At just 27 years old, Stephen L. Keller founded Kelco and changed an entire industry. He pioneered viatical settlements, giving terminally ill patients a way to access their life insurance money when they needed it most. He co-founded the industry’s first association, then in 1998 launched the life settlement industry itself.

He brought the first securitized bundles of life insurance policies to the New York Stock Exchange, captured 65% of the global market, now a $30-billion-a-year business, and raised $13 billion on Wall Street. He even helped write the regulations that still govern the industry today. Then came the high-profile FBI investigation… the federal trial… the international manhunt. Arrested by Interpol in the jungles of Panama, extradited to the United States, and he served nine years in federal prison.

More than a decade later, Stephen Keller is back in South Florida, building businesses, consulting, serving his church and community, and running a scholarship foundation for young entrepreneurs from his hometown in eastern Kentucky. And now, with his powerful new memoir Pay to Play, he’s telling the full story. Today we’re asking the question the majority leader once asked him: ‘Have you learned your lesson yet?’ Was this justice… or was it the weaponization of the DOJ and federal power against a disruptor who challenged powerful interests?