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Oh My Fraud

How the Vatican’s Blessing Helped Hide $1.3 Billion in Missing Money

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In June of 1982, a postal worker walking along the Thames in London noticed something hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge. At first, he assumed it was construction equipment, like scaffolding or a tarp caught on a pipe. Looking closer, he realized it was a man, still wearing a suit, with bricks in his pockets and a rope around his neck. For a few days, nobody knew who he was. Then the name came out: Roberto Calvi. Suddenly, a lot of very powerful people were very interested in who was under that bridge.

That story opened a recent episode of the Oh My Fraud podcast. Host Caleb Newquist dug into one of the largest and strangest banking scandals of the 20th century, the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the unsolved death of the man they called “God’s Banker.”

In this story, institutional prestige became the most dangerous fraud enabler of all. When a bank’s credibility rests on religious authority, secret power networks, and cultural trust rather than transparent financials, $1.3 billion can vanish through circular offshore schemes while everyone assumes someone else must have checked the books.

How a Methodical Banker Became “God’s Banker”

Roberto Calvi wasn’t supposed to be a mysterious figure. Born in Milan in 1920 to a working-class family, his early life followed the same path as many of his generation: World War II, military service, and rebuilding from the rubble. He joined Banco Ambrosiano in the late 1940s as an entry-level hire. By all accounts, he was exactly what institutions want: diligent, methodical, and reliable. As Caleb puts it, he was “the kind of person institutions tend to reward because they don’t rock the boat.”

And for decades, he didn’t rock it. Roberto climbed steadily, and was promoted to general manager by 1971, and chairman by 1975.

Banco Ambrosiano was one of Italy’s largest private banks, with deep ties to Catholic financial networks. Italy’s banking has always carried layers of political influence, regional loyalty, and religious connections. Banco Ambrosiano sat comfortably within that ecosystem.

The most important relationship was with the Vatican Bank, officially the Institute for the Works of Religion, which, as Caleb notes, “sounds less like a financial institution and more like a retreat center, but it functions as a bank.” It handles investments, transfers, and assets for church operations worldwide. Banco Ambrosiano became one of its primary external banking partners.

That partnership was worth more than money; it was reputational gold. “If a bank is trusted to handle the Vatican’s money, then a lot of people are going to assume it’s safe,” Caleb explains. And that assumption is where the trouble starts.

The financial press started calling Roberto “God’s Banker.” It was shorthand for “this guy has some serious connections.” But the nickname also fused the bank’s identity with one of the most trusted institutions on the planet. Investors were buying into the idea of a bank backstopped by centuries of religious authority.

“Where there’s a very deep sense of trust, there’s often a lesser degree of scrutiny,” Caleb points out. “Not explicitly, but psychologically.” The reputation became the product. When reputation does the heavy lifting, the actual financial structures don’t get tested nearly as hard.

During the 1970s, the bank genuinely grew through international expansion, complex financial products, and global operations. Some of that growth was legitimate. But growth also meant operating in jurisdictions where oversight was, as Caleb puts it, “loose.”

Italian regulators raised eyebrows more than once at the complex corporate structures, foreign subsidiaries that were hard to track, and financial guarantees that weren’t always transparent. Individually, each could be explained. Collectively, they formed a pattern. But the God’s Banker halo did its job of absorbing questions that might have demanded harder answers.

The Machinery of Fraud: Circular Money and Comfort Letters from God

Over a billion dollars doesn’t go missing all at once. It happens gradually, through structures so layered that by the time anyone understands them, the money’s already gone.

By the mid-1970s, Banco Ambrosiano was expanding aggressively into international markets. Foreign subsidiaries multiplied across Luxembourg, the Bahamas, and Panama, where regulatory oversight was minimal. Some entities served obvious purposes, such as international lending, currency transfers, or supporting clients abroad. But others had extremely vague business descriptions and corporate structures so layered that tracing ownership took real effort.

According to Caleb, the core scheme worked like this: “Some of those offshore companies weren’t really operating like independent businesses at all. They borrowed money from the bank, made deposits back into related entities, issued guarantees to support loans made to other subsidiaries in the same network. Money moving in a loop that created the appearance of capital strength without much actually underneath it.”

Circular financing isn’t automatically illegal. Multinationals do inter-company lending all the time. “The problem starts when those underlying assets aren’t as solid as everyone assumes, because then what looks like strength is really just confidence shifting from company to company,” Caleb explains.

His metaphor nails it: “It was financial scaffolding. Scaffolding works great while the building’s going up. Less great when someone leans on it expecting a finished structure.”

The Vatican Bank’s letters of patronage kept people from leaning too hard. These were essentially comfort letters, or assurances that were, as Caleb jokes, “about as secure as the Lord’s blessing.” But banks and counterparties treated them as something stronger than they technically were. If the Vatican says it stands behind something, who’s going to push back?

The ecosystem around Banco Ambrosiano was getting darker. Michele Sindona, another Vatican-linked Italian financier, had already blazed this trail. His banking empire collapsed in the mid-1970s through similar aggressive financing and opaque offshore deals. He was convicted of fraud in the U.S., later convicted of ordering a murder, and died in prison in 1986 after drinking cyanide-laced coffee.

Then there was Propaganda Due (P2) officially a Masonic lodge. When Italian authorities raided it in 1981, the membership list included Italian cabinet ministers, military leaders, intelligence officials, judges, and media executives. Roberto’s name was there, too. P2 members called themselves “Frati Neri,” Black Friars. Yes, the grim coincidence: Roberto was found under Blackfriars Bridge.

“Membership alone doesn’t prove wrongdoing,” Caleb notes, “but it suggests proximity to power, and in finance, proximity to power can smooth scrutiny, accelerate deals, and sometimes delay uncomfortable questions.”

Add another red flag. In 1981, Roberto was convicted in Italy for illegally exporting currency. He received a suspended sentence but it was still a criminal conviction tied to financial conduct. “Prior financial misconduct usually justifies closer monitoring, not looser scrutiny,” Caleb observes. Instead, institutional trust filled the gaps.

