduated to dealing it in tons (what the hell was he studying there? Oh, philosophy). This is his fascinating story.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernandez. Yet another book that resulted in the author getting death threats. This proves the old cliché true that the pen is mightier than the sword; until the sword comes down and cuts your neck. That’s why the author has to live under constant protection.
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright. Any aspiring drug lords should read this instruction manual. Just kidding. Wainwright goes deep into the functioning of various drug cartels and at the end also comes up with a plan to defeat them.
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Little known author tries his hand at true-crime. Pablo Escobar kidnapped 10 journalists when he was on the run from the authorities. This book revolves around that event.
The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy. On a December night in 1995, someone airdropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, West Bengal. Who did it and why? This book tells the story about one of India’s greatest ever security breaches.
No Angel: My Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the notorious biker gang. This is his story.
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo is an architect and lives and practices his trade in Argentina. Even though Pablo was his father, Juan does not try to justify his actions even a little bit. This is one of the best books written on Pablo Escobar.
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. Sister Ping, leader of the Chinese underworld in the US, earned $40 million a year smuggling people from China. Told from the viewpoints of gangsters, investigators, and poor immigrants alike, this book provides a unique window into the world of human smuggling.
Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich. I am disappointed that they went with FBI instead of Federal Bureau of Investigation in the title. Should have made it longer. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City on the 34th Street Just Opposite the Starbucks, Was Extorted out of 4.54 Millions and 55 Cents Plus Taxes by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in Federal Bureau of Investigation History by Michael Dostoyevsky Blutrich
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author, working as a reporter in Japan, writes about the seedy underbelly of crime in the country.
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness, Oscar Fraley. Where’s Nitty? He’s in the car. Great movie. How Eliot Ness and his team started the downward spiral in criminal career of Al Capone. A somewhat embellished account was also written in the book, but nonetheless, it is a gripping tale.
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was the last big outlaw of India. A sandalwood smuggler who lived in the forest to evade the police, Veerappan killed hundreds of policemen and civilians. K. Vijay Kumar, the officer who led the task force that ultimately brought down the brigand, is the author of this book.
Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? Goodfellas is perhaps the best Mafia movie ever made, so read it in his own words why Pileggi might fold under questioning.
Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss. This Saviano guy must have a death wish. But as a handsome list-writer once eloquently said, “If bitten already by a King Cobra, what difference it makes if you French kiss a Black Mamba?” Since the publication of his book on the Italian crime syndicate, Saviano has to live under constant police protection. So to make sure they don’t slack off, he wrote a book on Cocaine Cartel, this time acquiring lots of admirers in Latin America.
CONMEN, IMPOSTORS.
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. The Art of making money is to make other people work for you; not the other way round. But more scrupulous method of making money would be to counterfeit it. Art Williams did exactly that.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale. Maybe the most popular book on this list, Abagnale Jr.’s book is not to be missed even if you have watched the movie starring the actor who had sex with a bear (no, not Tormund).
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. One “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, set-up a medical practice to surgically insert goat glands in human testicles to restore their fading sex drive. I am not joking, this happened.
Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story by J. R. Weil, W. T. Brannon. Known as “Yellow Kid” Weil was a master conman, who duped public of more than $8 million 100 years ago. He’s called by many as the greatest conman of all time (second to the companies that charge service fees on the internet, of course).
Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton. Fenton was a math student until he turned into a carnival con artist. How many bananas he stole from the monkeys? How many bales of potatoes from the elephants? Read this book to find out.
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise. If you have any annoying friends who romanticize the Victorian era and say that they would have liked to live there, tell them to read this book and get back to you after that.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal. This is the true story of one of the greatest impostors of all time. The man could have impersonated a chihuahua if he wanted to.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by James Francis Johnson. Viktor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. I still have the relevant papers that my great grandfather left us. I’m going to shift it to Nauru or Detroit.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con by Amy Reading. This is a revenge story of a man who sets out to con the conmen who conned him twice. Unfortunately, the book could have been written better, but it is still worth having a look at.
Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. I once tried playing dead in a meeting when asked about the progress on my project. But there are people who fake their death for lesser gains, such as insurance fraud and debt fraud. Author Elizabeth Greenwood journeys into the dark world of death fraud to find out more.
Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. Charles Ponzi was so successful in duping people that we have immortalized his name by terming such swindles after him. At one point, he was raking in $2 millions a week. How many weeks would it take you to earn 2 million dollars at your current income? (sorry, that got heavy fast. It hurt me too).
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh. One botanist claimed that some species of plants on the islands south of Scotland survived the last Ice Age. Another botanist doubted him. This might not sound like a big fraud if you are not into plants, but believe me when I say that the 2 botanists who just read this threw their phones away in disgust and disbelief.
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. A quack doctor named Linda Hazard developed a technique called “fasting treatment”. The story focuses on two sisters who fell for the quack’s assurances that they would be cured of all the diseases - real or imagined. This book is quite infuriating to read. Hazard was a despicable human being.
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson. Wilson looks from ancient Rome to current times for food frauds. And she finds them aplenty (companion read - while having a nice snack).
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds by Michael Farquhar. This is a good bathroom book about fakers through history.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. Have you heard about Tania Head? If you haven’t, I urge you to skip this book. Tania Head duped survivors of 9/11 and the whole world alike into believing that she was one of the survivors from the South Tower of World Trade Center. I feel enraged just by typing this. So just read this book if you want to know more about her. There are a couple of documentaries out there too.
HACKERS.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Long before internet became a place for cat memes, Cliff Stoll was working at a research lab as a systems manager. One day he found 75 cents of accounting error. This made him alert that an unauthorized person was logging into the system. Thus began his lone effort of tracking down the spy.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley. Before there was internet, or even personal computers, mobsters and teenagers hacked the telephone system.
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon. The book tells the story of one of the best hackers of all times, Kevin Mitnick, and his cat and mouse game with the FBI.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich. A group of bankers manipulated daily interest rates just a fraction here and there on loans worth trillions of dollars and made some serious cash for themselves. This book also rocks one of the ugliest book covers of 2017.
MUTINEERS, PIRATES, OUTLAWS.
Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash. I was torn whether to include this book in the list as the history of Batavia’s mutiny is littered with corpses. But as the focus is on the mutiny, I am going to keep it here. This event could give the Medusa’s raft a run for its money.
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees. Poor girls in England, most of who were petty thieves, were given a chance to sail to Botany Bay in Australia to create a new life for themselves and the male population of New South Wales. But the real story happened at the sea on board the ship Lady Julian.
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Thom Hatch. Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful. Guard: People kept robbing it. Butch: Small price to pay for beauty. The book might not be full of memorable dialogues as the movie, but if you want to know more about the legendary outlaws, give this book a chance.
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. Mutiny of the Bounty is perhaps the most infamous of mutinies that occurred at sea. Even after the event and hundreds of years later, the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his sailors continue to live a crime-filled life like their forefathers on Pitcairn Island.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. This book will change your perception of Captain Kidd, that’s for sure.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. This non-fiction book concentrates on Sheriff Pat Garrett’s chase in pursuit of the bandit Billy the Kid. If you like reading westerns, this one and The Last Outlaws are not to be missed.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Cordingly takes a look at life among the pirates. Some of your romanticism would be squashed, but there were some good things about being a pirate too. Life among the pirates was neither black nor white; it was beige.
