CHARITY

As in my previous book, all proceeds accruing to me from its publication, will go to a duly registered and fully audited charity. Moreover, when you buy Conversion of a Rogue Financier you will find a little envelope inside. Simply stamp it and add your return address on the back of the envelope. Include a donation, and then simply mail it. You will receive your personal copy of Our Lady’s Message of Mercy to the World. Your donation is desperately needed to help others, and it is hugely appreciated.

May God bless you and your loved ones. You can contact me as follows:

florian@olmomag.org
www.florianhomm.org

Dedication

This real life story is dedicated to the Mother of God, who introduced me to a small book full of enlightening and encouraging messages. When I was totally downcast and contemplating suicide, Mary’s messages of mercy, hope and love saved my life. And because She saved this very lost, little soul from ruin, my life’s principal mission is to make Our Lady’s Message of Mercy to the World better known, so that other souls in need will also benefit from Her amazing mercy. This book is also dedicated to seven worldly angels, who fought for me and to all those who helped and prayed for me while I was incarcerated. I will not mention all your names, but each one of you knows who I mean. I thank you.

Background

From the Antechamber of Hell to Heaven on Earth

As I am beginning to write this book, it feels like another, very different person is articulating these thoughts than that individual, who authored Fugitive Financier in 2012. In that autobiography I predicted that I may face jail time, but in 2012 I could not even remotely fathom that I would face nine potential life sentences, beat extradition to the US, experience a dramatic conversion under the most severe circumstances imaginable and finally, end up as the only German citizen on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

The purpose of this book, unlike its predecessor, is not to resolve the quagmires of my existence and to make sense of my life. I have found my calling.

This is a book for everyone, regardless if you are happy, so-so or miserable. I seek to entertain and add some valuable insights into what truly makes us happy, but that is not my overriding purpose. This book encourages others facing misery, seemingly terrible odds not to give up! This book is also written for lost souls, people in extreme pain, those experiencing anguish, doubts, crisis and loneliness. It seeks to reach all those souls, who are down and out, seeking a way to fulfillment and happiness in their humdrum existence. It is also written for all those who have tried or may one day consider suicide, as well as society’s outcasts such as criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, prison inmates, hedge fund managers (I am joking!) and all those who are ill and oppressed. Lastly it is written for those who do not believe in anything, do not know what to believe in and those who have serious issues with matters of faith. At one point or another I was all of those three things.

If you are well and all seems swell for you, this book may be both entertaining and informative, but it may not touch your heart. You surely have everything under control. Nothing bad can touch or hurt you? Right? You are obviously living on the sunny side of life. You have worked hard for what you have. You may even go to church regularly or be a great family man. I am truly happy for you, but I urge you to be open and to share your accomplishments, your bliss with those who have been less fortunate. Being your brother’s keeper may seem a strange idea to you. Why share your hard earned fruits? After all everybody gets what they deserve or work for? Maybe not! This little book will show you that loving, giving and sharing is far more rewarding than taking, being logical and self-righteous. From a purely scientific view, it is also far more intelligent to give than to take. Be open. You may be surprised. Give it a try.

Introduction

February 2013, a few weeks before my arrest

Those closest to us are often far better describing people and events than we are ourselves. My son Conrad is certainly capable of drawing a more perceptive portrait than I can myself of those years leading up to my involuntary Italian sabbatical. Conrad’s essay provides readers, who did not read the initial autobiography Rogue Financier, make more sense of the sequel. During his final year at one of America’s leading private schools, Conrad wrote the following reflections for his English writing class:

Flashback,
March of 2015

I am alive. I am relatively free. I have a fantastic job. I love and am loved. Does it matter that I have chronic progressive multiple sclerosis, that I am the only German on the FBI’s Most Wanted List? Does it matter that I cannot travel anywhere on this planet but within my homeland? Does it matter that I am desperately short of funds to defend myself in two civil and two criminal cases? Not really. Because I am immensely grateful. I would even be exuberant, if those dearest to me were not subject to severe repression and threats, and if my beloved mother would not be wasting away from breast, bone, liver cancer and internal bleeding. Let me take you back to where I was one year ago.

Pisa State Prison, Tuscany, Italy – March of 2014

“Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is life. Fight for it.”

Mother Teresa

I have been stuck in Italian prisons for over one year fighting extradition to America. The US Justice Department had charged me with nine felony counts and was seeking nine consecutive life sentences of 25 years each for a total 225 year prison sentence, without any chance for parole. That was seven life sentences more than what the Department of Justice gave James J. Bulger, the notorious Boston mobster, who was convicted of eleven murders.

