The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History: Amazon.ca: Ellen Pollock: Books

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Ellen Joan Pollock's The Pretender is a biography of Martin Frankel, an unsavory financial savant whose vast illicit empire reached into very high places on two continents before collapsing with thundering suddenness. By the time of his arrest in 1999, Frankel had bilked various insurance companies out of $200 million via an elaborate (and oddly haphazard) Ponzi scheme. Pollock chronicles not only Frankel's phantom stock trades, fictional portfolios, asset skimming, and money laundering, but his mind-boggling personal extravagances--both financial and sexual. (His Greenwich, Connecticut, headquarters served both as business office and home to a shifting harem devoted to Frankel's sadomasochistic interests.) Pollock is a scrupulous writer, but for those unversed in financial subtleties, her novelistic treatment too rarely steps back to present overviews of the tangled crimes and their implications. Absent as well, finally, is any compelling psychological portrait of the bizarre and saurian Frankel. --H. O'Billovitch

From Publishers Weekly

A senior Wall Street Journal writer, Pollock (Turks and Brahmins) expands on her articles about the FBI's four-month manhunt for scam artist Martin Frankel, engagingly chronicling his journey from mama's boy to corporate mogul to international fugitive. Though he refused to grant Pollock interviews, Frankel comes to life here thanks to her exhaustive research in court documents, newspapers and Frankel's diary, plus interviews with lawyers, government and law enforcement officials, insurance executives, clergy, Frankel's girlfriends and business associates. In the 1980s, he launched the fraudulent Frankel Fund investment firm from his Toledo, Ohio, bedroom. Sued by investors in 1992, he was barred by the SEC from trading stock, but two years later undertook an intricate insurance scam from his new Greenwich, Conn., compound, where he surrounded himself with a "multitude of women." Frankel became an expert on Catholicism and St. Francis of Assisi and established a phony Catholic charity, duping priests with Vatican connections into a $55 million deal. Frankel's fiefdom crumbled in 1999 when insurance regulators became suspicious. After the eccentric embezzler fled, investigators found among his shredded and charred files an intact to-do list including a conspicuous item: "launder money." The final, suspenseful chapters track Frankel's flight across Europe and his 1999 capture at a posh Hamburg hotel. Some readers might recall the fugitive financier from the Court TV documentary House of Cards or ABC's 20/20, but Pollock's account delivers fresh, in-depth details. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Jan. 22)Forecast: First serial in the Wall Street Journal and a 20-city radio satellite tour will help this juicy book win respectable sales.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
It was a summer day in 1985 when Marty Frankel walked through the doors of Dominick & Dominick, a small discount brokerage office next door to a beauty salon and across from a rare-coin dealer's shop in the Great Eastern Shopping Center, a strip mall in a Toledo, Ohio, suburb. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)

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1.0 out of 5 stars ANNOYING., July 15 2003

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Angular Velocity "angular" (Midwestern cornfield, sprawl imminent) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History (Hardcover)

WHAT AN ANNOYING SCREWHEAD. I keep trying to read this book and have given up. Frankel's lying is one thing, but good Lord, his inability to actually consumate a trade (or anything else, evidently) is BEYOND annoying and makes for frustrating reading. At 2 bucks for a used copy, it's overpriced.

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1.0 out of 5 stars ANNOYING., July 15 2003

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Angular Velocity "angular" (Midwestern cornfield, sprawl imminent) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History (Hardcover)

WHAT AN ANNOYING SCREWHEAD. I keep trying to read this book and have given up. Frankel's lying is one thing, but good Lord, his inability to actually consumate a trade (or anything else, evidently) is BEYOND annoying and makes for frustrating reading. At 2 bucks for a used copy, it's overpriced.

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4.0 out of 5 stars What an account.., April 11 2004

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J. Daily (Fort Worth, Tx United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History (Paperback)

How was this man not caught sooner? It shows how greed affects us all. The seemingly educated, powerful people that Frankel was able to take in with his house of cards was amazing.

That he did most of the damage while still living at his parents house in Toledo, OH makes it even more amazing. Here is a man who was facinated with financial markets which he read about and studied for over 10,000 self confessed hours. He knew brokers and investors at all the major brokerage houses near his home. He was a "paper trader" and was more often than not correct. Yet he couldnt bring himself to pull the trigger and actually trade.

The gist of the scheme was started when Frankel started a phony stock brokerage and used a ponzi scheme to lure investors. But he was too afraid to make trades for his customers. He then decided to use his ill-gotten cash to buy a bank and in the process of shopping for one he came accross a "pre-need buriel insurance" firm that was in play. You'll have to read the rest.

I couldnt put this one down. Just when you think it cant get any more strange, it does.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
This is a great book. Its a page turner, with everything from audcious greed to stomach-turning S&M details. Read more

Published on Jan 3 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Well written Account of A Real Pretender
The bizarre truth of this con-man makes a great read.
Hopefully ,there will be later editions that will lay out
the inevitable convictions and sentencing of Frankel... Read more