The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter

Mark Seal

Jun 2011 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Erik Singer

About this audiobook

A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man.The story of Clark Rockefeller is a stranger-than-fiction twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man-because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. At seventeen, obsessed with getting to America, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents and his journey of deception began.Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts-culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a Rockefeller.The imposter charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions-working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection-until his marriage ended and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a connection to the bizarre disappearance of a California couple in the mid-1980s.The story of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is a probing and cinematic exploration of an audacious imposer-and a man determined to live the American dream by any means necessary.

About the author

Mark Seal has been a journalist for more than 30 years. Currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he has written for many major magazines and served as a collaborator on almost 20 nonfiction books. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.

Erik Singer has performed in numerous off-Broadway plays and with regional theaters around the country. He has appeared on television in All My Children and As the World Turns. Singer has also done voice work for numerous commercials, documentaries, and animated shows.