15 Best Podcasts About Liars and Cheaters
True crime podcasts have been part of the zeitgeist for quite some time now, but those that focus on scams seem to get less attention from the masses than their gory, murder-filled counterparts.
I’ve put together recommendations for the best and most entertaining scam podcasts on the digital airwaves right now. Catch up, follow along, and then pick your jaw up off the floor as you discover the shocking ways some truly manipulative people have been able to take advantage of the most vulnerable, robbing them of money, friendship, and trust. From mysterious boys emerging from the wild to defraud an entire town to an entrepreneur who swindles investors out of millions of dollars for bullshit science, each of these true-life stories is full of lies and deceit.
Cons: Caitlin’s Baby
The Fraudsters: Caitlin’s Baby is a six-part true crime series that follows the case of Caitlin Brown, a calculating Canadian woman who pretended to experience a series of traumatic events (such as pregnancy loss and sexual assault) in order to trick doulas into caring for her.
Presenter Sarah Treleven takes us through the story, focusing on the emotional impact it had on Caitlin’s victims to use her to support others, which requires such physical and emotional connection and vulnerability. Your eyes will widen, your heartbeat will speed up – I was even a little scared. The story of Caitlin’s plans may seem like a horror movie.
Sea of lies
From the same host of Wild Boys (one of my favorite shows on this list!) comes Sea of Lies , a show about prolific con artist Albert Walker whose list of scams includes identity theft, defrauding people out of millions of dollars, and murder. It starts with a huge splash (or rather, a corpse in the ocean) and ends with Walker being caught thanks to his Rolex watch, sending you down a zigzag path that will keep you guessing the entire time. The storytelling is excellent; you won’t be able to move on to the next episode fast enough.
True to life: the story of Coco Bertmann
True: The Story of Coco Bertmann introduces us to the life and crimes of Coco Bertmann, who gained online fame by sharing her harrowing account of her experience of child sex trafficking in Germany. When she was arrested for fraudulent fundraising under the guise of a false cancer diagnosis (someone got carried away!), people began to wonder if she could even be trusted. It’s a complex story, well told through careful, original reporting by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sarah Ganim and award-winning showrunner Karen Given, who pinpoint which of Coco’s stories to believe and which not to trust, and why, in essence, Coco was lying.
Believe in magic
In Believe in Magic, Jamie Bartlett (who also hosts The Lost Crypto Queen ) tells the story of Megan Bhari, a 16-year-old who founded a charity in 2012 to grant wishes to seriously ill children. Things really took off for Meghan when One Direction held a charity ball and Louis Tomlinson donated money from his own pocket. Over time, people began to notice inconsistencies in her medical history and a lack of transparency in the use of donations. Ultimately, this is an emotional, entertaining and balanced story about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and what drives people to scams with false altruism.
Scamanda
Amanda Riley, also known as Scamanda , is a California woman who faked her long battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and used her blog and social media to raise more than $100,000 in donations over nearly 10 years.
Amanda claimed to have undergone chemotherapy, radiation therapy and even a bone marrow transplant, which received sympathy and financial support from her church and community, who saw Amanda as an inspiration. It all came to a head when investigative producer Nancy Moscatiello received an anonymous tip about Amanda’s blog, sparking an eight-year investigation that ultimately led to Amanda’s five-year prison sentence. Amanda’s blog posts, read by actor Kendall Horne on the podcast, give us an idea of what she was really thinking.
Fraud Factory
“Scam Factory” tells the story of a network of people entangled in a complex in Myanmar that lures people inside with promises of high salaries, then enslaves them, making it nearly impossible to get out. When a guy named Max falls into a trap, his sister Charlie has to do some dangerous and unethical things to try to get him out. Charlie must play this game and become part of the fraud factory herself, luring strangers into the factory for the sake of her family. If you’ve ever heard a story about toxic, cult-like situations and wondered, “No, really, how does this happen to anyone?” this show explains it perfectly.
Binge Cases: Baby Broker
If you’re one of the many people caught up in Caitlin’s viral baby story, you might enjoy the episode “Baby Broker” from Drinking Incidents , which tells the story of Tara Lee, a woman who told more than 100 couples across the country that she could help them adopt a child, but lied the whole time. Peter McDonnell has spoken to some of the couples who have been affected by this, and they are all charming and cross paths frequently.
Wild boys
It’s summer 2003 in the small Canadian town of Vernon, and two teenage boys emerge from the wild. They claimed to have grown up in the British Columbia wilderness and to have grown up with no interaction with society—no television, no school, no registered ID. Journalist Sam Mullins grew up in Vernon and remembers the impact the boys had and how the Vernon community welcomed them with open arms, housed them, fed them and checked on them.
