The following is an alphabetical list of notable people known to have committed

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

A

Alfredo Sáenz Abad Alfredo Sáenz Abad (born 21 November 1942) is a Spanish businessman who was the CEO and Vice-Chairman of the Spanish bank Santander Group, the largest bank in the Eurozone and one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalisat ...

, retired in 2013 as CEO and vice-chairman of the Spanish bank

Santander Group Banco Santander, S.A., doing business as Santander Group (, , Spanish: ), is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Santander in Spain. Additionally, Santander maintains a presence in all global financial centres ...

; in lower executive position in early 1990s, lied about bank loans so that some customers to the bank went to prison, sentenced to prison years later but managed to get a pardon and kept his job * Frank Abagnale Jr., American

impostor An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise. Their objective is usually to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but also often for purposes ...

who wrote bad checks in 12 countries until arrested in 1969: falsely represented himself as a qualified member of professions such as airline pilot, doctor, attorney, and teacher; the film ''

Catch Me If You Can ''Catch Me If You Can'' is a 2002 American biographical crime comedy-drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks with Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams and James ...

'' is based on his life * Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, also known as Hushpuppi, Nigerian former Instagram influencer and fraudster and money launderer that operated from Dubai. *

John Bodkin Adams John Bodkin Adams (21 January 18994 July 1983) was an Irish-born British general practitioner, convicted fraudster, and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, which was deemed to be worthy of i ...

, British doctor and suspected years-long

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

, but only found guiltyin 1957of forging wills and prescriptions related to over 300 deceased patients * Eddie Antar, founder of

Crazy Eddie Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics chain in the Northeastern United States. The chain was started in 1971 in Brooklyn, New York, by businessmen Eddie and Sam M. Antar, and was previously named ERS Electronics (ERS stood for Eddie, Rose and ...

; has criminal convictions on 17 counts and about $1 billion worth of civil judgments against him stemming from fraudulent accounting practices at that company * Ruben Oskar Auervaara, a notorious

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

conman and

thief Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...

. He became famous by cheating money from women he met through newspaper announcements, by pretending to intend to marry them. His surname has become a concept in the

Finnish language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish ...

, meaning a deceptive charming trickster. *

Mehmet Aydın Mehmet Aydın is a Turkish politician who was one of Turkey's Ministers of State. Searched by

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

with red notice due to qualified fraud.

B

Jordan Belfort Jordan Ross Belfort (; born July 9, 1962) is an American entrepreneur, speaker, author, former stockbroker, and financial criminal. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation and running ...

swindled over $200 million via a

penny stock Penny stocks are common shares of small public companies that trade for less than one dollar per share. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) uses the term "Penny stock" to refer to a security, a financial instrument which represents a ...

boiler room operation. '' The Wolf of Wall Street'' is based on his life and fraudulent activity *

Horatio Bottomley Horatio William Bottomley (23 March 1860 – 26 May 1933) was an English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his editorship of the popular magazine ''John Bull (maga ...

, newspaper owner and Member of Parliament, convicted of fraudulent

conversion Conversion or convert may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman'' * "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series * "The Conversion" ...

C

* Melissa Caddick, Australian who ran a Ponzi scheme and thereby defrauded friends and close relatives. * Cassie Chadwick, pretended to be

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans i ...

's illegitimate daughter to get loans * Charlene Corley, who with her twin sister ran a company which used enormously inflated shipping costs to defraud the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

out of $21.5 million.

D

* Edward Davenport, self-styled as a "Lord"; from 2005 to 2009 was the "ringmaster" of a series of

advance-fee fraud An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the frauds ...

schemes for (non-existent) loans that defrauded dozens of individuals out of millions of pounds, while costing his clients further hundreds of millions in losses when they signed development property commitments backed by their anticipated loans *

Tino De Angelis Anthony "Tino" De Angelis (November 3, 1915 – September 26, 2009) was a Bayonne, New Jersey, commodities trader who dealt in vegetable oil futures worldwide. In 1962 De Angelis' company, ''Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Refining Corporation'', bi ...

, perpetrator of the 1963

Salad oil scandal The salad oil scandal, also referred to as the soybean scandal, was an American major corporate scandal in 1963 that caused over $180 million ($ billion today) in losses to corporations including American Express, Bank of America and Bank Leumi, ...

, which ultimately caused over $180 million ($ billion today) in losses to 51 corporations. *

Marc Dreier Marc Stuart Dreier (born May 12, 1950) is an American former lawyer who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2009 for committing investment fraud using a Ponzi scheme. He is scheduled to be released from FCI Sandstone on October 26, 2 ...