By early 1982, roughly $1.3 billion was unaccounted for. That’s in early 1980s dollars. Investigators later found a 2,400-pound safe in a secret office. When they cracked it open, they found a handwritten list of gold and silver items. No actual gold or silver. Just the list. “A pretty fitting metaphor for the whole operation,” Caleb says.

On June 5, 1982, Roberto wrote to Pope John Paul II warning the bank’s collapse would “provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the church would suffer the gravest damage.” On June 10, he fled Italy with a fake passport under the name Gian Roberto Calvini, having shaved off his mustache. Communication became sporadic, then stopped.

Death Under Blackfriars Bridge and the Lessons Left Hanging

The day before Roberto’s body was found, Graziella Corrocher, Roberto’s 55-year-old secretary, jumped from the fifth floor of the bank’s headquarters. She left a note that said, “May Roberto be double cursed for the damage he has caused to the bank and all of its employees.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone caught up in financial technicalities,” Caleb observes. “That sounds like betrayal.”

As for Roberto, the path from “dead banker” to “unsolved murder” took decades. The initial ruling was suicide. A 1983 inquest returned an open verdict. In 1998, authorities exhumed his body. Forensic analysis found neck injuries inconsistent with hanging and no traces of scaffolding paint, rust, brick dust, or limestone under his fingernails, evidence you’d expect on someone who climbed there himself. By 2002, Italian courts ruled it a homicide.

In 2007, five defendants including alleged Mafia figures went on trial. After twenty months of testimony, hundreds of witnesses, and mountains of forensic evidence, the judge threw out all charges for insufficient evidence. The public prosecutor said, “Roberto has been murdered for the second time.”

After negotiation and public pressure, the Vatican contributed between $224 and $250 million toward creditor settlements. The church framed it as a moral gesture, not an admission of legal liability. Caleb describes it as “the financial equivalent of saying we didn’t do anything wrong, but here’s some money anyway.”

What Accounting Professionals Should Take From This

Caleb closes with five key lessons from the wreckage:

  • Institutional trust is not a control. A respected name doesn’t guarantee sound financial structures. “A good reputation can chip away at skepticism, and reduced skepticism is exactly where fraud tends to thrive. People assume that someone must have checked.”
  • Complexity is not the same as sophistication. “Sometimes complexity is necessary, but it’s also camouflage.” If understanding the structure takes longer than anyone’s willing to spend asking questions, that’s probably a red flag.
  • Prior misconduct deserves attention. Roberto’s 1981 conviction didn’t doom the bank, but it should have triggered closer monitoring. Instead, institutional trust papered over a conviction that should have triggered alarm bells.
  • Liquidity crises expose accounting illusions extremely quickly. “A lot of frauds don’t collapse because someone discovers them. They collapse because cash gets really tight.” When creditors want repayment instead of extending credit, reality tends to win.
  • Fraud rarely happens in isolation. “This wasn’t just one banker making bad decisions. It was a network.” Most frauds reveal a rotten system, not just one bad apple.

The Banco Ambrosiano scandal is ultimately about how prestige substitutes for scrutiny. Four decades later, we still don’t know who killed Roberto Calvi. We do know what killed Banco Ambrosiano: a system where reputation did the work that controls were supposed to do.

Every era has its version of institutions where reputations function as a get-out-of-scrutiny-free card. The vehicles change, but the dynamic stays the same. When trust replaces verification, fraud finds room to grow.

Listen to the complete episode of Oh My Fraud for the full story, including the prequel villain who died from prison coffee, a safe full of nothing but lists, and a mustache shave that fooled no one.

And remember Caleb’s parting advice: if the chairman of your bank ends up hanging under a bridge named Blackfriars, you’re probably not having a normal quarter.

How Tim Duncan and Stan Lee Lost $50 Million to People They Trusted Most

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By 2017, Marvel movies were dominating the box office. Multiple films in the global top ten, billions in revenue, a cinematic universe shaping pop culture like we’d never seen before. At the center of it all, at least symbolically, was Stan Lee. But that same year, his wife Joan passed away after nearly 70 years together, and suddenly decisions they’d been navigating as a team were landing entirely on him.

That same year, NBA legend Tim Duncan discovered his financial advisor of 20 years had been stealing from him for the last decade. Between these two cases, the damage exceeded $50 million, and not a single dollar was stolen by a stranger.

In the latest episode of Oh My Fraud, host Caleb Newquist revives the podcast’s popular “Defrauded Famous” series to examine how trusted insiders extracted tens of millions from two of America’s most recognizable figures. As Caleb puts it, these cautionary tales are reminders that “fraud usually comes from the inside.”

The Big Fundamental’s Big Loss

Tim Duncan wasn’t your typical NBA superstar. Five-time champion, two-time MVP, 15-time All-Star, and nicknamed “The Big Fundamental” for his unglamorous but devastatingly effective style. As Shaquille O’Neal wrote in his autobiography, “I could talk trash to Patrick Ewing. Get in David Robinson’s face. Get a rise out of Alonzo Mourning. But when I went at Tim, he’d look at me like he was bored.”

This wasn’t a guy with a garage full of Ferraris and a Bengal tiger in the backyard. Tim grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands and planned to be a competitive swimmer until Hurricane Hugo destroyed his training pool. Basketball came later, but success came fast. He was the number one pick in the 1997 draft and won his first championship in his second season.

By the time he retired, Tim had earned well over $200 million in NBA contracts alone. And from day one, he’d been working with financial advisor Charles Banks IV.

Charles came from money. His father was president of Ferguson Enterprises, a major plumbing and HVAC distributor. Charles became president of CSI Capital Management, managing around $400 million for about 150 professional athletes. He was tall, bookish, a wine enthusiast who even co-owned Screaming Eagle Winery with billionaire Stan Kroenke. He positioned himself as someone who could connect clients with sophisticated opportunities beyond basic retirement planning.

For a pro athlete, that kind of help matters. As Caleb explains, NBA players face the “jock tax,” meaning they owe state income taxes in every state they play. A game in California? Taxed there. New York road trip? Taxed there too. With 80-plus games a season, sitting down to personally vet investment deals isn’t exactly practical.

