The Informant

The book opens in June 1995, when FBI agents Brian Shepard and Bob Herndon arrived at the Country Club of Decatur, Illinois, to confront executives of the Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM). They informed Terry Wilson, ADM's president of corn processing, that the Bureau possessed tapes of competitors conspiring to fix prices. Wilson denied wrongdoing. A third agent staged a fake interview with Mark Whitacre, president of ADM's Bioproducts Division, to make Wilson believe both men were being questioned independently. That night, Whitacre met the agents in a parking lot and revealed the encounter had been staged: He had been secretly cooperating with the FBI for over two years, recording colleagues and competitors committing price-fixing. The narrator warns that despite the government's unprecedented evidence, critical information had escaped investigators.

The narrative returns to the fall of 1992. ADM's chairman, Dwayne Andreas, was among the most politically connected businessmen in America, whose decades of bipartisan contributions had shaped federal agricultural policy. Mick Andreas, the vice-chairman, oversaw the company's entry into the lysine market, an amino acid used in animal feed. Whitacre's Bioproducts Division ran the new operation, but the plant was plagued by virus contaminations. Whitacre told Mick that an engineer named Fujiwara from the competitor Ajinomoto Inc. had called demanding $10 million to reveal a saboteur allegedly planted inside ADM. Dwayne Andreas contacted his nephew Allen Andreas in London, who relayed the story to the CIA, which routed the matter to the FBI.

When veteran agent Shepard visited Whitacre's home to install a recording device, Whitacre's wife, Ginger, pushed her husband to tell the truth. Sitting in Shepard's car, Whitacre confessed that ADM had been fixing lysine prices with Japanese and Korean competitors under the direction of the Andreas family. He also alleged ADM had stolen competitors' proprietary microbes and coached him to lie to the FBI.

What followed was a period of volatile cooperation. Whitacre oscillated between helping the FBI and sabotaging the investigation. He secretly ordered his salesman Sid Hulse to slash lysine prices, hoping to end the conspiracy and eliminate the FBI's need for him. He warned a competitor about possible wiretaps, failed two polygraph examinations, fabricated threats against his daughter, and mentioned suicide during a call from Arizona. Under questioning, he confessed that the Fujiwara extortion story that had triggered the FBI's involvement was itself a fabrication. After a blunt ultimatum from a federal prosecutor, Whitacre admitted he had been personally participating in the price-fixing he reported and agreed to record it.

From spring 1993, Whitacre wore multiple recording devices, capturing ADM executives discussing the conspiracy with startling casualness. At a recorded dinner at Chicago's Gaslight Club, Wilson confirmed price-fixing in citric acid, implicating pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche. Agent Bob Herndon, a young specialist with undercover experience, joined the team. The investigation reached its high point through a series of recorded meetings. In October 1993, Mick Andreas and Kazutoshi Yamada of Ajinomoto divided the world lysine market at a hotel in Irvine, California, while a hidden FBI camera recorded every word. In December, Whitacre taped a meeting in Tokyo where the conspirators explicitly discussed the illegality of their actions. In March 1994, all five lysine producers gathered at a resort in Hawaii, producing the case's most powerful evidence: The competitors agreed on volume allocations for the first time and created a bogus trade-association agenda as cover.

Behind this success lay a parallel story of corruption. Throughout his cooperation, Whitacre secretly embezzled millions from ADM through forged contracts and bogus invoices, funneling proceeds to offshore accounts in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong. The thefts had begun before he met the FBI, initially to recoup losses from a Nigerian advance-fee fraud, a common swindle in which con artists promise enormous returns on small investments. Whitacre recruited friends and subordinates as intermediaries to move and disguise the stolen funds.

The case went overt on June 27, 1995. Mick Andreas refused to cooperate, and FBI agents fanned out across Decatur serving search warrants. Whitacre had told colleagues about his FBI role before the raids, violating explicit instructions. Despite being told to retain his own lawyer, he clung to the belief that he could remain at ADM and instead revealed his cooperation to a lawyer hired by the company. ADM deduced Whitacre was the mole and hired Williams & Connolly, a powerful Washington law firm, to mount an aggressive defense.

Within weeks, ADM discovered Whitacre's embezzlement and presented evidence to the Justice Department, arguing the FBI agents may have been complicit. The Fraud Section seized control of the Whitacre investigation, erecting a strict information barrier between the fraud and antitrust teams that barred Shepard and Herndon from contacting their former witness. Whitacre attempted suicide; his gardener discovered him and saved his life. A psychiatrist diagnosed possible bipolar disorder.

New agents Mike Bassett and Tony D'Angelo investigated Whitacre's financial crimes. Through interviews with co-conspirators, including Marty Allison (Whitacre's first hire at ADM), the full scope of the fraud emerged. Whitacre's claim of an ADM-approved off-the-books bonus scheme collapsed: The money trails led back to Nigerian losses and personal greed, and no evidence supported a corporate fraud program. The Fraud Section pushed to indict Whitacre quickly, but Bassett and D'Angelo, backed by FBI headquarters, insisted on a thorough investigation.

The antitrust case advanced without Whitacre. Japanese executives in Hong Kong provided detailed testimony proving the conspiracy predated his cooperation. Asian competitors negotiated guilty pleas. Under pressure from a special committee of directors, Dwayne Andreas agreed to a corporate guilty plea, and ADM paid a $100 million fine, the largest criminal antitrust penalty in history. In December 1996, a grand jury indicted Mick Andreas, Wilson, and Whitacre for price-fixing. Whitacre's immunity had been voided because he concealed his frauds while cooperating, violating the agreement's core requirement for complete and truthful disclosure.

Whitacre's behavior grew increasingly erratic. He fired his lawyer, Jim Epstein, and hired Bill Walker, a solo practitioner without white-collar criminal experience. He fabricated allegations that Shepard had ordered him to destroy tapes and forged supporting documents, including a letter on his psychiatrist's stationery bearing an area code not yet in use on the letter's supposed date. When New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald confronted Whitacre with this forensic evidence in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Whitacre confessed to the forgeries and was rehospitalized. He pleaded guilty to 37 felonies and was sentenced to nine years in federal prison.

At the price-fixing trial in July 1998, the videotapes proved devastating. Judge Blanche Manning ruled that only one case agent could remain in the courtroom; the prosecutors selected Herndon, and Shepard was ordered to leave. On September 17, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts. Shepard and Herndon embraced in the courtroom. Andreas and Wilson each received two years in prison; Whitacre received additional time that brought his total sentence to approximately 11 years.

Dwayne Andreas stepped down as ADM chairman. His nephew Allen assumed the position, the same man whose 1992 call to the CIA had inadvertently launched the investigation. ADM's fine triggered a cascade of price-fixing investigations across the food industry, producing more than $1 billion in additional penalties and revealing that price-fixing had been a routine global practice.

In prison, Whitacre finally confessed to the author that the off-the-books bonus scheme never existed. He had stolen the money for personal use, initially to recoup Nigerian losses and later as a self-written "severance" once he feared the investigation would cost him his career. He said he was at peace for the first time, sleeping better than he had in years. "I'm happy now," he told the author.