Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

The host and creator of the award-winning true crime podcast Nobody Should Believe Me offers a groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that investigates Munchausen by Proxy.

Investigative reporter Zeke Faux provides an uproarious account of a crypto delusion; how Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers turned useless virtual coins into trillions of dollars.

Investigative journalist Gareth Gore recounts how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how exactly one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House.

As a string of high-profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the press dubbed the elusive thief the King of Diamonds. Like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, the King was so bold that he tip-toed into the homes of millionaires while they were home....

Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfish, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them....

At 5:02 p.m. on June 5, 1986, an emergency call came into the local sheriff’s office in the small town of Auburn, Washington State. A distressed housewife, Stella Nickell, said her husband, Bruce, was having a seizure....

If Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader (BTK Killer), and Robert Hansen had a prodigy, it would be Israel Keyes.

Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself from terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet. There was just one problem: she'd never had cancer....

The world’s most renowned art forger reveals the secrets behind his decades of painting like the masters—exposing an art world that is far more corrupt than we ever knew while providing an art history lesson wrapped in sex, drugs, and Caravaggio....

A New York Times bestselling author and former Los Angeles Times reporter's dives deep into the life of a con artist and bigamist who resorts to murder to hide his double life....

From a famous actor and an experienced journalist, a wildly entertaining debunking of cryptocurrency, one of the greatest frauds in history and on course for a spectacular crash....

The highly anticipated inside look at the collapse of the Murdaugh dynasty by the celebrated investigative journalist and creator of the #1 hit Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Mandy Matney....

The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious low country clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity—by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place.

The dramatic rise, disappearance, and near-fall of Aimee Semple McPherson, America’s most famous woman evangelist.

Fat Leonard is the unvarnished story of how a charismatic Malaysian defense contractor bribed scores of high-ranking military officers, defrauded the US Navy of tens of millions of dollars, and jeopardized our nation’s security.

When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want....

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation....

From the New York Times bestselling author and creator of the hit MrBallen Podcast and YouTube channel, a vividly illustrated graphic novel featuring nine spine-chilling stories—based on real events—of the horror that lurks within the unknown.

In 2016, the fate of Paramount Global—the multibillion-dollar entertainment empire that includes Paramount, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, and Simon & Schuster—hung precariously in the balance....

Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class.

Delve into the labyrinth of America’s conspiracy culture with this investigative masterpiece that unearths the roots of our era’s most potent myths.

Leah Sottile investigates the New Age movement in America that aims to understand its appeal to women and the self-proclaimed prophetesses, like Love Has Won's Amy Carlson, who've created kingdoms for themselves within it.

As a premier antiques dealer in Savannah, Jim Williams had it all: style, culture, charisma, and sophistication. But three decades of hard work came crashing down the night he shot Danny Hansford, his wild young lover. Jim Williams stood trial four times over the next decade....

Fifteen years after Bernie Madoff’s arrest, renowned investigative journalist Richard Behar delivers the definitive account of history’s largest, longest-running financial fraud—featuring audio excerpts from archival interviews with Bernie Madoff from prison.

From the moment an eccentric woman walked into the Knoedler Gallery with a Mark Rothko painting, everyone was fooled. For the next ten years, she ran an $80 million forgery ring, selling or consigning forty expertly crafted counterfeits claimed to be the works of Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others. Director of the documentary Made You Look Barry Avrich reveals new information, evidence, and inside stories about how a quixotic art dealer, master forger, and two cunning con artists managed to fool billionaire art collectors, journalists, and esteemed art appraisers.

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of Hobby Lobby, announced a purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous collection held at Oxford University, and its rightful owners had no idea it had been sold.

As an 18-year-old on a gap year in Canberra, Liz Cameron was approached at a shopping centre by a woman who, unbeknownst to her, was a recruiting agent for Providence, a Christian cult that originated in South Korea and currently operates in 72 countries. As a new adult, Cameron was struggling to navigate the world and her identity, and as cults do so skilfully, they took advantage of her vulnerability.

On September 6, 1982, convicted murderer Leroy James Chasson made a daring break for freedom from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute-Walpole—one of the most infamous, escape-proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just any prison break. It was a meticulously planned, five-year effort, made possible by an unlikely accomplice—Kathleen MacDonald, Chasson's former pen-pal turned wife.

On a stormy Thanksgiving Eve in 1971, a man known only as “Dan Cooper” boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305, claimed to have a bomb, and demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, he vanished mid-flight—parachuting into the freezing darkness over the Pacific Northwest. He was never seen again. Decades later, the case remains the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history. Despite an exhaustive FBI investigation, Cooper’s identity and fate remain a mystery, fuelling endless speculation and intrigue. In The Man Who Wasn't There, Mark Stokes ...