Scamfluencers
Bridgegate: The Phantom Tollbooth
The Bridgegate scandal was a prime example of New Jersey political corruption at its most ridiculous. At the center was Chris Christie – the brash Republican governor riding a landslide re-election and a fast track to the White House. But when the mayor of a small town refused to endorse Christie’s re-election, someone in the governor’s orbit decided to retaliate by weaponizing traffic. Four days of gridlock on the world’s busiest bridge. Ambulances stuck in traffic. Kids late to school. And a trail of texts and emails that led straight to the governor’s office. What started as petty political payback spiraled into a full-blown scandal implicated Christie’s closest allies, tanked his presidential ambitions, and ended up before the Supreme Court. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Carl Rinsch: Lights, Camera, Fraud
Carl Rinsch had everything Hollywood loves in an up-and-coming director: talent, charisma, and the ability to make people believe. His obsessive perfectionism was written off as the mark of a visionary. But when Netflix handed him millions for a TV series and the pandemic kept everyone at a distance, Carl went on a spree – cars, crypto, luxury mattresses – torching the money and every relationship he’d ever built. By the end, no one was buying what Carl was selling. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Milli Vanilli: Girl You Know It’s (Not) True
When news broke that Milli Vanilli were lip-syncing frauds, it was a defining moment in pop-culture. Forty years later, their name is still synonymous with fakery. But Rob and Fab weren’t the masterminds. Behind them was a Svengali producer named Frank Farian, who’d built his entire career on a simple formula: recruit talented artists to make the music, then cast beautiful people to sell it. But when the truth came out, Rob and Fab took the fall – while their puppet master walked away clean. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
ENCORE: Martha Stewart: The Homemaker Hustler Part 2
We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode of Scamfluencers. In the meantime, enjoy the conclusion of Martha Stewart: the Homemaker Hustler: In the summer of 2003, Martha Stewart is indicted for obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. She stubbornly maintains her innocence and vows to fight the charges, but her cover-up falls apart during a messy and humiliating public trial. She and her stockbroker are facing prison time, but she’s determined to come out on top – no matter what it takes to get there. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Encore: Martha Stewart: The Homemaker Hustler Part 1
We’ll be back in two weeks with new episodes, but in the meantime, we’re revisiting an episode about one of America’s most famous lifestyle moguls: Martha Stewart spends decades building her lifestyle empire from the ground up. Her cut-throat business savvy helps make her America’s first self-made female billionaire. But when she becomes embroiled in an insider trading scandal in 2002, it’ll spark a media circus and threaten to muddy her squeaky clean image. A damning investigation by the U.S. government promises to take her down – alongside some of her closest friends. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Sam Israel: Greed Is Good Part 2
This is part two of our series about Sam Israel – a wealthy hedge fund manager whose company starts quickly hemorrhaging money. Rather than admit defeat, Sam lies to his clients, and when they start asking questions, he bets everything on a conspiracy theorist named Roberth Booth Nichols. What follows is stranger than fiction, involving buried treasure, fake identities, a plot involving the President of the United States – and a con man who's about to discover what it feels like to be conned. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Sam Israel: Greed Is Good Part 1
Sam Israel was born into wealth, but he wanted to prove he could make it on Wall Street on his own. So he started a hedge fund – and almost immediately started losing money. But instead of admitting failure to his investors, he decided to lie. Eventually those lies spiraled into a $450 million fraud, a faked suicide, and a wild descent into a secret world of black-ops and dangerous con men. In a last ditch effort to dig his company out of debt, Sam is going to bet everything on a venture so bizarre, so shrouded in secrecy, that it’ll make the fraud look rational by comparison. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Miracle Children: The Price of Admission
T.M Landry was a small independent school in Louisiana that gained national fame for sending kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to Ivy League schools. The viral videos were inspiring. The acceptance letters were real. But behind the scenes, the school doctored transcripts and fabricated personal stories to get students in – and behind closed doors, students endured psychological and physical abuse at the hands of the school’s founders. In this episode, we talk with the two New York Times reporters who broke the story – Erica L. Green and Katie Benner, authors of Miracle Children: Race, Education, and a True Story of False Promises. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Juliette D’Souza: The Sham Shaman
