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Just who was the man whose name has become synonymous with the classic “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” scam in which money from new investors is used to reward earlier ones?  In December 1919, he was an unknown thirty-eight-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with a borrowed two-hundred dollars in his pocket.  Six months later, he was Boston’s famed “wizard of finance,” lionized by the public and politicians alike.  Based on exclusive interviews with people who knew Charles Ponzi, lent him their money, and exposed him, Donald Dunn’s Ponzi recreates both one of America’s most notorious and colorful financial con artists and the mad money-hungry era in which he thrived.

This book takes an investigative look at the reasons why Ponzi schemes and pyramid frauds are thriving everywhere. It closely examines why over 100,000 Americans are suckered into the schemes every year. Tips are offered to detect schemes and respond when they occur. The purpose of the book is to educated consumers and make them aware of how scams work.

This unprecendented original primetime series begins with story of a skilled fisherman and expert Ponzi scam artist angling for big money and reeling them in - luring over 50 local investors into a promising start-up, taking approximately $2 million. The schemes continue with art theft, including behind-the-scenes footage from inside a West Hollywood heist that is still on the FBI's top 10 list of art crimes. Narrated by actor Stacy Keach, "American Greed" continues with medical scams, religious fraud, bank heists, and identity theft.

Awarded the Excellence in Public Awareness Award by the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, "American Greed" should be required viewing for anyone looking to protect themselves from the dark side of the American Dream.

2 Disc Set

Preorder your copy now!

Your order will ship on January 28th.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Without Lou Pearlman, there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no *NSYNC, and possibly no Justin Timberlake. In the late 1990s, Pearlman's boy bands ushered out guitar-and-angst-driven grunge music, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys began to dominate the television and radio airwaves. At the core of this squeaky-clean pop revolution was a sinister international fraud conceived by Pearlman, a husky huckster who first honed his crooked business skills as a teenage math nerd and blimp enthusiast in Flushing, Queens. From there in the mid 1980s and from his Orlando, Florida, base in the early 1990s through 2007, he cheated hundreds of investors out of nearly $500 million. When they finally caught on to him and started demanding he return their money, the “Sixth Backstreet Boy” had already fled to Germany and then to Indonesia, where he was eventually nabbed by authorities and charged with a historic federal fraud.

Tyler Gray (the only journalist to speak with Pearlman while he was in jail) weaves together the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the greed and desperation of this boy-band mogul and monumental scam artist. Gray unravels Pearlman's twenty-year long Ponzi scheme and explores persistent rumors about alleged inappropriate behavior by Pearlman toward members of the boy bands and other young men. Along the way, former friends, family members, Pearlman business associates, and band members themselves reveal detailed accounts of everything from the heyday of their stardom to Pearlman's more troubled times.

The Hit Charade starts with Pearlman's awkward youth and follows along as his juggling act becomes increasingly complex, then builds to the heartbreaking moments when investors—retirees, relatives, and friends—and government authorities discover that the man they had trusted had been cheating them all along. How did this chubby boy from middle-class Queens, who pioneered some of the music industry's most lucrative pop ensembles, mastermind one of the largest and longest running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history? Here, finally, is the true story of Lou Pearlman's epic rise and fall.