POLITICAL CRIMES
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson. Three kids won a 300 million dollar contract – legitimately – I must add, to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. They had no money, but still they almost pulled it off. I don’t know, read this book, and if you’re a US citizen, visit the websites mentioned in the book, see if they are still doing business the same way, and if you want, you can become a supplier to the army too. Don’t forget to send me my cut (the movie War Dogs was trash).
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair by Sam Roberts. Even if you’re not a United Statian of American (USians?), chances are you might have read at least something about the execution of the Rosenberg couple as spies. This is probably the best book about the subject.
Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin. How many weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? If your answer is “what’s that?” then congratulations, you’re not unlike one of your former presidents. Who told the USians that there were WMDs with Saddam? Curveball.
The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins was an economic hitman, who at the instruction of US intelligence agencies and giant corporations cajoled and blackmailed other country leaders to serve US foreign policy and award lucrative contracts to American businesses (now that job has been transferred to the White House).
A Kim Jong – Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. Say you want to make a big movie for your country. But there is no one in your country who can handle such an ambitious project. What do you do? Hire some talent from other country? But you’re Kim Jong – Il. Oh. Then you just kidnap them, and force them to make the glorious movie of yours. Read this book. It’s pretty absurd (the movie they eventually made for Kim was utter shit. The Room would look like Gone with the Wind compared to that abomination).
The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins. One day a man Abdul Qadeer Khan caught a plane to Pakistan from Europe. With him he had blueprints of the mechanism that could prepare weapons grade Uranium that he had stolen from the lab he worked at in the last 3 years. He would make the first atomic bomb for Pakistan with that information. Then he sold the tech to stable countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya. How can someone get away with stealing such powerful information? Read this book to find out.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen. This is a pretty controversial topic that has only gained wider acknowledgement in recent decades. Read this book to know in detail how bogus the claims of justice being served to the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. Basically, if you were a scientist, you were very likely to be acquitted from any War Crimes allegations.
The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni. How did most of the Nazis who managed to escape from Germany ended up in South America? Read about the collusion of various entities and institutions that made it possible in this book.
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. This is the true story of a mole in FBI, how he attempted to sell classified information and how FBI tried to track him down.
ROBBERIES, HEISTS.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. If there is one thief in this list that I admire, it is without a doubt, Attila Ambrus. Ambrus was known as a gentleman thief, who would ask – no, request - the teller to fill his bag with money. If you read this book, it would be hard for you to dislike Attila even though he was a thief.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason, Lee Gruenfeld. Bill Mason looted many famous personalities in his long career as a jewel thief. In this book he tells how he did it.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson. Do you know there are people whose hobby is fly tying? The feathery thing that you attach to the hook to catch fish? But these are not your average fly tiers. They use feathers from exotic birds to create different ties whose total cost could run in thousands of dollars. Moreover, many of the most coveted birds are either protected or extinct. So one night a man named Edwin Rist broke into Tring museum and took hundreds of bird skins, some that belonged to Darwin, to fuel his hobby and even getting rich by selling precious feathers to other tiers. Don’t miss this book.
Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden. Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a big bag of money? It couldn’t have happened to a more clueless person. Joey Coyle, to be exact.
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby. The theft from Antwerp that still raises many questions.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. The truth is not that romantic.
The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Pearls, more valuable than the Hope Diamond, are stolen by thieves in Edwardian London.
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. My favorite Crichton book. Stealing gold from a running train! Watch the movie too that stars the great Sean Connery.
Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant. How hard is it to steal 17 million dollars? As far as these thieves were concerned, not much. Getting away with it was another thing altogether. The movie was pretty average, I think.
Into the Blast: The True Story of DB Cooper by Skipp Porteous, Robert Blevins. Is Tommy Wiseau DB Cooper? If only that was true. Read the book but don’t expect any clear-cut answers (I think most people would agree that the clumsy bastard died after he jumped from the plane).
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. True story of George Appo, a pickpocket living in nineteenth-century New York.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich. A guy steals moon rocks from NASA and then had sex on them with his girlfriend (how the hell is that comfortable?)
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. The last hermit was not a hermit in true sense. He didn’t rely on land to feed himself. He stole from the nearby community. Before someone says I have spoiled the book for them, it is revealed in the first chapter that he is a thief.
WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. The Steve Jobs impersonator, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, and her old boyfriend, Sunny, are some of the most vile people that I have come across while reading about corporate crime. This is one of the best books that I have read this year.
Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. This is probably the most famous book written about those Wall Street scoundrels.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb. The story of Leo Koretz, who created one of the longest running Ponzi schemes in the 1920s Chicago.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Mark Whitacre becomes an FBI informant against his own corporation. But as time goes by, the FBI starts to realize that Mark is not as truthful as he seems to be, and he has his own agenda (they made a movie with Matt Damon).
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. Sam Israel’s hedge fund was making heavy losses. So naturally, he fabricated fake returns to fool the investors. Then he heard about a secret market from where he could convert his millions into billions. That’s how he lost the last 150 million dollars of his invertors’ money.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Only thing you are going to learn from this book is don’t do business in Russia.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Bethany McLean asked one simple question in her article when everyone else was going gaga over Enron. “What does Enron actually do?” Nobody knew. Even Enron couldn’t give a specific answer. They were not just committing accounting fraud; they were looting ordinary people by creating fake shortage of electricity and driving the prices high. The documentary is worth watching too.
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony by Gary Stephen Ross. The guy Molony debited huge amounts of money from the bank he worked at to feed his gambling addiction. Oh, and he took the money in other people’s name who held huge accounts there. This is one of the best true-crime books that I have ever read.
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer. You know the man who builds schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Great guy, right? Krakauer doesn’t think so. And he’ll tell you why in this short book.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques. 65 billion dollars. That’s the amount that Madoff swindled from people through decades of fraud. I think I can buy a small island country with this much money. The idiot is in jail though. I don’t know, maybe after a couple of billion, skip to a country with no extradition treaty and live the rest of your life without the fear of being getting caught? But then, these types of people don’t know when to stop.
OTHER.
American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down --- My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off World’s Casinos by Richard Marcus. The guy ripped-off casinos all over the world by stealing gaming chips while maintaining an illusion of a highroller to lend his eventual take required legitimacy.
Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz by Jolene Babyak. Written by the daughter of a guard at Alcatraz, this book tells the story of the infamous escape from the prison island. Don’t forget to watch the classic movie too.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. The movie 21 was based on this book. But if you want to know the real story, without the whitewashing, you have no choice but to read this book.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Kevin Bales estimates that there are 27 million people worldwide who live as slaves, right now. And yes, slavery still exists in United States of America in case you were wondering. This is a depressing book.
Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison by T. J. Parsell. Rape in prison is absolutely overlooked almost everywhere. Read this book if you can endure reading about helplessness page after page.
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali’s Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella. Prison systems in developing world differ from the developed one in one regard that the guards and officials there are more corrupt and hence are likely to look the other way when something bad is going down amongst the inmates. Kerobokan Jail in Bali is one of the worst among those.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley. The author interviewed inmates from Leavenworth Prison for two years. The book is the result of that labor.
The Laundrymen: Inside the World’s Third Largest Business by Jeffrey Robinson. I have a perfect idea to launder money. Laser Tag! Robinson looks at the third largest business in the world. The book was published a while ago, but still hasn’t lost most of its relevancy.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Jon releases the Krakauer on one of the most relevant subjects of today. Rapes in colleges. These institutes would do anything to sweep things under the rug to maintain the illusion of clean image in the public eye.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover. The author worked as a prison guard for a year at one of the most notorious prisons of the United States. This book is about his experience.