The Trust That Turned Toxic

The turning point came in 2007 when Charles left CSI Capital Management. He never told Tim. Their formal advisory relationship had ended, but Charles kept approaching Tim with investments. And after 2007, Charles had an undisclosed ownership interest in each of them.

Take Le Metier de Beaute, a cosmetics company. Charles pitched it as profitable with $8 million in sales, claiming Kevin Garnett would also invest. Tim put in $1.1 million. In January 2013, an audit uncovered “accounting irregularities and possible fraud.” But Charles texted Tim a month later, “Need to update on a deal. All good news.” The company went bankrupt that September. Tim’s money was gone.

The biggest fraud involved Gameday Entertainment, a struggling sports merchandising company where Charles was chairman and held a controlling interest (facts he never disclosed to Tim). Charles convinced Tim to take out a $10 million line of credit, then loan $7.5 million to Gameday at 12% annual interest. He claimed another investor was putting in the same amount. That investor didn’t exist. Charles pocketed $225,000 in fees and skimmed $15,000 from each monthly payment for two years.

The most brazen move came during the 2013 NBA Finals. While Tim was playing Miami, Charles faxed him signature pages (not the full agreement) for what he described as an amendment that would “remove $1.5 million of risk for you.” He texted: “All great news. No downside.” In reality, Tim had just taken on $6 million in new liability while giving up his priority position as a creditor. Charles paid himself over $1.5 million from the proceeds.

Gameday’s own controller later testified it felt like Charles was using the company as “his personal piggy bank.”

Justice, Sort Of

Tim’s 2013 divorce led to the discovery. A new financial consultant found discrepancies everywhere, including unclear loans, missing documentation and undisclosed conflicts. The final tally showed Tim had invested $24.1 million with Charles and gotten back about $7 million, all from interest payments, not actual returns.

In September 2016, a federal grand jury indicted Charles on four counts of wire fraud. He pleaded guilty to one count and was sentenced to four years in federal prison plus $7.5 million in restitution. Federal investigators calculated Tim’s actual loss at $13.5 million. Tim himself estimated it closer to $25 million.

At sentencing, Tim told Charles directly, “I just wanted you to own up, pay up, and we’d move on. You wouldn’t. So now we’re here.” He also wrote to the judge, “You may not understand how difficult it is for me to be in the public light in this horrible way, as the poster child for a dumb athlete whose financial advisor took his money.”

Judge Fred Berry wasn’t sympathetic to Charles, comparing him to a drug dealer he’d sentenced earlier that day. “People like you ought to be held to a higher standard because you know better,” he said.

Making matters worse, Kevin Garnett was sitting in that courtroom during Charles’s sentencing, across from Tim, with Charles’s family. At the time, Kevin didn’t think he was a victim. Tim’s attorney later said, “We tried to save Kevin. We tried to tell him.” By 2018, Kevin had filed his own lawsuit alleging Charles stole $77 million through a partnership called Hammer Holdings LLC. Combined, Charles allegedly extracted roughly $100 million from these two NBA stars.

When the Gatekeeper Dies

Stan Lee’s story is different but equally troubling. Despite being the face of characters worth billions, including Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, and The Hulk, he didn’t own them. Early comic deals weren’t creator-friendly. But convention appearances, licensing deals, and media projects still generated significant income, and Stan needed help managing it.

For decades, that manager was his wife, Joan. She handled schedules, controlled access, and served as the gatekeeper. When she died in 2017 after nearly 70 years of marriage, that protective layer vanished overnight. What followed was three overlapping fraud cases totaling over $26 million in alleged losses.

Gerardo “Jerry” Olivares, a former florist turned publicist, had worked his way into Stan’s life starting in 2010. After Joan’s death, he allegedly moved fast, convincing the grieving Stan to sign over power of attorney within days, then firing Stan’s banker of 26 years and his longtime attorneys. A lawsuit alleged Jerry transferred $4.6 million from Stan’s account without authorization, including $1.4 million traced directly to Jerry and $850,000 for a West Hollywood condo.

Then there’s the detail that sounds like something out of a horror movie. Jerry allegedly had a nurse extract vials of Stan Lee’s blood to stamp on Black Panther comics that sold for up to $500 each. Stan never authorized it. The lawsuit called it a “diabolical and ghoulish scheme.”

Max Anderson, Stan’s road manager since 2006, allegedly stole over $21 million, including $11 million in autograph revenue and $10 million in appearance fees. At one 2017 New York Comic Con, Max allegedly collected over $800,000, paid himself $700,000 as a “management fee,” and gave Stan just $50,000. He also allegedly got Stan, whose vision had deteriorated so badly he couldn’t read what he was signing, to grant him a worldwide license to Stan’s name and likeness in perpetuity for one dollar.

Keya Morgan, a memorabilia dealer who took control of Stan’s business affairs in early 2018, faced criminal charges, including false imprisonment of an elder and elder abuse. He allegedly moved the 95-year-old Stan from his home late at night and called 911 on social workers who came for welfare checks, trying to convince Stan he was in danger.

Limited Justice for Stan

The outcomes were frustratingly incomplete. Jerry Olivares settled for an undisclosed amount without admitting wrongdoing. Background checks later revealed he had 45 tax liens and 15 court judgments, none of which Stan had verified before handing over his finances.

Max Anderson’s civil case settled a week before trial. He pled guilty to federal tax charges for not reporting $1.25 million in income and got 12 months and a day in federal prison.

Keya Morgan’s criminal trial ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal. The judge dismissed all remaining charges “in the interests of justice.”

The total alleged harm was over $26 million. But total proven misconduct was just Anderson’s $1.25 million in unreported income. That’s it.

Stan Lee died in 2018 before most of these disputes were resolved.

What We Can Learn

As Caleb frames it, “Nobody manages this level of complexity completely alone.” Tim wasn’t reckless. Stan wasn’t naive. They worked with people they had good reasons to trust. “That is normal. But trust without oversight is basically the equivalent of keeping your fingers crossed.”

