The Greatest Impostor
Ferdinand Demara is quite possibly the greatest con artist you’ve never heard of. With good reason: he hardly ever used his own name. Demara was a professional impostor. In his long and prolific caree...
6 Kesä 201739min
Crooked Carnival
Peter Fenton made a career out of crafting that con we’ve all fallen for: the con of fantasy, of alternative realities that are much more pleasant than the existing one. This week, we go inside the wo...
30 Touko 201732min
Psychic Faith
A fraud is lurking on most every block of most every city and town, all over the world: the psychic. When you’re down, when you’re alone, when you’re uncertain: that’s when you’re perfectly vulnerable...
23 Touko 201731min
For a Small Investment...
Oscar Hartzell, born to humble beginnings, would go on to craft one of the most elaborate and successful mail fraud cons of all time. Pirates, lost treasure, the Wild West — it's the Spanish Prisoner,...
16 Touko 201732min
The One Who Almost Got Away
Sam Israel not only ran one of the most successful Ponzi schemes in history, he would eventually go on to the single most extreme con there is: the con of life and death. Who knows how often it happen...
9 Touko 201731min
Loving a Lie
Maria talks with the Atlantic’s Emily Yoffe about the most common grift of them all: the sweetheart scam. It’s a catfishing bait and switch where the person you fall in love with isn’t the person you ...
2 Touko 201730min
The Religion of the Black Dog
A small secretive cult was started in the 1970s and operated out of New Jersey for decades without notice. A survivor tells us her dark story of abuse and manipulation at the hands of the charismatic ...
25 Huhti 201744min