Cross-posting my list from books.
ART THIEVES, FORGERS, SMUGGLERS.
The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason. A true story about the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and how they conspired to cheat their clients out of millions of dollars.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace. The most expensive bottle of wine and the conflicting reports about its history. This is a book that would enchant wine conessi… conues… lovers.
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser. Author Ulrich Boser looks at the unsolved art theft case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant. Grant Hadwin, a logger-turned-activist, fells a unique 165 feet Sitka spruce in an act of protest. John Vaillant takes the readers into the heart of North America’s last great forest to find out why he did that.
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by Susan Ronald. Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art thief, or as he put it himself, an ‘official dealer’ for Hitler and Goebbels. But he stole from the Jews and Nazis alike. This book was published after his hoard was recently (2013) discovered which created an international furor.
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart. This book is about the art theft at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The suspect, a gangster named Martin Cahill, played cat and mouse with police for years.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. When you think about stealing some valuable art, do maps come to your mind? Then this book is for you. Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr. stole numerous centuries-old maps from research libraries in US and Canada.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne. Han van Meegeren became so much adapt at forging Vermeer paintings that it is said that even professional experts would find it difficult to point out his works from the originals. He earned more than $50 million by selling his forgeries – and he even swindled the Nazis.
The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy. Reptile smuggling is a big “business”. The author, a federal agent, suspected a reptile business owner of being a major smuggler and he started investigating. It was not as simple as it sounds because at one point he was chased by a mother alligator and even bitten by a python.
The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver. A 2500 year old cup made by the Greek master Euphronios which depicted the fall of Troy gets stolen and sold (along with 3 other such vessels). Then due to the questionable practice of some art dealers, no one can track down its last known owner.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. With nothing better to do, the author embarks on a journey to discover a Caravaggio painting which was lost to time two hundred years ago.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. John Charles Gilkey stole rare books not because he wanted to make profit as most thieves do, but because he loved books. I guess if you want to call yourself a book-reader but don’t actually want to say… read a book, you could just steal them and show them off to your friends. But who are we to question the wisdom of “booklovers”, right?
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. If you thought that stealing maps is a weird “job” to have, how about stealing a rare breed of flower? We all know about the Tulipomania that gripped Netherlands in the 1630s. But this is a modern tale, and the book is perhaps one of the most popular ones on this list.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman. This book is about Robert K. Wittman, FBI’s founder of the Art Crime Team and his undercover missions around the world to rescue various pieces of stolen art.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury. You could have a Jackson Pollock lying around in your basement, but if you can’t prove that the piece is real, you might as well use it as a table cloth (I might have exaggerated there a bit, but you get the point). John Myatt, a struggling artist, and John Drewe, a conman who knew the importance of Provenance in the art world, duped many people and museums by creating a fake paper trial that seemed to prove that the art was a real thing and not a forgery. So much so that the experts believe that there might still be some fake paintings created by Myatt displayed in prominent places as the real thing.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. Dolnick writes about the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and the subsequent investigation that took place to track it down.
Selling Hitler by Robert Harris In mid-eighties, Hitler’s diaries were “discovered” and many experts fell for the con. The backpeddling many did when it was revealed that the diaries were not real is really amusing to read about.
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty by Craig Welch. This book is about the poaching of a larger-than-life clam – a Geoduck, to be precise, and the subsequent chase from the wildlife police to nab the poacher.
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood. This book provides a sweeping history of thefts of various priceless antiques.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The twelve panel oil-painting of the Mystic Lamb is the most frequently stolen artwork in the world. It was stolen 13 times. One wonders whether they could have guarded it a little better after the first couple of times, you know. Anyway, this book describes the events of each theft.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith. Two reptile smugglers compete against each other to conquer the illegal trade for themselves. The funny thing is, the Zoos stood against them in the courts, but they had no problem buying rare fauna from the two smugglers, sometimes simultaneously.
Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel. A massive fire destroyed wines worth $250 million in a California warehouse, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. It was done by a conman named Mark Anderson, who rented storage space at the same warehouse. This book tells why he did that and also goes into the surprisingly bloody history of wine trade in California. (reads well with cranberry juice).
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. On August 21, 1911, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa tucked inside his coat (should have painted it bigger, eh Vinci?). I am not going to spoil this book for anyone. Read it if you want to know whether Mona Lisa was recovered or was lost to time forever.
CARTELS, GANGS, UNDERWORLD.
American Desperado: My Life --- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright. Jon Roberts, who starred in documentary Cocaine Cowboys tells his story to the journalist Evan Wright in this book. Roberts smuggled drugs to Miami for the Medellin Cartel (which will feature many times in this category).
At the Devil’s Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel by William C. Rempel. This is Narcos Season 3, basically. Remember the family guy who gets involved with the Cali Cartel and mops around for the whole season even though he had an unbelievably hot wife who was clearly out of his league? That character was based on Rempel. And if I must say so, the book is more compelling than that season of Narcos. Nothing can beat Agent Pena, though.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill. The story of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger – the head of the Irish Mob in Boston - who became an informant for the FBI and chaos ensued. Depp plays Whitey Bulger in the movie adaptation with a soggy tortilla glued to his face as make-up.
Blow: How a Small -Town Bay Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All by Bruce Porter. Another book where Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie adaptation. This book is about George Jung, who after meeting Carlos Lehder, started selling cocaine in the United States through Medellin Cartel.
Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare by Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell. Paul Keany was caught smuggling half-a-million euro worth of cocaine into Venezuela. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Now, prisons everywhere aren’t exactly fun places to be, but Los Teques where Keany was incarcerated was nothing short of hell on earth.
Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Junichi Saga was a doctor by profession. A patient, who was a former Yakuza, recounted his life story before him. Saga recorded the conversations, and broke doctor-patient confidentiality by writing this book.
Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire by Mark Bowden. A dentist named Larry Lavin builds the foundation for a cocaine empire in the United States.
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley. Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent, goes undercover for six years to infiltrate the Mafia. Do watch the movie too, it is Depp’s last movie without weird make-up.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. Journalist Ioan Grillo has written, arguably, the definitive book on Mexican drug cartels. Why he is still alive is anybody’s guess.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh, who was a sociology grad student at the time, infiltrated one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs. This is one of a kind type of book.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This book is about the Italian Crime Network called Camorra in Naples, Italy. Due to his intensive investigative journalism which exposed lot of insider information about the crime syndicate, author Saviano still has to live under constant police protection.
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry. This is a recent book, where the author Alex Perry looks inside the ruthless Calabrian Mafia of Italy and three women who want to save their own and their children’s lives. This is a fascinating and courageous look into an aspect of the Mafia which is often overlooked by most.
Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most Wanted Drug-Lord by Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century. Remember when Joaquin Guzman was caught for the first time and then he escaped and then he was caught again for good? Yes? Then read this one. But this book only focuses on the operation that nabbed him for the first time. I must warn you though – the author, Andrew Hogan – is really really in love with himself and it seeps into his writing.
The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel by Robert Mazur. Mazur went undercover and actually became a money launderer for Pablo Escobar. This book is more about how bankers actively helped to launder the drug money and how Mazur helped to bring them down.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. This is the best book about tracking and eventually killing Pablo Escobar. And as Walter Jr. pointed out to Walter White, it focuses on the good guys, not the bad ones. Good companion book to Pablo Escobar: My Father written by Escobar’s son.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. The author stays inside San Pedro jail for months with a drug smuggler to chronicle his tale. This is one of the most popular books written on cocaine smuggling.