I could not feel a damn thing in my right ankle, because the head of the prison infirmary had knowingly withheld my multiple sclerosis medicine for over three months. I was using a cane or crutches wherever I was going, because I had fallen down countless times. My left hand was twitching uncontrollably and I had not slept for more than two hours at any time during the last five months. This was due to a urinary tract infection, which forced me to pee at least every two hours. Since this infection had gone untreated by the doctors here, I was regularly injecting soap into my penis with a twelve inch straw attempting to clean up this bacterial mess by myself. I was not yet prepared to wear a self-made plastic diaper, and to urinate all over myself all night, just to get a few extra hours of sleep.

Since records have been kept some 30 years ago, not a single detainee had ever defeated extradition from Italy to America. Those were disastrous odds. I was also freaking out because my defense funds were running pathetically low. 20 million dollars of mine were frozen in Swiss bank accounts. They did not allow me to touch these funds, not even for my defense. So I needed to mobilize about three million dollars for my upcoming US trial. Even though my US lawyers were confident that I would win my case, they told me that a government appointed defense lawyer does not have the resources nor the brains to master such vast and complex case. My odds of defeating the US government, with an under-qualified and overworked public defender, were zero.

So I wrote to twelve alleged friends and former business partners. These folks were ultra-liquid with disposable cash a little north of a billion dollars. Most of them owed me big time. A few did not. Two decent guys offered about 50,000 dollars each, but let’s be real. My monthly legal costs were 300,000 dollars and that would spiral once I arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

The guys in my cell constituted huge health risks. A vicious urinary tract infection, and chronic progressive MS was a joke compared to the diseases these guys had: Aids, all forms of hepatitis, syphilis, bronchitis and so forth. The real winner was this guy with open and chronic tuberculosis, who was about three yards away from me in an adjoining cell. That would not be so bad, if some thug had not blasted my spleen in an assassination attempt in Caracas, Venezuela in 2006. That meant, my immune system could not combat any of the aforementioned diseases. Result, if I contracted any one of those aforementioned diseases, I would die. Given my circumstances and outlook, that may not have been such a bad idea. But I intensely disliked the idea of a creeping, grim and painful death that could easily take a year.

I was also not enthralled about serving a 225-year sentence without any chance of parole among the most hardened criminals and gang members in the US federal prison system. That looked about 99.99 percent certain. My son had stopped communicating. My ex-wife told my lawyers she can’t do a darn thing. My mother. She was so sick. She would die soon. My father had not talked to me in 25 years. Yeah, I had three great friends. Juergen, Daniela and Michael. But they had no money. “What the devil is there to live for?” I asked myself.

I was far too rational to be depressed. I noticed the lovely blue sky of the Tuscan spring, the pigeons which flew over our cement courtyard, but I was tired of seeing nothing but walls, bars and fighting off extortion attempts. I was glum, because I had lost so many trials and appeals. What really got to me was that my odds truly sucked. Logically speaking, I preferred dying with some great memories still intact than rot away each day with multiple sclerosis, utterly lonely and abandoned in another hellhole like this, only in America.

So what was the best way to call it quits? Because, if you had money you could get anything in an Italian prison, in my case mostly great Cuban cigars. Some privileged guys here were even scoring golden triangle opium, a high quality poppy paste, which is almost impossible to get on Italian streets.

How hard could it be to get Pentobarbital, Depronal or some other nasty little death potion? It’s not that easy, but a few thousand euros would certainly be sufficient to find a relatively quick and painless way to kill yourself in a poorly managed and extremely corrupt maximum security prison like Pisa.

March 2015, Frankfurt, Germany

I was facing the ultimate choice: life or death in March of 2014. One year has passed since I seriously deliberated death by suicide, since I was restored from the absolute low point of my life. I chose life and faith, and since that moment I have been graced with strength, a fulfilling mission and a moral obligation to let others know how to overcome fear and despair and find hope even in the most despondent situation; maybe even experience miracles by simply turning to a little blue book for a few minutes each day. Welcome to my little journey of faith, suffering, joy and love. Welcome to mercy and hope.