The lessons for accounting professionals are:

  • Trust needs verification. Independent review and periodic check-ins aren’t signs of distrust. They’re good governance. Charles operated unchecked for 20 years. That’s a single point of failure.
  • Scale changes everything. Once you reach a certain income level, you’re basically a small business. Multiple revenue streams, complex taxes, and licensing deals demand real internal controls and separation of duties.
  • Fraud comes from inside. It’s not hackers or strangers. It’s people who know “where the documentation is thin or non-existent, where no one’s double checking anything.”
  • Life transitions create vulnerability. Joan Lee’s death removed Stan’s only real oversight. Tim’s fraud was discovered during his divorce. Powers of attorney and defined processes are easier to establish in advance than during a crisis.
  • Documentation matters. Charles faxed Tim the signature pages during the NBA Finals rather than the full agreement. Insist on complete documentation every time.

As Tim said after everything came to light, “I was coached early on in my career about preparing for something like this. I thought I was prepared the right way. I thought I did the right things and it still happened. So obviously it can happen to anyone.”

The full Oh My Fraud episode digs deeper into both cases, including more courtroom details and that wild story about Stan Lee’s blood. These stories are reminders that the principles of internal controls exist for exactly these situations. Every client who says “I trust my advisor completely” might be describing a perfectly healthy relationship. Or they might be involved in exactly the kind of setup that enabled Charles Banks IV to steal for two decades without detection.

Why the Biggest Financial Scandals in America Are Perfectly Legal

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Before a recent episode of Oh My Fraud discussed how America legalized corruption over the past 50 years, it started with something simpler: Olympic-level credit card fraud.

French biathlete Julia Simon won gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics while carrying some interesting baggage. Last October, she received a three-month suspended sentence and a €15,000 fine for spending €2,000 on her teammate’s credit card. The teammate she scammed finished 80th at the same Olympics. Simon also used the team physiotherapist’s credit card in 2021 and 2022.

The best part is, Simon denied the crime for three years, claiming identity theft until investigators found photos of the credit cards on her phone. “I confess the accusations, but I don’t remember committing them. It’s like a blackout,” Julia told the court.

That’s the kind of corruption we can all understand: straightforward, prosecutable, and absurd. But the most effective heists in American history aren’t happening with stolen credit cards but with Supreme Court rulings, secret contracts, and fee structures so boring that nobody bothers to read them.

That’s the world investigative journalist David Sirota has spent decades mapping. Recently, David sat down with host Caleb Newquist for what he calls “not a political episode in the tribal sense,” although he admits upfront that two self-described lefties are about to discuss how money corrupts democracy.

Who Is David Sirota?

David isn’t your typical political commentator. He’s written four books, most recently Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. He founded The Lever, an investigative news outlet focused on how money manipulates power. He co-wrote the Oscar-nominated film Don’t Look Up with Adam McKay. It’s the fourth most-watched Netflix original movie ever. And he created award-winning podcasts on everything from the 2008 financial crisis to, well, legalized corruption.

David has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. But his real education came from sitting in on politicians begging donors for money.

The Windowless Room Where Democracy Goes to Die

Fresh out of college, David landed a job running the fundraising call room for a congressional candidate in the Philadelphia suburbs. The candidate was on his fourth run for the same seat, having lost the previous race by just 40 votes.

For eight hours a day, David sat with the candidate as he worked the phones, begging for money. Then David handled the follow-up calls to ensure those commitments actually materialized.

“If you’re not willing to take fundraising seriously, to raise enough resources to communicate with voters, there’s no point in running a campaign,” David told Caleb. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? That’s not real. That’s not a real thing.”

What struck David wasn’t the grind; it was the distortion. The candidate spent all day talking to people who could write thousand-dollar checks, not knocking on doors in neighborhoods where people couldn’t spare ten bucks. The donors’ concerns inevitably became the candidate’s concerns. Not through explicit bribery, but through simple repetition. Eight hours a day, every day, he listened to what wealthy donors care about.

“You can see how what the candidate worries about and what they’re thinking about is distorted,” David explained. “They’re not necessarily spending eight hours a day knocking on doors and talking to people who can’t even write a $10 check.”

Bernie Sanders and the Bill That Died on Christmas

Later, David went to Washington as press secretary for “this obscure, independent weirdo named Bernie Sanders.” It was the late 1990s, and Sanders was considered fringe. He was a self-described socialist in an era when that word was political poison.

Working for Sanders meant seeing Congress from the outside looking in. One of his first experiences came when setting up a camera to beam Sanders questioning Alan Greenspan to local TV stations via satellite. While other congressmen fawned over the Fed chair, Sanders “ripped his face off.”

“The whole room is quiet,” David recalled. “And I was like, oh, this is a way different job than any other press secretary for any other member of Congress.”

But the moment that crystallized how corruption really works came later. Sanders championed a bill allowing Americans to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. These were the exact same drugs, but at Canadian prices. After massive effort, they got it through the Republican House, the Republican Senate, and Bill Clinton signed it.

But three weeks before Clinton left office, during Christmas week when nobody was paying attention, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala killed the program using a poison pill provision someone had slipped into the final bill.

“We defeated money, and money still won,” David said.

When Fighting Corruption Gets You in Trouble

The final lesson in David’s corruption education came at the Center for American Progress, the Clinton machine’s think tank in exile. David published a report showing how much money 30 key House Democrats had taken from the credit card industry, right before they helped pass President Biden’s bankruptcy bill, legislation that made it dramatically harder for Americans to escape predatory debt.

House Democrats went ballistic. They dragged John Podesta to Capitol Hill and demanded David be fired or muzzled.

“I thought we were doing the right thing, even if it pissed off some Democrats,” David recalled. “You’re supposed to be against corruption as long as being against corruption helps the party that you’re affiliated with. You can combat corruption, but only up to a point.”

That’s when David left for what Caleb called “the literal wilderness” of Montana.

What Corruption Actually Is (And Why We’ve Legalized It)

When Caleb asked David to define corruption, David had a ready answer.

“It’s something that interferes with how a system is supposed to work,” he said. “Specifically, how a democratic institution is supposed to work.”

When the public overwhelmingly wants lower prescription drug prices but money ensures it doesn’t happen, that gap between public will and policy outcome is corruption. Legal or not.

And the kicker is, America has legalized most of it.

