The Grift Presents: Family Ghosts
The Grift presents an episode of another Panoply podcast we think our listeners will love: Family Ghosts. When Nick's grandfather died in 1994, something bizarre happened: his aunt Susan stole the bod...
11 Dec 201755min
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 Juni 201739min
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 Maj 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 Maj 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 Maj 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 Maj 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 Apr 201744min