Chapter I:
Suffering and Confusion

March 2013, Germany/Italy

I was driving from Munich to Florence, Italy in a very discreet but souped up Audi station wagon good for a top speed of 170 miles per hour. I was going to see my son Conrad and the big love of his life, Mikaela. These teen lovers were chaperoned by my ex-wife. My little excursion began in Berlin, where I was toughing it out with Sahra Wagenknecht, one of Germany’s most articulate, and rapidly rising political stars, on national television. My next stop was Frankfurt, where I had been regularly during my five year exile from the world of money, vanity and confusion, to visit my mother. Then onto Munich, where I met the guy, Josef Resch, who had orchestrated a 1.5 million global manhunt to apprehend me for incognito clients. The global bounty hunt was officially over, therefore Resch had little incentive to nab me in Bavaria. Regardless, this guy was dangerous. He had almost nabbed me in Puerto Mont, Chile and in Paris, France. My mother’s former Bulgarian housemaid and a former business associate called Ullrich Z. were on this guy’s payroll.

But in order to lead a more normal life, I needed to bury the hatchet with as many of my enemies as I could. I had done enough research on JR with my own crew, and the verdict was that he was good for his word. He hardly ever promised anything, but when he did, this man was very reliable. He would not lay a trap. So I reckoned “so what”? I can meet this bloodhound. I had been on a peace making mission with a long list of enemies in Russia, London, Spain and Germany during the past year, including far more dangerous elements such as oligarchs, and some scary freelance agents. Even members of the Frankfurt, Germany chapter of the Hells Angels had been part of the global bounty hunt making an intense visit to my best friend to “collect information” a few years ago.

I wanted peace, resolve my legal issues, be a father, ask for my ex-wife’s forgiveness and do something worthwhile with the remainder of my life. My fortune had dwindled below one percent of my peak net worth of 600 million euros in 2007, but that was still enough to live decently and without too many headaches.

Piles of non-accessible cash were frozen in Switzerland, the media called me the billionaire fraudster, the German Madoff, and a fugitive from the law. I have been called names much of my professional life: the company destroyer, the share price killer, the Godfather of Mallorca and even the Antichrist of Finance. What bugged my intellect more than the absurd legal allegations against me, was being called a fugitive. Sure I used an alias at the time, but if you have a bullet in your 12th vertebrae from an assassination attempt, have survived a global manhunt, and have been in battles with some of the world’s richest and most wicked men, it made little sense to keep a high profile, let alone to move around with your official name tag. In 2006 and 2007, during our combative divorce, even my ex-wife had detectives shaking me down, seeking hidden assets and amorous liaisons. If some of your more spooky enemies have private armies, underworld contacts and/or secret service government backing, an alternate identity seemed like a pretty logical idea to me.

From about the early nineties until 2007 I was a public figure, and for many gullible media consumers, the personification of evil capitalism. Okay, I was a short seller, a raider, but I was also Liberia’s largest donor, a venture capitalist for promising and highly ethical medical and internet companies. From 2004 to 2006, I even saved one Europe’s top soccer clubs from the brink of bankruptcy, Borussia Dortmund.

Turning around a bankrupt and insolvent, but ultra-high profile soccer club was very entertaining, notwithstanding a few death threats I received from profoundly annoyed BVB fans. Before the cleanup and return to financial order, management had hawked the BVB brand name for a 20 million euro loan to a fairly wealthy guy. As far as I was concerned, the guy could keep the name and we would call the club something else, saving 20 million euros with the simple stroke of a pen and a fax machine. Three million BVB fans were outraged. The hardcore hooligans were making ugly calls and sending threatening letters. So what? If there was one thing I had learned from the dark side, professionals don’t threaten. They simply do their job. Therefore, I was fairly relaxed. The Dortmund turnaround was wildly successful and the shares appreciated 700 percent. They even got to keep their name. The death threats disappeared. And the Antichrist of Finance had become, for once, the Savior of a worthy cause.

But media profiles need to be dramatic and one-sided to attract attention. Forget about balanced portraits or journalistic integrity. Good or bad. There is no room for nuances in the sensationalist press. The message has to be simple, preferably vulgar to attract attention. Half these journalists are semi-literate professional dilettantes, who do little or no original research, just like most of the guys in finance. I could live with all that. After all “worldly justice” and “fair reporting” are oxymorons.

But fugitive from the law? I found this term intellectually insulting, bordering on moronic. I began working for Liberia as Ambassador at Large for two ministries only months after Liberia’s civil war came to an end in 2003. During my exile (2007–2013) I continued to work for Liberia at the Paris embassy and for UNESCO. I had an official French residency card that included my address. Any third-rate detective could find me within the French system. I crashed at the embassy often enough. I was even listed on the official UNESCO website in Paris, France. A moron could have found me in Paris. Resch, the private investigator and bounty hunter, certainly had, but was unable to grab me there with his goon-squad.

