Overview

It's a story with all the makings of a television drama: a reclusive financial whiz swindles insurance companies out of $200 million, attracts a harem of young women, outsmarts a posse of bumbling federal agents in a chase across Europe, and leads some very famous people down the garden path. Yet it's all part of the very real life of Martin Frankel. THE PRETENDER chronicles how a nerdy thirty year old used his financial skills to build an intricate Ponzi scheme based on lies and his amazing gift for luring businessmen, including Democratic power broker Robert Strauss, into his web. While Frankel's stolen millions allowed him to easily transform himself from mama's boy to corporate mogul, his attempts to go 'global' proved more challenging. Nevertheless, his creation of a phony Catholic charity drew the attention of priests with close Vatican ties and a new group of mysterious business partners, until increasing paranoia caused Frankel to vanish from his Greenwich estate, beginning a bizarre chase across Europe that would climax in a German hotel room.

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Ellen Joan Pollock is a senior special writer of page one features at The Wall Street Journal, where she has worked for more than twelve years. She has focused on personalities from George W. Bush to Michael Jackson to Ronald Perelman, and spent several years covering the Whitewater scandal. She is also the author of Turks and Brahmins. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

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