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

Description

The astounding, never-before-told story of how an ingenious Ghanaian con artist ran one of the 20th century’s longest and most audacious frauds.

When Ghana declared its independence from Britain in 1957, it immediately became a target for home-grown opportunists determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. A nationalist military coup ousted the new nation’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of seizing and hiding the country’s gold overseas.

Into the space stepped one of history’s most determined and charismatic scammers, John Ackah Blay-Miezah – a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into rural poverty on the Gold Coast, Blay-Miezah returned to Ghana and declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth millions. You, too, could claim a piece, if only you would help him rescue it – with a small investment. Over the 1970s and ’80s, he grew his scam to epic proportions, amassing hundreds of millions of pounds from his thousands of marks. Many raised their suspicions (including Shirley Temple Black and Henry Kissinger), but Blay-Miezah continued to live in luxury, deceiving lawyers, financiers, businessmen and investigators from around the globe.

In Anansi’s Gold, Yepoka Yeebo chases the ever-wilder trail of Blay-Miezah – from the smartest suites in the best London hotels to a small football club in Ghana where the fans learned to chant his name – revealing the untold story of the grifter who beat the West at its own thieving game.

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