Penang is hot. The kind that sits on the island like a wet blanket from January all the way to December. When you walk outside in the morning the air smells like cooking oil and ocean breeze, combined with exhaust coming from the fishing boats.

Jho Low was born in 1981, into a Malaysian & Chinese family. His father Larry Low had built a garment manufacturing company and sold his shares at the right time, turning the whole family into multimillionaires. In a country where most people brought home a few hundred dollars a month, the Low family were ridiculously wealthy. They enjoyed a lifestyle full of personal drivers, maids, butlers, the whole thing.

Jho’s father believed in education the same way some men believe in real estate. You put your money into the best school you could afford and let the location do the work. The right school led to the right people, and the right people led to the right opportunities.

So in 1998, when Jho was 16, Larry sent him to Harrow School in London. Harrow is an all boys boarding school that costs about 30,000 pounds a year. Winston Churchill went there and so did the first prime minister of India. The alumni list is basically a history book.

Jho was placed in Newland's house, a four story red brick building where members of the Rothschild family had lived before him. He unpacked his bags in a room that smelled like old wood and radiator heat and looked out at the English landscape. It was nothing like Penang.

But the real difference wasn't the landscape. Back at home in Malaysia, at the International School of Penang, Jho had been one of the rich kids. At Harrow, his family's money didn't mean much. The other boys weren't children of businessmen. They were children of actual royalty. Saudi princes whose families sat on oil reserves worth more than Malaysia's entire economy. European banking heirs whose trust funds had been growing since before the First World War.

And Jho felt that gap every single day.

So he decided to close it.

And the first move he made was brilliant.

This is how one of the biggest financial frauds in history started with a borrowed yacht and some swapped out picture frames.

[Listen to the full episode → Here]