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.

Now a number-one international best seller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history....

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....

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

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....

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....

In 1911 two British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, read a brochure about a revolutionary fasting treatment that promised a lifetime of good health....

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....

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 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 uproarious, bestselling true story of the world's most sought-after con man, immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio in DreamWorks' feature film of the same name, from the author of Scam Me If You Can.

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

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....

An explosive investigation into Word of Faith Fellowship, a secretive evangelical cult whose charismatic female leader is a master of manipulation....

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....

The Devil Wears Rothko charts the explosive demise of Knoedler Gallery, one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious art galleries, with detailed and salacious insight into the art fraud scandal of the century.

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.

Eight true crime stories of murder and mayhem. In my first audiobook as a true crime author I've started with a few of the stories that have haunted me for some time. Some of these stories are unbelievable in their brutality while others are astounding in the stupidity of the killers....

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.

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

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 ...