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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 and rapacious Western interests determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn''t already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation''s inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of seizing the country''s gold and hiding it overseas.Into the space created by this big lie stepped one of history''s most determined and charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into rural poverty on the Gold Coast and educated at the University of Pennsylvania, John Ackah Blay-Miezah returned to Ghana and declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth $86 million. You, too, could claim a piece, if only you would help Blay-Miezah rescue it-with a small investment. Over the 1970s and ''80s, he grew his scam to epic proportions, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars from his thousands of marks. He lived in luxury, deceiving Philadelphia lawyers, London financiers, and Seoul businessmen alike, all while eluding his pursuers in the FBI. Anansi''s Gold is the previously untold story of a grifter who beat the West at its own thieving game. As journalist Yepoka Yeebo chases the ever-wilder trail of Blay-Miezah, she unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements and African dreams, revealing how what we call history writes itself into being one lie at a time.>
