- Lou Pearlman
Lou Pearlman (born June 19 1954, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA. He was an only child born to Reenie and Hy Pearlman that ran a dry cleaning business. He last resided in Orlando, Florida) and was best known as a manager for boy bands like the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and US5. However, in the long run he may be better remembered as the con man that operated a Ponzi scheme.
- Schabir Shaik
Schabir Shaik is a South African businessman from the Berea, Durban, who rose to prominence due to his close association with South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma. On 2 June 2005, he was found guilty of corruption and fraud, which also led to the dismissal of Zuma two weeks later.
- Conrad Black
Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, PC, OC, KCSG (born 25 August, 1944, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a former financier and newspaper magnate who was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice on 13 July 2007. He has written several biographies, including one about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Black is Canadian-born but publicly renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 in order to become a life peer in the British House of Lords.
- Frank Abagnale
Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is a former cheque forger and impostor for five years in the 1960s. Currently he runs Abagnale and Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company. His life story provided the inspiration for the feature film "Catch Me if You Can", nominally based on his ghostwritten biography of the same name. Over five years he worked under no fewer than eight identities (though he used many more to cash checks), …
- Michael Brown
Michael Robert Alexander Brown is a Scottish businessman, who between 10 February and 30 March 2005 donated £2.4 million to the British Liberal Democrats. He is the largest donor that political party has ever had, giving ten times more than anything the party had received before. On 25 September 2006 he was convicted to serve 18 months in prison for perjury and 6 months for making an untrue statement to obtain a passport in his pursuit to adopt a child.
- Barry Minkow
Barry Minkow (born March 17 1967) is an American religious leader and ex-convict. As a young teenager Minkow was a fraudulent entrepreneur who managed to present the front of a successful businessman for a number of years during the 1980s. He was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but served only seven years. During his time in prison, Minkow became involved in Christian ministry, which continued after his probationary release from prison in April 1995.
- Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff (born February 28, 1959) is a former American political lobbyist, a Republican political activist and businessman who was a central figure in a series of high-profile political scandals. Abramoff pled guilty on January 3, 2006, to three criminal felony counts in a Washington, D.C., federal court related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials.
- Andrew Fastow
Business executive and convict. Born Andrew Stuart Fastow on December 22, 1961 in Washington, DC. Andrew Fastow was one of three sons raised in a middle-class Jewish family in New Providence, New Jersey. He graduated from Tufts University in 1983. After earning his MBA from Northwestern University, he worked for Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago.
- Kenneth Lay
Kenneth Lee "Ken" Lay (April 15, 1942 - July 5, 2006) was an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely-reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001. Lay was the CEO and chairman of Enron from 1986 until his resignation on January 23, 2002, except for a few months in 2001 when he was chairman and Jeffrey Skilling was CEO.
- Jeffrey Skilling
Jeffrey Keith "Jeff" Skilling (born November 25, 1953) was the CEO of Enron Corporation in 2001. He was convicted in 2006 of multiple federal felony charges relating to Enron's financial collapse, and is currently serving a 24-year, 4-month prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Waseca in Waseca, Minnesota.
- Nick Leeson
Nicholas Leeson (English, born February 25, 1967) is a former derivatives trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank. Leeson was born in Watford, north-west of London. He attended Parmiter's School. After leaving school in the early 1980s, Nick landed a job as a clerk with royal bank Coutts, followed by a string of jobs with other banks, …
- David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, a candidate in presidential primaries for both the Democratic and Republican parties, and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke is a self-styled "white nationalist," and he is commonly referred to by his opponents as a white supremacist. He says he does not think of himself as a racist, however, …
- Kevin Trudeau
Kevin Mark Trudeau (born February 6 1963) is an American author, pool player, salesman and alternative medicine advocate. He is known for a number of television infomercials selling his products, and for several books, including the controversial "Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About". Trudeau has had numerous interactions with the U.S. judicial system, including multiple fines and a larceny conviction., …
- Jayson Blair
Jayson Blair (born March 23, 1976, Columbia, Maryland) is an American former "New York Times" reporter who was forced to resign from the newspaper in May 2003, after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories.
- Charles Ponzi
Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882-January 18, 1949) was an Italian immigrant to the United States who became one of the greatest swindlers in American history. His aliases include Charles Ponei, Charles P. Bianchi, Carl and Carlo. Although many people have never heard of Ponzi, the term "Ponzi scheme" is a well known description of fraud that continues to this day through its modern version, …
- L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard Scientology's esteemed founder. Slate Magazine/July 15, 2005
- Duke Cunningham
Randall Harold Cunningham (born December 8 1941), usually known as Randy or Duke, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from California's 50th Congressional District from 1991 to 2005. Cunningham resigned from the House on November 28 2005 after pleading guilty to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes and underreporting his income for 2004.
- Charles Keating
Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. (born December 4, 1923 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American felon convicted of fraud in the savings and loan scandal of 1989. Prior to his arrest, he was a lawyer, a banker, and he was noted as a vehement anti-pornography campaigner. A conservative Roman Catholic, Keating was active in the Republican Party. His brother, William J. Keating, was a Republican Congressman from Ohio.
- Marc Rich
Marc Rich (born Marc David Reich on December 18, 1934) is an international commodities trader. He fled the United States in 1983 to live in Switzerland while being prosecuted on charges of tax evasion and illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis. He received a presidential pardon from United States President Bill Clinton in 2001.
- Boris Berezovsky
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky a.k.a. Platon Elenin is a Russian-born billionaire. He emigrated to the UK in 2001, where he was granted political asylum.
- Dennis Kozlowski
Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International received the most negative articles -- 243 -- in 2002. His total compensation in 2001 was $77.8 million, a substantial portion of which was estimated by the authors to be excess compensation. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, received the second highest number of negative articles in 2002.
