MERIDIAN
The Ponzi Scheme That Emptied a TownBy Mohamed Aslam
Length1h 25m
About this audiobook
For nearly thirty years, Walter Renquist managed the retirement savings of roughly four hundred families in a small Iowa town — right up until the morning it all collapsed, and investigators discovered the money had never actually been invested at all. What followed was a whistleblower accountant nobody believed at first, a regulator juggling too many cases, a town forced to reckon with what unquestioning trust had cost it, and one family's devastating, irreversible loss.
Meridian: The Ponzi Scheme That Emptied a Town traces one of the longest-running Ponzi schemes ever uncovered — not through Wall Street, but through the quiet, trust-built fabric of a town where everybody thought they knew each other. A story about what happens when the person you trust most completely turns out to have been lying the whole time, and what a community owes itself once the truth finally comes out.
Audiobook details
GenreTrue Crime
Length1 hr 25 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJul 24, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
18Chapter Nine: Building the Case
2Prologue: The Advisor Everyone Trusted
19Chapter Seventeen: The Defense's Dilemma
3Chapter One: How the Scheme Worked
20Chapter Ten: The Sentencing Hearing
4Chapter Fifteen: How It Began
21Chapter Eleven: What Renquist Said
5Chapter Sixteen: Two Times It Almost Ended
22Chapter Twenty-Two: The Family Renquist Left Behind
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6Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Familiar Shape
23Chapter Twelve: Four Hundred Families
7Chapter Two: The First Red Flag
24Chapter Twenty-Five: Building Support From Nothing
8Chapter Three: What Priya Chandrasekaran Found
25Chapter Thirteen: What Regulators Changed
9Chapter Four: The Regulator Who Almost Missed It
26Chapter Eighteen: A Story Bigger Than One Town
10Chapter Twenty-Four: Dorothy Kessinger's Forty Years
27Chapter Twenty-Six: What It Cost the Accountant
11Chapter Twenty-Three: When the FBI Joined
28Chapter Fourteen: Meridian, After
12Chapter Five: The Collapse
29Chapter Twenty: What Meridian Wants Remembered
13Chapter Six: What Was Actually Left
30Chapter Twenty-Eight: Four Towns, One Country
14Chapter Twenty-One: Net Winners and Net Losers
31Chapter Twenty-Nine: What Remains
15Chapter Seven: Frank Larson
32Author's Note
16Chapter Eight: A Town Reckons With Itself
33Epilogue: What Trust Costs, and What It's Worth
17Chapter Nineteen: The Congregation's Loss
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