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny. This is a thorough investigation into organized crime worldwide which accounts for 1/5th of total GDP of the world. This book would please readers who are into extensively researched true-crime history books, not so much a casual reader (inb4 - I just read 5 pages of McMafia and wow… just wow).
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker. Edward Bunker had had an eventful life. Incarceration for two and a half decades, being on FBI’s most wanted list, and being a crime novelist. This is his autobiography.
Mr. Nice by Howard Marks. Howard Marks started dealing dope in small quantities while he was studying at Oxford – as you do – and then eventually graduated to dealing it in tons (what the hell was he studying there? Oh, philosophy). This is his fascinating story.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernandez. Yet another book that resulted in the author getting death threats. This proves the old cliché true that the pen is mightier than the sword; until the sword comes down and cuts your neck. That’s why the author has to live under constant protection.
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright. Any aspiring drug lords should read this instruction manual. Just kidding. Wainwright goes deep into the functioning of various drug cartels and at the end also comes up with a plan to defeat them.
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Little known author tries his hand at true-crime. Pablo Escobar kidnapped 10 journalists when he was on the run from the authorities. This book revolves around that event.
The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy. On a December night in 1995, someone airdropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, West Bengal. Who did it and why? This book tells the story about one of India’s greatest ever security breaches.
No Angel: My Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the notorious biker gang. This is his story.
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo is an architect and lives and practices his trade in Argentina. Even though Pablo was his father, Juan does not try to justify his actions even a little bit. This is one of the best books written on Pablo Escobar.
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. Sister Ping, leader of the Chinese underworld in the US, earned $40 million a year smuggling people from China. Told from the viewpoints of gangsters, investigators, and poor immigrants alike, this book provides a unique window into the world of human smuggling.
Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich. I am disappointed that they went with FBI instead of Federal Bureau of Investigation in the title. Should have made it longer. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City on the 34th Street Just Opposite the Starbucks, Was Extorted out of 4.54 Millions and 55 Cents Plus Taxes by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in Federal Bureau of Investigation History by Michael Dostoyevsky Blutrich
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author, working as a reporter in Japan, writes about the seedy underbelly of crime in the country.
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness, Oscar Fraley. Where’s Nitty? He’s in the car.” Great movie. How Eliot Ness and his team started the downward spiral in criminal career of Al Capone. A somewhat embellished account was also written in the book, but nonetheless, it is a gripping tale.
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was the last big outlaw of India. A sandalwood smuggler who lived in the forest to evade the police, Veerappan killed hundreds of policemen and civilians. K. Vijay Kumar, the officer who led the task force that ultimately brought down the brigand, is the author of this book.
Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. ” I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? Goodfellas is perhaps the best Mafia movie ever made, so read it in his own words why Pileggi might fold under questioning.
Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss. This Saviano guy must have a death wish. But as a handsome list-writer once eloquently said, “If bitten already by a King Cobra, what difference it makes if you French kiss a Black Mamba?” Since the publication of his book on the Italian crime syndicate, Saviano has to live under constant police protection. So to make sure they don’t slack off, he wrote a book on Cocaine Cartel, this time acquiring lots of admirers in Latin America.
CONMEN, IMPOSTORS.
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. The Art of making money is to make other people work for you; not the other way round. But more scrupulous method of making money would be to counterfeit it. Art Williams did exactly that.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale. Maybe the most popular book on this list, Abagnale Jr.’s book is not to be missed even if you have watched the movie starring the actor who had sex with a bear (no, not Tormund).
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. One “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, set-up a medical practice to surgically insert goat glands in human testicles to restore their fading sex drive. I am not joking, this happened.
Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story by J. R. Weil, W. T. Brannon. Known as “Yellow Kid” Weil was a master conman, who duped public of more than $8 million 100 years ago. He’s called by many as the greatest conman of all time (second to the companies that charge service fees on the internet, of course).
Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton. Fenton was a math student until he turned into a carnival con artist. How many bananas he stole from the monkeys? How many bales of potatoes from the elephants? Read this book to find out.
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise. If you have any annoying friends who romanticize the Victorian era and say that they would have liked to live there, tell them to read this book and get back to you after that.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal. This is the true story of one of the greatest impostors of all time. The man could have impersonated a chihuahua if he wanted to.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by James Francis Johnson. Viktor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. I still have the relevant papers that my great grandfather left us. I’m going to shift it to Nauru or Detroit.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con by Amy Reading. This is a revenge story of a man who sets out to con the conmen who conned him twice. Unfortunately, the book could have been written better, but it is still worth having a look at.
Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. I once tried playing dead in a meeting when asked about the progress on my project. But there are people who fake their death for lesser gains, such as insurance fraud and debt fraud. Author Elizabeth Greenwood journeys into the dark world of death fraud to find out more.
Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. Charles Ponzi was so successful in duping people that we have immortalized his name by terming such swindles after him. At one point, he was raking in $2 millions a week. How many weeks would it take you to earn 2 million dollars at your current income? (sorry, that got heavy fast. It hurt me too).
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh. One botanist claimed that some species of plants on the islands south of Scotland survived the last Ice Age. Another botanist doubted him. This might not sound like a big fraud if you are not into plants, but believe me when I say that the 2 botanists who just read this threw their phones away in disgust and disbelief.
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. A quack doctor named Linda Hazard developed a technique called “fasting treatment”. The story focuses on two sisters who fell for the quack’s assurances that they would be cured of all the diseases - real or imagined. This book is quite infuriating to read. Hazard was a despicable human being.
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson. Wilson looks from ancient Rome to current times for food frauds. And she finds them aplenty (companion read - while having a nice snack).
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds by Michael Farquhar. This is a good bathroom book about fakers through history.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. Have you heard about Tania Head? If you haven’t, I urge you to skip this book. Tania Head duped survivors of 9/11 and the whole world alike into believing that she was one of the survivors from the South Tower of World Trade Center. I feel enraged just by typing this. So just read this book if you want to know more about her. There are a couple of documentaries out there too.
HACKERS.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Long before internet became a place for cat memes, Cliff Stoll was working at a research lab as a systems manager. One day he found 75 cents of accounting error. This made him alert that an unauthorized person was logging into the system. Thus began his lone effort of tracking down the spy.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley. Before there was internet, or even personal computers, mobsters and teenagers hacked the telephone system.
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon. The book tells the story of one of the best hackers of all times, Kevin Mitnick, and his cat and mouse game with the FBI.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich. A group of bankers manipulated daily interest rates just a fraction here and there on loans worth trillions of dollars and made some serious cash for themselves. This book also rocks one of the ugliest book covers of 2017.
MUTINEERS, PIRATES, OUTLAWS.
Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash. I was torn whether to include this book in the list as the history of Batavia’s mutiny is littered with corpses. But as the focus is on the mutiny, I am going to keep it here. This event could give the Medusa’s raft a run for its money.
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees. Poor girls in England, most of who were petty thieves, were given a chance to sail to Botany Bay in Australia to create a new life for themselves and the male population of New South Wales. But the real story happened at the sea on board the ship Lady Julian.
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Thom Hatch. Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful. Guard: People kept robbing it. Butch: Small price to pay for beauty. The book might not be full of memorable dialogues as the movie, but if you want to know more about the legendary outlaws, give this book a chance.
