Marthe Hanau was one of the most forceful, polarizing, and headline-grabbing figures in 1920s France. She built a financial empire that controlled hundreds of millions of francs that poured in from investors across the country. Her arrest in 1928 on charges of orchestrating a massive fraud sparked a political furore and launched a prosecution that dragged on for more than six years.
The rise and fall of the indomitable woman dubbed the “Ponzi of Paris.”
