Official Site of Mark Whitney - Fool For A Client: An Award-Winning Saga Of Litigation

SYNOPSIS

   Caught in a lie because the people he lies to are caught in a lie and facing 225 years in Federal prison, the world's greatest vacuum cleaner salesman represents himself at trial, where he learns everyone's selling a vacuum cleaner.
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   A story as powerful and relevant as it is true, Fool For A Client, Mark Whitney's high-energy, award-winning, political dramedy, deftly and hilariously explores the inherent tension between the Golden Rule and the Rule of Law, tolerance and zero tolerance, fear and freedom.
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   This tale of individualism and risk versus bureaucracy and control, centers around the epic ten year battle between a lousy student who makes $50,000 his first year out of high school selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door and the United States Government, represented by a seemingly endless array of insidious bankers, lawyers, tax collectors, FBI agents, politicians, judges, prosecutors, prison guards and probation officers.
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   Freedom to Mark means no rules and a lot of money! He comes of age in the seventies. The American Dream is alive and well. "Our parents are geniuses. They know that fear and anxiety burns calories!" he recalls.
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   Mark wonders how his sons will find their way in America 2.0. "You agree to work on commission, there's a chance you won't get paid. Today nobody wants to take a chance. It's not about the American Dream anymore. It's about safety, security, resource officers and extended warranties. Our new national slogan oughtta' be, 'Better Safe Than Sorry,'" he laments.
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   A self-made millionaire at 28, the entrepreneurial Whitney gives $60,000 to Ben and Jerry for the franchise rights to New Hampshire, then immediately borrows $2 million from a small, rogue bank that's up for sale even as the Feds investigate it for predatory lending. That's the bank's secret.
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   Mark's secret is he lies to get the money by documenting his personal income with unfiled tax returns.
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   Everybody's lying. Everybody's making money. Things couldn't be better. But when the Feds squeeze the bank, the bank squeezes Mark with a court order to close his stores even though his $25,000 monthly payments are current. The next day, Mark secures a court order of his own and the stores re-open. But now he's in litigation. "Litigation's a machine you enter as a pig and come out as a sausage! " Mark says.
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   When the money runs out the lawyers declare victory. Mark loses everything and is bankrupt.
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   Worried about a pending indictment for tax fraud, he takes the advice of a lawyer-friend who tells him he can defeat any potential prosecution by confessing to IRS. Mark amends his returns, incurs a million dollar debt to IRS and unwittingly triggers a two year FBI investigation that culminates in his indictment, arrest and prosecution for bank fraud.
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   Turns out his Electrolux training - dump a lot of dirt, answer questions with questions, control the debate, give a detailed presentation, change a word or two here and there, finesse the situation, cheat along the edges - is precisely the same training the pitbull Federal prosecutors received at Harvard Law.
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   Through thousands of hours of self-directed study behind prison walls, Mark masters The Rules and learns to "lie truthfully" - just like the real lawyers. Mark's such a good student he stands the legal system on its head, in what Senior United States District Court Judge Shane Devine calls a "saga of litigation."