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A probing exploration of an audacious impostor, Christian Gerhartsreiter, and his "talented Mr. Ripley" story as Clark Rockefeller. The thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man. Clark Rockefeller's story is a twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man--because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. Born in a small village in Germany, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was obsessed with getting to America. At seventeen, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents. Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder across the country--culminating in a twelve-year marriage to a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a Rockefeller. The impostor charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions--working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection--until his marriage ended and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a chilling connection to the bizarre mid-1980s disappearance of a California couple.