13. The Conman and the CIA
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ronald Rewald made a name for himself in Honolulu as a rising business star and playboy. In his youth, he had spent a year as a CIA informant, monitoring student groups at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. So when he became a seemingly successful Hawaii investor years later, the Agency was delighted when he offered to let it use his investment firm as cover for clandestine activities. Accordingly, some of America’s spies were “hired” to work at Rewald’s firm, Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham, and Wong. The spies got defrauded and taken to the cleaners by Rewald.
Before he moved to Hawaii, Rewald ran a Wisconsin company that sold sporting goods to schools. The business went bankrupt because of fraud, and he pled guilty to criminal charges. Rewald relocated to Honolulu, where he launched an investment firm, with its first three names those of famous rich Hawaiians who had nothing to do with him. He simply slapped their name on the letterhead to give the firm some gravitas. A bigger problem with the firm was that it was a pure Ponzi scheme.