If you hand a congressperson $5,000 cash with a specific legislative ask, you can go to prison. But funneling $50 million through dark money groups to elect 25 congresspeople who write every bill you want is perfectly legal.

“We have created this patina of ‘that’s just politics, that’s just the way it works, it’s all legal, so there’s nothing dirty,'” David explained. “This is a deeply, deeply corrupt system. We’ve just put a nice fresh coat of paint on it.”

The 50-Year Master Plan

How did we get here? David traces it to a deliberate campaign that began after Watergate, ironically, right when real anti-corruption reforms were passed.

In 1971, Lewis F. Powell (then head of the American Bar Association and Philip Morris board member) wrote his now-famous memo arguing that corporations needed to start buying American politics because the government was too responsive to ordinary people. Shortly after, Powell landed on the Supreme Court.

There, he engineered the Buckley v. Valeo ruling, which established a radical idea as constitutional doctrine: money isn’t corruption, money is free speech. The legal argument was crafted by, among others, John Bolton. Yes, that John Bolton.

That ruling became the foundation for corporate spending rights, then Citizens United, transforming elections from democratic contests into auctions.

Meanwhile, courts were narrowing what counts as prosecutable bribery. The culmination came recently when an Indiana mayor awarded a municipal contract to a company that then gave him $10,000. The mayor was prosecuted and convicted, but the Supreme Court overturned it, ruling it wasn’t a bribe but a “gratuity,” and thus, perfectly legal.

“That’s where we are,” David said. “That is literally where we are right now.”

The $5 Trillion Heist Nobody’s Watching

While everyone’s distracted by culture wars and political theater, there’s $4-5 trillion sitting in public pension funds across America. That’s money from teachers, firefighters, and first responders, invested for their retirements.

Increasingly, it’s flowing into private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital, despite these “alternative investments” often underperforming simple index funds over the long term while charging astronomical fees.

A Vanguard fund charges almost nothing. Private equity charges the classic “two and twenty:” 2% management fee plus 20% of profits.

“Even Warren Buffett would say nobody can beat the market,” David noted. So why pour billions into high-fee, high-risk investments? Maybe because the people running those firms donate heavily to the politicians who appoint pension board members.

When David’s team obtained leaked contracts, they discovered investment funds charge different fees to different investors in the same fund. The billionaire investing his own money negotiates a better rate than the pension fund managed by political appointees without skin in the game.

“The pensioners subsidize the free ride of the billionaire who’s investing alongside,” David explained.

The old cliché about the mafia looting pension funds “is happening every day in every state and city in America,” David said. “And it’s not a story.”

When David exposed these connections in New Jersey’s $100 billion pension fund, Governor Chris Christie attacked him by name at multiple press conferences. “You’re talking about a $100 billion pension fund,” his editor explained. “There are a lot of really powerful people that want things from that, and you’re getting in their way.”

If Humans Built It, Humans Can Unbuild It

Despite everything, David strikes a surprisingly hopeful note. The corruption is no longer hidden. Trump, if nothing else, made the transactional nature of politics explicit. “You don’t have to explain that there is a problem anymore,” David said. “Everybody understands there is a problem.”

David offers practical advice for fighting corruption:

  • Run for local office where elections are small enough that money doesn’t determine everything
  • Support ballot initiatives for dark money disclosure and limits on corporate spending
  • Push for publicly financed elections so candidates can run without relying on donors who demand favors

“Back in the 1970s, the people who legalized corruption worked at it for 50 years,” David said. “Those dreamers made their dream happen. And now we’re all living in their nightmare.”

But if they could dream their corrupt system into existence, we can dream something better. The work starts now.

The pension fund story should hit particularly close to home for accounting professionals. This is about fiduciary duty, fee transparency, and what happens when the people guarding the money answer to the wrong stakeholders. You’re trained to see what others miss in the numbers. The people benefiting from this system count on complexity and boredom to keep everyone else looking away.

Don’t let them be right about that.

Listen to the full episode of Oh My Fraud for more, including David’s Bernie Sanders rental car bus story and his Oscar night encounter with Harvey Keitel. Because sometimes understanding corruption requires understanding the people fighting it, and they’re more human than you might think.

A $600 Credit Card Complaint Unraveled One of the Biggest Frauds of the 1980s

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The auditors stood in what looked like a massive insurance restoration job. Equipment everywhere. Workers milling around. Paperwork ready and in order. It looked like a thriving construction site.

Except it wasn’t real.

The workers were hired actors. The paperwork was fake. The project didn’t even exist. And the company behind it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper.

This is the story of Barry Minkow and ZZZZ Best. On a recent episode of the Oh My Fraud podcast, host Caleb Newquist explained this financial crime with his trademark dark humor that resonates with accounting professionals and true crime fans alike.

Starting in the Garage

Barry was born in 1966 and grew up in Reseda, a middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley. He wasn’t an athlete or particularly popular. His classmates nicknamed his old Buick “the bomb,” which tells you where he stood socially.

But Barry wanted to stand out, and business seemed like the way to do it.

At 15, Barry started a carpet cleaning company out of his parents’ garage. He called it ZZZZ Best. The four Zs represented the number of kids he wanted someday. The name also put the company at the end of the phone book listings, which wasn’t great marketing, but he was 15. What did he know?

Actually, Barry knew more about the carpet-cleaning industry than most teenagers did. His mom worked at a carpet cleaning company, and he’d done telemarketing there as a kid. He understood how to pitch services, how pricing worked, and what customers expected.

The business was real at first. Barry hustled, running local ads, making aggressive sales calls, and working long hours. ZZZZ Best built a modest reputation by showing up when scheduled, charging what they quoted and working late to finish jobs. Compared to competitors known for bait-and-switch tactics, ZZZZ Best seemed like the most honest option.

But running a business as a teenager created problems. California law didn’t allow minors to sign binding contracts, so banks would shut down his accounts once they realized how old he was. He wasn’t even old enough to drive at first, so he needed rides from friends to meet customers.

The biggest problem was cash flow. There are upfront costs like equipment, supplies, advertising, and payroll. Revenue comes later, after you do the work. When you’re 15 with no savings and no credit, those gaps become huge problems.

