NEW! Empire of Deception
The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation
Coming in May 2015 from New York’s Algonquin Books, HarperCollins Canada and HighBridge Audiobooks.
>>>>> The larger-than-life exploits and make-believe world of 1920s Chicago con man extraordinaire Leo Koretz – and his escape to a new life in Canada. A riveting tale of greed, glamour and one of the greatest swindles in history.
Available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca , Barnes & Noble and Chapters.Indigo.ca.
HE RAN ONE OF THE LONGEST, most elaborate and most successful swindles in history. For almost twenty years a charming, smooth-talking Chicago lawyer enticed hundreds of people to invest as much as $30 million (upwards of $400 million today), most of it in phantom timberland and oil wells in Panama. His Bayano River Syndicate, he claimed, controlled millions of acres near the Canal Zone, including oilfields that produced a torrent of crude and earned investors an astounding sixty percent return. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil conglomerate, he assured his grateful investors, was desperate to buy into the Bayano windfall.
His name? Leo Koretz, the Bernie Madoff of the 1920s, a con man extraordinaire posing as a financial genius. The New York Times considered him “the most resourceful confidence man in the United States.” The Chicago Daily Tribune agreed, describing him as “the most boldfaced swindler” of his time. And when his scheme collapsed in 1923, under the weight of his own dazzling success in reeling in the suckers, he almost made a clean getaway to a life of luxury in Canada.
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An absolutely rollicking tale that is one part The Sting, one part The Great Gatsby, and one part The Devil in the White City …. Empire of Deception vividly recreates the unscrupulous side of 1920s Chicago where greed, deception, and corruption ran amok, and where one Leo Koretz, a charismatic and enigmatic con man, charmed them all … including me.” – Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
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The New York Times declared Leo Koretz “the most resourceful confidence man in the United States.”
Leo’s method was simple: Promise high returns and, when the money rolled in, use some to pay fat dividends to keep the stockholders happy while skimming off the rest. It’s the template Madoff used to rake in billions of dollars, a financial sleight of hand known as a Ponzi scheme. Charles Ponzi, a contemporary of Leo’s, used it to fleece unsuspecting immigrants, promising huge profits from the resale of postal-reply coupons. But Leo mastered the scam long before Ponzi stole a dime and it took his imagination, bravado, and charisma to keep it running for almost two decades.
People camped out on Leo’s doorstep and begged him to take their money. The lucky few he allowed to invest plowed their fat Bayano profits into more worthless stock. Nothing could shake their faith in the man they hailed as “The New Rockefeller,” not even the exposure of Ponzi’s fraud in 1920. Investors simply gave him a new nickname: “Our Ponzi.”
LEO LIVED WELL thanks to his gullible victims, splurging on a mansion overlooking Lake Michigan, Rolls-Royce limousines, suites at the finest hotels in Chicago and New York, and a cache of bootlegged booze. He was a family man with a wife and two children, but his personal life was as phony as his professional one – a web of lies and trysts with a succession of mistresses. “I don’t see why these women won’t leave me alone,” he once complained in jest, knowing full well the answer was the charm and money he used to win their affections.
His house of cards came crashing down in 1923 when a group of investors boarded a steamer and headed to Panama, eager to tour their lucrative holdings. Leo saw them off, then scraped together as much cash as he could. By the time the delegation discovered the truth – their bonanza was a swath of worthless jungle and swamp – Leo had disappeared. When the news broke, Leo and his sensational Bayano fraud – the swindle of the century, some called it – made headlines across North America and beyond. His wife and close-knit family were devastated. Many of his investors swallowed their losses in silence, too embarrassed to admit how thoroughly they had been duped.
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A guilty-pleasure reminder that the most audacious bad guys have always been the most entertaining …. Kudos to Jobb for unearthing this overlooked story and bringing to life a charming, witty, naughty, iconic American crook.” – Neal Thompson, author of A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley
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Enter Chicago state’s attorney Robert Crowe, a man whose ascent in the ruthless world of Chicago politics paralleled Leo’s rise to financial stardom. Crowe, one of the most powerful Republicans in the city, was making headlines as a crusader against gangland crime. By 1922 the mayor’s office, and perhaps even the governorship, seemed within his ambitious grasp. But corruption pervaded politics and justice in Chicago, and Crowe the crime-fighter enlisted crooks and thugs to intimidate his political opponents and win elections. Crowe and Leo had begun their legal careers together, and when the Bayano wizard’s swindle was exposed it was Crowe who launched an international manhunt to bring his former colleague to justice.
