A Book You Cannot Trust: Robert N. Winter-Berger’s The Washington Pay-Off

On June 8, 1960, the New York State attorney general Louis J. Lefkowitz enjoined Winter-Berger from the securities market. Why? Because Winter-Berger had defrauded folks by peddling non-existent stock to rich folks, to whom he passed himself off as a “prominent socialite.” The corporation and the miracle product he described did not exist. He made it up whole cloth.

Not long afterward, Winter-Berger decamped to DC, got close to the powerful, then wrote a book proclaiming them to have done all sorts of sordid things. President Gerald Ford was only one of the accused who responded that Winter-Berger was lying.

That noted, the claims in this book should be treated with great skepticism and verified through more reputable sources before believing it or sharing them. Unfortunately, however, numerous other books do cite Washington Pay-Off as a source and repeat its claims.