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. Mutiny of the Bounty is perhaps the most infamous of mutinies that occurred at sea. Even after the event and hundreds of years later, the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his sailors continue to live a crime-filled life like their forefathers on Pitcairn Island.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. This book will change your perception of Captain Kidd, that’s for sure.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. This non-fiction book concentrates on Sheriff Pat Garrett’s chase in pursuit of the bandit Billy the Kid. If you like reading westerns, this one and The Last Outlaws are not to be missed.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Cordingly takes a look at life among the pirates. Some of your romanticism would be squashed, but there were some good things about being a pirate too. Life among the pirates was neither black nor white; it was beige.
POLITICAL CRIMES
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson. Three kids won a 300 million dollar contract – legitimately – I must add, to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. They had no money, but still they almost pulled it off. I don’t know, read this book, and if you’re a US citizen, visit the websites mentioned in the book, see if they are still doing business the same way, and if you want, you can become a supplier to the army too. Don’t forget to send me my cut (the movie War Dogs was trash).
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair by Sam Roberts. Even if you’re not a United Statian of American (USians?), chances are you might have read at least something about the execution of the Rosenberg couple as spies. This is probably the best book about the subject.
Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin. How many weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? If your answer is “what’s that?” then congratulations, you’re not unlike one of your former presidents. Who told the USians that there were WMDs with Saddam? Curveball.
The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins was an economic hitman, who at the instruction of US intelligence agencies and giant corporations cajoled and blackmailed other country leaders to serve US foreign policy and award lucrative contracts to American businesses (now that job has been transferred to the White House).
A Kim Jong – Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. Say you want to make a big movie for your country. But there is no one in your country who can handle such an ambitious project. What do you do? Hire some talent from other country? But you’re Kim Jong – Il. Oh. Then you just kidnap them, and force them to make the glorious movie of yours. Read this book. It’s pretty absurd (the movie they eventually made for Kim was utter shit. The Room would look like Gone with the Wind compared to that abomination).
The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins. One day a man Abdul Qadeer Khan caught a plane to Pakistan from Europe. With him he had blueprints of the mechanism that could prepare weapons grade Uranium that he had stolen from the lab he worked at in the last 3 years. He would make the first atomic bomb for Pakistan with that information. Then he sold the tech to stable countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya. How can someone get away with stealing such powerful information? Read this book to find out.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen. This is a pretty controversial topic that has only gained wider acknowledgement in recent decades. Read this book to know in detail how bogus the claims of justice being served to the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. Basically, if you were a scientist, you were very likely to be acquitted from any War Crimes allegations.
The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni. How did most of the Nazis who managed to escape from Germany ended up in South America? Read about the collusion of various entities and institutions that made it possible in this book.
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. This is the true story of a mole in FBI, how he attempted to sell classified information and how FBI tried to track him down.
ROBBERIES, HEISTS.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. If there is one thief in this list that I admire, it is without a doubt, Attila Ambrus. Ambrus was known as a gentleman thief, who would ask – no, request - the teller to fill his bag with money. If you read this book, it would be hard for you to dislike Attila even though he was a thief.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason, Lee Gruenfeld. Bill Mason looted many famous personalities in his long career as a jewel thief. In this book he tells how he did it.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson. Do you know there are people whose hobby is fly tying? The feathery thing that you attach to the hook to catch fish? But these are not your average fly tiers. They use feathers from exotic birds to create different ties whose total cost could run in thousands of dollars. Moreover, many of the most coveted birds are either protected or extinct. So one night a man named Edwin Rist broke into Tring museum and took hundreds of bird skins, some that belonged to Darwin, to fuel his hobby and even getting rich by selling precious feathers to other tiers. Don’t miss this book.
Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden. Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a big bag of money? It couldn’t have happened to a more clueless person. Joey Coyle, to be exact.
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby. The theft from Antwerp that still raises many questions.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. The truth is not that romantic.
The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Pearls, more valuable than the Hope Diamond, are stolen by thieves in Edwardian London.
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. My favorite Crichton book. Stealing gold from a running train! Watch the movie too that stars the great Sean Connery.
Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant. How easy is it to steal 17 million dollars? As far as these thieves were concerned, not much. Getting away with it was another thing altogether. The movie was pretty average, I think.
Into the Blast: The True Story of DB Cooper by Skipp Porteous, Robert Blevins. Is Tommy Wiseau DB Cooper? If only that was true. Read the book but don’t expect any clear-cut answers (I think most people would agree that the clumsy bastard died after he jumped from the plane).
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. True story of George Appo, a pickpocket living in nineteenth-century New York.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich. A guy steals moon rocks from NASA and then had sex on them with his girlfriend (how the hell is that comfortable?)
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. The last hermit was not a hermit in true sense. He didn’t rely on land to feed himself. He stole from the nearby community. Before someone says I have spoiled the book for them, it is revealed in the first chapter that he is a thief.
WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. The Steve Jobs impersonator, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, and her old boyfriend, Sunny, are some of the most vile people that I have come across while reading about corporate crime. This is one of the best books that I have read this year.
Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. This is probably the most famous book written about those Wall Street scoundrels.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb. The story of Leo Koretz, who created one of the longest running Ponzi scheme in the 1920s Chicago.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Mark Whitacre becomes an FBI informant against his own corporation. But as time goes by, the FBI starts to realize that Mark is not as truthful as he seems to be, and he has his own agenda (they made a movie with Matt Damon).
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. Sam Israel’s hedge fund was making heavy losses. So naturally, he fabricated fake returns to fool the investors. Then he heard about a secret market from where he could convert his millions into billions. That’s how he lost the last 150 million dollars of his invertors’ money.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Only thing you are going to learn from this book is don’t do business in Russia.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Bethany McLean asked one simple question in her article when everyone else was going gaga over Enron. “What does Enron actually do?” Nobody knew. Even Enron couldn’t give a specific answer. They were not just committing accounting fraud; they were looting ordinary people by creating fake shortage of electricity and driving the prices high. The documentary is worth watching too.
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony by Gary Stephen Ross. The guy Molony debited huge amounts of money from the bank he worked at to feed his gambling addiction. Oh, and he took the money in other people’s name who held huge accounts there. This is one of the best true-crime books that I have ever read.
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer. You know the man who builds schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Great guy, right? Krakauer doesn’t think so. And he’ll tell you why in this short book.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques. 65 billion dollars. That’s the amount that Madoff swindled from people through decades of fraud. I think I can buy a small island country with this much money. The idiot is in jail though. I don’t know, maybe after a couple of billion, skip to a country with no extradition treaty and live the rest of your life without the fear of being getting caught? But then, these types of people don’t know when to stop.
OTHER.
American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down --- My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off World’s Casinos by Richard Marcus. The guy ripped-off casinos all over the world by stealing gaming chips while maintaining an illusion of a highroller to lend his eventual take required legitimacy.
Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz by Jolene Babyak. Written by the daughter of a guard at Alcatraz, this book tells the story of the infamous escape from the prison island. Don’t forget to watch the classic movie too.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. The movie 21 was based on this book. But if you want to know the real story, without the whitewashing, you have no choice but to read this book.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Kevin Bales estimates that there are 27 million people worldwide who live as slaves, right now. And yes, slavery still exists in United States of America in case you were wondering. This is a depressing book.
Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison by T. J. Parsell. Rape in prison is absolutely overlooked almost everywhere. Read this book if you can endure reading about helplessness page after page.
