Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year * Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, NPR, Newsweek, The Economist, TIME, Slate, and WIRED "Catch Me if You Can meets Coming to America in this epic tale of one of the greatest scammers of all time."NPR The astounding, never-before-told story of how an audacious Ghanaian con artist pulled off one of the 20th centurys longest-running and most spectacular frauds. When Ghana won its independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to snatch any assets that colonialism hadnt already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nations inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the countrys gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of historys most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty in Ghana and trained in the United States, John Ackah Blay-Miezah declared himself custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece--if only you would invest in Blay-Miezahs fictitious efforts to release the equally fictitious fund. Over the 1970s and 80s, he and his accomplicesincluding Ghanaian state officials and Nixons former attorney general--scammed hundreds of millions of dollars out of thousands of believers. Blay-Miezah lived in luxury, deceiving Philadelphia lawyers, London financiers, and Seoul businessmen alike, all while eluding his FBI pursuers. American prosecutors called his scam one of the most fascinating--and lucrative--in modern history. In Anansis Gold, Yepoka Yeebo chases Blay-Miezahs ever-wilder trail and discovers, at long last, what really happened to Ghanas missing wealth. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call history writes itself into being, one lie at a time.