Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

In the 1990s, when Abdul Kareem Telgi spent more than eighty lakh rupees on a dancer in a dance bar one evening, he came under the target of the police, politicians and the underworld....

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....

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.

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....

Someone in the U.S. is an identity-theft victim every four seconds. Stealing Your Life is the reference everyone needs, by an unsurpassed authority on the latest identity-theft schemes....

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....

Two New York Times-bestselling psychologists explain the science of cons—and how we can avoid them....

Derek DelGaudio believed he was a decent, honest man. But when irrefutable evidence to the contrary is found in an old journal, his memories are reawakened and Derek is forced to confront - and try to understand - his role in a significant act of deception from his past....

After parting ways with the eponymous McAfee Antivirus software company in 1994, John McAfee embarked on innumerable business, political, and criminal enterprises....

The case of D. B. Cooper is a modern legend that has obsessed and cursed his pursuers for generations with everything from bankruptcy to suicidal despair. Now, with Skyjack, Geoffrey Gray obtains a first-ever look at the FBI’s confidential Cooper file, uncovering new leads in the infamous case....

This gripping true crime classic tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners....

Where does a moderately popular internet star who never leaves her house look for potential suitors? Online. Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, OkCupid - I tried them all. My 31-year-old self clicked and swiped her little heart out, leading to more dates than I could count....

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....

In the world of high finance, multibillion-dollar Wall Street banks greedily guard their secrets. Enter Robert Kerbeck, a working actor who made his real money lying on the phone, charming people into revealing their employers’ most valuable information....

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

Jen Beeny is leaving her turbulent past behind and now it's time to start living. Or at least she's trying to. Between her dead-end job, live-in-landlord and disastrous dates, life in London is not quite turning out as she'd planned....

Fifty years after the event that rocked the nation and shook the world, Marrs reveals the facts behind the most audacious cover-up of our time....

A bizarre, rollicking trip through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies: Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling examines the growing universe of non-traditional treatments....

FINLAND TRUE CRIME - TRUE CRIMES - REAL CRIME CASES. n this sixth volume of his True Crime series, Germany's bestselling True Crime author Adrian...

New York Times Bestseller #1. Die unglaubliche wahre Geschichte des begehrtesten Betrügers der Welt, die von Leonardo DiCaprio im Spielfilm...

A page-turning real-life thriller that features deadpan FBI agents, crooked executives, idealistic lawyers....

Using modern biology and history to investigate a series of grisly deaths in the countryside of 18th-century France....

After her father died in 2003, Susan Fensten turned to a genealogy message board to search for surviving relatives. Days later, she was delighted to receive an email from someone claiming to be a distant cousin. In fact, Susan had just been ensnared by a relentless sociopath....

It takes just seconds for someone to die....

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....

Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks, all before he was twenty-one.

Hold Fast is the uncompromising story of Backpage.com, the world’s most scandalous website, and the rise and fall of alternative weekly newspapers nationwide.

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, hiding in their closets and daring to smoke while they were sleeping. Rena Pederson, then a young reporter with UPI, started following the elusive thief while she managed the night desk. With gymnastic skill, he climbed trees and crawled across rooftops to take jewels from heiresses, oil kings, corporate CEOs.

The most famous man in South Carolina lives jailed in the state capital. He stands accused of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—ninety-nine crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors claim, Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug dealer and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claim, he also became a killer.

Just before the small-time bootlegger Max Gerlach died, he tried to reveal his secret: he was the inspiration for the mysterious Jay Gatsby. It’s a nice story, but was he telling the truth? Veteran reporter Joe Nocera and producer Poppy Damon investigate this century-old literary mystery and uncover untold secrets about the Great American Novel.