Leo, meanwhile, hid out in New York City for several months before making his way to Nova Scotia, on Canada’s Atlantic Coast. He grew a beard to mask his identity, adopted the alias Lou Keyte, and posed as a retired financier-turned-literary critic. He became a regular at hotels and dance halls in the provincial capital, Halifax, and joined the exclusive Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron. He converted a secluded hunting lodge into a posh estate where he entertained like a real-life Great Gatsby and attracted a new circle of friends and female admirers. He even bragged he was a close friend of bestselling author Zane Grey, who spent part of the summer of 1924 fishing for tuna off Nova Scotia.
Chicago police and federal agents spent almost a year of chasing anonymous tips and false leads. It began to look as if Leo Koretz, master of the Ponzi scheme, might be a master escape artist as well.
Inside Detective magazine’s cover story on “lover boy” Leo Koretz
EMPIRE OF DECEPTION is the first book to chronicle the exploits of one of the slickest con men in history. Itcaptures the intrigue and drama of Leo’s stranger-than-fiction story while recreating an era when it seemed as if everyone was entitled to easy riches. The dot-com bubble and the stock market meltdown of 2008 are reminders those heady times were not so different from our own. The book establishes Leo Koretz, not Charles Ponzi, as the first to master the pay-dividends-from-capital investment scam. It dissects how con men and stock swindles operate. And it brings to life a time and place when anything – even vast oilfields in faraway Panama – seemed possible.
Leo’s brazen fraud is a compelling story that combines drama and dark humor. It is a cautionary tale that will resonate with readers who are curious about how con men such as Bernie Madoff operate and how they prey on the trust of others. It is a rollicking tale of greed and gullibility, lies and betrayal and grandeur and delusion that could have been ripped from today’s headlines. It is a story played out against a Jazz Age backdrop that reaches from the tough streets of Chicago to the remote jungles of Panama, from the glitter of Manhattan’s finest hotels to the backwoods of Nova Scotia.
The incredible-but-true saga of Leo Koretz and his spectacular oil swindle exposes the pitfalls, then and now, of too much trust, too much greed and too little common sense.
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>>>> ADVANCE PRAISE FOR EMPIRE OF DECEPTION
“Dean Jobb has written an absolutely rollicking tale that is one part The Sting, one part The Great Gatsby, and one part The Devil in the White City. Impressively researched and brilliantly told, Empire of Deception vividly recreates the unscrupulous side of 1920s Chicago where greed, deception, and corruption ran amok, and where one Leo Koretz, a charismatic and enigmatic con man, charmed them all. . . including me.”
– Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
“The story of slick-talking Leo Koretz — aka Lou Keyte, aka Al Bronson — is a guilty-pleasure reminder that the most audacious bad guys have always been the most entertaining. In Dean Jobb’s hands, the free-for-all 1920s, a sweet spot in the history of greed and corruption, reads like a Gatsby-Ponzi mashup. What makes Koretz’s unscrupulousness outshine Charles Ponzi’s and even Bernie Madoff’s is how, after he’s cornered, he hits the road and brazenly crafts a deluxe new life for himself in remote Canada, which launches a massive manhunt led by an obsessive Chicago lawman. Kudos to Jobb for unearthing this overlooked story and bringing to life a charming, witty, naughty, iconic American crook.”
– Neal Thompson, author of A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley
A cartoonist\’s take on Leo Koretz\’s oil swindle
“Begin with a Bernie Madoff, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing con man, pursued by a power-hungry prig of a public prosecutor; add the great hog-trough feeding frenzy of 1920s Chicago; stir with great writing and enterprising research, and there you have it: A wonderfully entertaining read!”
– Michael Lesy, author of Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
“Empire of Deception is a sure thing–a book guaranteed to entertain and make you rich (in knowledge, that is). Dean Jobb has found a fascinating yet little-known jazz-age tale and told it with style and smarts. Get in on the action.” – Jonathan Eig, New York Times best-selling author of Get Capone
“Dean Jobb’s Empire of Deception is the highly readable account of a major swindle in the Roaring Twenties in Chicago, which will convince any sensible reader that when it comes to investing in crackpot schemes nobody ever learns anything by experience. Leo Koretz did exactly what Bernie Madoff did, and came to the same end, as did his investors. A dramatic read, and a useful lesson!”
– Michael Korda, author of Charmed Lives
Bayano River Syndicate stock certificate
“A captivating tale of high-flying financial chicanery in 1920s Chicago. Dean Jobb tells the story of Leo Koretz, a legendary con artist of Madoffian audacity, with terrific energy and narrative brio. A thoroughly enjoyable read.”