That’s when the shortcuts started. Check kiting to cover expenses. Overcharging customer credit cards and only refunding if someone complained. He staged burglaries at his own office to collect insurance payouts and even sold his grandmother’s jewelry to raise cash.

These actions could have landed him in jail. But at this stage, it wasn’t massive corporate fraud. It was just a young business owner scrambling to keep something afloat.

The Pivot to Fake Restoration

The thing about solving cash flow problems with fraud is you’re not actually fixing anything. You’re just postponing the problem and adding new ones.

The carpet cleaning business was real, but it wasn’t wildly profitable. And it definitely wasn’t generating the kind of money Barry was starting to claim publicly. He needed something bigger. Something that could explain rapid growth and put impressive numbers on paper.

Enter insurance restoration.

The pivot made some sense. Carpet cleaning and disaster restoration overlap—smoke damage, water damage, that kind of work. But the real appeal was scale. Residential carpet cleaning might bring in a few hundred dollars per job. Commercial restoration contracts could run hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars.

Restoration work also offered complexity. Multiple parties were involved, including insurers, adjusters, contractors, and property owners. Work spread across multiple locations. Payments happened in stages. Lots of documentation. From the outside, it’s hard to tell what’s actually happening on any given job.

Around this time, Barry met Tom Padgett at a gym in the San Fernando Valley. Tom was an insurance claims adjuster and was established in the industry. He understood exactly how insurance companies documented and approved restoration claims. That gave him credibility Barry didn’t have.

Together, they began creating restoration projects that existed mostly on paper. Contracts showing large commercial cleanup jobs. Work orders and invoices—the kind of supporting documentation you’d expect if major restoration work was actually happening.

To make it more believable, they created Interstate Appraisal Services. On paper, it looked like an independent firm verifying restoration projects for insurers. In reality, it was part of the same scheme.

With those fake restoration contracts documented, Barry started factoring receivables. That meant selling ZZZZ Best’s accounts receivable to banks at a discount in exchange for immediate cash. Instead of waiting months to get paid, you get most of the money now. The bank collects the full amount later.

The problem was that the invoices weren’t tied to real projects, so there was nothing for the bank to collect. New contracts had to appear to cover old obligations. More documentation. More fake projects. Bigger numbers. It wasn’t exactly a Ponzi scheme, but it worked like one. Except the people being recruited were banks instead of investors.

By the mid-1980s, ZZZZ Best was reporting roughly $50 million in annual revenue. Most of it came from the restoration business that largely didn’t exist.

Fooling the Auditors

Going public would solve many of Barry’s problems. He’d get access to capital, legitimacy, visibility, and the kind of validation that makes lenders and partners more comfortable.

But there was one obstacle: auditors.

Before a company can go public, independent auditors must review the financial statements, verify revenue, and confirm contracts exist. The numbers have to reflect reality. That’s a big problem when much of your revenue is fake.

ZZZZ Best hired Ernst & Whinney, one of the then-Big Eight accounting firms. It was a serious firm with a serious reputation. Exactly the kind of name you’d want if you were trying to build credibility.

Ernst & Whinney did what auditors do. They asked questions. They requested documentation. Eventually, they wanted to see some restoration projects in person.

Paperwork alone wasn’t going to be enough anymore. So the fraud evolved.

Instead of just fake documents, Barry and his team created fake job sites. Barry temporarily staged buildings that weren’t ZZZZ Best projects to look like they were. They brought in equipment, added signage, and had workers show up. They prepared paperwork in advance. There was enough activity to create the impression of a functioning restoration job.

Put yourself in the auditors’ shoes. You’re visiting a site for a brief period. It’s your first time there. Management is guiding you through everything. From your perspective, everything lines up. The site visit confirms what you’re being told. Independent appraisals exist. The documentation matches.

Ernst & Whinney issued an unqualified audit opinion. They believed the financial statements fairly reflected the company’s finances. ZZZZ Best cleared a major hurdle.

The company went public in January 1986 through a reverse merger with a shell company already publicly traded. It’s a faster route to the stock market that can involve less scrutiny than a traditional IPO.

The stock began trading at around $4 per share. Within months, it climbed to about $18. Barry Minkow, barely out of his teens, was suddenly CEO of a publicly traded company worth nearly $300 million.

The $600 Complaint That Brought It All Down

For a while, everything looked like it was working. Media coverage was positive. Barry conducted interviews, leaning into the young-entrepreneur success story. But behind the scenes, pressure was building. Some lenders were asking more detailed questions about restoration contracts. Industry people wondered how such a young company had landed so many large jobs so quickly.

Then came a problem with a flower order.

Barry owned a small side business called Floral Fantasies. It wasn’t a major part of ZZZZ Best, just another little venture. A Los Angeles secretary named Robin Swanson was overcharged by about $600 on a credit card purchase. She complained and tried to get a refund. She kept calling but got nowhere.

Most people would eventually let it go. Not Robin.

She started asking questions, talking to other customers and comparing experiences. What she found suggested a pattern of repeated questionable charges tied to Barry’s businesses. She documented names, dates, and amounts and took it all to the Los Angeles Times.

When reporters started digging, they weren’t initially investigating the restoration business. They were looking at credit card complaints. But when journalists pull at one thread, they tend to find others. Questions about Floral Fantasies led to questions about Barry’s business practices, which in turn led to scrutiny of ZZZZ Best’s restoration contracts.

The article hit on May 22, 1987: “Behind Whiz Kid Is a Trail of False Credit Card Billings.”

At first, it didn’t look catastrophic. But it accelerated scrutiny that was already building. In early June, Ernst & Whinney abruptly resigned as ZZZZ Best’s auditor, citing unresolved questions about certain restoration contracts.

When your auditors suddenly quit, that’s about as reassuring as a smoke alarm going off in the middle of the night.

The stock price plummeted from $18 to the mid-$6 range. A proposed acquisition that might have stabilized everything fell apart. By July 1987, Barry resigned as CEO, citing health reasons. Shortly afterward, ZZZZ Best filed for bankruptcy.

When the dust settled, the company that once had a market value of nearly $300 million had remarkably little underneath it. Just some equipment and a few vehicles for a small, legitimate carpet-cleaning business. Investor losses topped $100 million.

