We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the best true crime “scammer” story they’d ever heard, read, or seen. Here are their fascinating responses:
1.
The bold and messy story of Lisette Lee, aka the “Pot Princess of Beverly Hills,” a self-described model-socialite who scammed people into believing she was an heiress to the Samsung corporation (among many other things like being classmates with Paris Hilton, attending Harvard, and dating Leonardo DiCaprio), when in fact, she was actually trafficking thousands of pounds of marijuana across the United States.
2.
The shocking scandal around Sandra Anderson, a well-known trainer of cadaver dogs (yup, dogs who are specially trained to use their sense of smell to locate human remains) who faked evidence, planting bones and using her own body fluids, in cases she worked on.
3.
The truly fascinating story of Doris Payne, aka “Diamond Doris,” a 91-year-old jewel thief who used 22 aliases while stealing millions of dollars worth of jewelry from around the world and was arrested more than 20 times in countries like Greece, France, England, and Switzerland over the course of six decades.
4.
The truly awful story of Belle Gibson, an Australian con artist who lied about having cancer (among many other things) in order to scam people into believing she was a wellness expert.
5.
The unbelievable Simon Leviev, aka the “Tinder Swindler,” drama about an Israeli con artist who allegedly swindled what is believed to be more than $10 million from women around the world. The story was so wild that Netflix actually made a doc about it.
6.
The scandal around Martin Shkreli, aka “Pharma Bro,” who became known for raising prices on the life-saving medication Daraprim (according to the New York Times, “a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection) from $13.50 a tablet to $750 (more than 4,000%) while he was the head of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
7.
The ongoing fraud case of Thomas Girardi, a Los Angeles-based celebrity attorney who appeared in several episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alongside Erika Jayne, who he’s currently in the process of divorcing. Girardi was disbarred in 2022 after accusations of embezzling $15 million in client money, and has since been placed under conservatorship after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
8.
The old story of Charles Ponzi, an Italian con artist active in the United Statues during the 1920s, who became so well known for a particular fraudulent money-making scheme that it would later be called a “Ponzi scheme” (although, for the record, he did not invent the practice).
9.
Speaking of Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff, who masterminded the largest Ponzi scheme in history estimated to be worth roughly $64.8 billion. Madoff, who was a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, ran the decades-long scam that conned many, many people including celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Larry King, Kevin Bacon, and John Malkovich.
10.
The really weird story of Brandon Lee (real name: Brian MacKinnon), a 30-year-old Scottish man who, for a whole year in 1993, enrolled in high school and managed to convince everyone that he was just a regular 17-year-old kid.
11.
The headline-grabbing Sam Bankman-Fried/FTX fraud case, which is currently ongoing. Basically, Bankman-Fried has been accused of defrauding investors in his (now-bankrupt) company FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, causing billions of dollars in losses. At his hearing, Bankman-Fried pled not guilty to criminal charges, while a federal prosecutor at the hearing said, “Customer funds were also used and laundered through political donations, charitable donations, and a variety of venture investments.”
12.
The Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos saga, which saw Holmes rise to the top of Silicon Valley, being named Forbes’ youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the US, then fall after it was revealed Holmes and her company had committed massive fraud.
13.
The story of Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, a popular Instagram influencer from Nigeria who became “one of the most prolific money launderers in the world,” according to the FBI. Abbas basically leveraged his social media clout to run scams and commit crimes. In 2020, he was caught, arrested, and given to the FBI and eventually sentenced to 11 years in prison over his scams in 2022.
14.
And finally, the popularized Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey, story about a young Russian con artist who pretended to be a wealthy heiress in order to be a part of New York’s social and art scenes, and then proceeded to defraud $275,000 out of all kinds of businesses and people.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/scammer-stories