E. Scott Reckard

E. Scott Reckard spent more than 30 years as a journalist for The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times. He became the AP’s Los Angeles business writer in 1989, just as prosecutors ramped up criminal fraud cases against Charles H. Keating Jr. and others involved in the savings and loan debacle. He also has written about such notorious financial figures as Michael Milken, the fallen king of junk bonds; Barry Minkow, the teen tycoon whose ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning company was exposed as a huge con job; Robert Citron, the Orange County treasurer whose interest rate bets ended in an enormous municipal bankruptcy; and Angelo Mozilo, whose Countrywide Financial was the nation’s biggest subprime home lender before its collapse ushered in the financial crisis.

A 2005 Times series by Reckard and Michael Hudson, exposing rampant fraud at subprime giant Ameriquest Mortgage Co., was described by The Columbia Journalism Review as 'the unicorn of business coverage' at a time when most regulators and news operations seemed oblivious to the corruption and recklessness that spawned the Great Recession. Reckard’s 2013 Wells Fargo coverage won a “Best in Business” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and was a finalist in the 2014 Gerald Loeb Awards for distinguished financial journalism. Now working as a consultant for a financial technology firm, he lives in Laguna Beach, Calif., with his wife, Andrea, the editor of a local newspaper.