, managing founder of law firm Dreir LLP, a $700 million Ponzi scheme from 2004 to 2008 * Enric Durán, from 2006 to 2008, took out 68 commercial and personal loans from a total of 39 banks in Spain with no guarantees or property as collateral, then gave the €500,000 to various anti-capitalist movements

E

Bernard Ebbers Bernard John Ebbers (August 27, 1941 – February 2, 2020) was a Canadian businessman, the co-founder and CEO of WorldCom and a convicted fraudster. Under his management, WorldCom grew rapidly but collapsed in 2002 amid revelations of accounting ...

, founder of

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunic ...

, which went bankrupt in 2002 having inflated its asset statements by about $11 billion ($ billion today)

F

Ramón Báez Figueroa Ramón Buenaventura Báez Figueroa (born in 1956) is the former president of Banco Intercontinental (BANINTER) from the Dominican Republic, accused in 2003 of masterminding the country's most spectacular banking fraud scandal, amounting to more than ...

, banker from the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...

and former President of

Banco Intercontinental Banco Intercontinental (or BANINTER) was the second largest privately held commercial bank in the Dominican Republic before collapsing in 2003 in a fraud tied to political corruption. Ramón Báez Figueroa and expansion of BANINTER Banco Interco ...

(BANINTER), charged in 2003 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison for a U.S. $2.2 billion fraud case ($ billion today). The BANINTER Crisis was overwhelming for the small Dominican economy, equivalent to two-thirds of its national budget. *

Martin Frankel Martin R. "Marty" Frankel (born 1954) is an American financial criminal who conducted a series of investment frauds in the late 20th century, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. He was caught in 1999, and in 2004 was sentenced to ...

, American former

financier An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Type ...

, convicted in 2002 of insurance fraud worth $208 million, racketeering and money laundering

G

* Anthony Gignac, a serial con man and fraudster who falsely took on the identity of Saudi prince Khalid bin Al Saud to entrap victims in investment scams and other schemes, currently serving an 18-year jail sentence

H

* Shimon Hayut, international Ponzi schemer sentenced in Finland and Israel for fraud, wanted by Norway, Sweden, and the UK. His illegal activities were outlined in the Netflix movie "The Tinder Swindler" in 2022. * Vladislav Horohorin, indicted in 2009 for fraud activities as a hacker and international credit card trafficker, sentenced in 2013 *

Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American convicted fraudster and former biotechnology entrepreneur. In 2003, Holmes founded and was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company that ...

, convicted of 4 counts of felony fraud in January 2022 - three counts of wire fraud, and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for misleading investors on the biotech company Theranos, a diagnostics company claiming to be able to perform multianalyte clinical chemistry using unsound liquid handling tech. Company results were manipulated, not transparent, and real patient samples were handled in error. *

David Hu David L. Hu (born circa 1979) is an American mathematician, roboticist, and biologist who is currently an associate professor at the engineering department of Georgia Tech. His research centers on animal behavior and movement, and is noted for its ...

, IIG cofounder sentenced to 12 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme

I

Samuel Israel III Samuel Israel III (born July 20, 1959) is an American fraudster and former hedge fund manager for the Bayou Hedge Fund Group, which he founded in 1996. In 2008, Israel was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $300 million for ...

, former hedge fund manager; ran the fraudulent American Bayou Hedge Fund Group; pled guilty in 2005 of defrauding investors out of $450 million ($ million today)

K

Dennis Kozlowski Leo Dennis Kozlowski (born November 16, 1946) is a former CEO of Tyco International, convicted in 2005 of crimes related to his receipt of $81 million in unauthorized bonuses, the purchase of art for $14.725 million and the payment by Tyco of a $ ...

, former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Tyco International Tyco International plc was a security systems company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with operational headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, United States (Tyco International (US) Inc.). Tyco International was composed of two major bu ...

, convicted in 2005 of fraud and other crimes related to his receipt of $81 million in unauthorized bonuses, the purchase of art for $14.725 million and the payment by Tyco of a $20 million investment banking fee to a former Tyco director. *

Sante Kimes Sante Kimes (born Sante Singhrs; July 24, 1934 – May 19, 2014) was an American criminal who was convicted of two murders, as well as robbery, forgery, violation of anti-slavery laws, and numerous other crimes. Many of these crimes were comm ...

and her son committed numerous frauds, violated anti-slavery laws, and committed murders * Russel King, convicted fraudster known for his part in the doomed purchase of

Notts County Football Club Notts County Football Club is a professional association football club based in Nottingham, England. The team participate in the National League (division), National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system. Founded on the 2 ...

