Money Matters

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I saw a really weird thing on our dining room table the other day, and I thought: what’s that? And it was my purse. I simply hadn’t needed it for the past 60 (but who’s counting) days. And inside was my wallet. I thought—for the first time in forever--I have no idea how much money is in that wallet.

It was incredibly weird.

But when it comes to finances—big time finances—there’s no one more on the inside (in a good way, not like that Senator) (allegedly) than Larry Light.

His new financial thriller--written “before”—is titled CRASH.

Oh, yeah.

And today he gives us his two cents. And a whole lot more.

Money Matters: The Rebirth of the Financial Thriller

By Larry Light

America’s unbalanced financial situation has been apparent for some time now. It started with the 2008-09 financial crisis, which showed how Wall Street sharpies could earn dubious millions and not suffer any consequences, while ordinary people lost their homes. Then came a long period of achingly slow economic recovery, as wages stagnated for most, but the 1% expanded their fortunes mightily. And now, amid a horrible pandemic, we’ve reached unemployment of Great Depression-like proportions.

The point is that, regardless of income level or political affiliation, economic matters have become more and more important in everyday life. And that, seems to me, has prompted a resurgence of financial thrillers.

Sure, I have a dog in this fight. My new thriller, Crash, which just came out, revolves around a plot by Wall Street honchos to wreck the world’s economy and emerge from the ruins as the last solvent ones standing—thus allowing them to rake in money that used to belong to others.

The only ones who can stop them are a computer whiz at an investment bank and her boyfriend. I wrote it with David Hagberg, a New York Times best-selling author, who alas died in the fall, after we’d completed the book.

We figured that we could warn readers of problems they might not know about, but which affect them--because their wealth, even if modest, is linked to the stock and bond markets. And that invested money determines whether they can buy a house, pay for their kids’ education and retire in security. And what stands in the way of their dreams? People whom Theodore Roosevelt called “malefactors of great wealth.”

David and I set out to tell this tale in an entertaining fashion aimed at showing folks how Wall Street works in an easily understood and fun way. Our skills complemented one another. I’m a financial journalist, having worked at the Wall Street Journal and other such places, and David was the master of the broad-ranging, high-stakes plot.

During times of economic unease, financial thrillers have an appeal. The last time this happened was in the financially fraught 1970s, when Paul Erdman made a grand entrance onto the book scene with popular reads like The Silver Bears and the Crash of ’79.  More on Paul later.

Nowadays, the increased public appetite for tales of finance is seen in the popularity of TV shows like Showtime’s Billions and HBO’s Succession. But a steady stream of books about money matters has developed.

One of the best practitioners of this is Joseph Finder, a best-selling writer who loves to immerse himself in the milieus he’s describing. His latest, House on Fire, pits his hero, Nick Heller, who runs a private intelligence firm, against a big pharmaceutical company and the family controlling it. Seems they’ve cashed in big-time on opiates. Finder digs into this world of enormous riches and corporate power to get to the truth.

When it comes to the sociology of the business elite, Finder has a deft touch that pleasingly includes satire. In Killer Instinct, a thwarted electronics salesman gets dressed down by his braying jackass of a boss, who loves to blare platitudes like: “There’s no I in team.” To which the salesman retorts, at least to himself: “Well, there’s an I in idiot.”

Former Wall Streeter Michael Sears brings his strong financial background and stylish prose to his Jason Stafford series, about a stock trader who served time in jail and returns as an investigator of financial crimes, and one who knows both the light and dark side of the business. His love for his autistic son makes Stafford an exceptionally compelling hero.

In his first job after getting his MBA, Christopher Reich worked for a Swiss bank. Using that experience, he produced Numbered Account, a novel of dirty doings in Switzerland’s secretive banking industry, which became a best seller. Lately, he has launched a series starring Simon Riske, an industrial spy with a taste for the high life a la James Bond. In Reich’s newest book, Crown Jewel, he’s hired by a casino magnate to get to the bottom of a cheating ring that is costing this billionaire a fortune at his deluxe Monte Carlo gambling emporium.

Investment banker H.T. Narea has a tale of international intrigue in The Fund, where a Middle Eastern hedge fund honcho tries to bring down the West’s economy. Narea brought to bear his career in debt restructuring, private equity and syndicated finance to this well-informed plot. (Disclosure: He blurbed Crash). He got his start in fiction researching and editing books by his father-in-law, Paul Erdman, the godfather of financial fiction.

