Based on a gripping true story

The Dark Edge of the American Dream.

Where big business, politics, and profit converge in a system rigged for power.

Pay to Play book cover by Stephen L. Keller about political corruption, corporate greed, and the cost of the American Dream
Hardcover • $29.99

The memoir and the movement

The Truth They Tried to Bury

Pay to Play is the tell-all memoir story of Stephen L. Keller, a brash young entrepreneur who sets out to challenge the insurance industry by bringing dignity to those at the end of their lives.

Stephen L. Keller, author of Pay to Play — professional headshot

Stephen L. Keller

Entrepreneur. Survivor.

Entrepreneur. Survivor. Stephen L. Keller is a pioneering entrepreneur whose real-life story reads like a corporate thriller, marked by ambition, disruption, and dramatic downfall. At just 27 years old, Keller founded Kelco, a financial firm that began with a bold way for terminally ill patients to access their life insurance benefits.

He was a co-founder of the industry's first association. In 1998, Keller created and launched the modern life settlement industry, introducing the first-ever securitized bundles of life insurance policies on the NYSE and capturing 65% of the global life settlements market, now a $30 billion annual industry. Over his career, he raised $13 billion on Wall Street.

His memoir, Pay to Play, offers a behind-the-scenes exposé of ambition, corruption, and the American obsession with winning at all costs.

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The Justice Restoration Foundation

This is bigger than one story.

The book exposes a machine that can crush entrepreneurs, families, and ordinary citizens. The Justice Restoration Foundation carries that warning forward into repair, advocacy, and restoration.

Stephen L. Keller seated for Pay to Play author movement portrait

Pay to Play Book

Order the story they tried to bury.

A memoir, a warning, and the beginning of a movement.

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