Juliette D’Souza had no medical degree and no spiritual training – but she convinced her clients she was a gifted healer and shaman. For more than a decade, her natural charm gave her control over her followers and their life savings. But when one victim stumbles onto the truth while trying to feed Juliette’s pet monkey, her spell starts to crack. Her victims band together to bring her down – and discover that getting justice will be almost as hard as breaking free. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Martin Armstrong: The Man Who Bet Billions on Pi
Martin Armstrong is a Wall Street outsider who builds a financial prediction model with a hidden connection to the number pi. And whether it’s fortune-telling or just a fluke, Martin’s system really does predict some major economic events. His discovery attracts billions in investor funds and gives him the confidence to make bets no rational person would make. But when those bets fail, Martin faces a choice: admit the model was wrong or insist the whole world is conspiring against him. What happens next is either one of the greatest deep-state coverups in history… or an unhinged numerology scam that has Martin’s followers still tangled up to this day. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Wildenstein Family Part 2: The Art of the Steal
In our last episode, we followed the Wildenstein family over the span of four generations as they came to dominate the art world. The family prized success – and secrecy – above all else. But when the Wildenstein men attempt to cast aside the women they brought into their fold, leaving them with nothing, these women are going to fight back using the one thing the family fears most: publicity. As the Wildensteins make headlines, they’ll face court case after court case – and be forced to reckon with some brutal buried history. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Wildenstein Family Part 1: The Art of the Steal
For over a century, the Wildenstein family has quietly dominated the art world, amassing one of the largest private collections ever assembled while most people have never even heard their name. The anonymity isn’t an accident; it’s a strategy. Because what they are hiding is enormous: a sprawling fortune built on secrecy, tax evasion, stolen masterpieces and alleged Nazi collaboration. Four generations of Wildenstein men constructed an empire designed to be invisible. But when one family member’s messy divorce blows the vault wide open, a century’s worth of buried secrets comes spilling out. Now, the women they’ve tried to discard are about to tear it all down. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Bill Mize: The Car Crash King
Bill Mize always believed he was destined for fortune – he just couldn’t figure out how to get it. After flaming out as a restaurateur and drug dealer, Bill finally found his calling: orchestrating a sprawling fraud ring of staged slip-in-falls and car wrecks for insurance money. He recruited his closest friends and family into the scheme, then skimmed some of their portion of the payouts. His obsession with control over everyone in his orbit eventually led to his downfall – and a run from the authorities that made national headlines. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Trevor Milton: The Elon Musk of Semi-Trucks
Trevor Milton called himself a serial entrepreneur and his playbook was simple: pick a futuristic idea, promise it will change the world… then talk about it constantly online. His biggest pitch was an emissions-free semi-truck that would make diesel engines obsolete. Investors poured in billions of dollars. But Trevor spent far more time selling the dream than building the truck – and soon, a scorned business partner, a frazzled engineer, and a finance bro with a conscience will start pulling at the threads of his startup empire, exposing the used car salesman at its core. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
John McAfee: The Antisocial Virus
John McAfee was a brilliant but volatile programmer who helped pioneer antivirus software, making himself a fortune in the early days of personal computing. But he had an addictive personality and a short attention span, so after walking away from cybersecurity, he spent his life chasing bigger thrills, taking wilder risks, and getting into trouble in multiple countries. Behind the scenes, a lifetime of relentless self-indulgence was destroying everything – and everyone – around him, leaving him high, broke, and on the run from the U.S. authorities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Notes from the Edge
The Shawn Ryan Show
This American Life
The Ezra Klein Show
Stuff You Should Know
Happy Hour with Ina Garten