. In 2019 he was there sentenced to six years imprisonment. He was released in 2021. * Bashar Kiwan, Syrian-French convicted fraudster and mastermind of the Comoros passport sales scandal. *

Konrad Kujau Konrad Paul Kujau (27 June 1938 – 12 September 2000) was a German illustrator and forger. He became famous in 1983 as the creator of the so-called Hitler Diaries, for which he received DM 2.5 million (€2,421,020 in 2020 terms, adjusted for in ...

, German fraudster and forger responsible for the "

Hitler Diaries The Hitler Diaries (german: Hitler-Tagebücher) were a series of sixty volumes of journals purportedly written by Adolf Hitler, but forged by Konrad Kujau between 1981 and 1983. The diaries were purchased in 1983 for 9.3 million Deutsche ...

" *

Rudy Kurniawan Rudy Kurniawan (born 10 October 1976, in Jakarta, Indonesia) is an Indonesian convicted criminal and perpetrator of wine fraud. He was found to be offering more magnums of the limited edition 1947 Château Lafleur than had been produced, and ...

, Indonesian wine fraudster in America

L

Kenneth Lay Kenneth Lee Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron. He was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the large ...

, American businessman who built energy company

Enron Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. ...

; one of the highest paid

CEOs Kea ( el, Κέα), also known as Tzia ( el, Τζια) and in antiquity Keos ( el, Κέως, la, Ceos), is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit. Geography It is the island o ...

in the U.S. until he was ousted as chairman and convicted of fraud and conspiracy, although, as a result of his death, his conviction was vacated *

Nick Leeson Nicholas William Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is an English former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorized and speculative trades resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest merchant bank. Leeson w ...

, English trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank * James Paul Lewis, Jr., ran one of the biggest ($311 million) and longest running Ponzi schemes (20 years) in U.S. history *

Victor Lustig Victor Lustig (; January 4, 1890 – March 11, 1947) was a highly skilled con artist from Austria-Hungary, who undertook a criminal career that involved conducting scams across Europe and the United States during the early 20th century. Lusti ...

, con artist known as "the man who sold the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

M

Gregor MacGregor General Gregor MacGregor (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central Am ...

, Scottish con man; tried to attract investment and settlers for the non-existent country of Poyais *

Bernard Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ s ...

, creator of a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest investor fraud ever attributed to a single individual *

Matt the Knife Matt the Knife (also called MTK; born 1988) is a magician and mentalist. He has broken a number of Guinness World Records. He began his career as a professional con man. Career Sometime around 2000 he began to perform magic. Since then, he has p ...

, American con artist, card cheat and pickpocket; from age approximately 14 through 21, stole from dozens of casinos, corporations and at least one Mafia crime family. * Billy McFarland organizer of the notorious

Fyre Festival Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival founded by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent of promoting the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take pla ...

and other fraudulent activities in which he defrauded others of $27.4 million *

Gaston Means Gaston Bullock Means (July 11, 1879 – December 12, 1938) was an American private detective, salesman, bootlegger, forger, swindler, murder suspect, blackmailer, and con artist. While not involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, Means was associ ...

, professional con man during U.S. President

Warren G. Harding Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. A ...

's administration *

Harshad Mehta Harshad Shantilal Mehta (29 July 1954 — 31 December 2001) was an Indian stockbroker and a convicted fraudster. Mehta's involvement in the 1992 Indian securities scam made him infamous as a market manipulator. Of the 27 criminal charges br ...

, committed fraud without bank receipts of ₹5 billion from State Bank of India and an individual scam of ₹14 billion using fake bank receipts. The Indian television series ''

Scam 1992 ''Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story'' is an Indian Hindi-language biographical financial thriller streaming television series on SonyLIV directed by Hansal Mehta, with Jai Mehta serving as the co-director. Based on the 1992 Indian stock market ...

'' is based on his life and fraudulent activity. *

Trevor Milton Trevor Robert Milton (born April 6, 1982) is an American convicted felon, former businessman and the founder and former chairman and CEO of Nikola Corporation. In September 2020, Milton resigned from his position as chairman after the U.S. Securi ...

, founder and former CEO of Hydrogen Trucking company Nikola inc. Convicted of Fraud lying to investors to pump the companies stock price. *

Barry Minkow Barry Jay Minkow (born March 22, 1966) is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, Minkow founded ZZZZ Best (pronounced "Zee Best"), which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and ...

