Stephen Pizzo

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Stephen P. Pizzo is a former real estate broker who, in 1982, purchased a small-town newspaper called the Russian River News in Northern California. Stephen did not have any journalistic experience or training, but intended to revitalize the failing publication and resell it. Instead, he discovered that the local savings and loan, which had been deregulated along with the rest of the nation’s thrift institutions, was making risky loans to out-of-town borrowers with shady pasts. His investigations led to a network of crooked contractors, grifters, and organized crime figures that stretched from coast to coast. After national newspapers did not show interest in picking up the story, he decided to begin work on a book, which became Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans. Stephen is also the coauthor of The Ethic Gap: Crisis of Ethics in the Professions and Profiting from the Bank and S&L Crisis. His investigative reporting has won the Lincoln Steffens Award for Journalism, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Book of the Year Award, the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award, the Sonoma State University Project Censored Award, and the Sail America Southam Award. Pizzo is now retired and living in Sebastopol, California, with his wife Susan.