These days, Vesco the fugitive fraudster would have had a top job on Wall Street
So farewell, Robert Vesco, the fraudster, drug trafficker and fugitive from US justice whose death last year has been ‘confirmed by Cuban burial records’, according to the Daily Telegraph. Vesco absconded with $200 million of other people’s money — $60 million of it in banknotes in his excess baggage on a commercial flight — after looting Investor Overseas Services, the mutual-funds empire created but recklessly mismanaged by Bernie Cornfeld. Welcomed as a white knight when he gained control of IOS in 1970, Vesco proceeded to steal most of its remaining assets by selling them to fictitious companies as fast as he could print imaginative new letterheads. He referred to one of these companies as LPI — explaining, when asked, that it stood for Looting and Plundering International.
Vesco’s yacht, the 137ft Patricia III — which he arranged to have spirited away from US Customs in Florida after it had been confiscated — became a familiar sight in Caribbean havens where his money bought him protection.
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