Although it exceeded 200 pages, it was not a very imposing book, and it was barely visible to me on the dimly lit
book shelf
crowded with larger more important-looking volumes. It was the fall of 1991 and I came across it by chance
as I was
casually browsing the shelves of Columbia
University’s Butler Library.
In those long gone days, I was in the habit of visiting Butler on my lunch breaks from my nearby office where I held
the
position of associate director of internal
audit at Columbia. As was my custom with other books on other days, I carried it
to a small reading desk nearby. I made myself comfortable, opened the hard cover, and read the title, “Papers in Relation
to
the Case of Silas Deane.”
It had been published in Philadelphia 1855 by the Seventy-Six Society.
Intrigued by the title, the date of publication, and the name of the publishing group, I began to read, and discovered
a
“narrative” by Silas Deane, America’s very first diplomat, which he had written, while in much distress, to the U.S.
Congress.
In his narrative, Deane detailed how he, a small-town colonial Connecticut lawyer
and merchant, had been sent to France
in March
of 1776 by the Second Continental Congress;
how he had been instructed by his friend Benjamin Franklin to
approach King Louis XVI for arms, money, and diplomatic alliance to support the American rebellion against the English
crown; how he had worked in league with a flamboyant playwright named Beaumarchais,
author of The Barber
of Seville
(and a secret agent
for the French king), and how these two men of vast differences in origin, temperament, and abilities,
had successfully obtained and shipped to America the arms and men desperately needed by George Washington
to defeat
the
British; and then how he had suddenly been
recalled back to America in 1778 under
suspicion of having embezzled his
country’s funds.
However, to my disappointment, “Papers in Relation to the Case of Silas Deane” did not reveal
the end of the fraud
investigation against Deane. But I was now hooked and was soon devoting my lunch hour to researching the rest of the
Deane
story. Was he convicted? Did he go to jail or was he found innocent and perhaps lauded by his peers as one of
America’s greatest Revolutionary War heroes?
My unplanned investigation into the Silas Deane story, a tale which I’ve fully
told in this book, aroused my curiosity as to what other frauds, embezzlements, scams, and schemes—famous in their day—had occurred in the center of great historical events but had
been forgotten as time turned its pages. I did this research initially just out of curiosity. Later, however, as I came across
one interesting story after another, the idea for a book on these forgotten frauds began to simmer in the back of my mind.
Still, in a way, writing this book might have been a bit of my destiny, as, although I had pursued a professional
career in audit and investigations, my abiding lifelong passion has always been for history. These days, I avidly read the
American Historical Review, but I can think back to my early youth when I was thrilled to receive at the ripe age
of 10 my very own subscription to American Heritage magazine. I also recall one day, at roughly the same young age,
sitting in the living room of my Uncle E.J and Aunt Joan’s “Moodna Hollow,” their century-old family homestead
in upstate New York. Knowing that I loved history, they had entrusted me to hold and read the bound original 1860s editions
of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. There I discovered the American Civil War as I had never seen it portrayed
in my school textbooks, with the vividly written descriptions accompanied by the detailed photograph-like illustrations of
the Northern armies in battle. It was as if I had been transported back in time, a feeling I have always held while reading
history.
This first volume of Before Madoff, and the volumes that will follow, took decades of research. To a degree,
perhaps a great degree, a good portion of this time resulted from the immense enjoyment I receive from discovering old lost
stories of fraud, coupled with my almost irrepressible investigator’s quest to keep digging deeper until I can uncover
all the facts. However, with a modicum of self-management and the vocal encouragement of friends and family to get on with
the writing, I stopped the research after gathering over 200 fraud stories, the oldest taking place in the fifteenth century
and the last in the mid-twentieth century. From this inventory I have selected thirty that I think are the best, which I will
offer to you in multiple volumes. The book in your hands is the first of these.
And so, little did I know back in
1991 that when I opened "Papers in Relation to the Case of Silas Deane,” I would also be opening up a
new chapter in my own life leading to the publication of this book. This has indeed been a labor of love, and often great
fun to research and write, especially when I come across some fascinating tidbit of history that adds meat and bones to the
one-dimensional images we are often given of the people, places, and events of days long gone by.
I
hope the stories I selected for you in this volume and those to follow will be enlightening, intriguing, and entertaining.