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali’s Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella. Prison systems in developing world differ from the developed one in one regard that the guards and officials there are more corrupt and hence are likely to look the other way when something bad is going down amongst the inmates. Kerobokan Jail in Bali is one of the worst among those.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley. The author interviewed inmates from Leavenworth Prison for two years. The book is the result of that labor.
The Laundrymen: Inside the World’s Third Largest Business by Jeffrey Robinson. I have a perfect idea to launder money. Laser Tag! Robinson looks at the third largest business in the world. The book was published a while ago, but still hasn’t lost most of its relevancy.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Jon releases the Krakauer on one of the most relevant subjects of today. Rapes in colleges. These institutes would do anything to sweep things under the rug to maintain the illusion of clean image in the public eye.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover. The author worked as a prison guard for a year at one of the most notorious prisons of the United States. This book is about his experience.

IMPORTANT:
You can and should buy Craig Unger's “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia” excellent book. This post is sourced from it.
Trump has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Russia. Here are fifty-nine Trump connections to Russia, as detailed by Craig Unger in “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia”. This list can be useful when people claim there is no connection between Trump and Russia.
1. Roman Abramovich Putin confidant/billionaire who, along with fellow oligarch Lev Leviev, created the Putin-approved Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, aka “Putin’s rabbi.” Ivanka Trump is close to Abramovich’s ex-wife, Dasha Zhukova, and has taken several trips with the Abramoviches, including a trip to Russia in 2014 as their guest.
2. Aras Agalarov A billionaire Russian real estate developer who is close to Putin, Agalarov partnered with Trump in bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow and was a serious potential partner behind the never-built Trump Tower Moscow. Agalarov remained in contact with Trump after Miss Universe and during the 2016 presidential campaign.
3. Emin Agalarov Son of Aras Agalarov, pop singer Emin performed at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, got Donald Trump to appear in one of his music videos, and was a key figure in arranging the infamous June 2016 meetings in Trump Tower between Russian operatives and top Trump associates.
4. Evsei Agron The first alleged boss of the Russian Mafia in Brighton Beach, Agron came to New York in 1975 and ran his crime gang out of Brooklyn’s El Caribe Country Club, which was owned by Dr. Morton Levine and his family, including nephew Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer.
5. Rinat Akhmetshin Former Soviet counterintelligence officer who became a K Street lobbyist working to end sanctions. Akhmetshin attended the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and others in June 2016 at which a Russian lawyer promised to provide opposition research on Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Times, Akhmetshin had also worked in Kiev with Konstantin Kilimnik, an aide to Paul Manafort who had a background in Russian intelligence.
6. Tevfik Arif One of the billionaire oligarchs behind the Bayrock Group, the real estate development company, whose offices were in Trump Tower. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Arif worked for the KGB-linked Ministry of Commerce and Trade.
7. Marat Balagula Evsei Agron’s alleged successor as head of the Brighton Beach Mafia, Balagula was suspected of having ordered the hit on Agron, but was never charged and moved into Agron’s former office in the El Caribe Country Club, which was still owned by Michael Cohen and his uncle. Balagula partnered with David Bogatin, who had previously purchased five apartments in Trump Tower.
8. Boris Birshtein Russian-Canadian who founded Seabeco SA with KGB operatives and under KGB guidelines to set up corporations abroad. Worked with son-in-law Alex Shnaider (who later built Trump Tower in Toronto) and two-thirds of the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation’s Trio (Patokh Chodiev and Alexander Mashkevich). Birshtein hosted the famous 1995 summit meeting in Tel Aviv, at which Semion Mogilevich was allotted an enormous share of the Ukraine energy trade.
9. David Bogatin One of the pioneers behind the Red Daisy gas tax scam, Bogatin bought five apartments in Trump Tower for $6 million in 1984, in the process becoming the first alleged Russian mobster to launder money through Trump Tower. Donald Trump personally sold the apartments to Bogatin.
10. Jacob Bogatin Key member of the Mogilevich Russian organized crime family who was indicted for his involvement in Mogilevich’s YBM Magnex stock scam. Brother of David Bogatin.
11. Oleg Boyko Russian oligarch who was close to Boris Yeltsin and who purchased a Trump Tower apartment in 1994, which he later sold to Vadim Trincher.
12. Mikhail Chernoy Billionaire oligarch who ran Trans-World Group with his brother, Lev; gained control of Russia’s aluminum industry; and acquired a huge stake in processing and distributing other metals and petroleum products. Chernoy allegedly defrauded the Russian central bank of more than $100 million, and is believed by the FBI to be a major Russian crime figure. In the nineties, Chernoy worked with the Chodiev Group. Chernoy also worked with Semyon Kislin, who had a long relationship with Trump and who partnered with Tamir Sapir, a financier of Trump SoHo.
13. Vitaly Churkin Russian ambassador to the UN. Churkin met Trump in 1986 and along with Yuri Dubinin set up the trip Trump took to Moscow in 1987. Churkin died in 2017 in New York.
14. Michael Cohen Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Cohen and his extended family, through his uncle, owned El Caribe Country Club in Brooklyn, which provided an alleged base of operations for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. In 1999, Cohen received a mysterious check for $350,000 that reportedly was intended for one of the leaders of the Izmaylovskaya Organized Crime Group. Both Cohen and his brother Bryan married Ukrainian women, and Bryan’s father-in-law, Alex Oronov, partnered with Viktor Topolov, an oligarch who employed three executives who were allegedly part of the Russian Mafia, including one enforcer who was tied to Mogilevich and admitted to taking part in at least twenty murders.
15. Oleg Deripaska Russian oligarch and founder and owner of Basic Element, a huge diversified industrial group. Close to Putin. Paid Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort $10 million per year to advance Putin’s global agenda. Manafort owed Deripaska nearly $19 million after a failed business deal, but that debt was said to have been forgiven after Manafort offered Deripaska secret briefings on the Trump campaign. Has admitted that, at times, he has had to collaborate with suspected mobsters because he had no choice but to work with such people. Also employed David Geovanis, who in 1996 helped arrange meetings for Trump in Moscow with key Russian figures regarding a potential Trump Tower there.
16. Natalia Dubinina Daughter of Yuri Dubinin who was already living in New York as part of the Soviet delegation to the UN when her father became Soviet ambassador to the UN in March 1986. Stated that there was a determined effort by the Soviet government to seek out Trump. At a time when KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov had been complaining about the failure to recruit enough American agents, Dubinina played a key role in setting up a meeting with Trump and encouraging him to come to Moscow.
17. Yuri Dubinin As Soviet ambassador to the UN, Dubinin met Trump and invited him to Moscow in 1987. The trip was arranged by Intourist, which was essentially a branch of the KGB whose job was to spy on high-profile tourists. As a result, Trump’s entire visit, including his hotel stay, would have been subject to surveillance by the KGB.6 Dubinin later became Soviet ambassador to the US.
18. Dmitry Firtash Ukrainian oligarch who is alleged to have partnered with and is considered a front man for Semion Mogilevich in “opaque intermediary companies” that siphoned off billions of dollars from the Ukraine energy trade. Supporter of the pro-Putin Party of Regions, which backs such policies. Also partnered with Paul Manafort on an abortive deal involving New York’s Drake Hotel.
19. Michael “MISHA” Flynn Foreign policy adviser to Trump during the campaign who later became Trump’s short-lived national security adviser. Met with GRU chief Igor Sergun in Moscow in 20137 and gave a speech to new hires at GRU headquarters. Was paid $45,000 by RT for a speech in late 2015, and was seated near Putin at an RT dinner.