Prison, Pastor, and More Fraud

In January 1988, a federal grand jury indicted Barry and several associates. The charges covered securities fraud, mail fraud, racketeering, bank fraud, tax violations, and conspiracy. After a trial lasting several months, Barry was convicted on dozens of counts.

In March 1989, Judge Dickran Tevrizian sentenced Barry to 25 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay tens of millions in restitution. Tom Padgett, who helped create the fake restoration projects, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years.

That’s where most fraud stories end. But Barry’s story was just beginning.

While serving his sentence in Colorado, Barry went through what he described as a religious conversion. Raised Jewish, he became a born-again Christian in prison. He got involved in ministry programs and studied theology. He was released in 1995 after serving about seven and a half years.

Barry enrolled at Liberty University and earned a master’s degree in divinity. By the late 1990s, he was pastor of San Diego Community Bible Church. He also founded the Fraud Discovery Institute in 2001, positioning himself as someone who could spot fraud because he’d committed it.

He spoke at churches, universities, and accounting conferences. He wrote books about ethics and redemption. Media profiles framed him as a cautionary tale-turned-expert. By the late 2000s, Barry had rebuilt surprising credibility.

Then came Lennar.

The Fraud Investigator’s Fraud

Lennar Corporation is one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. In 2009, right after the housing market collapsed, the company was under pressure, as was much of the construction industry.

Barry released a report through his Fraud Discovery Institute accusing Lennar of accounting misconduct. He alleged financial irregularities and potential fraud at the executive level. He filed complaints with regulators and spoke publicly about the allegations.

Lennar’s stock dropped from about $11.50 to the mid-$6 range within weeks. Media coverage amplified the claims, prompting analysts to ask questions.

But there were problems with Barry’s allegations.

Before going public with his claims, Barry had taken short positions against Lennar stock, meaning he bet that Lennar’s stock price would go down. If negative news about Lennar came out, Barry would profit.

Also, a San Diego developer named Nicolas Marsch III, who was already suing Lennar over a failed real estate deal, hired Barry to investigate the company. The fraud allegations weren’t coming from a neutral source.

Federal investigators concluded that key elements of Barry’s fraud claims against Lennar lacked evidence to support them. Prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to manipulate Lennar’s stock through false allegations.

He pleaded guilty in 2011. Judge Patricia Seitz sentenced him to five years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $583 million in restitution, essentially the amount Lennar’s market value dropped after his report. She said Minkow had “no moral compass.”

The Pastor Who Stole from His Flock

While the Lennar situation was unfolding, something else was happening at Barry’s church.

During much of his time as pastor of San Diego Community Bible Church, prosecutors said Barry was embezzling money from the church itself. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, he stole more than $3 million through unauthorized accounts, forged checks, and diverted donations.

Some victims were individual church members who knew Barry personally and trusted him spiritually. One victim was a widower who thought he was funding a humanitarian hospital project overseas. Investigators concluded the project didn’t exist.

Churches tend to operate on trust, which means financial oversight often relies on good faith rather than verification. That didn’t help here.

In January 2014, Barry pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, and defrauding the federal government related to the church schemes. Federal prosecutors called him “a professional con man expertly plying his craft, a predator from the pulpit.”

The judge called it a “despicable, inexcusable crime” and imposed the maximum sentence allowed: another five years in federal prison on top of the Lennar sentence.

Lessons for Accounting Professionals

Barry was released from federal prison in June 2019. He reportedly works in addiction counseling now. He owes $612 million in restitution across his various convictions. He’ll be paying that back for the rest of his life.

His three-decade criminal career offers several lessons:

  • Fraud escalates. ZZZZ Best didn’t begin as a massive public company scandal. It started with check kiting and overcharging.
  • Small rationalizations become bigger ones. A “temporary” cash-flow fix becomes fabricated contracts that turn into staged job sites. Early ethical lapses are often leading indicators rather than isolated incidents.
  • Revenue deserves skepticism, especially when growth outpaces reality. ZZZZ Best reported explosive revenue from complex restoration contracts that few people fully understood. When you see rapid growth tied to opaque transactions, multiple third parties, or heavy reliance on estimates and documentation, that’s a cue to dig deeper.
  • Independence and professional skepticism matter more than reputation. A Big 8 firm with a string name wasn’t immune to being deceived. Don’t outsource your judgment to management narratives, staged environments, or impressive paperwork.
  • Verification beats trust. The fake restoration sites worked because auditors saw what they expected to see. Fraudsters exploit expectations. Time pressure and client relationships can dull the instinct to “trust but verify.” Independent confirmations, third-party evidence, and corroborating documentations are essential safeguards.
  • Culture and governance are risk factors. ZZZZ Best was led by a charismatic founder with little oversight and a board that lacked the experience or backbone to challenge him. That same pattern reappeared at the church and in the Lennar situation. Weak governance structures and concentrated authority create environments where fraud can thrive. When evaluating clients, ask hard questions about the tone at the top and real accountability.
  • Small complaints can uncover big problems. ZZZZ Best started unraveling over a $600 credit card complaint. Pay attention to the outlier, the small anomalies, and the client who keeps asking questions. Those moments often reveal more than polished financial statements ever will.

When the Paperwork Looks Perfect, Look Closer

The story of Barry Minkow and ZZZZ Best is part cautionary tale, part masterclass in how fraud evolves and how even sophisticated professionals can be misled.

For accountants, auditors, and advisors, it’s a reminder that our role is both ethical and technical. It requires curiosity, courage, and the willingness to challenge narratives that feel too neat.

For a full breakdown, listen to the complete episode of Oh My Fraud. It’s a fascinating look at one of the most audacious frauds in modern business history and the lessons it still holds for the profession today.

Your Most Trusted Employee Is Your Biggest Fraud Risk

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If you’re an accountant cramming in your last CPE credits while reading this, Caleb Newquist has a message for you: “Have fun. You’re in for something.”

The host of Oh My Fraud just wrapped up 2025 with 26 episodes of financial fraud stories that share one depressing pattern: they were completely preventable. In episode 101, Caleb and co-producer Zach Frank sat down to recap a year that started with co-host Greg Kyte’s departure and continued with tales of embezzlement, gambling addictions, and presidential pardons.

