Book of the Week #49

Cover-up: One Man's Pursuit of the Truth Amid the Government's Failure to End a Ponzi Scheme by Mark Connolly (Key West, Florida: White Whale Press, 2011).

"When New Hampshire’s largest Ponzi scheme exploded on the scene in late 2009, Mark Connolly was looking forward to starting his own business. He received some alarming phone calls. The state’s bank commissioner had some disturbing news and wanted Connolly’s involvement in his agency’s looming problem. Those puzzling conversations were the first of many in which Connolly began realizing incompetent dealings had been taking place in New Hampshire government regarding a failed mortgage company in Meredith, New Hampshire. Cover-Up is a story that blows the whistle on the behind the scenes maneuverings to manage the state’s political damage and assign blame about the government’s regulatory failures concerning the failed mortgage company. Connolly refused to be part of a government cover-up. His story reveals an inexcusable lack of oversight in financial regulation not only in New Hampshire but in the nation at large. Connolly takes the reader through a remarkable journey, and he tells the story as it unfolded before his eyes.
During his various attempts to alert officials to regulatory shortcomings in the state, Connolly was met with resistance and even hostility. It became clear the securities bureau was being set up to take the fall for a scheme that had taken place outside its jurisdiction. Cover-Up offers a unique and startling behind-the-scenes account of deception as only an insider could describe. As the director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, Connolly had a national reputation as an investor advocate. The small New Hampshire bureau had already taken on tough fraud cases and won. But the bureau had never taken on the government before. Connolly reveals why the state’s Ponzi scheme went on for too long—due to personal greed, government incompetence, political influence, and inadequate regulatory laws." --Publisher's blurb

This book is not at all objective (and doesn't claim to be) in the telling of this tale, but is an interesting and well presented look into the middle of a conflict involving several parts of New Hampshire state government and the people who work there. Mark Connolly spent eight years as director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, and is a graduate of Dartmouth College.