We have something a little bit different, today: an excerpt from a biography about corporate intrigue and deception, and the dark side of finance: Robert D. Bailey‘s Pirate Cove. Due to be published by Bancroft Press on November 7th, the lovely people at Kaye Publicity have provided us with an excerpt from early on in the book. First, here’s the synopsis:
When Richard Bailey, a successful yet jobless businessman, receives a call from his old friend Jeff, he’s lured back into the high-stakes world of finance. Jeff, a charismatic corporate veteran, is now the number three guy at Southport Lane, a fledgling private equity firm. His boss invites Richard to inspect a pharmaceutical venture that reeks of mismanagement and financial disaster.
Bailey quickly finds himself navigating a sea of corruption as he attempts to rescue a floundering vineyard, Lieb Cellars, while unraveling a complex web of deceit at the heart of the corporate operations at Southport Lane.
Bailey provides an insider’s chronicle of a white-collar crime whose headline-grabbing elements first appeared on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal. It’s the true, unvarnished, previously untold, and fascinating story of how one honest man helped unravel the massive Southport Lane fraud perpetrated by the author’s former employer, 26-year-old, self-proclaimed financial prodigy Alexander Chatfield Burns.
A friend of the author once asked Burns how he got control of four state-regulated insurance companies. With a Cheshire cat grin, Burns cryptically responded, “Jesus with a telescope on Mars couldn’t figure out how I did this.”
But Bailey eventually did.
Now, read on for the excerpt, about the author’s early encounters with Burns…
Civilian Reader 