The surprisingly involving story of an enormously audacious tax fraudster and the men who brought him down.
Heycke relates the history of the biggest individual tax fraud case in history.
The author describes this book as a tribute to the “Sisyphean efforts” of the IRS investigators and Justice Department tax prosecutors who serve the country by “clawing back billions from tax cheats [while] earning a fraction of what their private sector counterparts make.” These efforts are made against overwhelming odds, as Heycke makes clear: one’s chances of getting convicted of tax fraud, he writes, are roughly the same as getting struck by lightning, which is “hardly a deterrent for major fraudsters who can afford armies of accountants and lawyers.” At the center of this narrative is one of those fraudsters: Robert Brockman, billionaire founder of Universal Computer Systems and one of the greatest tax cheats in American history. Brockman, with the help of his tax attorney, Carlos Kepke, hid over a billion dollars of Brockman’s wealth in various offshore trusts and via other subterfuges that are colloquially termed “Trust Turduckens.” Unraveling these schemes was the work of Ted Lair, special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation task force, and prosecuting it all was the work of DOJ Tax Division prosecutor Corey Smith. In these pages, Heycke describes every step of the crime, the investigation, and the prosecution, and he wonderfully crafts the narrative as a terrific example of thrilling narrative nonfiction. His main characters (most especially the revolting Brockman himself) are vividly drawn, and the story’s action builds to a gripping climax in which Brockman kills himself (no spoiler: the author opens his book with that detail). The IRS still hasn’t recovered its full claims against Brockman’s frozen assets (the litigation is “a financial ghost haunting multiple jurisdictions”), but Heycke’s story remains a gripping and well-researched history.
The surprisingly involving story of an enormously audacious tax fraudster and the men who brought him down.Pub Date: July 12, 2025
ISBN: 9798288536526
Page Count: 182
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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