JANICE TREY

Steve Keller is an entrepreneur, industry pioneer, and former financial executive whose new memoir, Pay to Play, tells the astonishing true story of how he helped build the modern life settlement industry—turning a controversial idea into a multibillion‑dollar market—only to collide with powerful corporate and political interests when he refused to “play the game.” As founder and CEO, Keller was at the center of an innovation that provided cash to terminally ill policyholders in exchange for life insurance benefits, challenging some of the insurance industry’s most lucrative practices and drawing the ire of entrenched players and their allies. In Pay to Play, he gives a first‑hand account of the financial boom, the pressure and pay‑to‑play politics he says targeted his firm, and the years of legal battles, exile, and prison that followed—offering an insider’s look at the collision of business, power, and the American Dream.