"So, instead of spending Christmas with family, I lined up with around 300 other inmates to be escorted, single-file, from Building One to the mess hall. We were told to walk past a guard, who handed us what amounted to a paper shot glass of lukewarm, non-alcoholic eggnog. Each of us downed the shot and threw the cup in the trash can next to the guard. Never stopping, we marched on back to our cells." 

An unbelievable but true white-collar crime story told by an average family man, Rick Norton. He gives a rare look into his own life as a young businessman in San Diego working as a financial planner, then falling into the life of being a business manager for professional athletes and gaining a front-row seat to their huge money and frequently dirty world. Used as a pawn by a powerful Fortune 500 company and exploited by the very professionals he was paying to help him, he tells of the difficult lessons learned along the way of meeting, head-on, ignorance, greed, revenge, fear, and corruption, which ultimately led him through the gates of federal prison. 

His personal experiences are written with dry wit and and his continual positive outlook on his circumstances in life shines through. The chapters of courtroom drama where he represents himself in a four-and-a-half-month jury trial, as well as where he recounts his experiences in prison, are worth their weight in gold. The twists and turns of this story are truly stunning, so much so that the New York Times wrote, "And while title insurance and escrow accounts do not seem like the stuff of white-knuckle drama, the legal adventures that gave rise to the San Diego cases would keep Law & Order rolling for months."