In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor?the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide?was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated administrators and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it fractions of a percent to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed ?Gollum?; the broker ?Abbo,? who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as ?Derka Derka?; a broker known as ?Village? (short for ?Village Idiot?) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called ?Clumpy? because of his patchwork hair loss and a broker uncreatively nicknamed ?Big Nose? who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches ?until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, the Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.