ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Part bounty hunter, part Robin Hood, and part James Bond - Martin Kenney is one of the world’s most successful fraud hunters. He tracks and traps financial criminals and brings them to justice. A trusted consultant to the FBI, Scotland Yard, and the World Bank Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR), Kenney works with governments, law enforcement agencies, corporations and private citizens all over the world to stop grand corruption and fraud.

SYNOPSIS
The turquoise waters, white sand beaches, and lavish resorts of The British Virgin Islands (BVI) serves as a playground for the rich and famous. It is also a hot spot for fraud hunting. In an era where traditional law enforcement is no match for sophisticated financial criminals and money launderers, Martin Kenney and his team are on the trail of big fish. International fraudsters and kleptocrats stash their riches here in offshore “shell” corporations and banks—dodging taxes and the law.

Yet this obvious wealth is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the world’s unaccounted-for trillions. Some of the money is stolen from governments; some is the product of criminal activities like drug-running and terrorism; and some represents the booty of fraudsters who con unsuspecting citizens out of their life savings. Kenney’s crew includes former agents from the FBI and Scotland Yard; experts in accounting and computer crime; and a world-renowned psychologist and leading authority on the criminal minds of fraudsters.

In one case, Kenney is spearheading a class action suit representing 22,000 hardworking individuals defrauded of their pension funds by flamboyant Texan Alan Stanford in the second-largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history—second only to Bernie Madoff. In another case, the Brazilian government hired Kenney to track a top bank official who faked his institution’s bankruptcy and laundered the money—much of it through the United States.

Kenney’s team traced assets worth over $1 billion, including several luxury properties, a vast estate in Sao Paulo, and priceless works of art stashed in warehouses in Switzerland. This is the first time Kenney and Co. have allowed a crew to film them in action while the last chapters of these cases unfold—shining a light into the dirty and dangerous underworld of financial crime.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Alison Armstrong
PRODUCER Alison Armstrong