A darkly compelling memoir of trust broken and reality distorted, charting how a lifelong friendship spiralled into one of the most bizarre frauds imaginable

What if your best friend turned out to be a master of deception?

In 2005, Jim Phillips set up a marketing company with his best friend. The business grew and prospered but as the contracts rolled in and the client list expanded, his friend's behaviour became increasingly eccentric.

And then in 2012, everything unravelled in a spectacular fashion. Jim discovered his friend of twenty years had been deceiving him on a scarcely believable scale, weaving a web of lies so complex that it involved assuming the identities of over 100 people.

108 Psychopaths and Me is a tale of fraud, betrayal, celebrity (real and imagined), an inexplicable descent into deeply delusional behaviour, fake identities, fake affairs, impersonating banks, judges, doctors, even Chinese ministers, stolen money; millions of pounds worth of imaginary transactions, bailiffs, debt, family rifts, drugs, the faking of terminal cancer and finally arrests and a prison cell (although not for the right person).

Jim Phillips was the dupe in this mind-blowing tale and the book combines a blow-by-blow account of how the nightmare ramped up with a deeper analysis of what had happened to them both and, more importantly, why it had happened at all.