In 2008, I defended myself successfully against a lawsuit launched in the state of Colorado. In 2009, I was the key witness in a public trial in a multi-million euro corporate dispute in Düsseldorf, Germany. I had been to Switzerland several times between 2009 and 2013 voluntarily facing interrogations by a Swiss prosecutor. By 2012, I was defending myself officially against both an SEC lawsuit in Washington and a corporate lawsuit in New York. I appeared on public television in front of several million viewers and gave extensive newspaper interviews. Fugitives don’t do these things. They hide. They do not go to interrogations, appear on television or defend themselves in court. They avoid the law and the public. They do not confront it. That’s what makes them fugitives.

Until the day of my arrest, I had spent 53 years and 153 days in freedom. Anybody who wanted to contact me could reach me through my lawyers or through the Liberian embassy. By early of 2013, I had reentered public life and felt relatively safe. I had begun to behave like a fairly normal guy. In retrospect, that seems pretty stupid. I was arrested by Italy’s elite Squadra Mobile on March 8th of 2013, 48 hours after the US had issued an Interpol Arrest Warrant for me.

However, how exactly did that ever make me a fugitive from the law after I resigned from my job on September 18, 2007? I chose exile and decided to live, for once, a private, non-public life? I did not flee. Sure, I hid from my enemies for obvious reasons. But I confronted my legal challenges, was looking to reconcile with my little family, do charitable work and reconnect with a few select friends in early 2013. A fugitive? I was not!

The Uffizi Gallery, Italy Museum in Florence, Tuscany

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

Michelangelo

One of my lawyers had assured me I was safe to travel. According to this guy, there were no criminal charges against me anywhere. The statutes were five years and I had passed that point six months ago. Little did I know that this barrister had screwed up completely and overlooked a provision in the Frank Dodd laws, which extended certain statutes retroactively from five to six years. Even though I had extensive US business connections dating back to Harvard College two decades ago, I had never been in conflict with American Justice. While my sense of morals were only sub-optimally developed prior to my conversion in prison, I did work as a pro bono prison counselor during college in one of America’s deadliest and most notorious prisons: MCI Walpole, tutoring a multiple murderer, formerly highly placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, after a bank robbery shootout. Who could have guessed that I would also end up on the same frigging FBI list as my student, Jean Christian? One genius, a former professor at Harvard Business School, once astutely remarked when he noticed me coming off a heavy nose candy binging weekend that I would either become a billionaire or go to prison. Well, I did both.

I had to deal with two legal issues in Germany, and as a consequence was vastly more familiar with continental European law than US law. In fact my criminal record, at the time of my arrest, was squeaky clean. One misdemeanor charge and one conviction, which had led to probation, had been wiped off my record.

But changing laws retroactively in Europe simply does not happen. It is considered utterly unfair and is also unconstitutional. But I could have smelled this rat. I was aware of telephone recording laws in the US, which had been altered retroactively in order to prevent thousands of US government employees from becoming convicted felons, if the existing laws at the time had not been altered after the crimes were already committed.

I also had a way to score fairly reliable arrest data in those days. The data was communicated once a month at mid-month. I don’t trust assurances from lawyers, and for that matter from anyone, other than from the Holy Mother, God and Jesus. However, the data was also reassuring, so I thought my lawyer had done his work. I had pressured him to verify statutes in various countries, including the US, on at least three separate occasions. He said he had done his homework and told me that I should be “less paranoid, more relaxed and begin leading a more normal life”. So I bought into this bullshit. I was traveling mostly without body guards, with my own passport and checked into a four star hotel in Verona in my own name. For over five years I had traveled purely with light, carry-on baggage: at most three outfits, and if I needed anything else, I would buy it on site. By 2013, my only steady travel companion was a little book called Our Lady’s Message of Mercy to the World.

Women came and went depending on where I chose to live. I could never engage in an open and honest relationship while subject to a 1.5 million euro global manhunt. My only precaution in Italy was not to appear on any Florence hotel registry and to reside at least 100 kilometers away from that city’s center. I was ready to see my talented son and his ultra-brainy girlfriend, chaperoned by my ex-wife Susan.

I had arrived early in Florence and was nervously pacing the city on a cold, damp and dark late winter dawn. Susan was supposed to bring the museum tickets.

We were to meet at Italy’s most famous art museum, expand our cultural horizons and then go out for a delicious Italian meal. The Uffizi Gallery is one of the top art museums in the world, featuring great artists like Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrand, Botticelli and Michelangelo, welcoming about 1.5 million visitors per annum. I was keen to see Altdendorfer’s famous painting, the Martyrdom of Saint Florian, which has been part of the permanent Uffizi collection since 1914.