White Collars, Red Hands

It's the season 21 finale as we delve into another murder committed by the ultra wealthy. This week we talk about pathological liar Christian Gerhartsreiter, who killed a couple in the 80s but continued a reign of terror under many identities. His most famous was that of Clark Rockefeller, yes of those Rockefellers. A name under which he got married, had a child, swindled many, and finally got caught.

After wiring more than a million dollars to her husband, Anthony Strangis, Sarma Melngailis watches her once-thriving restaurant spiral into missed payroll, employee walkouts, and investor panic. While Anthony gambles away the money, the couple goes on the run, only to be caught in the most ironic way possible. We break down the manipulation, the unraveling, and how a celebrated vegan empire ended in handcuffs.

This week we embark on a two week journey through the life of potential investment banker turned raw vegan food restaurateur Sarma Melngailis, whose life became more difficult than her name is to pronounce. Learn about how she met a wolf in sheep's clothing through a popular online game, and how he slowly started to ruin her life.

This week we bring you the conclusion of our revisit to Michele Sindona. Find out how the ruins of bodies, and families were left behind as Michele's banking empire fell across multiple countries, and the lengths he would go to to try and avoid facing his just punishment.

Five years ago, with one mic and a dream we started this podcast. And we were a lot worse at putting a story to mic if you'd believe it, because we didn't write scripts. One of our favorite stories has been the mystery of Michele Sindona, confidant to the bank of the Vatican that worked in the shadows with both God's men and the mafia. Join us on a two part series as we revisit how one man took over Italian banking and eventually led to the murder of two people, and the exposure of a secret underground society.

It's part two of our Cola Wars double feature! This week we discuss the history of Coke's little bro Pepsi. We talk about the interesting reason it was first created and numerous scandals involving them over the last century from marketing mishaps to suspicious substances in their cans.

So it turns out that making sugar water can entitle you to some great power throughout the world. No one knows that better than Coca Cola, a Fortune 500 company that started by selling the stuff you can get under a bridge for $120/g nowadays, and saying it helped in the bedroom. Join us for this two part series where we talk about the largest cola makers in the world, how they rose to prominence and the many skeletons lurking in their ice chests.

We hope you all had a great Holiday Season! After a week off we come back with a story about Dina Wein Reiss, who went through a surprising amount of effort to scam companies into giving her truckloads of merchandise at cost which she then turned around and sold, stealing all of their profit margin. Find out how a fake store and actors on the payroll setup the scheme, and how one disgruntled employee took it all down.

Hey Everyone! Nina and Kishan are both travelling for the holidays so we are dropping this gift of an episode updating what has happened since we posted our episode on ten different stories. Hope you enjoy finding out whose been naughty and who turned nice, and we will see you in a couple of weeks!

This week we discuss the absolute food giant in Kraft Heinz. Starting as two lonely multinational food corporations, they decided they would be better together when they merged in 2015. Unfortunately the relationship turned out toxic as the new couple immediately started some lengthy accounting fraud that was uncovered in 2019 and now they are on the verge of divorce.

Anglo Irish Bank had one motto: if you can’t afford it, lend it anyway. With Sean FitzPatrick at the helm, the bank inflated Ireland’s boom and then helped detonate its bust. After billions vanished and investigators uncovered hidden loans, the whole thing unraveled into a courtroom saga that become one of the longest in Irish history.Join us as we unpack the rise and fall of Anglo Irish, and how one banker helped sink a nation.

On the season 20 finale we discuss Texas oil tycoon T. Cullen Davis who was once the richest man in the state until his life exploded into a double murder case, a bitter divorce, and a dramatic courtroom drama. After his stepdaughter and his ex-wife’s boyfriend were killed, Priscilla Davis identified Cullen as the gunman, but with immense wealth and a powerhouse legal team, he walked free not once, but twice.

While the financial crisis was unfolding and ruining the economies of the world, China had a little more to contend with. In 2008 babies began to contract kidney stones, and all of them were fed with the same baby formula produced by Sanlu Group. Join us this week as we discuss how milk in China became contaminated, how it affected the world's dairy trade, and how it led to the deaths of multiple people.

This week we discuss Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli ye Gon, who operated one of the largest drug manufacturing plants in Mexico. The only problem is that the drugs he was manufacturing were less than legal. Join us on the journey that pseudoephedrine took from China, to Mexico, to the meth pipes of America all transported in Zhenli's back seat

This week we discuss master art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who created paintings to fill the holes of lost work by great artists. Holes that had largely been left after the Nazis destroyed many pieces of artwork during WWII. Find out if he was a genius, or just an egotist, on this week's episode.

