True crime podcasts have been within the zeitgeist for fairly a while, however these specializing in scams appear to get much less mainstream consideration than their bloody, murder-heavy counterparts.
I’ve gathered suggestions for the most effective, most fascinating rip-off podcasts on the digital airwaves proper now. Catch up, comply with alongside, then decide your jaw off the ground as you study the surprising methods some actually manipulative folks have been capable of make the most of probably the most weak, robbing them of their cash, friendship, and belief. From mysterious boys rising from the wild to con an entire city, to an entrepreneur bilking traders out of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for bunk science, every of those true life tales is dripping with lies and deceit.
The Con: Kaitlyn’s Child
Credit score: ‘The Con: Kaitlyn’s Child’
The Con: Kaitlyn’s Child is a six-part true crime sequence wanting into the case of Kaitlyn Braun, a calculating Canadian lady who pretended to have a sequence of traumatic occasions (like being pregnant loss and sexual assault) as a way to trick doulas to look after her.
Host Sarah Treleaven tells us the story, specializing in the emotional affect it had on Kaitlyn’s victims to be taken benefit of for supporting others, one thing that requires such bodily and emotional connection and vulnerability. Your eyes will widen, your coronary heart fee will quicken—I even acquired somewhat terrified. The story of Kaitlyn’s schemes can begin to really feel like a horror film.
Sea of Lies
Credit score: ‘Sea of Lies’
From the identical host of Wild Boys (considered one of my favourite reveals on this record!) comes Sea of Lies, a present concerning the prolific swindler Albert Walker, whose record of swindles consists of stealing identities, defrauding folks of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, and homicide. It begins with an enormous splash (extra particularly, a lifeless physique in an ocean) and ends with Walker getting caught because of a Rolex watch, taking you on this zig-zagging path that can maintain you guessing the entire time. The storytelling is superb; you received’t be capable of get to the subsequent episode quick sufficient.
Plausible: The Coco Berthmann Story
Credit score: ‘Plausible: The Coco Berthmann Story’
Plausible: The Coco Berthmann Story introduces us to the life and crimes of Coco Berthmann, who gained web fame by sharing her harrowing account of surviving little one intercourse trafficking in Germany. When she was arrested for fraudulently elevating funds below the guise of a false most cancers analysis (somebody acquired carried away!) folks began questioning if they might consider her in any respect. This can be a advanced story effectively informed with meticulous authentic reporting from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sara Ganim and award-winning showrunner Karen Given, who map out precisely which of Coco’s tales to consider and which to mistrust—and why, on the root of all the things, Coco lied within the first place.
Consider In Magic
Credit score: ‘Consider in Magic’
For Consider in Magic, Jamie Bartlett (who additionally hosts The Lacking Cryptoqueen) tells the story of Megan Bhari, a 16-year-old who based a charity in 2012 to grant needs to noticeably unwell youngsters. Issues actually blew up for Megan when the band One Route hosted a charity ball and Louis Tomlinson donated cash from his personal pockets. Finally folks began to note contradictions in her sickness story and the shortage of transparency in how donation cash was getting used. In the long run it’s an emotional, fascinating, and well-balanced story about Munchausen syndrome by proxy and what drives folks to scams with pretend altruism.
Scamanda
Credit score: ‘Scamanda’
Amanda Riley, aka Scamanda, is a California lady who faked an extended battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and used her weblog and social media to solicit greater than $100,000 in donations over virtually 10 years.
Amanda claimed to endure chemotherapy, radiation, and even a bone marrow transplant, which introduced in sympathy and monetary assist from her church and neighborhood, who noticed Amanda as a supply of inspiration. All of it got here to a head when investigative producer Nancy Moscatiello acquired an nameless tip about Amanda’s weblog, prompting an eight-year investigation that finally led to Amanda’s five-year jail sentence. Amanda’s weblog posts, learn by actor Kendall Horn within the podcast, give us an concept of what she was actually considering.
Rip-off Manufacturing facility
Credit score: ‘Rip-off Manufacturing facility’
Rip-off Manufacturing facility tells the story of a community of individuals tousled in a compound in Myanmar that lures folks inside with guarantees of excessive salaries after which enslaves them making it almost inconceivable to get out. When a man, they name him “Max,” will get suckered in, his sister Charlie must do some harmful and unethical issues to attempt to get him out—Charlie should play the sport and turn into a part of the rip-off manufacturing unit herself, luring strangers into the manufacturing unit for the sake of her household. When you’ve ever heard a narrative about poisonous, cult-y conditions and puzzled, “no actually, how does this occur to somebody?” this present explains it completely.
The Binge Circumstances: Child Dealer
Credit score: ‘The Binge Circumstances’
When you’re amongst one of many many individuals swept away by the viral story of Kaitlyn’s Child, you would possibly just like the Child Dealer sequence of The Binge Circumstances, which tells the story of Tara Lee, a girl who informed greater than 100 {couples} throughout the nation that she may assist them undertake a child however was mendacity the entire time. Peter McDonnell spoke with a few of the {couples} who have been impacted, that are all fascinating and infrequently cross paths.
Wild Boys
Credit score: ‘Wild Boys’
It’s the summer season of 2003 within the small Canadian city of Vernon, and two teen boys emerge from the wilderness. They claimed to have been raised within the British Columbia wilderness and grown up with out publicity to society—no TV, no faculty, no registered IDs. Journalist Sam Mullins grew up in Vernon and might keep in mind the affect the boys made and the way the Vernon neighborhood embraced them with open arms, housing them, feeding them, and checking in on them.
