Tim Elfrink

It was a postcard-perfect January afternoon in Scottsdale, a winter's day more like a postcard-perfect spring afternoon. Some 60 Stanford Group Company "wealth managers" had flown to Arizona for the company's quarterly meeting—the kind most of these advisors might have skipped most other quarters. But not this one, not now,...

The soldiers move through the wheat field, scanning the windswept plain for signs of trouble. There are six of them, dressed in fatigues and body armor, wearing the sunglasses and bushy beards popular among the Special Forces. The only thing they can hear is the rustling of wheat stalks. They...