Jeremy Wilson spent years crisscrossing the country and inventing new identities as a war hero, an MIT grad, a Hollywood journalist, and more.

Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his debut thriller, The Woman in the Window. His life contains even stranger twists.

“Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognized that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.”

On the grifter who made a living forging the signatures of American heroes.