Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

by Tom Wright

From late 2010, Low relayed instructions to Yak, now a managing director at BSI, to open a series of accounts in his name and those of scores of shell companies. There was an “onboarding” procedure—a checklist of simple know-your-customer bullet points that included items such as passport details, legal convictions, and the source of a customer’s money. Low came up clean. It was at this point that he began laying the groundwork for his tale of family wealth. The June 2011 transfer of $55 million—some of which was used for the Time Warner purchase—was a test to see if BSI compliance staff would buy the story that this was family money. It worked and Low began to send gushers of cash into his BSI accounts.