BROADCASTS.com

Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8% interest on savings and in investments forty percent a year \u2014but by the time she died in prison, they were owed a hundred and fifty five million francs. Some people even credit her spectacular swindle to the political confluence that brought Leon Blum and his popular front to power in France at the end of the 1930s. This is the fascinating tale of just how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.\nClick here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.\n----more----\nSOURCES:\nSt\xe9phanie Bee, "La Bancqui\xe9re des Ann\xe8s Folles,"\xa0Univers-L, January 11, 2020, https://www.univers-l.com/portrait_marthe_hanau.html\nJanet Flanner, "The Swindling Presidente,"\xa0The New Yorker,\xa0August 18, 1939, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/26/annals-of-crime\nPaul Jankowski,\xa0Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).\nDean Jobb, "The Ponzi of Paris,"\xa0CrimeReads,\xa0December 3, 2021, https://crimereads.com/marthe-hanau-paris-ponzi-confidence-woman/\nRod Kedward, La Vie en Bleu - France and the French since 1900\xa0(London: Allen Lane, 2005).\nWilfried Knapp, France--partial Eclipse: from the Stavisky Riots to the Nazi Conquest\xa0(London: Macdonald, 1972).\nOur intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner