Former stock analyst Dan Davies has categorized and compiled in Lying for Money various frauds that people throughout history have used to try to extract money from others. Some of the scams date back to ancient times, when, for example, seafarers would take out insurance on their ship and then claim it had sunk, simply painting a new name over the old one.

The scams are presented in an order where the first ones are the easiest to understand, progressing toward more complex ones. For example, it is easy to understand that it is unequivocally wrong to take out a loan and intentionally fail to pay it back. More difficult concepts include various control frauds that are not committed against an individual or a company, but against the market. If, for instance, a bank manager gets filthy rich by setting unrealistically high targets for their subordinates to sell loans to consumers, and rank-and-file employees therefore skip checking the customers' creditworthiness, eventually driving them into bankruptcy, have laws been broken, and who should be convicted for it? Especially when the bank reports to the authorities that absolutely everything is checked and done correctly, and if mistakes have been made, they are isolated human errors. At the same time, however, promotions and bonuses go to the most ruthless employees, and there is no active attempt to prevent wrongdoing whatsoever.

The book presents the scams with numerous practical examples, so you even find out, for instance, what the original Charles Ponzi pyramid scheme actually was. The author also sprinkles in just enough dry humor to keep the text reasonably engaging, but still, at least for me, reading the book took a disproportionately long time. Quite interesting anyway, though.