, founder of ZZZZ Best, a carpet-cleaning and restoration company, which was actually a front for a Ponzi scheme. *

Michael Monus Michael I. "Mickey" Monus (born 1947) is the former president of Phar-Mor, Inc., founder of the World Basketball League and was an original owner of the Colorado Rockies, a Major League Baseball expansion team. Phar-Mor was a deep-discount drug stor ...

, founder of

Phar-Mor Phar-Mor (stylized as PHA℞-MOR) was a United States chain of discount drug stores, based in Youngstown, Ohio, and founded by Michael "Mickey" Monus and David Shapira in 1982. Some of its stores used the names Pharmhouse and Rx Place (purchas ...

, which ultimately cost its investors more than $1 billion * F. Bam Morrison, conned the town of

Wetumka, Oklahoma Wetumka is a city in northern Hughes County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,282 at the 2010 census, a decline of 11.7 percent from the figure of 1,451 recorded in 2000. First settled by the Muscogee Creek after removal in the 1830s ...

by promoting a circus that never came *

Phillip Musica Philip Mariano Fausto Musica (1877 – December 16, 1938), also known as F. Donald Coster, was an Italian swindler whose criminal career spanned parts of three decades. His various crimes included tax fraud, bank fraud, and bootlegging. However, ...

, engaged in tax fraud, bank fraud, and securities fraud (

McKesson & Robbins scandal (1938) The McKesson & Robbins, Inc. scandal of 1938 was one of the major financial scandals of the 20th century. The company McKesson & Robbins, Inc. (now McKesson Corporation) had been taken over in 1925 by Phillip Musica, who had previously used Adelp ...

P

Lou Pearlman Louis Jay Pearlman (June 19, 1954 – August 19, 2016) was an American record producer. He was the person behind many successful 1990s boy bands, having formed and funded the Backstreet Boys. After their massive success, he then developed NSYNC. ...

, former boy-band manager and operator of a $300 million Ponzi scheme using two shell companies * Frederick Emerson Peters, American impersonator who wrote bad checks * Thomas Petters, American masquerading as a business man who turned out to be a con man; former CEO and chairman of

Petters Group Worldwide Petters Group Worldwide was an American diversified company based in Minnetonka, Minnesota that was turned into a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme by its founder and CEO, Tom Petters. It had 3,200 employees and investments or full ownership in 60 companie ...

;Nicole Muehlhausen
BIO: Tom Petters
KSTP.com, September 24, 2008. Retrieved October 8, 2008. resigned his position as CEO in 2008 amid mounting criminal investigations;
later convicted for turning Petters Group Worldwide into a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme; sentenced to 50 years in federal prison *

Charles Ponzi Charles Ponzi (, ; born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi; March 3, 1882 – January 15, 1949) was an Italian swindler and con artist who operated in the U.S. and Canada. His aliases included ''Charles Ponci'', ''Carlo'', and ''Cha ...

Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to believe that profits are comin ...

Gert Postel Gert Uwe Postel (born June 18, 1958 in Bremen) is a German impostor, best known for successfully applying several times for public health positions as a medical doctor without ever having received medical education. Gert Postel went to Hauptsc ...

, German mailman; worked as a psychiatrist in different hospitals

R

* Alves Reis, ran the 1925 Portuguese Bank Note Crisis, forging

Bank of Portugal The Banco de Portugal (English: Bank of Portugal) is the central bank of the Portuguese Republic. The bank was founded by royal charter in 1846, during the reign of Queen Maria II of Portugal, by a merger of the '' Banco de Lisboa'' (Bank of Lis ...

documents giving him authority to hire a firm to print moneyofficial banknotes worth 100 million

Portuguese escudo The Portuguese escudo was the currency of Portugal from May 22nd 1911 until the introduction of the euro on January 1st 2002. The escudo was subdivided into 100 . The word derives from the scutum shield. Amounts in escudos were written as w ...

s (adjusted for inflation, it would be worth about US$150 million today) *

John Rigas John James Rigas (November 14, 1924 – September 30, 2021) was an American businessman who was one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, which at its peak was one of the largest cable TV companies in the United States. He wa ...

, cable television entrepreneur, co-founder of

Adelphia Communications Corporation Adelphia Communications Corporation was an American cable television company with headquarters in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1952 by brothers Gus and John Rigas after the pair purchased a cable television franchise for US$300. C ...

and owner of the

Buffalo Sabres The Buffalo Sabres are a professional ice hockey team based in Buffalo, New York. The Sabres compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The team was established in 1970, along w ...

hockey team; indicted in 2002 for defrauding the corporation by concealing $2.3 billion in liabilities from corporate investors and of using corporation funds as personal funds, sentenced to a 12-year term in federal prison * Christopher Rocancourt, a Rockefeller impersonator who defrauded

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

celebrities *

Scott W. Rothstein Scott W. Rothstein (born June 10, 1962) is an American disbarred lawyer, convicted felon, and the former managing shareholder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the now-defunct Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm. He funded an extravag ...

