This was unbelievably excellent. Sometimes I thought I was reading a work of fiction because some of the details were just so fantastical. It is beyond the concept of reality how far and wide the illicit drug trade is. Even more crazy is how Le Roux was able to be a massive prescription drug-lord and yet elusive and able to evade law enforcement for so long. The way the drug trade actually works, everyone is untrustworthy, deadly, big-business, wow it's all so far out of my world that I was sucked in and absorbed into every detail.

What an eyeopener. I learned a lot about a topic I knew very little about.

This book is intriguing to learn how extensive the lead character’s network operated in spite of government knowledge of its existence. Drags on in places, but overall a very well-researched and fascinating book. Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Even though I had just read/heard an audiobook on "American Kingpin" and really was not in the mood for yet another 'drug mafia business DEA / LEA bust' but this is written in a fun, thriller style and makes for a fun read.

A few spelling mistakes / typos.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

"The Mastermind" is a rather intriguing look into Paul Le Roux and his schemes. It's a far more bizarre story than I had anticipated but it certainly was worth the read. I think it did get a little boring at some part but it's an overall good read.

Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal by Evan Ratliff is a 2019 Random House publication.

2012-

Catherine Lee was found dead in a dumpster in the Philippines. Charles Shultz, owner of an independent pharmacy and well past retirement age, is arrested by DEA agents. An Israeli- Australian citizen with ties to a major cocaine cartel, leases a warehouse in Hong Kong, which is raided by an organized crime unit.

How were these three incidents related?

Evan Ratliff connects the dots and uncovers a richly layered internet –based crime syndicate overseen by a man named Paul Le Roux- aka- The Mastermind.

I vaguely remember hearing something on the news several years back about FedEx facing criminal charges for delivering illegal prescription drugs. I didn’t follow the story too closely, but I did wonder how people were buying prescription drugs online like that.

Well, this book will explain all that, and it is an incredible story!!

The author begins by introducing the reader to the various groups involved in the entire saga from start to finish: The Investigators, The Operators, The Mercenaries, The Reporter, and The Mastermind.

The chapters alternated between these groups, giving the reader a full, well rounded picture of the entire operation. It took years to bring it down and the journey to that point is shocking, frustrating and often disappointing.

“At times it seemed almost laughable. Here were Brill and Holden in Minneapolis equipped with a couple of desktop computers, some five- by- seven notebooks, and mail drop at FedEx, taking on a global network worth hundreds of millions of dollars, operated by an encryption expert with an unending supply of shell companies, thousands of employees, and impenetrable email servers.”

Without a doubt Paul Le Roux is one of the most diabolical criminal masterminds of the modern era. He was ruthless, greedy, arrogant and apparently without conscience or remorse.

This is a crazy story about crime in the internet age and how hard it is to infiltrate especially with all the encryption software and the ease of global transactions. Since this time, there have been some hardcore crackdowns have since taken place, I’m sure once Paul Le Roux and his cronies were out of the way, many more just like him cropped up to take his place.


However, this is riveting true crime story, well organized, and easy to read and understand, which is saying something because it is a very complex international saga and is completely mind boggling!! Evan Ratliff went above and beyond here as an investigative reporter and as an author.


Overall, this is eye-opening crime saga. It reads like fiction, resembling the plot in a bestselling thriller or like something you might see in a movie. Insane- but true!!

True crime readers will not want to pass this one up!

4 stars

This story is so fantastic that it's almost unbelievable. The far reaching tentacles that this guy had were unbelievable. The things people did out of fear. Good read.

This was unbelievable and very thoroughly researched. This is the true story of IT guy turned drug kingpin, Paul LeRoux. At times, I found the book quite repetitive and felt it could have been about 150 pages shorter.

A must read for fans of true crime. At times this one was hard for me to stomach but I respect The immense amount of work the author put in to this.

This nonfiction book reads like a complex thriller. The characters are larger than life, the investigators uncover a massive operation, though it takes years to realize just what they have done, and one man, who more closely resembles a tourist than a computer and business genius, is the man behind it all.

He plays with the laws and bends them to his will while using the internet, television, and innocent people to do his bidding; many without realizing just what they have gotten themselves into. It is a fascinating read into one of the biggest illegal operations that most people did not realize they were a part of.

