Great frauds in history: Jack Clark’s nursing homes

Jack Clark invented sales, inflated profits and produced fraudulent accounts at his chain of nursing homes to swindle investors out of hundreds of millions.

Jack Clark was born in Oklahoma City in the United States in 1927. He started out working in the nearby oilfields, before spending a brief time as a milkman. He then moved into the building trade, first selling building materials between the years 1954 and 1958, and then running his own development company, Fashion Built Homes. In 1964 his half-brother Thomas Clark, who operated a nursing home, persuaded Jack to found Four Seasons Nursing Centers of America Inc, which was designed to cash in on the boom in nursing homes by both building and financing them.

What was the scam?

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri