Crime Con

From former Vice journalist and executive producer of hit Netflix documentary Fyre comes an eye-opening look at the con artists, grifters, and snake-oil salesmen of the digital age - and why we can’t stop falling for them.

The Holy Thief is the remarkable memoir of an amazing man. It is a true-life gangster story, a passionate love story, and a case of study in redemption. Regardless of your faith, you will find his story tragic, funny, uplifting, and inspirational.

On February 20, 1926, landlady Clara Newman (60) opened her door to a potential tenant who enquired into the availability of one of her rooms. Despite his grim and bulky appearance, he introduced himself politely and in a soft-spoken voice whilst clutching a Bible in one of his large hands. She invited him in. The moment he stepped into her home, he lunged forward, wrapping his oversized fingers around her throat and forced her to the ground.

Texas millionaire Steven Beard, Jr. fell hard for Celeste Martinez, a waitress less than half his age. She served the seventy year old widow his nightly cocktail—along with sexual favors—at a country club in Austin. After they married, Steven gave her cars, homes, jewelry, and designer clothes. But Celeste wanted more. Claiming she had depression, Celeste checked into a psychiatric facility, where she met and seduced fellow patient Tracey Tarlton. Celeste soon convinced Tracey that the only way they could be together would be to kill Steve.

Twelve true crime stories of murder and mayhem. Fifth audiobook of the True Crime Case Histories Series (2020). When researching these stories, I commonly use actual police reports, court documents, and first-hand descriptions. Some of the details can be disconcerting. I do my best to not leave out any of the details in my audiobooks, no matter how depraved they may be. My intent is not to shock, but to show precisely how twisted the mind of a killer can be. The stories in this volume are shocking and disturbing, but they’re also true. These things really do happen in the world.

It's easy to imagine Harold Shipman doting on his little grandkids, reading them stories from his lap and letting them play with his big, bushy beard. If you were told he was a doctor, I bet you'd imagine he was a good, kind and gentle one, with an easy, affable manner and deep care for his patients. Harold Frederick Shipman certainly projected all those qualities, but only so that he could hide the evil that lurked deep inside. Shipman abused his trust and used his position to kill.

Drowning in debt and facing almost certain bankruptcy, John Darwin did the unthinkable—he paddled out to sea in his red canoe and disappeared. After a massive search and rescue operation failed to find his body, he was assumed dead, lost in the bleak North Sea. But everything was far from what it seemed. Nearly six years later, after John miraculously returned from the dead with a strange tale of 'amnesia' and sporting a suspicious golden tan, the police and the press were desperate to discover the truth behind his remarkable resurrection.

The stakes are high for one of the world's most powerful corporations. With hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts at risk, an international conglomerate and its team of lawyers pursue an eighteen-year-old college student who creates the code that could bring it all down. Crimson Code is the true story of University of Alabama student Desmond Jackson, an ambitious cybersecurity expert and entrepreneur. This is Desmond's first-person account of his stunning tale that reveals legal and political corruption and one young man's determination to prove his innocence.

The conned: an Oxford don, a revered society physician, a chic French art dealer, and a charming English lord. They have one thing in common. Overnight, each novice investor lost his life's fortune to one man. The con: Harvey Metcalfe. A brilliant, self-made guru of deceit. A very dangerous individual. And now, a hunted man. With nothing left to lose, four strangers are about to come together—each expert in their own field. Their plan: find Harvey, shadow him, trap him, and penny-for-penny, destroy him.

Learn about investment traps with an insight into fraudulent Ponzi Schemes with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series. A Ponzi scheme is an illegal business practice. Investors are recruited into a Ponzi scheme and offered excellent returns over time for little or no risk. The operator of a Ponzi scheme relies on further recruitment of investors to accumulate funds. Earlier investors are repaid with later investor's money. They have also been described as Pyramid Schemes.

Con artists are everywhere—your new boyfriend or girlfriend, your new neighbor or coworker, your new friend—and they don’t outsmart you; they out-feel you to get their hands on your money. In Anatomy of a Con Artist, Walton lays out “the tells” based on hundreds of real-life cases he’s investigated.

At the end of the 20th century, over the span of three decades, the story of the BTK Killer was almost the same as the boogeyman: a tale told to frighten women and children about an unknown beast who murdered the innocent. The boogeyman, however, remains a figment in the imagination of many, while the BTK Killer is real.

The instant bestselling story of Lee Mackenzie, who was a capable and confident young woman, studying broadcast journalism and honing her skills of observation and objectivity. She was also a little unworldly, the product of a small, rural Western Canadian community where doors were never locked and life was simple and direct. On a backpacking trip in the UK, she met the man who would become her husband. A man who everyone agreed was one of the most intelligent, charming people they had ever met.

Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington.

From poverty to lucky in love, Belle found her happy ending with a man named Mads…or so everyone thought. But when the wealthy Mads died a mysterious death, Belle collected the life insurance policy and remarried…only for her new husband to drop dead. With things going from strange to sinister, more men mysteriously die or go missing around Belle.

Cassie Chadwick, one of history's most successful con artists, was a master of the trade. She swept from town to town, assuming new identities and running new swindles at each railroad stop. In the dusk of the Gilded Age, years after the robber barons had amassed their fortunes, she was amassing her own. Using her wits and a series of forged documents, Cassie convinced prominent men from Cleveland to New York City that she was Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. The con made her impossibly rich.

In 1977, Vera 'Toddie' Hays and Florice 'Beezie' Bessire thought they were about to embark on the trip of a lifetime when Vera's nephew, Vern Todd, offered them a campervan to drive from Germany to India. Little did the women know that Vern and his accomplices would secretly pack two tonnes of hashish into the vehicle along the way. This shocking inside story chronicles Toddie and Beezie's wild ride across continents and oceans to our shores, their arrest by Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents and all that the women faced in the aftermath.

A lack of love in an authoritarian household sparked Andrew’s lifelong search for love and belonging. His AA sponsor introduced him to A Course in Miracles, which Andrew studied deeply for twenty years. Then a celebrated spiritual teacher invited him to edit his first book and join his community. Andrew had been led to believe that he was chosen to find the Love of God. After a heart-rending parting from his family, he moved to Utah and joined the community.

When Speaker Newt Gingrich greeted Dr. David Lewis in his office overlooking the National Mall, he looked at Dr. Lewis and said: "You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?" "I know," Dr. Lewis replied, "I just hope to stay out of prison." Gingrich had just read Dr. Lewis' commentary in Nature, titled "EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics".

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 this exhilarating memoir that will appeal to fans of The Wolf of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can, unsuspecting receptionists, assistants, and bigshot executives all fall victim to “the Ruse.”