, disbarred lawyer from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; perpetrated a decades long Ponzi scheme, until caught in 2009, which defrauded investors of over $1 billion

S

* Michael Sabo, best known as a check, stocks and bonds forger; became notorious from the 1960s through to the 1990s as a "Great Impostor" with over 100 aliases, earning millions but also receiving numerous prison terms * Emil Savundra, Sri Lankan insurance swindler; the collapse of his Fire, Auto & Marine Insurance Company left 400,000 motorists in the UK without coverage. *

Jeffrey Skilling Jeffrey Keith Skilling (born November 25, 1953) is an American businessman who is best known as the CEO of Enron Corporation during the Enron scandal. In 2006, he was convicted of federal felony charges relating to Enron's collapse and eventual ...

is an American former

Enron Corporation Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. B ...

, convicted of

securities fraud Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in los ...

(and other crimes) for his part in the 2001

Enron scandal The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen then on ...

, a $63.4 billion bankruptcy ($ billion today). * John Spano, struggling businessman who faked massive success in an attempt to buy out the

New York Islanders The New York Islanders (colloquially known as the Isles) are a professional ice hockey team based in Elmont, New York. The Islanders compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference ( ...

of the

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

in 1996; ran an advance-fee for loans fraud after release from prison, sent to prison again, returned to fraud after serving that sentence, again sent to prison. *

Allen Stanford Robert Allen Stanford (born March 24, 1950) is an American financial fraudster, former financier, and sponsor of professional sports. He is serving a 110-year federal prison sentence, having been convicted in 2012 of fraud, on charges that his i ...

, self-styled banker; sold fake certificates of deposit to over 30,000 investors in 100 countries, raking in up to $8 billion over 20 years *

John Stonehouse John Thomson Stonehouse (28 July 192514 April 1988) was a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician and cabinet minister under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Stonehouse is remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in ...

, the last Postmaster General of the UK and MP; faked his death to marry his mistress *

Charles Stopford Charles Albert Stopford III (born May 1962) is an American imposter who posed as the Earl of Buckingham and lived under the assumed name of Christopher Buckingham for over twenty years. The press dubbed him ‘the real Jackal’ due to his use of ...

, assumed the identity of a deceased infant and claimed to be the

Earl of Buckingham The peerage title Earl of Buckingham was created several times in the Peerage of England. It is not to be confused with the title of Earl of Buckinghamshire. It was first created in 1097 for Walter Giffard, but became extinct in 1164 with the d ...

T

Kevin Trudeau Kevin Trudeau (; born ) is an American author, salesman, and convicted fraudster known for promotion of his books and resulting legal cases involving the US Federal Trade Commission. His ubiquitous late-night infomercials, which promoted unsub ...

, American writer and billiards promoter; convicted of fraud and larceny in 1991; known for a series of late-night infomercials and his series of books about "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About"

W

Samuel D. Waksal Samuel D. Waksal (born September 8, 1947) is the founder and former CEO of the biopharmaceutical company ImClone Systems. He is also the founder of Kadmon Pharmaceuticals, which was financed with private capital and commenced operations in New Y ...

is the founder and former CEO of the

biopharmaceutical A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, t ...

company

ImClone Systems ImClone Systems Incorporated was a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing biologic medicines in the area of oncology. It was founded in 1984 and had its corporate headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey, and its research headquarters i ...

. In October 2002, he pleaded guilty to charges of

bank fraud Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many ins ...

obstruction of justice Obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, is an act that involves unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investigators, or other gov ...

, and

perjury Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...

. *

Ferdinand Ward Ferdinand De Wilton Ward, Jr. (1851–1925), known first as the "Young Napoleon of Finance," and subsequently as "the Best-Hated Man in the United States," was an American Charlatan, swindler. The collapse of his Ponzi scheme caused the financial ...

, financial swindler in the late 1800s * Dina Wein Reis pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in May 2011, having duped corporations out of tens of millions of dollars. * Richard Whitney, stole from the New York Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund in the 1930s *

Whitaker Wright James Whitaker Wright (9 February 1846 – 26 January 1904) was a company promoter and swindler, who committed suicide at the Royal Courts of Justice in London immediately following his conviction for fraud. Early life The eldest of five child ...

, company promoter, convicted of fraud.

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References

Further reading