Billion Dollar Whale
- 416 pages
- 15 hours of reading
Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this New York Times bestseller reveals how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion in "the heist of the century." It tells the story of a young social climber from Malaysia who executed one of the largest heists in history. In 2009, Jho Low, a mild-mannered Wharton School graduate, orchestrated a fraud of unprecedented scale that posed a significant threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, with the assistance of Goldman Sachs and others, he siphoned billions from an investment fund, operating under the radar of financial watchdogs. Low used the stolen money to finance elections, acquire luxury real estate, host extravagant parties, and even fund Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and the U.S., Low became an international fugitive amid ongoing investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice. This narrative has become a classic tale of hubris and greed in the financial world, joining the ranks of other notable works on white-collar crime.