20.Rick Gates When Paul Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager, Gates, as Manafort’s partner, became the campaign’s number two, after having worked closely with Manafort for pro-Putin forces in Ukraine. In 2017, Gates was charged with conspiracy against the United States, making false statements, money laundering, and failing to register as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In 2018, Gates pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements and one count of conspiracy against the United States.
21. David Geovanis As head of real estate for a subsidiary of the Brooke Group,* Geovanis arranged meetings for Trump during his 1996 Moscow trip to explore building Trump Tower Moscow. Later went to work for Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element.
22. Rob Goldstone Music promoter who represents Emin Agalarov. Helped arrange the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 in which representatives of the Russian government offered the Trump campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Extended an invitation to Trump in the summer of 2015 to a party for Agalarov with the possibility of meeting Putin. Attended Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant.
23. Anatoly Golubchik Sentenced to five years in prison in 2014 for his role in the $100 million gambling ring being run out of Trump Tower.8 Owned a condo in Trump International Beach Resort and appeared in the Panama Papers as part of a shell company that has the same corporate director as a company owned by Mogilevich and ex-wife, Galina Telesh.
24. Vyacheslav “Yaponchik” Ivankov One of the last of the old-time vory, Ivankov took over the Brighton Beach Mafia in 1992 and became one of the most powerful mobsters in the US. Connected to Putin through Leonid Usvyatsov, Putin’s judo coach who happened to be a mobster. Owned 25 percent stake in Mogilevich’s company Arbat. Mogilevich flew into New York on occasion to meet with Ivankov. FBI agents looked all over Brooklyn for Ivankov—only to find that he lived in Trump Tower. Ivankov also made frequent visits to Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.
25. Irakly Kaveladze Longtime US-based associate of Aras Agalarov’s real estate firm, the Crocus Group, Kaveladze attended the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and the Russians. At one point, he claimed he’d attended as a translator, but another translator was present. In truth, he was there as a representative of the Agalarovs. In the nineties Kaveladze’s company International Business Creations established more than two thousand Delaware-based shell companies and laundered more than $1.4 billion in cash.
26. Viktor Khrapunov A former Kazakh energy minister and ex-mayor of Almaty, the biggest city in Kazakhstan, Khrapunov was charged with conspiring to systematically steal billions of dollars of public assets and laundering the money through shell companies, including three corresponding to apartments in Trump SoHo. Khrapunov has denied the allegations.
27. Konstantin Kilimnik Started working for Paul Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine. Studied at the First Department of the Moscow Military Red-Banner Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, which trained interpreters for the Russian military intelligence agency.10 Made two trips to meet with Manafort during the 2016 presidential election regarding the Trump campaign, and the possibility that Manafort would give briefings to Oleg Deripaska. Also opened a consulting firm in 2015 that had ties to Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that helped elect Trump.
28. Semyon “Sam” Kislin In the late seventies, Trump bought hundreds of television sets for the Commodore Hotel (now the Grand Hyatt) from Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant who became a billionaire. Partnered with Tamir Sapir, whose Sapir Organization worked with Bayrock and financed Trump SoHo. As a commodities trader, Kislin was tied to Mikhail and Lev Chernoy and, according to the FBI, to Vyacheslav Ivankov’s gang in Brighton Beach. Kislin has denied having ties to the Russian mob.
29. Sergey Kislyak Russian ambassador to the US who had a number of secret meetings and communications with Trump campaign officials, including General Mike Flynn and Senator Jeff Sessions. During the Republican National Convention, Kislyak had two brief encounters with Trump foreign policy adviser J. D. Gordon, who was a key figure in rewriting—and weakening—the Ukraine plank in the Republican platform.
30. Simon Kukes Bought an apartment in Trump Parc in 2000 and contributed more than $280,000 to various Trump entities. Picked by Putin to head Yukos Oil, replacing Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Shortly after the Trump Tower Russian meeting, Kukes started making major contributions to the Trump campaign as well as the Republican National Committee.
31. Bennett LeBow Founder and chairman of the Brooke Group. LeBow and Howard Lorber, president of the Brooke Group, accompanied Trump on his 1996 trip to Moscow.
32. Lev Leviev An Israeli billionaire close to Putin, Leviev made his fortune by cracking the world diamond monopoly of the De Beers cartel. Has several ties to Trump, among them a business relationship with Jared Kushner, who bought four floors of the old New York Times Building, on West Forty-Third Street, from Leviev for $295 million.13 In addition, Leviev was closely tied to the late Trump SoHo financier Tamir Sapir through Sapir’s son-in-law Rotem Rosen, who was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, Leviev’s holding company, and who also became CEO of the Sapir Organization. One of Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, Leviev allied with Roman Abramovich to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”
33. Howard Lorber President of the Brooke Group. Lorber and Brooke CEO Bennett LeBow accompanied Trump to Moscow in 1996.
34. Yuri Luzhkov As mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov was tied to Mogilevich and cultivated a reputation for corruption that was summed up by John Beyrle, then US ambassador to Russia, in a 2010 cable to Washington. “Corruption in Moscow remains pervasive with Mayor Luzhkov at the top of the pyramid,” Beyrle wrote. “Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behavior.” Trump’s meetings in Moscow city hall to discuss major developments in Moscow took place under Luzhkov’s aegis.
35. Paul Manafort Before becoming Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort had been hired by Ukraine’s pro-Putin Party of Regions to do an “extreme makeover” of Viktor Yanukovych that succeeded in making him president—only to see Yanukovych later exiled in disgrace. Manafort worked for oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Rinat Akhmetov. As early as 2005, Manafort proposed to influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet republics to Putin’s benefit. He is alleged to have hidden $75 million in offshore accounts, at least one of which has ties to Mogilevich.
36. Alexander Mashkevich Kazakh billionaire who, with Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov, is part of the Troika, or Trio, as they are known, major stockholders in the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, which controls chromium, alumina, and gas operations in Kazakhstan. Along with Chodiev, Mashkevich worked at Boris Birshtein’s KGB-linked Seabeco16 and was tied up with the Russian Mafia through their alliance with the Chernoys in the Aluminum Wars. He is listed in Bayrock’s promotional literature as a primary financial backer, but it is unclear if Mashkevich actually backed Bayrock projects.
37. Sergei Mikhailov Alleged to be the longtime head of Solntsevskaya Bratva, the biggest crime gang in Russia, and an associate of Semion Mogilevich, who is said to have laundered money for him starting in 1984. According to one denizen of the Russian underworld, Mikhailov is very much the boss and is more powerful that Mogilevich, who, as the brains of the operation, laundered vast amounts of money and came up with its most sophisticated financial scams, which is why Mikhailov has partnered in at least eight companies with Mogilevich. Mikhailov’s ties to Trump largely run through Mogilevich, but in 2013 Mikhailov was said to be interested in backing a Trump Tower development in Moscow and allegedly met with Trump representatives at the Ukraine hotel in Moscow.
38. Semion Mogilevich Ukrainian-born alleged “Brainy Don” of the Russian Mafia, with a multibillion-dollar organization allegedly involved in the sale of nuclear materials to terrorists, human trafficking and prostitution, drugs, and money laundering. In a 1995 Tel Aviv meeting, Mogilevich was awarded a controlling stake in RosUkrEnergo by fellow mobsters, thereby securing the franchise to siphon off untold riches from the Ukraine-Russia energy trade. Has close ties to Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow; Leonid Derkach, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine; and Vladimir Putin. In 1992, Mogilevich sent Vyacheslav Ivankov to New York to oversee expansion of the Mafia into the US. Trump partner Felix Sater was said to be Mogilevich’s shammes—i.e., his errand boy.