Erdman, who died in 2007, was an economist with a colorful past. An American, he founded a Swiss bank that went under, which earned him a 10-month stint in solitary without being charged of a crime. He was let out on a $133,000 bond and promptly skipped bail to return to the U.S. He used his time in prison to write the beginning of The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, about a machination to control the world’s monetary assets. His book went on to win the Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America in 1974 for best first novel.

The 1970s were a time of great economic turmoil, like today. The Arab oil embargo hit Americans where they lived—in their cars. Long gas lines formed, and people in the U.S., an invincible nation after World War II, got a taste of vulnerability. They didn’t like it. 

Then came stagflation, an unwelcome mix of stagnant economic growth and high inflation. Meanwhile, crime was rising and cities seemed unlivable. Things seemed out of control.

And at the core, the root cause was financial. No wonder Erdman found a ready audience for his chronicles of underhanded doings in the world of high finance, with regular people ending up with the dirty end.

Other similar shenanigans are going on these days in real life. We’ll find out about them soon enough and gnash our teeth. And someone will have scarfed up big bucks in the meantime. As Erdman wrote in his first novel, describing the scheme to crash the U.S. dollar and get rich off of the resulting mess: “Imagine what a Papa Kennedy, a Bernard Baruch, or even a Karl Marx would have done with a situation like this.”

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yeah, it’s….so depressing. But I do remember being fascinated by Michael Lewis’ THE BIG SHORT, and the amazing movie that was made from it.  (You DID see that, right?)

SO what do you think, reds are readers? Do we want books that reflect the times, or distract us? I do think financial thrillers are incredibly valuable—they have the glory of teaching us something while telling us a story.  And in good hands, like Larry’s, they can reveal the inner workings of the financial machine that literally runs our lives.

When the grocery delivery person came yesterday, I asked whether he wanted his extra tip-on-top-of-the-standard in cash? Or added to the app?

He did not hesitate. “Cash,” he said.

And yeah, let's chat. If we dare ask Larry: what do YOU think will happen?

Lawrence Light is currently the markets editor of CIO magazine. He has been a writer/editor for most of the major financial news sources of our time: Business Week, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and has written for Fortune, Money, Investopedia, CBS Money-watch, and many more. He has written the Karen Glick books, Too Rich to Live, and Fear and Greed. His short stories appear frequently, including one in Wall Street Noir, a collection from Akashic. His latest thriller is CRASH, with David Hagberg which came out in April 2020 and features a threatened economic apocalypse.

CRASH

THE SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION IS COMING. THE WORLD’S ECONOMIES ARE GROANING UNDER TOO MUCH DEBT. IF ONE THING GOES WRONG, THE ENTIRE RICKETY SYSTEM COLLAPSES. NOW, ACCLAIMED AWARD-WINNING NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING NOVELIST DAVID HAGBERG AND RENOWNED FINANCIAL REPORTER LAWRENCE LIGHT HAVE COMBINED FORCES TO DRAMATIZE―HOUR BY HOUR―HOW THIS ALL-TOO-REAL CATASTROPHE COULD GO DOWN IN CRASH.

With debt-burdened governments and businesses worldwide about to go bust, a cabal of Wall Street big shots plot to destroy the globe’s stock exchanges. To provide that one thing that goes wrong. In 24 hours, a powerful computer worm will smash the exchanges and spark an international panic, pushing a debt-laden world into the abyss. The Wall Street gang’s investment bank will be the last one standing, able to make a killing amid the ruins.

But one person, who works for their bank as a computer expert, spots the worm embedded deep in its network. Cassy Levin invents a program to destroy the cyber-intruder. Angered by Cassy’s discovery, her bosses order her kidnapping.

Her boyfriend, a former Navy SEAL, is alarmed at Cassy’s disappearance and unravels the plot. Ben Whalen only has until the next morning to save the woman he loves and prevent the economic apocalypse.

This story is based on the genuine threat posed by towering debt, which will make the 2008 financial crisis look puny.

The Secrets to the Scheme

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Did you see the movie THE BIG SHORT? It was brilliant, and terrifying, and fascinating. But if I described what it was about, nefarious and illegal practices in the derivatives market,  you might wonder how that could be such a compelling movie. (Plus, isn’t that problem over?)  (Probably not.)

 Full disclosure: That’s a little bit like what the wonderful Lisa Black’s agent worried about when Lisa described her new book. When her agent read it—whoa. She changed her mind.

ROGUE’S GALLERY

 Players in the Housing Bust

  By Lisa Black

My new book, Perish, opens with a crime scene both lavish and gruesome. In a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Cleveland, a woman’s body lies gutted in a pool of blood on the marble floor—Joanna Moorehouse, founder of Sterling Financial. Its offices seethe with potential suspects, every employee hellbent on making a killing. When another officer uncovers disturbing evidence in a series of unrelated murders, the investigation takes a surprising detour. But how did the beautiful Joanna accumulate such wealth in only a few short years? And why am I, someone whose eyes would glaze over if you mentioned the word ‘business’ come to write such a book?