But things weren’t going well: one of the boys was very thin and only ate fruit, and they both had huge holes in their conflicting stories. Despite all the warning signs, everyone was surprised to learn that nothing the wild boys said was true. Sam tells the story of the scam that stunned the Veronians in Wild Boys and explores why two young children went to such lengths to escape to establish an unlikely identity in another country.
Maintenance phase
At first glance, “Maintenance Phase” doesn’t seem like a show about con artists. In each episode, Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs (formerly of You’re Wrong ) take an in-depth look at fashion trends in the health and weight loss industry and help us separate fact from fiction. What they cover—fat camps, BMI, Olestra, and the keto diet— usually, upon closer inspection, turns out to be riddled with scams, from unethical ways of selling products to bogus science used to back up their claims.
Aubrey and Michael share some disturbing information about how we’re all being lied to, but their spark and sense of humor make the show a real pleasure to listen to. They are masters of being angry, and it is pleasant to be angry with them.
The Missing Crypto Queen
Cryptocurrency is a mysterious place, so it is only natural that people fall victim to one crypto scam after another. The Lost Crypto Queen tells a stunning story of crypto fraud, perhaps the largest in the industry’s short history. In 2014, Bulgarian entrepreneur Dr. Ruja Ignatova launched OneCoin, a cryptocurrency she hoped would surpass BitCoin. She lured investors from 175 countries to earn about 4 billion dollars – and disappeared.
Lifting the veil, BBC Sounds’ Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt discovered that OneCoin was a Ponzi scheme – there was no blockchain, no trading exchange, just a bunch of servers in Bulgaria. Ignatova disappeared in October 2017 along with all the loot, and no one has seen her since then. In “The Lost Crypto Queen”, Bartlett and Katt detail how she pulled off her scam and track the ongoing hunt to find her.
Dream
The first season of “The Dream” focused on multi-level marketing schemes, but the second season focuses on the world of health and the lofty promises made by some of the industry’s shadiest suppliers. American Life alum Jane Marie, along with producer Dann Gallucci, challenge the ethics of crystals, vitamins, supplements and more, separating fact from fiction in every episode. Jane Marie adds personality to her research by including personal stories: how her own childhood brain injury shaped her views on the health industry, an aunt who was mesmerized by a popular essential oil company, and a friend who still tries to sell her a packet of Thirty-One.
Pretend
Have you heard the story about the woman who got into a scam with people she thought were her cousins, but they all turned out to be the same person – her cat catcher friend? Or the real-life Truman Show, where one unsuspecting guy lived a lie with a bunch of actors? What about the prank caller who pretended to be a police officer and used his power to force fast food managers to search female employees, forcing them to run naked, jump and perform other humiliating acts? These are the stories told on Pretend , where Javier Leyva interviews scammers, snake oil salesmen, and cult leaders, and tells some of the most incredible stories that other scam podcasts don’t tell. o – often very deep, investigations span several episodes or an entire mini-series.
Sympathy Pain
Sympathy Pains is a six-part medical scam hosted by Laura Bale ( Dr. Death , The Bad Batch ) about a woman who faked a variety of illnesses—from cancer to muscular dystrophy to Ebola—and created a tragic backstory about how she was the mother of a dead child. But all this was not true. She didn’t just want her victims’ money, she wanted their friendship and sympathy, and she became adept at finding people she knew would give up everything for her, even when her stories began to crack. This is one of the most unusual con stories you’ll ever hear, and the most interesting twist comes in the final episode.
Dropout
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the scheme carried out by Elizabeth Holmes (or watched the docudrama about it on Hulu). She’s a modern-day poster child for scammers bilking millions of dollars out of investors for her medical technology company that promised to revolutionize blood testing but was built on flawed zero-stakes science.
You can read the book or watch the TV series to understand Holmes’ life and her complex scam, but The Dropout podcast from ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis complements the reporter’s years-long investigation with never-before-aired testimony from Holmes and those at the center of the story, and includes exclusive interviews with former employees, investors and patients. The story of how one fascinating woman went from being dubbed the “Next Steve Jobs” to being criminally charged requires the kind of scrutiny that this long-form podcast offers.
California City
California City is located deep in the Mojave Desert, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, in a place that once promised the American dream: thousands of people were told that if they bought land there, they would one day be rich. At least 73,000 hopeful people invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the California city, only to discover too late that the land was worthless. They would spend years trying to get their money back.
In this series, Emily Guerin goes to a California town with a microphone and a mission to find the people responsible for the fraud, and finds herself embroiled in conversations with real estate developers trying to hide the truth, as well as people who share heartbreaking stories of giving everything they had in pursuit of a dream that will never come true.