The biggest takeaway? The person most likely to steal from you isn’t some sophisticated hacker. It’s the assistant who sets up your bank accounts, the business manager you’ve trusted for years, or the administrator who’s been ordering computers for decades.

When Your Interpreter Controls Your Bank Account

The year’s most talked-about fraud case involved baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. The setup was almost embarrassingly simple. Ippei handled everything when setting up Ohtani’s bank account during spring training in Arizona: the setup, the passcodes, and the access. Ohtani himself couldn’t access his own money. Neither could his business manager.

“Don’t let your assistant set up your account for you,” Zach emphasized during the recap. The only person who could touch that money was the interpreter who eventually stole from it.

The DOJ charging documents revealed desperate text messages between Ippei and his bookie. When the bookie suggested Ippei might be covering for Ohtani, Ippei insisted, “No, this was all me.” He made phone calls to the bank pretending to be Ohtani, claiming he was buying cars while actually funneling money to cover massive gambling debts.

Ippei is now serving time at Allenwood in Pennsylvania, after which he’ll be deported. Lionsgate TV and Stars are developing a series about the scandal, because apparently financial disasters go great with a side of popcorn.

The Business Manager Who Managed Beyoncé (Before the Fraud)

Episode 81 was the podcast’s most popular of the year, featuring an interview with Jonathan Todd Schwartz. Before stealing $7 million from Alanis Morissette, Schwartz managed finances for Beyoncé and Gwyneth Paltrow, back before they became the cultural forces they are today.

“Everyone loves hearing from the person who committed the crime and hearing why and how they committed the crime,” Zach noted. Schwartz’s story connected directly to another recurring theme of 2025: the devastating combination of gambling and drug addictions creating pressure that makes theft seem like the only solution.

Both the Ohtani and Morissette cases featured one person with total financial control and zero independent oversight. They’re failures of basic internal controls that any first-year accounting student could spot.

When Yale Lost $40 Million in Computers (And Nobody Noticed)

If celebrity cases seem distant from everyday fraud risk, consider Yale Medical School. An administrator within the finance function stole approximately $40 million in computer equipment over several years by simply keeping purchases under $10,000 to avoid triggering review thresholds.

“Forty million dollars should replace every computer at that entire school,” Zach pointed out. “Not just the medical school, like all of Yale.”

The university’s multi-billion dollar endowment meant these losses barely registered as statistical noise. As Caleb noted, Yale wasn’t exactly a sympathetic victim, “but that doesn’t mean you should steal $40 million worth of computers and sell them on the black market.”

The solution was painfully obvious. Omri from Routable (the podcast’s sponsor) summed it up in an earlier bonus episode: “A procurement process probably solves that problem.” Not revolutionary thinking; just basic purchasing controls that require someone other than the person ordering equipment to also receive and verify it.

The Columbus Zoo Plays Hardball

The Columbus Zoo case from episode 79 showed what happens when organizations decide to fight back. After executives were convicted of misspending and stealing funds, the zoo didn’t stop at criminal prosecution. They sued three executives to foreclose on their homes, determined to recover restitution.

The case came to light thanks to investigative reporting by the Columbus Dispatch, a reminder that journalism often serves as the last line of defense when internal controls fail. It’s a pattern that repeated throughout 2025: local reporters doing the unglamorous work of following paper trails and asking tough questions.

The Mental Gymnastics Olympics

Understanding how fraud happens mechanically is one thing. Understanding why people convince themselves it’s okay is another entirely.

Carlos Watson’s Ozy Media case pushed rationalization to its limits. Watson, who was convicted of fraud but subsequently pardoned by President Trump (with his restitution expunged), reportedly did “whatever it took” to make his business succeed. The SEC decided not to pursue further civil litigation after the pardon.

“The mental gymnastics that guy must have been going through in order to rationalize what he was doing,” Caleb observed. “Weird, but impressive.”

The Spotify streaming fraud case included another common justification: “Who am I really stealing from?” Perpetrators faking streams saw themselves taking from faceless tech giants rather than individual artists. The same logic appeared in cases involving fake invoices to Google and Facebook.

Where Are They Now? The 2025 Updates

Beyond the new cases, the year brought updates on ongoing sagas:

  • Mair Smyth, the con artist featured in Johnathan Walton’s episode was sentenced to four years in UK prison for mortgage fraud. Walton helped Northern Ireland authorities locate her. He flew to the UK for the trial but remains frustrated by what he sees as a light sentence for a career criminal.
  • First NBC Bank. A listener from New Orleans shared a local rumor that the bank’s massive Directors & Officers insurance policy allowed CEO Ashton Ryan to draw out his legal proceedings for seven years before finally being sentenced. He’s now in a prison infirmary.
  • Miriam Baer, the podcast’s first guest of 2025, left Brooklyn Law School to become Dean and President at California Western School of Law in San Diego.
  • The Rare Book Find. Caleb tracked down a copy of Australian con man Johann Friedrich Hohenberger’s ghost-written autobiography at a Maryland rare book store. When he apologized for taking months to complete the purchase, the seller reassured him, “In the rare books business, this was actually fast.”

What 2025 Taught Us (Again)

The year’s cases delivered a maddeningly consistent message: basic controls work, but only if you actually use them. Whether it’s a baseball star’s interpreter, a rock legend’s business manager, or a university administrator, the pattern never changes.

“The classics constantly get covered because people are going to constantly fall for them and commit those crimes,” Zach summarized. Ponzi schemes, embezzlement, and wire fraud are not going anywhere.

For accounting professionals, it’s crucial to maintain skepticism about single-person financial control. It’s not paranoia; it’s professional responsibility. Those boring internal controls you learned about in school are boring because they work.

Want the full conversation, including discussions about whether crypto is just one giant Ponzi scheme, why procurement departments exist, and how the hosts feel about having to do it all over again in 2026, listen to episode 101 of Oh My Fraud.

Because if you’re going to learn about fraud, you might as well learn from people who can make you laugh about it, even if the punchline involves prison sentences and presidential pardons.