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    Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
    Unavailable
    Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
    Unavailable
    Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
    Audiobook12 hours

    Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

    Written by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright

    Narrated by Will Collyer

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The definitive inside account of the "extraordinary" (Financial Times) 1MDB scandal, "a true life thriller" (Ben Mezrich) about a "modern Gatsby" who managed to swindle over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others—a "must read" (Booklist) "epic tale" (Publishers Weekly) that exposes the secret nexus of elite wealth, banking, Hollywood, and politics from two award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters.

    In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a baby-faced, seemingly mild-mannered Wharton grad began setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude—one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. His name is Jho Low, a man whose behavior was so preposterous he might seem made up.

    An epic true-tale of hubris and greed, Billion Dollar Whale reveals how this young social climber pulled off one of the biggest heists in history—right under the nose of the global financial industry. Federal agents who helped unravel Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme say the 1MDB affair will become the textbook case of financial fraud in the modern age—and its fallout is already being credited for taking down the prime minister of Malaysia. With his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing money-laundering charges in Malaysia, an Interpol red notice, and an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice Investigation, Low has become an international fugitive.

    For listeners of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood, Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about finance run amok.

    Editor's Note

    Audacious…

    “Bad Blood” meets “The Wolf of Wall Street” in this deeply-reported, absorbing story of how a con man pulled off a recklessly bold — and infuriating — international theft. This gold-standard work of journalism follows the money trail, untangling a dizzying web of secret offshore bank accounts, corrupt heads of state, the world of finance, and Hollywood.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateSep 18, 2018
    ISBN9781478948001
    Unavailable
    Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
    Author

    Bradley Hope

    Bradley Hope has worked for the Wall Street Journal for the last four years, covering finance and malfeasance from New York City and London. Before that, he spent six years as a correspondent in the Middle East, where he covered the Arab Spring uprisings from Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, and Beirut. He was detained by authorities in Bahrain, reported from the front lines of the Libyan civil war, and has been teargassed in raucous Egyptian protests. Bradley is a Pulitzer finalist and a Loeb winner, and also author of Last Days of the Pharaoh, a chronicle of the final days and hours of the presidency of Hosni Mubarak.

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    Reviews for Billion Dollar Whale

    4.5/5

    33 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Always enjoy a story about a Wharton grad who keeps the brand for fraud up. Book was written a bit too early as it missed the trials of the Goldman Sachs partners involved.
    • 4/5
      Detailed, absorbing account of the extraordinary 1MDB scandal, how perhaps $5 Billion was brazenly stolen from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund - with the connivance of several top international financial institutions.
    • 4/5
      An eye-watering story digging into the fraud behind the 1MDB scandal, in which hundred of millions of US$ were stolen from an account supposedly set up to finance infrastructure and other development projects in Malaysia.The Whale of the title (a reference to what clubs and casinos call their big spenders) is a young Malaysian man called Jho Low, who from an early age loved to host lavish parties and throw lots of money around. On one occasion described in the book, while hanging out with Paris Hilton, Low spent €2m on champagne in a single night (needless to say, this bought more champagne than the whole club-ful of people could drink). But the authors are just as critical of the supposedly reputable banks, auditors and other institutions who were happy to accept and facilitate very dubious-looking deals, as long as a cut of the profits was rolling in their direction.It's a well-written book, which helps to explain the financial flows just as well as it characterises Low's big-spending habits. One thing I found very curious was the way that Low managed to attract some genuine A-list celebrities to hang out with him. I mean, it's easy to imagine Hilton and the other Z-listers in the book making as much money as possible while they can. But Alicia Keys? Jamie Foxx? The authors explain how Leonardo di Caprio and Martin Scorsese were happy to work with Low because they got complete creative control of their work. (Low's company famously financed The Wolf of Wall Street, which it turns out Warner Bros were not willing to support because they didn't think an R rated film would make its money back. This meant that Scorsese got to crash a real Lamborghini in the opening scene - Warner Bros would have demanded he use a replica. One fascinating snippet is that one of the people who saw through Low very quickly was Jordan Belfort, the subject of Wolf of Wall Street, who after one of Low's parties apparently said "This is a fucking scam ... You wouldn't spend money you'd worked for like that.").In a strange way, Low is a vacuum at the heart of the book. Other than wanting to be seen and to throw parties, it's hard to know what drove him. Perhaps if he ever stops being a fugitive from justice and comes to trial, we will be able to find out more.
    • 3/5
      Detailing the escapades of Jho Low the self styled financier who pulled off maybe the biggest heist ever through structuring and manipulating his way to a personal fortune utilizing the Malaysian bond fund. The money in play here is staggering, many billions. And this younger who set his sights on enriching himself straight of out Wharton is equally so.The book goes through the complexity of how Low arranged for starting the main fund and offshoots then siphoned off his billions on phony accounts and structures. Aided by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Swiss bankers among others Low seemed to encrypt his on Midas Touch. Still on the run as the book ends abruptly, it is not clear whether Low will be brought to justice. The massive scale of this crime and the length of time it played out is truly amazing and shows how little it takes to scheme one's way to a fortune using the available willing world financial institutions.
    • 4/5
      An ambitious young Malaysian, Jho Low, graduated from Penn with connections to other members of the global elites now sending their children to Ivies, including a contact with access to Gulf money. After a few false starts, he managed to convince Malaysia’s prime minister to start a sovereign wealth fund, and promptly stole hundreds of millions of dollars from it. Notable bits: (1) Just how pointless and dumb the resulting spending was—millions on champagne, on gambling, on paying models to hang out at his party, on gifts to Paris Hilton and other celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio. (2) Low helped disguise his money laundering by giving his fake entities names reminiscent of well-known financial institutions like the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. (3) The discussion at the end that assumes, without explaining, that there is no alternative for Malaysia but to pay this money back. This may well be true because of the way that the debt instruments were written, but that fact itself deserved more discussion.
    • 5/5
      Wow great book! most of these types fall apart in the middle or become to repetitive. there is a lot that went on. loved it.