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by Stephen Keller (Author)
Pay to Play is the astonishing true story of Stephen L. Keller, a brash young entrepreneur who took on the ruthless insurance industry at its most inhumane. In the shadow of the AIDS crisis, when insurers routinely denied coverage to the terminally ill, Keller saw both injustice and opportunity. He pioneered the controversial viatical settlement market, offering cash to dying policyholders in exchange for their life insurance benefits, creating a billion-dollar industry in the process.
From a drab cubicle as a stockbroker to the heights of financial innovation, Keller's rise is a portrait of raw ambition, audacious strategy, and poetic revenge against a broken system. But as his empire grows, so does the scrutiny. When political and corporate interests collide, Keller is forced to flee the country with his family, becoming both a cautionary tale and a catalyst for a global market now worth over $180 billion.
Unflinching, fast-paced, and deeply personal, Pay to Play pulls back the curtain on the dark intersection of big business, politics, and the cost of the American Dream
Author Biography
Stephen L. Keller is a pioneering entrepreneur, whose real-life story reads like a corporate thriller, marked by ambition, disruption, and dramatic stakes. At just 27 years old, Keller founded Kelco, a financial firm that revolutionized the life insurance market by introducing Life Settlements, a product that offered seniors over the age of 65 an unprecedented way to access their life insurance benefits. By 1998, Keller launched the first-ever securitized bundles of life insurance policies on the NYSE and captured a significant portion of the global life settlements market. His scholarship fund, the Stephen L. Keller foundation continues awarding annual scholarships supporting future entrepreneurs from his hometown of eastern Kentucky.
