5 Must-Read Books About Big-Time Financial Fraud

Building on Pulitzer-finalist work for The Wall Street Journal, Wright and Hope offer a gripping, deeply reported account of how Malaysian financier Jho Low rose from obscurity to orchestrate one of the most audacious financial frauds of the 21st century. He funneled more than $5 billion from the state-owned 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, meant to spur Malaysia’s economic growth, into a murky web of Swiss bank accounts, shell companies and other complex financial structures. Along the way, the authors sketch a Gatsby-meets-Goldman-Sachs portrait of capitalism run amok, as Low—“armed with more liquid cash than possibly any individual in history”—wooed the global elite. Star-studded cameos (dates with supermodel Miranda Kerr, parties with Leonardo DiCaprio) add sparkle to this voyeuristic tale of “one of the greatest spenders of money the jet-setting class had seen in a generation”—even if his diamond-studded empire was built on smoke and mirrors.

Zuckoff, a former Boston Globe reporter, tells the riveting story of how Charles (born Carlo) Ponzi—an Italian immigrant with big dreams and a criminal past—spun a financial fantasy in 1920s Boston so outrageous that his name still defines the modern con. Ponzi promised 50 percent returns in just 45 days, all based on a flimsy “rob Peter to pay Paul” scheme involving postal coupons. Zuckoff brings the operation to life, along with the world that enabled it: sluggish regulators, a gullible press and a public ravenous for instant wealth. Nearly 30,000 people invested $10 million—pre-inflation—thronging his downtown office and cheering his limousine arrivals—until the whole plot collapsed. Yet Zuckoff offers a surprisingly nuanced portrait—depicting Ponzi less as a calculating crook than a reckless dreamer, undone by his own pie-in-the-sky ambitions.

Lewis (Liar’s Poker, The Big Short) returns to the theme of financial mania—this time in the volatile world of cryptocurrency. With rare insider access, he traces the improbable rise of Sam Bankman-Fried from a depressed middle-school loner to crypto billionaire and, eventually, convicted felon. In 2023, Bankman-Fried was found guilty of stealing $8 billion from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Lewis doesn’t dive deep into the technical side of crypto, but he captures the wild, loosely regulated world surrounding FTX and its sister firm, Alameda Research. In classic Lewis fashion, the book shimmers with sharp observation, including a 14-page scene of Bankman-Fried playing video games during a Zoom call with Anna Wintour.

While Diana B. Henriques’s The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust remains the definitive chronicle of the Madoff scandal—forming the basis for HBO’s Robert De Niro-led film—this gripping account delivers the raw, insider’s view from the man who tried to stop it. In 1999, Markopolos, a derivatives portfolio manager at a Boston equity firm, analyzed Madoff’s returns and found them mathematically impossible, with inconsistencies “popping out as clearly as a red wagon in a field of snow.” What followed was a nine-year crusade to expose Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme—recounted with the urgency of a thriller and the precision of a financial analyst who saw the truth early.

Bethany McLean’s 2001 Fortune article, “Is Enron Overpriced?”, was the first major red flag—a bold journalistic investigation that dared to ask, “How exactly does Enron make its money?” In this full-length exposé, McLean teams up with fellow Fortune writer Peter Elkind to unravel the company’s $70 billion collapse. Their reporting traces Enron’s evolution from a modest pipeline operation to a sprawling, fraudulent empire built on accounting tricks and corporate bravado. Among the book’s jaw-dropping moments: CEO Jeff Skilling’s demand to use “a different type of accounting from the one ordinarily used by the natural-gas industry” as a condition for joining the company.