If I was not told that it was nonfiction, I would think the author was making up a fantastic tale that could never happen. Sometimes its fun to read a story that definitely defines “truth is stranger than fiction.” However, it is also sobering to know that what took place is real, that people really did suffer, and that one man could have such a far reaching impact that could negatively affect so many.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advanced copy to read. All opinions are my own.

Interviewed Evan for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. It was an enjoyable experience. Loved the book. http://brendanomeara.com/ratliff141

A gripping, globe-spanning true story of an amoral coder who approached organized crime like a video game. I read the serialized version of this as it came out but the updates and new details in the book made another read completely worthwhile.

Mentioned on podcast.

My main issue was this is that I felt like there was not enough interesting content to fill up a book of this size. I listened to a 30 minute podcast about this story and felt I got as much out of that as I had reading 300 pages. But the narrative and investigation was quite well done. 3.5 stars.

A deeply disturbing picture of the evil one man can perpetrate and the power he held over those who were lured into his sordid plans. While I found it difficult to read and keep the myriad of players straight, my utmost respect to the two DEA agents who persevered, and investigated him endlessly, only to have him snatched from their grasp at the end with nary a thank you for their persistence and diligence.
It read like a James Bond book, each incident more bizarre than the preceding one. The mastermind, Paul Le Roux, was so unbelievable to me, and the fact that he seemingly will walk away from the terror he inflicted on so many, and the crimes he committed, with most of his billions of dollars hidden away and just waiting for him truly enrages me.
Thank you to Evan Ratliff, Random House, and NetGalley for opening my eyes to the evil that exists, the dogged perseverance of two DEA agents, and the unbelievable “justice” systems utter failure to hold him accountable for much of anything.

Mastermind. Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. The title really tells the entire story in a nutshell.

Paul Le Roux started out small with online prescription drug sales in the United States. Marijuana dispensaries still use his “doctors prescribe without seeing the patient” methods. Like most legitimate CEOs, Paul expanded his product line; in his case to weapons, cocaine, and meth. Who knew a nerdy programmer could be so business-oriented? His programming skills allowed him to develop an “unbreakable” encryption to keep his identity and location hidden.

Mastermind. Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. is true crime that reads like a thriller. Kudos to the author’s investigative journalism abilities for uncovering the entire complex story. However, the complexity made it a difficult read. There are so many characters that the author provides a list of the main ones in the beginning of the book. For true crime fans, this book is highly recommended. However, for thriller fans, be warned it is much more complicated than the typical thriller. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a podcast listener. I listen to a dozen or more each week, and I’m someone who cannot differentiate between (or among) multiple hosts most of the time. One podcast that I listen to fairly regularly is Reply All, hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman. Their February 14th episode (#136) was entitled The Founder, and either PJ or Alex talked about Paul LeRoux, former programmer, former criminal cartel boss, and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It was incredibly interesting hearing the discussion with Evan Ratliff, CEO and co-founder of Atavist, a media and software company. I kept thinking “Ratliff – that name is familiar”… then I remembered I had a copy of his book, that I received from Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was hooked!

The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. is the story of Le Roux, the man who created an Internet-based cartel that started as an online prescription drug network, supplying painkillers worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As the business expanded into endeavors beyond prescription drugs, there were a ton of great stories including yachts carrying $100 million worth of cocaine, safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars, weapons deals with Iran, meth from North Korea, mercenary armies in Somalia, and hit men in The Philippines. Among the difficulties the authorities faced in trying to solve the problem was that LeRoux’s technology skills ensured there were encryption programs that were so advanced that the government was unable to break them.

It’s an amazing story, and Ratliff has done a masterful job telling it, including lots of juicy details and suspense, with the end result being true crime that reads like fiction. I loved it. Five stars. And (SPOILER ALERT!) LeRoux is currently in custody in New York.

What a ride! I had never heard of Paul Le Roux before jumping into this book, but it turned out to be astounding and at times riveting, bordering on the fantastical. If I wasn't told it was true crime beforehand I would have agreed with Preet Bharara that parts "were ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel".

The events depicted initially jumped between the early/mid-2000s, when the first crimes were taking place, and a decade after that, when Evan Ratliff embarked on his own investigation. Eventually the years in between are filled in by investigators, law enforcement and a surprising number of people who previously worked for Le Roux. That ended up being one of the most insane parts to me, that the author was able to coax so many former associates (some still avoiding capture by American authorities!) into giving interviews and admitting to being a part of many extremely serious international crimes.

The book is divided into three parts and then into chapters depicting different sides of the investigation and entire criminal enterprise at various stages. My favorites were 'The Reporter' and 'The Investigators' chapters. Ratliff is a skilled journalist and his ability to relay his first-hand accounts of the places and people he visited were extremely engaging. The ones with the cooler sounding titles--'The Mercenaries', 'The Mastermind'--were interesting, but at times struggled to keep my attention. When this shady underworld starts unraveling, the pace picks up as those involved start collapsing under the pressure.

The unexpected antagonists of the ordeal seemed to be the arresting agency and prosecutors involved. Specifically, the SOD and Linda Marks, who both dropped the ball in big ways, and failed to live up to the work that Kimberly Brill and Kent Bailey put into the pursuit of Paul Le Roux and his organization. The inability to coordinate with both internal and international law enforcement were a huge weak spot that an alleged 'criminal Mastermind' could easily exploit. The reader is left to judge whether or not he did so.

Well-researched true crime story.
Ratliff has pealed back the veil revealing the often hidden underworld of white collar crime.
As with most true crime works, there is a plethora of detail. This alone requires the reader to pay attention.
Highly recommended for white collar true crime enthusiasts, who revel in conspiracy theories.

"He's the most versatile criminal in history."

Wow, I mean truly what is there to say? This book is a honest-to-goodness tour de force of investigative journalism that spans so many years, it's really mind-blowing to even wrap my head around how to review it.

Paul Le Roux and his dark empire are the stuff of fiction. A better evil mastermind could not have been dreamt up in a novelist's imagination: clever, intelligent, hard working, selfish, greedy, and utterly without a shred of empathy or loyalty. A fascinating character to a true crime junkie like myself. And his ending only makes the tale more spectacular.

But there are so many other characters which are as much a part of Le Roux's story as the man himself. There's the petite blonde agent, working alone when no one else seems to be interested in the case. There's the journalist swamped with a thousand leads that never seem to connect, who risks his life on so many occasions in search of that one fact which will bring all the threads together. Then there's the myriad of men and women who worked for Le Roux, who find themselves wondering questions they dare not say aloud and live with a constant glance over their shoulders. The scariest ones though are those who never questioned at all, who loved the thrill of a life beyond the law.

The Mastermind is an incredibly dense book with many moving parts. It's not one that I could sit down and just peel through, it felt more so like one of those nonfiction books you have to digest a bit before continuing. At times I will admit to scanning the page or becoming a bit bored but I think that was due to being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of storylines, names, and details. It makes for an incredibly thorough read; it will be THE book on Le Roux for decades to come, if not forever. I would highly recommend it to any true crime fan and honestly I would not be surprised to see this reporting turned into a film in the future. It's the stuff of fiction but in the real world.


NOTE: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Random House, and the author Evan Ratliff for the opportunity to do so.

I didn't find this book interesting at all. It seemed more like a screenplay that a novel. The subject matter was described in terms that were obvious to the reader, and the conversations were very stilted.

This was an insane tale - proving, once again, that truth is stranger than fiction... Ratliff underwent an incredible amount of research and detective work for this one and it shows. The tale of the unraveling of Paul Calder Leroux's criminal empire was astonishing. The breadth and depth of his brilliant and evil machinations were almost unbelievable - as was the way it all wound up falling apart. The ending (such as it is; things are not entirely wrapped up because they are still ongoing) was not very satisfying, if you're looking for justice in any form, but that is (after all) often the case... Still, the journey to that point is a marvelous assemblage of facts and extrapolations painstakingly pieced together over years. The format - back-and-forth narration that tracks the development of the case across time - was engaging and interesting and the writing style was a great blend of compelling narrative and factual recitations. There's a LOT here; the read isn't particularly quick because it's very detailed and at times a little repetitive (not in a bad or inappropriate way, but because of the nature of the investigation and subsequent prosecution), but it is an altogether mind-bending story that draws you in even if you find yourself needing a break from it every now and again. It can be wearying to read about the unrelenting nature of greed and power-hunger, at least to me, but each time I picked the book back up again I was almost immediately drawn right back into the thick of things. It's a wild ride, particularly when you consider that most readers probably had no idea any of it was happening (I certainly didn't), despite the potentially world-altering threats posed by so many of Leroux's activities. It is a weird, intense, scary-in-its-implications read, but one I quite enjoyed for all that.