- Curveball
Curveball was the designation for a claimed "Iraqi chemical engineer" who the United States claimed had served as an informant. Curveball would be the attributed source of pivotal information concerning weapons of mass destruction leading up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The name Curveball is a reference to a curveball baseball pitch, which is US English slang for something that behaves indirectly, erratically, or surprisingly.
- Matthew Cox
Matthew Bevan Cox (born July 2, 1969), commonly known as Matthew Cox, also sometimes known as Matthew B. Cox and Matt Cox, is an American felon and con man who has been convicted of conspiracy and grand theft. Cox, also an aspiring author, wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled "The Associates". In the manuscript a character, which was most likely based upon himself, travelled the country committing mortgage fraud.
- Martin Frankel
Martin Frankel (born November 21 1954) is a former U.S. financier, convicted in 2002 of insurance fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Frankel was born in Toledo, Ohio into a family of Jewish heritage. He is the second child of county judge Leon Frankel. He studied at the University of Toledo, but dropped out after two years. Instead he developed an interest in finance and the securities market.
- Robert Vesco
Robert Lee Vesco (born December 4, 1935) is a US financier who fled a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation and ended up in Cuba. Robert Vesco took over a small New Jersey industrial company called International Controls Corporation and grew it rapidly through hostile, debt-financed takeovers of other businesses. By 1968 the company owned an airline and several manufacturing plants and Vesco held shares totalling $50 million.
- Bernard Ebbers
Bernard John "Bernie" Ebbers (born August 27, 1941 in Edmonton, Alberta), is a Canadian-born businessman. He co-founded the telecommunications company WorldCom and is a former chief executive officer of that company. In 2005, he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the largest (to date) accounting scandal in United States history, as a result of WorldCom's false financial reporting, and subsequent $180-billion loss to investors.
- Gregor MacGregor
Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and colonizer who fought in the South American struggle for independence. Upon his return to England in 1820, he claimed to be "cazique" of Poyais (also known as "Principality of Poyais", "Territory of Poyais", "Republic of Poyais"). Poyais was a fictional Central American country that MacGregor had invented which, with his help, drew investors and eventually colonists.
- Clifford Irving
Clifford Michael Irving (born November 5, 1930) is an American writer, best known for an "authorized autobiography" of Howard Hughes that turned out to be a hoax.
- Kobi Alexander
Jacob "Kobi" Alexander is the former CEO of Massachusetts-based Comverse Technology. Alexander founded Comverse Technology (NASDAQ: CMVT) in 1982 and built it up from a 3-person Israeli startup to employing over 6,000, becoming the leading provider of software and systems for telecommunication companies worldwide. Comverse’s success lead to its inclusion in the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 indices.
- Gerald Ronson
Gerald Maurice Ronson is a British business tycoon and philanthropist, and became known in the UK as one of the "Guinness Four" for his conviction in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s. __TOC_
- Cassie Chadwick
Cassie L. Chadwick (October 10, 1857 - October 10, 1907) is the most famous name of a Canadian-born woman who defrauded Cleveland, Ohio banks by claiming to be an illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie.
- Ivan Boesky
Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937, in Detroit) was notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s. Boesky was born to a Russian-Jewish family. He is a graduate of the Detroit College of Law (now known as the Michigan State University College of Law). By 1986, Ivan Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers.
- Michael McKay
Michael McKay is a convicted racketeer and former labor leader from the United States. He was president of American Maritime Officers (AMO) from 1993 until his conviction in 2007. McKay, son of long-time AMO president Raymond McKay, joined the union as a Third Assistant Engineer in 1968. He worked his way up to Chief Engineer (Steam and Diesel), sailing aboard deep-sea tankers and containerships.
- Christopher Rocancourt
Christopher Thierry Rocancourt (b. July 16, 1967 in Honfleur, France) is an impostor and con artist who scammed affluent people by masquerading as a French member of the Rockefeller family.
- John Rigas
John J. Rigas (born November 14, 1924 in Wellsville, New York) was one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, which at its peak was one of the largest cable companies in the United States. He was also the majority owner of the Buffalo Sabres franchise of the National Hockey League. The son of Greek immigrant parents, he followed a path from rags to riches to ruin.
- Frederick Emerson Peters
Frederick Emerson Peters (1885-1959) was an American impostor who wrote bad checks masquerading as scholars and famous people. In an age before mass communication, few store owners bothered to ID check writers. Peters began his career of passing phony checks around 1902 when he presented himself as Theodore Roosevelt II, the son of the US president.
- Gaston Means
Gaston Bullock Means (b. 1879, Concord, North Carolina; d. 1938, Leavenworth, Kansas) was an American private detective, bootlegger, and con artist. While not involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, Means was associated with other members of the so-called Ohio Gang that gathered around the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Means also tried to pull a con associated to the Lindbergh kidnapping, but died in prison following his criminal conviction.
- Peter Popoff
Peter Popoff (born 1946) is a German-born U.S. televangelist who has spent most of his adult life claiming to treat physical ailments through the use of faith healing. His ministry is based in Upland, California, and is funded through donations. A widely popular minister in the 1980s, he went bankrupt in 1987 after the truth behind his "miracles" was exposed by James Randi on national television.
- Stephen Glass
Stephen Glass (born 1972) was an American reporter for "The New Republic", who was fired for basing his articles on fake quotes, sources, and events. The story of Glass's downfall is told in the 2003 film "Shattered Glass".
- John Stonehouse
John Thomson Stonehouse (28 July 1925 - 14 April 1988) was a British politician and minister under Harold Wilson. Stonehouse is perhaps most famous for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974.