Great frauds in history: Jean-Pierre van Rossem's money-making machine

Jean-Pierre van Rossem told investors he had a supercomputer able to make money by predicting market movements. He didn't.

Jean-Pierre Van Rossem © Gie Knaeps/Getty Images
© Getty
(Image credit: Jean-Pierre Van Rossem © Gie Knaeps/Getty Images)

Belgian Jean-Pierre van Rossem (born 1945) was a star economics student at the University of Ghent, making money on the side writing other students’ dissertations. He became a Marxist, then won a scholarship to study under Lawrence Klein, a Nobel Prize-winner who pioneered the use of computers to predict market fluctuations. Van Rossem later started his own company in the US, but went bankrupt financing a heroin habit and served time for fraud.

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