This week we discuss one of the craziest stock market manipulations in history. This time we travel to India where Harshad Mehta is the king of the world in the early 90's, and he is trading at ridiculous volumes and has a stranglehold on the market. But his methods are not just unconventional, they're illegal. Listen to discover how it all unfolded.

This week we discuss Bill Mastro, who helped build the multi-million dollar industry of sports memorabilia trading with his auction site Mastro Auctions. However, he also helped to build the massive corruption that lurked behind these sites by cheating the buyers and hawking fake merchandise before eventually striking out.

This week we give you vignettes of healthcare fraud that was uncovered in a sweeping shift by the DOJ to root out these kinds of scams earlier this year. Join as as we discuss unnecessary skin grafts, improper billing codes and so many more things that I swear are more interesting than they sound.

This week we dive into the backstory of one of the lesser talked about US presidents Warren G Harding. We talk about his humble beginnings in journalism, his rise to the presidency, and the scandals that left his legacy tarnished including what was widely considered the worst US political corruption scandal... that is until Richard Nixon set the bar even higher.

This week we discuss the madam at the center of a prostitution ring that serviced the most powerful men of Washington D.C. Learn Jean Palfrey's story about how she built an escort service that prided itself on fulfilling fantasies, and how she was maybe unfairly targeted when the ivory tower dwellers her service catered to got jumpy.

We are so back baby! Did you miss us? We know you did. But life trudges, and one of our hosts moved multiple states so our hiatus between seasons was a little longer than we hoped. Oops. But to make it up to you we have our Season 20 finale all about one of the largest douche bags to profit off of the fallout of 9/11 David H Brooks. Who milked PointBlank Industries, a company who exclusively made bulletproof vests for the armed forces and police, for millions of dollars to personally enrich himself. Come hate him together with us and we can now all do it virtually!

For the season 19 finale we once again talk murder committed by the wealthy. This time we travel to the years leading up to the American Civil War when a congressman shot a man in public, admitted to the crime, showed no remorse, and still lived a long life. How did Daniel Sickles get away with murder? And he introduced who to the queen of England?! All answered in this episode!

This week we sit down to discuss how a broken printer led to a huge hit on a nation's economy when the Bank of Bangladesh was hacked to the tune of $81MM, but it could have been a lot more than that. Find out the circumstances that led to the hack and how the money was cleaned before being shipped to one of the craziest countries out there.

Although not in the top ten data breaches by people affected, the 2017 Equifax Data Breach showed us just how bad data leaking online can be when it comes because a huge corporation pays absolutely zero attention to cybersecurity. Join us this week as we discuss just how royally Equifax messed up, and also a little about the history of credit reporting in general.

This week we discuss disgraced former mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, who for years (encompassing the disaster of Hurricane Katrina) funneled money through backdoor deals into his... rock business. How boring. The rocks... not today's episode... please still listen.

This week we delve into two stories from the history books filed under "The Early 1800s Ridiculous Scams" . First up is the Blanc brothers who used the first telecommunications system to commit the first telecommunications fraud. Then we dive into the truly awful story of Gregor MacGregor who duped all of Europe into buying into a fake South American country.

This week we discuss the Kardashians of the South: The Chrisleys. Starring in the popular reality tv show Chrisley Knows Best, the family led by Todd and Julie Chrisley, were well known for being over the top. But when the cameras were off the big personalities remained, and the family was pulling a lot of shady strings to maintain their wealth.

Today we discuss the largest Ponzi scheme, the largest FBI investigation, and the longest conviction handed down in a White Collar crime... in Indiana. Tim Durham was unapologetically greedy and loved to flaunt his wealth, but when a friend flipped on him the playboy wannabe was about to come crashing back to Earth.

In this weeks fan submitted episode we dive into the sprawling sports complex in Mesa, Arizona now known as Legacy Fields but was once Bell Bank Park. The origin of this complex goes back to a father and son duo who would do anything to get it built including lying their a$$es off.

This week we tackle a German giant in industrial engineering, Siemens (yes there is more than a few jokes about it). Siemens has survived through two world wars on the losing side, and still managed to keep the scandal alive into the early 2000s when the entire company was finally outed for its decades long practice of bribing government officials. Find out all the dirty details in this episode!

This week we discuss Christina Marie Chapman and the scheme she helped perpetuate that brought workers into I.T. positions for U.S. companies. The only issue is that these workers allegedly had stolen identities and were actually taking jobs to steal secrets and funnel money into North Korean weapon's programs.

On this season finale we discuss former millionaire's wife Sante Kimes who along with her son went on a rampage of murder and enslavement that saw them both end up in prison for over 100 years. What led this bad apple to not fall far from the tree? Find out on this week's episode

This week we find out what we are really paying for when we buy a bunch of bananas, The United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands International, has left a bloody history in its wake to being the largest banana provider. They've taken part in massacres, controlled governments, and even toppled some with the help of the CIA. We delve into it all on this week's episode!

This week we talk about Weathervane Productions, a company backed by affluent men with ties to Wells Fargo, which gave them the appearance of reliability. They funded multiple box office participation trophies, but the funding deal they were peddling seemed too good to be true.

I love it when a plan doesn't come together, because it ends with us getting wine tipsy in a relaxed feel episode. This week there wasn't enough info to flesh out an entire episode so we instead talk about the history of wine and some recent scandals surrounding one of the oldest vices known to humanity.

This week we sit down to discuss the story of Tara Lee who ran a private adoption agency. Tara always seemed to be able to match parents to children faster and cheaper than anywhere else, but as prospective parents soon found out, her methods for finding the mothers was seedy at best, and that's if they ever existed in the first place.

This week we learn a little bit about the background of Taiwan, a country that has spent the last century in turmoil, and changing ruling hands twice. Recently there has been a push for their independence and hope was on the horizon with democratic elections, but their second democratically elected president, Chen Shui-bian, proved to be a little more corrupt than they hoped.

This week we cover the mononymous James, who just wanted to sell a time share he no longer used and ended up getting sent on a wild ride of additional scams from a Mexican cartel that cost him almost one million dollars.

This week we talk the largest financial scandal to come out of South Africa: Steinhoff International. What started out as a multinational home furniture retailer who was always playing second fiddle to Ikea, turned into a huge empire with representation in over 30 countries. But behind the scenes Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste was secretly cooking the books, and things were speeding to an unhappy end.

This week we discuss an ongoing story that is developing around the viral sensation Haliey Welch, also known as the Hawk Tuah Girl. Who somehow capitalized on one bj joke and made it to a pretty comfortable position, before seemingly ruining her short career with a rug pull crypto scam.

Welcome to the season 18 premiere! This week we discuss Lou Blonger (I hardly know 'er) who had a stranglehold on Denver during the times of the Wild West into the Roaring 20s. We will discuss how he figureheaded a group of conmen in an organized crime ring that later became known as the Million Dollar Bunco Ring, and how one young DA finally took him down.

In our 17th season finale we discuss a clash of the titans that took place at the turn of the 20th century when coal and transport magnate Harry K Thaw shot famous architect Stanford White on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden in front of countless witnesses. But the real victim was the young woman caught up in the mix, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry's wife.

This week we tackle a recent story featuring a three-hit wonder from the late 2000s in Sean Kingston and a band that never really got started in Lights Over Paris. Although their level of fame achieved was different, they both have now landed in the same place: jail. Find out how on this week's episode.

This week's episode takes a look at the scandal filled presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, who while trying to rebuild the country in the aftermath of the American Civil War found himself fighting off corruption from within on multiple fronts. The largest of which was the Whiskey Ring, a criminal organization with political ties that was stealing millions from the government and was getting a little too close to the Oval Office for comfort.

This week we discuss a Fox-news anchor lookalike and Wish Pitbull Lexie Gehrke and Jeffery King who through pretty blatant Medicare fraud exploited the sick and dying to enrich themselves for almost $1 Billion. Find out how Lexie Pickles got herself into one on this upsetting episode!

This week we dive into this episode's listener submitted episode as we discuss a recent scandal with the Columbus Zoo where three C-suite executives were using the accounts as their personal piggy bank to catch T-Swift on the Eras Tour, and drunkenly watch barely legal men give each other brain damage.

This week we discuss the businessman Norman Shy who did not live up to his last name when he brazenly scammed the Detroit public school system for millions of dollars in a corruption case that runs deep. Find out just how he did it on this week's episode of White Collars, Red Hands.

This week we discuss how Polly Peck Picked a Peck of Pickled Partnerships, a Peck of Pickled Partnerships Polly Peck Picked. If Polly Peck Picked a Peck of Pickled Partnerships, where's the money from the Pickled Partnerships Polly Peck Picked?

This week we discuss Anna Delvey who went from scamming friends and banks out of huge sums to solitary confinement in a maximum security prison to... podcast and television appearances? Find out more about this fake heiress on this week's episode!

This week we discuss a corruption scandal in Turkey that has brought Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and his political party the AKP under fire since its unveiling. A web of corruption allowed a sidestepping of American sanctions against Iran through a golden loophole, that saw 91 high-ranking officials detained with millions in their shoeboxes.