Hi -
Apologies in advance if this is too vague for the purposes of /r/askhistorians.
I've recently been captivated by Den of Thieves and Connie Bruck's The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders, as well as the story of Dr. John R. Brinkley and his exploits as a fraudulent doctor and radio maven.
I'm trying to amass stories of these kinds of outsized characters in American history who commit massive/ongoing fraud and get their fingers in a lot of pies - the Michael Milkens, the Wilson Mizners, the John Brinkleys.
What sorts of figures would you recommend looking at, and what sources and biographies do you think would be worth looking at?
Thanks in advance.
For sheer exuberant stupid greed, it's hard to beat the Hunts of Texas. In 1979 Bunker Hunt and his brother concocted a scheme to corner the silver market, using their oil money and that of Saudi investors. It started a general buying panic, driving silver from $8 to $16 an ounce in two months. But even when regulators stepped in and the price began to fall they continued to buy. Eventually they were in the hole about $1.5 billion, and this was matched by other speculators. Paul Volcker had to craft a bail-out program to keep the stock market from collapsing.
Also quite good is Gordon's The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street, on the Erie Railroad Wars, between Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Cornelius Vanderbilt: that almost resulted in the entire NY legislature going to jail for fraud. Gordon's done an AMA here in the recent past, which is worth a read.