The Crimes Of A Con Artist: 12 Scammer Stories That Will Have You Hooked

1. The Puppet Master: Hunting The Ultimate Conman

Netflix has been on a series roll producing some big documentaries, and they struck gold again with The Puppet Master: Hunting The Ultimate Conman. The three-part documentary is set around the search for the British conman Robert Hendy-Freegard, a man who has managed to conceal his identity and steal money from several victims over 20 years.

Watch as he moves from his job as a car salesman in Shropshire, convincing unsuspecting customers that he was an undercover agent at MI5 to convincing students that they were targets of assassination plots by the IRA. He spent years cutting them off from family and friends and stealing their money.

What’s worse is that he is still at large. Jake and Sophie Clifton have lost their mum to him. He controlled their mum over a series of months and convinced her to leave her family, taking all her money with her. Let’s hope there’s a part 2 where he gets locked up.

Where to watch: Netflix 

Let’s hope there’s a part 2 where he gets locked up.

2. Inventing Anna

Inventing Anna tells the story of Anna Sorokin, or Anna Delvey as she called herself, and how she convinced the elites of New York that she was a multi-millionaire.

Anna is a Russian-German who travelled to the US in 2013. It was there that she decided to create the idea of the “Anna Delvey Foundation”, using the name she had started calling herself a few years earlier. She pitched this to a number of NYC’s wealthiest, including tycoon Aby Rosen and entrepreneur Roo Rogers. Her proposals weren’t very successful however, and so she began applying for a $22 million dollar loan from City National Bank.

Through a number of other scams and fraudulent applications, including staying in luxury hotels like the 11 Howard without paying, Sorokin defrauded around $250,000 out of New York’s elite companies. In the inventing Anna Series, we see this spree being followed by the reporter Vivian Kent, a fictionalised version of the real life journalist, Jessica Pressler, who told her story.

Where to watch: Netflix 

3. Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

Think of the best ever festival the world has to offer. A sort of Glastonbury and Burning Man love child on a desert island. Then think of your local council’s rubbish tip. That’s basically the before and after of Fyre Festival.

The Fyre Festival was a luxury music festival founded by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule in 2017. The festival was meant to be created as a way to promote a music talent booking app for their company Fyre Media – with luxury tents, glamour and a massive party all on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.

To whet people’s appetites, the event was promoted on Insta by a load of models and influencers, including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski – with most of them not disclosing that they were actually paid to promote it.

You can watch how this happy beginning has disastrous consequences, as the team find problems with security, food, accommodation, and, well, basically everything. It’s grippingly good.

Where to watch: Netflix 

Think of your local council’s rubbish tip. That’s basically Fyre Festival.

https://youtu.be/_R3LWM_Vt70

4. The Tinder Swindler

Yes, there’s yet another Netflix documentary to add to the list. And if you haven’t seen it yet, we’re actually wondering where you’ve been all this time. The Twinder Swindler has had everyone making memes and gasping in horror, as conman Simon Leviev (not his real name) swindles women out of millions after matching with them on Tinder.

They think he is a diamond dealer who has “enemies” chasing him down… but he turns out to be a regular nobody.

It’ll make you think twice about the next time you swipe right…

Where to watch: Netflix 

5. The Dropout

The fraud frenzy continues with The Dropout, which follows Elizabeth Holmes, one of the most notorious fraudsters of the 21st century. Find out how the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire lost it all in the blink of an eye.

Elizabeth Holmes was a dropout of Stanford University, and went on to found Theranos, a company dedicated to medical technology. She eventually became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. The company announced that they had created technological methods that would change how blood testing works forever, and allow a single fingerprick to be enough of a sample to search for hundreds of different diseases.

However, investigations showed strong doubts about the claims of the revolutionary technology. As the company began to lose credibility, it attempted to gain trust back in a number of desperate attempts, even going as far as creating a fake lab to show then Vice President Joe Biden as part of a tour.

The series shows Holmes’ rise and fall and how the scandal impacts her relationship with her partner Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews).

Where to watch: Netflix

6. Dirty John

This eight-parter tells the story of Debra Newell, the businesswoman who fell for a charming guy off the internet who, it turns out, was also a highly dangerous con-man. The clean-cut doctor, John Mehan, had served with Médecins Sans Frontières in Iraq, where he’d been wounded by shrapnel, was the perfect match for the self-made millionaire interior designer. He was loving, charming, great with people, funny and he saved lives for a living. Except almost everything he’d told her turned out to be totally untrue. After a whirlwind romance that saw them move in together and marry within weeks, things started to take a dark turn.

John Mehan is controlling, violent, abusive and yet charming and suave. As the series progresses, his previous relationships and experiences are woven into the story, and if you’ve ever internet dated then you’re going to start having nightmares.

The kicker is that everything’s totally true. Knowing that all this really happened makes it all the more chilling, and all the more fun Googling the story afterwards.

Your work day is around 8 hours long, right? So slip on some headphones, pop Netflix up on your phone and binge watch this series right now, at your desk.

Where to watch it: Netflix

7. The Serpent

The BBC’s The Serpent is a crime drama miniseries following the murders conducted by serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Set during the mid 1970s, it documents the unanswered murders of twelve Western backpackers across Thailand and Nepal. Alongside the glamorous outfits, get swept along with the glamour of this decade until things go awry. Drugs, false deals and stolen passports leave a load of backpackers in dire straights. And it’s sadly all true.

Where to watch it: Netflix

8. The Imposter

This BAFTA-award-winning film shows the tale of a French con artist who tricks a family in Texas into believing he is their long-lost child. The film is based on interview footage of the con artist himself, Frederic Bourdin, a seemingly likeable character, who was wanted by Interpol for his extensive record of identity thefts of missing minors across Europe.

The film is made up of poignant scenes of the family’s hometown in Texas, and chilling home footage of the still-missing Nicholas Barclay. It’ll leave shivers down your spine.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

9. Catfish

Catfish is one of the first series that started off the con-artist trend of documentaries. The film follows Nev Schulman, a New York-based photographer and documentarist. Nev one day receives a painting of one of his photos sent over by eight-year-old Abby, a young painter extraordinaire, living in Michigan. By sending back a simple message of thanks via Facebook, he embarks on a stream of social media correspondence with Abby and her mysterious, wildly talented, and not-so-humble family.

What follows is a journey of false hope and deception, not only to Nev but many others too.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

Catfish is one of the first series that started off the con-artist trend of documentaries.

10. Hustlers

One thing’s for sure – J.Lo knows how to hustle. she stars in this film that’s based on the true story of Lorene Scafaria. It tells of how a group of strippers managed to fleece their rich Wall Street clients through a combination of seduction, drugs and embarrassment. It all happens against the backdrop of the economic crash in the 2000s and the financial differences it created, especially for working-class women.

While these women take out a sort of sleazy justice – it also leads to dire consequences.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

11. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant are almost unrecognisable in this Oscar-nominated flick. Melissa takes up the main role as Lee Israel, an impoverished writer who made money through literary fraud, faking letters and signatures from the likes of Noel Coward and Ernest Hemingway. While the con-artist aspect is pretty bad, it also illuminates how much Lee was driven to desperate lengths through unavoidable poverty.

Where to watch it: Disney +

12. Catch Me If You Can

This addictive movie has all the glamour of the 60s, the beautiful women, the charm and of course… all the scamming. Directed by Steven Spielberg, this film sees Leonardo DiCaprio star as Frank Abagnale Jr., a man who claimed to have impersonated a doctor, lawyer and a pilot all while being pursued by the FBI. While he admits that he made up a few of these lies, it still makes great watching…

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime