Robert Lee Vesco (December 4, 1935 – November 23, 2007) was an American criminal financier. After several years of risky investments and dubious credit dealings, Vesco was alleged to have committed securities fraud. He immediately fled the ensuing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation by living in a number of Central American and Caribbean countries. Vesco was notorious throughout his life, attempting to buy a Caribbean island from Antigua to create an autonomous country and having a national law in Costa Rica made to protect him from extradition. A 2001 Slate.com article termed Vesco "the undisputed king of the fugitive financiers." After settling in Cuba during 1982, Vesco was charged with drug smuggling in 1989. During the 1990s he was indicted by the Cuban government for "fraud and illicit economic activity" and "acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state" in 1996. Vesco was sentenced to 13 years in jail by Cuba. In November 2007 the New York Times reported that he had died of lung cancer at a hospital in Havana, Cuba, five months before, although it has been suggested that he faked his death. Biography Vesco was the son of a Detroit autoworker. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he grew up and attended, and then quit, Cass Technical High School. He quit engineering school during his early twenties to work for an investment company. After a brief period he made an independent $800 stake matching buyers and sellers in the aluminum market, until he eventually acquired a portion of the profits of a floundering aluminum plant. By 1965, he could borrow enough money to acquire International Controls Corporation (ICC). Through aggressively hostile expansions and debt-financed takeovers of other businesses he increased ICC quickly. By 1968 the company owned an airline and several manufacturing plants, and Vesco had shares totaling US$50 million. IOS scandal In 1970, Vesco began a successful takeover bid for Investors Overseas Service, Ltd., a mutual fund investment company with holdings of $1.5 billion managed by financier Bernard Cornfeld, who had gotten into trouble with the SEC. When his company began to experience financial difficulty, no "white knight" was willing to get involved. Vesco saw his chance and began a protracted battle to assume control of the company, opposed by Cornfeld and others. Cornfeld was jailed in Switzerland and Vesco was accused of looting the company of hundreds of millions of