39. Hillel “Helly” Nahmad An art dealer who started buying apartments in Trump Tower in 1999, eventually taking over a full floor. Nahmad was a leader of the Nahmad-Trincher Organization, which operated “international sports books” that laundered more than $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States in an enterprise that was based in Trump Tower. The entire operation, prosecutors say, was protected by Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.
40. Eduard Nektalov A diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, Nektalov, who bought a condo in Trump World Tower directly below Kellyanne Conway, came under investigation by the US Treasury Department for mob-connected money laundering. In 2004, after rumors circulated that Nektalov might cave in and cooperate with federal investigators, he was murdered on Sixth Avenue.
41. Alexandre Ventura Nogueira Primary broker of the Trump Ocean Club in Panama, Nogueira marketed the Trump-branded units to Russians, among others with criminal pasts.
42. Carter Page Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Traveled to Moscow in July 2016 during the presidential election and met with senior Russian officials and influential oligarchs. Was approached in 2013 by Russian intelligence officials who were trying to recruit him. Page met with a Russian spy in 2013 and supplied research materials.
43. George Papadopoulos A foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, Papadopoulos triggered the FBI investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia when he told an Australian top diplomat that Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. In March 2016, Papadopoulos met with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in hopes of setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin.
44. Sergei Polonsky A flamboyant six-foot-four Russian real estate oligarch, Polonsky was convicted of fraud in 2017. While still associated with Donald Trump, Felix Sater served as an adviser to Polonsky in Mirax Group, which partnered with Sistema, a conglomerate tied to Mogilevich. Polonsky also partnered with Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a Mogilevich crony.
45. Vadim Rabinovich A pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and Mogilevich lieutenant who spent seven years in jail for embezzlement, Rabinovich attended the famous 1995 Russian Mafia summit in Tel Aviv at which Mogilevich was granted a generous share of the Ukraine energy trade. A year later, in 1996, Rabinovich hung around with his partners Howard Lorber and Bennett LeBow as they showed Trump around town.
46. Vladimir Rezin In 1996, Trump began negotiations with Rezin, the first deputy mayor of Moscow, to build a $300 million luxury residential complex. Like all of Trump’s proposed projects in Moscow, it never came to fruition.
47. Rotem Rosen Chief lieutenant of real estate magnate Lev “King of Diamonds” Leviev, Rosen married Zina Sapir, daughter of Tamir Sapir, who founded the Sapir Organization, which backed Trump SoHo. Attended Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in hopes of negotiating a Trump Tower Moscow. His son’s 2008 bris was touted by New York magazine as “the best bris invite ever.” Attendees included Donald Trump, daughter Ivanka, and her husband-to-be, Jared Kushner.
48. Dmitry Rybolovlev Russia’s “fertilizer king,” Rybolovlev owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus, alleged to be a haven for money laundering. In 2008, he purchased a mega-mansion from Trump in Palm Beach for $95 million, which Trump had purchased four years earlier for $40 million.
49. Tamir Sapir An impoverished immigrant turned billionaire, Sapir partnered with Semyon Kislin, who, according to the FBI, was a “member or associate” of Vyacheslav Ivankov’s mob in Brighton Beach. Like Kislin, Sapir likely made his money through ties to Uzbek oligarch Mikhail Chernoy. Lived in Trump Tower, and partnered with Bayrock and Trump on Trump SoHo. Sapir denied having any mob ties. Died in 2014.
50. Felix Sater Bayrock’s international man of mystery, Sater was born in the Soviet Union in 1966. As managing director of Bayrock Group, he partnered with Trump and made various stabs at developing Trump Tower Moscow. Cooperated with the government after pleading guilty to racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme in 1998. His father was said to be a lieutenant in Mogilevich’s organization and did business with the Italian Mafia in New York. Childhood friend of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Served as a government asset who helped the US track terrorists and mobsters, but is also alleged to be working with Mogilevich. Accompanied Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr. on a 2006 Russia trip, in which he said he arranged for Ivanka to spin around in Putin’s chair in the Kremlin.
51. Alex Shnaider In the early 2000s, he began to develop the tallest building in Canada, the sixty-five-story Trump Tower and Hotel in Toronto. When it came to financing the skyscraper, Shnaider, a billionaire of Russian extraction, turned to Raiffeisen Bank International AG in Vienna, whose affiliate company was said to be a front for RosUkrEnergo. Shnaider is also the son-in-law of Boris Birshtein and worked at Birshtein’s KGB-tied company, Seabeco.
52. Eric Sitarchuk As an attorney, Sitarchuk represented Mogilevich lieutenant Jacob Bogatin during the YBM Magnex scandal and, many years later, Donald Trump himself as owner of the Trump International Hotel in DC, when a wine bar argued that the president’s ownership of the hotel constituted an unfair competitive advantage.
53. Roger Stone A close Trump ally for decades, Stone represented Trump when he moved into the gambling industry in the eighties. Served as adviser to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Communicated directly and indirectly with WikiLeaks in order to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton and hacked emails before the election.
54. Gennady Timchenko Yet another judoka pal of Putin’s who ended up a billionaire, in this case as chairman of the Gunvor oil-trading firm, with a net worth of $15.6 billion.20 Cited as a member of Putin’s inner circle, Timchenko has been subject to sanctions. As an owner of Sibur, a large gas company, he is one of the biggest clients of Navigator Holdings, a shipping firm partly owned by Trump’s commerce secretary Wilbur Ross.
55. Vadim Trincher Along with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, Anatoly Golubchik, and Hillel Nahmad, Trincher was a leader of two Russian-American organized crime families—the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization and the Nahmad-Trincher Organization—which ran “international sports books” that laundered more than $100 million out of the former Soviet Union. They operated out of the sixty-third floor of Trump Tower until they were busted in 2013.
56. Alimzhan “Taiwanchik” Tokhtakhounov Another ringleader of the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization, Tokhtakhounov has allegedly spent more than three decades working with Mogilevich and the Solntsevo Organization, dating back to the early eighties, when he hung out with Mogilevich and Mikhailov at the Legendary Hotel Sovietsky in the Moscow suburb of Solntsevo. He was indicted for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics. After the bust of the gambling ring in Trump Tower in April 2013, he surfaced in November at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow near Donald Trump.
57. Viktor Vekselberg A member of Putin’s inner circle, Vekselberg is the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, investing in it at a time when Wilbur Ross, who has since become Trump’s secretary of commerce, was the bank’s vice chairman.
58. Natalia Veselnitskaya A Russian attorney for Denis Katsys’s Cyprus-based Prevezon Holdings, Veselnitskaya set up the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, among others. Veselnitskaya has been an informant to Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia. The meeting held forth the promise of handing over damaging information on Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign, as well as addressing the possibility of lifting sanctions against Russia. Closely aligned with the Agalarovs.
59. Viktor Yanukovych Elected president of Ukraine after being completely remade as a candidate by Paul Manafort. Earned a reputation as a “Putin puppet,” and was ousted in 2014, and exiled to Russia. Manafort, Rick Gates, and Konstantin Kilimnik all worked for Yanukovych for more than a decade—in return for tens of millions of dollars.