How Ponzi Schemer Sam Israel Fell for Conspiracy Scam: Review

Lying came easy to Sam Israel, the Connecticut hedge-fund manager who faked suicide in 2008 to escape a 20-year prison sentence for running a $450 million Ponzi scheme. Within two years of starting the Bayou hedge fund in 1996, Israel, trader Jimmy Marquez and chief financial officer Dan Marino began cooking the books to hide a 14 percent loss. Confessing would have driven investors to withdraw their money, depriving the trio of the chance to show the world that the fund’s Forward Propagation strategy — a crazy-quilt of technical-sounding palaver and marketing — worked. Though of course it didn’t. Read Bloomberg report here.