Behind every billionaire there is a story!

Robert Vesco

How much Robert Vesco stole no one knew for certain. America’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was after him for more than $224m, or more than $1 billion in today’s money, which was then the biggest financial fraud in history. But oddly, once the crack teams of lawyers and accountants were on the case, they recovered almost twice as much. And they were still nowhere near the bottom of the schemes that brewed in Mr Vesco’s head, behind the pencil moustache, the slicked-back hair and the dark glasses, the very essence of a Hollywood fraudster.

Money being such liquid, transient stuff, it is hardly surprising that financiers should be fugitive. But Mr Vesco capped them all. He was on the run for 35 years, sometimes in a million-dollar yacht eluding the FBI in the blue seas between the Bahamas and Antigua, sometimes in his own Boeing 707, the Silver Phyllis, steaming with a variety of nymphs in the on-board sauna or gyrating in the on-board discotheque.

read the rest published by Economist here:

http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11448479