– Gary Krist, author of City of Scoundrels
“Dean Jobb’s exploration of financial shaman Leo Koretz’s shameless scheming is a great read, but it’s also so much more than that. A brilliantly researched tale of greed, ambition, and our desperate need to believe in magic, it’s history that captures America as it really was – and always will be.” – Douglas Perry, author of Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero and The Girls of Murder City
“Except to those being swindled, swindlers make wonderful swaggering copy, and Dean Jobb has made splendid use of the material in this juicy retelling. His story of con man Leo (or Lou, or Al, or whatever name he chose to use) and his pathetically gullible and mostly rich victims perfectly captures the flavors of Chicago (and New York! and Nova Scotia!) in the roaring Twenties. What a great caper movie this would make!”
– Marq de Villiers, author of Our Way Out and The End
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I just pre-ordered Empire of Deception from ChaptersIndigo — it looks like an amazing read. I also expect that this is a book that can be judged by its spectacular cover.
Leo was my ex-wife’s great-great-great uncle, and the story of Leo’s exploits is only spoken of in hushed-tones and shame among family members. I’ve always felt it was a great story to be told, but not unlike the Madoff family of today, they carry the shame of his name as a secret family burden. I know much of the story, but I’m anxious to fill in the blanks by reading Empire of Deception. This story could give Wolf of Wall Street a run for the money.
When I saw that Dean was writing the story of Leo Koretz I could not have been more excited. Having recently read Devil in the White City, I cannot wait to read more of the intriguing world of Chicago at the beginning of the 1900s. Dean’s writing is sure to bring this story alive and I am looking forward to seeing how Koretz’s plots and cons unfold. Going to get my hands on a copy as quickly as possible.
Dean Jobb doesn’t just bring history alive, he breathes life into the act of writing history. He speaks to students about the joy and excitement of discovering historical details, quirks and connections, and weaving them together to create a full and engaging story of the past. Thanks for today’s presentations to Park View High School students in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, and I look forward to reading Empire of Deception when it comes out!
This looks absolutely fabulous! I am very much looking forward to reading it.
Empire of Deception looks like it will be an intriguing story, as it seems to have all the ingredients that make for a gripping read — deception, lies, mystery, scandal, and even a touch of romance, if Leo Koretz’s claims are to be believed! I am a fan of Dean’s writing and this book seems sure to deliver a fascinating, yet cautionary tale that will surely hit home in our modern world of scammers and fraudulent people. I can’t wait to read the story of this consummate master-swindler!
Cannot wait to read this! I love an old fashioned con-man tale and Dean is a really engaging writer. The depth of this story is incredible, it’s hard to believe this could actually happen. Should be a great read!
Sounds like a riveting tale! I’m looking forward to reading this, as I hope many others are as well, lest we repeat the mistakes of the past. It is truly eye opening to think how long things like this, on such a scale, have been going on.
I’m going to ignore the temptation to google what happened to him in the end! I’m sure Dean will do a better job of telling it!
Amazing to think that this guy got away with this for so long (two decades?!) and even after Charles Ponzi’s crimes came to light. Looking forward to getting the full story on how he was able to pull it off for so long and then still able to live a life of luxury under an assumed name afterwards.
The citizens of the State of Illinois appear to have a fascination with crooks. We have had and still have a lot of them. Look to our former governors. Now, I am looking forward to the publication of Dean Jobb’s new book of Leo Koretz, “Empire of Deception.” I am curious to read how Leo Koretz lived so well in Illinois and then in Nova Scotia. Did he really “get away with the crime”? Dean Jobb’s new book may not be a “whodunit?” but rather a book of “how did he do it?”
Angela Schneider
I am anxiously awaiting the publication of “Empire of Deception.” My husband is a member of the Koretz family and we are aware of the years of meticulous research Mr. Jobb has done while writing this book. Can’t wait to read it!
This will be a great read, especially for those of us who have connections in the community on Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
This will be an interesting book to read and an important part of our history properly researched and told. I am looking forward to it.
I have read many of your books. I am anxious to know when “Empire of Deception” will be available. Looking forward to a great read!
It seems Wall Street has not changed an iota. Or at least the financial wolves are wearing the same sheep’s clothing; a fashion apparently set in the 20’s. This coming book sounds like a great read and looking forward to the completed work.
I can’t wait for this book to be published … such a great present for at least five friends! Hope it is on the bookstands soon.
This story sounds like a wonderful tale of wealth and naivety; a perfect combination for a talented con-man. What a great storyline for a movie!