The Antiquarian Book Dealer Who Became ‘France’s Bernie Madoff’

Gérard Lhéritier, the son and grandson of plumbers, built himself into the biggest, and flashiest, seller of old manuscripts and books in France, a businessman whose (heavily publicized) prize piece of inventory was the Marquis de Sade’s original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom. (Naturally, Esquire uses that fact as the hook for this article.) Now Lhéritier, his assets seized, stands accused orchestrating France’s largest-ever Ponzi scheme, using a Wall Street-style device to bilk thousands of shareholders of more than $1 billion.