Ring of Deceit: Inside the Biggest Sports and Banking Scandal in History by Bruce Henderson

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
January 23, 1981, started out to be a typical Friday morning at the bank. But
it wasn’t to stay that way for long.
Lloyd Benjamin Lewis sat at his desk in the Operations Department,
trying to get through a stack of paperwork. For Lewis and the other forty or
so employees of Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills, California, the end of
the workweek was in sight. No one was looking for new problems. In fact,
given that it was Friday, most of them wanted to avoid fresh entanglements.
Monday would be the beginning of a new week. Everything that could wait
until then would just have to wait. Ben Lewis felt the same way.
A veteran of twelve years with Wells Fargo, Lewis was adept at coping
with the ceaseless flow of paperwork that characterized bank operations. He
was a survivor. He had learned how to maneuver around difficulties and
keep the paperwork under control. He concentrated on priorities, working
his way down a mental list from the most pressing to the least important
matters. Unfortunately, the priorities had a way of changing without notice.
A compact black man with a quick smile and friendly nature, Lewis was
a lieutenant in the small army of middle-management personnel needed to
keep things running smoothly at Wells Fargo Bank, the nation’s eleventh
largest and California’s oldest bank. His job was not glamorous. But then
Lewis was not a glamorous man, although he wanted to be.

Ring of Deceit: Inside the Biggest Sports and Banking Scandal in History by Bruce Henderson