However issues weren’t including up—one of many boys was extraordinarily skinny and would solely eat fruit, and so they each had enormous gaps of their conflicting tales. Regardless of all of the purple flags, everybody was stunned to study that nothing the wild boys mentioned was true. Sam tells the story of the con that shocked Vernonites in Wild Boys and explores why two younger children would go to such nice lengths to run away to ascertain an unimaginable id abroad.
Upkeep Section
Credit score: ‘Upkeep Section’
Upkeep Section doesn’t seem, at first look, to be a present about scams. In every episode, Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes (previously of You’re Flawed About) look at fads within the wellness and weight reduction business with a fine-toothed comb, and assist us splice reality from fiction. The issues they cowl—fats camps, the BMI, Olestra, and the Keto Weight loss program—do often find yourself, upon nearer inspection, to be riddled with scams, from the unethical means merchandise are marketed to the bunk science used to assist their claims.
Aubry and Michael ship disturbing perception into the methods we’re all being tricked, however their spark and humorousness makes the present a complete blast to take heed to. They’re consultants at getting indignant—and it feels good to get indignant together with them.
What do you suppose up to now?
The Lacking Cryptoqueen
Credit score: ‘The Lacking Cryptoqueen’
Crypto is mysterious, so it appears solely pure that folks have fallen prey to 1 crypto rip-off after one other. The Lacking Cryptoqueen tells a whopper of a crypto rip-off story, maybe the largest within the business’s quick historical past. In 2014, Bulgarian entrepreneur Dr. Ruja Ignatova launched a cryptocurrency that she hoped would out-do BitCoin, known as OneCoin. She lured traders from 175 international locations into cashing in on the order of a collective $4 billion—and vanished.
Peeling again the curtain, Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt of BBC Sounds found that OneCoin was a Ponzi scheme—there was no blockchain and no buying and selling change, only a bunch of servers in Bulgaria. Ignatova disappeared in October 2017 with the entire loot, and hasn’t been seen since. On The Lacking Cryptoqueen, Bartlett and Catt element how she pulled off her con, and monitor the continued hunt to seek out her.
The Dream
Credit score: ‘The Dream’
Season considered one of The Dream was about multilevel advertising schemes, however season two zooms into the world of wellness and the lofty guarantees made by a few of the business’s shadiest purveyors. This American Life alum Jane Marie, together with producer Dann Gallucci, problem the ethics of crystals, nutritional vitamins, dietary supplements, and extra, separating reality from fiction in every episode. Jane Marie provides a private contact to her analysis by together with private tales: of how her personal childhood mind damage impacted her view on the wellness business, of an aunt who has been hypnotized by a well-liked important oil firm, and of a pal who remains to be making an attempt to promote her Thirty-One baggage.
Faux
Credit score: ‘Faux’
Have you ever heard the one concerning the lady who turned entangled in a con with individuals who she thought have been her cousins, however who all ended up being the identical individual—her catfishing pal? Or the one concerning the real-life Truman Present, which left one unsuspecting man residing a lie with a bunch of actors? What concerning the one concerning the prank caller who pretended to be a police officer and used his energy to get quick meals managers to strip-search feminine staff, forcing them to jog bare, do leaping jacks, and carry out different humiliating acts?
These are the tales informed on Faux, as Javier Leiva interviews swindlers, snake oil salesmen, and cult leaders, and tells a few of the most unbelievable tales that the opposite con podcasts aren’t speaking about—usually in nice depth, with investigations spanning a number of episodes or an entire miniseries.
Sympathy Pains
Credit score: ‘Sympathy Pains’
Sympathy Pains is a six-part medical con story hosted by Laura Beil (Dr. Dying, Dangerous Batch) a couple of lady who faked a number of sicknesses—from most cancers, to muscular dystrophy, to Ebola—and created a tragic backstory about being the mother to a toddler who had died. However none of it was true. She didn’t simply need her victims’ cash, she wished their friendship and sympathy, and have become a grasp in concentrating on individuals who she knew would drop all the things for her, even when her tales began to crack. This is among the most uncommon con tales you’ll ever hear, and the most effective twist comes within the remaining episode.
The Dropout
Credit score: ‘The Dropout’
By now, you’ve virtually actually heard of the scheme perpetrated by Elizabeth Holmes (or watched the Hulu docudrama about it). She’s the trendy day poster little one of rip-off artists, pulling hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from traders for her well being expertise firm that promised to have revolutionized blood testing, however was constructed on defective science with zero valuation.
You possibly can learn the e-book or watch the present to know Holmes’ life and her difficult con, however The Dropout, a podcast from ABC Information’ Rebecca Jarvis, fleshes out the reporter’s multi-year investigation with never-before-aired deposition testimony from Holmes and people on the middle of the story, and consists of unique interviews with former staff, traders, and sufferers. The story of how one alluring lady went from being known as “The Subsequent Steve Jobs” to discovering herself dealing with legal costs calls for the form of scrutiny this lengthy type podcasts provides.
California Metropolis
Credit score: ‘California Metropolis’
California Metropolis is positioned deep within the Mojave Desert, 100 miles north of L.A., a spot that when held the promise of the American dream—hundreds have been informed that in the event that they purchased land there, they will surely get wealthy someday. At the very least 73,000 hopeful folks poured tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into California Metropolis, solely to seek out out too late that the land was nugatory. They’d spend years making an attempt to get their a reimbursement.
On this sequence, Emily Guerin travels to California Metropolis with a mic and a mission to seek out the folks chargeable for the con, and winds up enmeshed in conversations with actual property builders making an attempt to brush the reality below the rug, in addition to the individuals who share heartbreaking tales of giving all the things they’d, chasing a dream that may by no means be realized.
