Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

Written by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright

Narrated by Will Collyer

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios).

Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history.

In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.

By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation.

Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781478948001

Bradley Hope

Bradley Hope is the New York Times bestselling co-author of Billion Dollar Whale and Blood and Oil. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Gerald Loeb Award winner. Formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a correspondent in the Middle East, Hope is co-founder of Project Brazen, a journalism studio and production company. He lives in London.

Reviews for Billion Dollar Whale

[hskey-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The details of international banking flew over my head, but overall an extremely compelling read. The amount of research that went into this book must have been staggering, good on the authors and their research teams. Loved learning about the greed and hollywood celebrities and hopeful Jho Low and others are held accountable for this ridiculous amount of corruption and greed.

[jcvogan1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Always enjoy a story about a Wharton grad who keeps the brand for fraud up.
Book was written a bit too early as it missed the trials of the Goldman Sachs partners involved.

[dramman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Detailed, absorbing account of the extraordinary 1MDB scandal, how perhaps $5 Billion was brazenly stolen from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund - with the connivance of several top international financial institutions.

[wandering_star_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An eye-watering story digging into the fraud behind the 1MDB scandal, in which hundred of millions of US$ were stolen from an account supposedly set up to finance infrastructure and other development projects in Malaysia.

The Whale of the title (a reference to what clubs and casinos call their big spenders) is a young Malaysian man called Jho Low, who from an early age loved to host lavish parties and throw lots of money around. On one occasion described in the book, while hanging out with Paris Hilton, Low spent €2m on champagne in a single night (needless to say, this bought more champagne than the whole club-ful of people could drink). But the authors are just as critical of the supposedly reputable banks, auditors and other institutions who were happy to accept and facilitate very dubious-looking deals, as long as a cut of the profits was rolling in their direction.

It's a well-written book, which helps to explain the financial flows just as well as it characterises Low's big-spending habits. One thing I found very curious was the way that Low managed to attract some genuine A-list celebrities to hang out with him. I mean, it's easy to imagine Hilton and the other Z-listers in the book making as much money as possible while they can. But Alicia Keys? Jamie Foxx? The authors explain how Leonardo di Caprio and Martin Scorsese were happy to work with Low because they got complete creative control of their work. (Low's company famously financed The Wolf of Wall Street, which it turns out Warner Bros were not willing to support because they didn't think an R rated film would make its money back. This meant that Scorsese got to crash a real Lamborghini in the opening scene - Warner Bros would have demanded he use a replica. One fascinating snippet is that one of the people who saw through Low very quickly was Jordan Belfort, the subject of Wolf of Wall Street, who after one of Low's parties apparently said "This is a fucking scam ... You wouldn't spend money you'd worked for like that.").

In a strange way, Low is a vacuum at the heart of the book. Other than wanting to be seen and to throw parties, it's hard to know what drove him. Perhaps if he ever stops being a fugitive from justice and comes to trial, we will be able to find out more.

[knightlight777 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Detailing the escapades of Jho Low the self styled financier who pulled off maybe the biggest heist ever through structuring and manipulating his way to a personal fortune utilizing the Malaysian bond fund. The money in play here is staggering, many billions. And this younger who set his sights on enriching himself straight of out Wharton is equally so.

The book goes through the complexity of how Low arranged for starting the main fund and offshoots then siphoned off his billions on phony accounts and structures. Aided by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Swiss bankers among others Low seemed to encrypt his on Midas Touch.

Still on the run as the book ends abruptly, it is not clear whether Low will be brought to justice. The massive scale of this crime and the length of time it played out is truly amazing and shows how little it takes to scheme one's way to a fortune using the available willing world financial institutions.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An ambitious young Malaysian, Jho Low, graduated from Penn with connections to other members of the global elites now sending their children to Ivies, including a contact with access to Gulf money. After a few false starts, he managed to convince Malaysia’s prime minister to start a sovereign wealth fund, and promptly stole hundreds of millions of dollars from it. Notable bits: (1) Just how pointless and dumb the resulting spending was—millions on champagne, on gambling, on paying models to hang out at his party, on gifts to Paris Hilton and other celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio. (2) Low helped disguise his money laundering by giving his fake entities names reminiscent of well-known financial institutions like the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. (3) The discussion at the end that assumes, without explaining, that there is no alternative for Malaysia but to pay this money back. This may well be true because of the way that the debt instruments were written, but that fact itself deserved more discussion.