The Spider Network - How a Math Genius and a Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off One of the Greatest Scams in History

David Enrich

Summary

SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 
The Wall Street Journal's award-winning business reporter unveils the bizarre and sinister story of how a math genius named Tom Hayes, a handful of outrageous confederates, and a deeply corrupt banking system ignited one of the greatest financial scandals in history. 
In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world’s largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor—the London interbank offered rate, which determines interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide—was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of shadowy team that used hook and crook to take over the process and set rates that made them a fortune, no matter the cost to others. Among the motley crew was a French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose.” Eventually known as the “Spider Network,” Hayes’s circle generated untold riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion. 
Praised as reading “like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller” (New York Times), “compelling” (Washington Post) and “jaw-dropping” (Financial Times), The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but a provocative examination of a financial system that was warped and shady throughout.

Available since: 03/21/2018.

Other books that might interest you

The Case of Stephen Downing -...

Stephen Downing

The memoir of a man wrongfully convicted of murder and his 27 years spent in the U.K. prison system until his conviction was overturned.

On September 12, 1973, seventeen-year-old, naïve gardener Stephen Downing returned from his lunch break to discover the badly beaten, unconscious, thirty-two-year-old Wendy Sewell lying on the footpath of Bakewell Cemetery close to Catcliff Wood and the consecrated chapel where she had been attacked. Stephen ran to the nearby workmen’s building, and in the meantime Wendy’s attacker returned and dragged her body to a second location where she was subsequently found soon after.

Despite having learning difficulties, Downing was immediately taken into custody, questioned at length without a solicitor, and eventually signed a false confession statement. Wendy died some two days later from her injuries. Following a very biased, three-day trial during February, 1974, Downing was found guilty by a jury, convicted, and sentenced to what was eventually a full life sentence.

Just eight months later during October, 1974, there followed an appeal with fresh evidence from an eye witness who saw Wendy Sewell alive after Downing left the cemetery for lunch. However, the prosecution trashed this evidence, and the appeal failed.

In the years following Downing’s incarceration, he was moved from prison to prison, continuing to maintain his innocence—and in doing so, jeopardizing any chance of parole, as he was “In Denial of Murder”—until eventually his plight reached journalist Don Hale. Hale’s tireless efforts led to an appeal in which Downing was released after some twenty-seven years, the longest miscarriage of justice in the United Kingdom’s legal history.

Show book

Murder in Roanoke County - Race...

John Long

Violence, bigamy, race, and a quest for justice—the true crime story of Charles Watkins, his wife’s mysterious death, and the chaos that followed.   A drama played out in the mountains of southwestern Virginia in 1891 that attracted nationwide attention and held the citizens of the Roanoke Valley spellbound. The tale of the trial of Charles Watkins for the murder of his wife was marked by threats of lynching, a fugitive manhunt, a disappearing witness, mistaken identities, claims of insanity and finally a secret letter to break the case wide open. In its day, the story was as closely followed as a modern televised murder trial. Despite the rapt attention of the public then, it has entirely faded from the history books—until now. Historian John Long resurrects the truth of who killed Susan Watkins.

Show book

Buried Alive - The True Story of...

Roy Hallums

A “vivid, absorbing, and chilling” true-life account of surviving nearly a year of captivity in Iraq (Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes correspondent). 
 
AK47s, masked thugs, and brutal urgency erupt from Roy Hallums’ account of his abduction in Iraq, shredding through those frequently sterile cable news reports revealing that another American contractor is being held hostage. Hallums was the everyman behind that report—a fifty-six-year-old retired Naval commander working as a food supply contractor in Baghdad’s high-end Mansour District. 
 
His abduction was transacted in a matter of minutes, amidst a hail of gunfire and a handful of casualties. For the first few months of his captivity, Hallums endured beatings and psychological torture while being shuffled from one ramshackle safe house to another. 
 
From the four-foot-tall crawlspace where he carried out the bulk of his nearly year-long abduction, Hallums established a surprising degree of normalcy—a system of routines and timekeeping, along with an attention to the particulars that defined his horrific ordeal. His experience is recreated here, rich with harrowing specifics and surprising observations.

Show book

Cop Without a Badge - The...

Charles Kipps

What's the difference between a cop and Kevin Maher? Kevin doesn't have a badge. And he doesn't play by the rules. Cop Without A Badge tracks confidential informant Kevin Maher as he helps the NYPD, the FBI, and many other law enforcement agencies solve cases that range from robbery to extortion to homicide. In the process, Kevin becomes the highest paid CI the DEA ever had.  But Kevin's motives are more complicated than simply money. Having been arrested for Grand Theft Auto at the age of sixteen, his felony conviction prevents him from being what he always wanted to be: a police officer. So now he's out to prove to himself he truly is what he could've been. A cop. Even without a badge. Kevin Maher was 39 years old and living in New Jersey in 1996 when Cop Without A Badge was first published. Maher now works as a private investigator in the state of California.

Show book

The Darkest Night - Two Sisters...

Ron Franscell

Casper, Wyoming: 1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived; the other did not.Years later, author and journalist Ron Franscell-a childhood friend and next-door neighbor to the girls-can't forget his hometown's shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder.  Exploring the nature of a small town's memory and the poison of survivor guilt, The Darkest Night races toward a shocking ending.  The result is one of the most provocative true-crime stories of the decade, told by one of the nation's finest narrative journalists.

Show book

United States of True Crime:...

Ashley Hudson

United States of True Crime is an anthology series with books devoted to the most disturbing cases in each of the 50 states. This book focuses on ten of the most chilling crimes in Connecticut history. 
True crime junkies may recognize some of the highly publicized cases, but also included are lesser-known, equally unsettling crimes. 
The cases included in this book: 
Steven Hayes & Joshua Komisarjevski: Followed a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter in a horrific attack that left only the father of the family alive 
Amy Archer-Gilligan: Systematically poisoned at least five elderly men in her care 
Fotis Dulos: Suspected of murdering his missing wife, whose body has never been recovered 
Michael Ross: Serial killer responsible for the death of eight women and the last person executed in the state of Connecticut 
The Unsolved Disappearance of William "Billy" Smolinski Jr.: Thirty-one-year-old man missing almost two decades. His family lobbied for national changes in missing persons protocol 
Bonnie Foreshaw: Convicted of the murder of a pregnant women but granted clemency 
Qinxuan Pan: Charged with the shooting death of a Yale student in an unrequited love triangle 
William Devin Howell: Serial killer who lived with the bodies of his victims in his van 
Michael Skakel: Convicted of murdering his fifteen-year-old neighbor but released after a Supreme Court decision 
La Amistad Mutiny and Court Case: Kidnapped Africans killed the crew of the slave ship, and the precedent-setting case played out in the Supreme Court

Show book