Well, because on several lists over the years, Cleveland, Ohio and Cape Coral, Florida, led the country in foreclosures. They are also the only two places I have ever lived. I assure you this is purely coincidental…but it did prompt a sudden interest in shady mortgages.

         If you’re a relatively honest person and/or not versed in white collar crime, you may wonder how someone made money by buying a house and then abandoning it. Short answer: you can’t. Not unless you have some help.

         The scheme generally requires three people:

1.    A buyer, who can produce documents showing fictitiously inflated income and bank accounts. In fact, an entire fake identity would be helpful.

2.    An appraiser, who can inflate the value of the house out of proportion so that a large bank loan seems reasonable. Sometimes an innocent but cooperative seller can be talked into inflating the price after the buyer convinces them they need the extra loan money to improve the property. If the seller isn’t quite so naïve, the buyer can simply alter the settlement statement before they send it to the bank.

3.    It helps to have a conspiratorial or at least cooperative title company that won’t ask too many questions or wonder why this same buyer or holding company has been purchasing so many properties. 

4.    It also helps to have a mortgage broker on board who can funnel all these fraudulent documents without appearing to profit from any of them, other than normal fees. In reality, they’re a partner and taking a cut.  

The shady buyer contracts with a seller, gets a loan from the bank for far, far more than is needed to purchase the home, pays off the seller and splits the rest of the loan money among the co-conspirators. They stop making loan payments and walk away, either declaring bankruptcy or simply disappearing. And that’s how you make money by buying houses you don’t want. 

Of course, eventually the bank notices that they’re getting stuck with a bunch of foreclosed properties when at the same time they often were dealing with their own fallout from playing too fast and too loose for too long. Or an honest employee or loan officer or title company or seller figures out that one or two documents aren’t adding up. Pull one thread, and things start to unravel, which is why many of these fraudsters are only now getting out of jail.

To be clear, frauds like these didn’t cause the housing crisis ten years ago—that was caused largely by skyrocketing property values and indiscriminate lending—but they exacerbated an already difficult situation.

In Cape Coral one of our police officers, the son of our well-liked chief, went to jail for just such a conspiracy. The total funds involved totaled over four million dollars.

In Cleveland, a mortgage fraud task force led to hundreds of indictments:

Uri Gofman bought more than 450 homes, pretended that improvements had been made, refinanced based on the new inflated value and resold the homes to people who were not qualified. He was one who had a mortgage broker and a title company on the payroll. He left jail in early 2017. His broker is still inside.

 Kimberly Wilson was a broker who found the straw buyers herself and worked with her husband and an appraiser to inflate the values for loans. She made a deal to testify against the appraiser, Lavon Ruderson, to get 18 months while Ruderson got five years.

Stephen Holman, a loan officer, worked with his brother to sell properties with no down payment and other assorted shadiness. He got twelve years.

         Thomas France, once one of Ohio’s most successful, threw that away on a series of frauds as outlined above which netted him a 10 year prison sentence. For using the same technique, Fred Loewinger, Clarissa Foster, and Corritha Wells each served 6 years.

         Blaine Murphy used fake names to buy 96 homes, pretending to fix them up before selling them to other buyers for a profit. It was like flipping, but without the flipping part, and the fake names kept irate buyers and banks from coming after him—at least for a while. He got two years.

         Anthony Jerdine and Susan Alt, separately, went for scheme quality over quantity. He bought a home for $700K, faked an appraisal and resold it the same day for two million. Jerdine got eight years in the federal pen. Susan Alt served six years.

      

   When I sent this book to my agent, she worried that it might seem dated. She asked if predatory lending was really such a problem any more—reforms were supposed to have closed loopholes and opportunities for such shenanigans. But I see commercials for quick and easy mortgages, I get phone calls all the time offering business loans that I never asked for, and I worry. We learned a lesson, but did we learn it well enough?

         What do you think?

        HANK:  And don't you get those things in the mail that look like checks? Wonder how many people cash those?  Have you ever wondered about real estate schemes--or had any in your life?

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Lisa Black has spent over twenty years in forensic science, first at the coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and now as a certified latent print examiner and CSI at a Florida police dept. Her books have been translated into six languages, one reached the NYT Bestseller’s list and one has been optioned for film and a possible TV series. 

www.lisa-black.com

@LisaBlackAuthor