6 Addictive Podcasts About Scammers, Fraudsters, And Catfish

I go mad for a good podcast. I don’t know when I became this person, but discovering an addictive new podcast will radically improve my life quality.

I’ll listen to it every waking hour. I’ll tell all my disinterested friends about it. When it ends, I will grieve before I plunge into a menty b until another podcast piques my interest.

I’ve gone through all the podcast phases — comedy, true crime, dating horror stories — but there’s one topic that I can never get enough of and it had a real moment in 2022: scams. On the back of scammer-inspired TV series like Netflix’s Inventing Anna, Disney’s The Dropout, and Apple’s WeCrashed, stories of people conning their way to the top have never been hotter.

With scammer stories now trendier than ever, the demand has increased which means there are loads of podcasts that have popped up recapping and analysing stories of someone’s deception — whether it was wide-scale fraud, or just someone exploiting their friends and family.

We’ve rounded up some of the best — happy listening!

Here are some addictive podcast about scammers, fraudsters, and catfish that you should jump on asap:

1. Sympathy Pains

From the host of Dr. Death, Laura Beil returns with a six-part series about Sarah Delashmit, a woman who for 20 years told people that she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, and a variety of other illnesses. None of this was true.

Sarah’s con went as far as using a wheelchair to get around and posting selfies from a hospital bed. In another lie, she told friends and coworkers she was trapped in abusive relationships, and she had a child who had died. Sarah’s victims recount their stories of offering this woman support for years before finding out everything she said was fabricated.

Listen here.

2. Twin Flames

If you’ve ever been baffled by the term ‘twin flames’ being bandied around (likely by Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly) then this is the podcast for you. FYI: a twin flame is a step up from a soulmate, so to be another person’s twin flame it  means they’re forged from the same soul.

Still confused? Well, YouTubers Jeff and Shaleia Ayan are a young couple who teach seminars on how to find someone’s twin flame aka a romantic partner created by divine design. While this doesn’t sound too suss, the couple’s tactics to do this were wildly unethical: followers claim they were encouraged to cut ties with their friends and family, and in some cases even switch genders or sexual orientations — they were instructed to employ any means necessary to meet their twin flame.

Have none of these people heard of Tinder?

Listen here.

3. Sweet Bobby

This is the best podcast I’ve listened to in recent memory and I won’t stop telling people about it. If you’re a fan of the movie and TV show, Catfish, then this is right up your alley. Kirat is a successful radio presenter who meets a man on Facebook named Bobby, a handsome cardiologist. They begin a love affair which becomes increasingly complex: Bobby’s relatives get involved, Bobby’s health dwindles, and Bobby becomes increasingly controlling over Kirat’s life. But does Bobby exist?

I won’t spoil it but this six-part podcast is a wild ride from beginning to end.

Listen here.

4. Liar Liar

A fraudster with an Aussie twist, Sydney woman Melissa Caddick was a seemingly successful businesswoman from Sydney who went missing after authorities raided her home amid questions over an unlicensed financial planning business.

An investigation by Sydney Morning Herald investigative journalist Kate McClymont would uncover that Melissa was executing a massive Ponzi scheme and a $23 million fraud to rip off investors, her family, and friends. While embezzling millions, the Sydney woman was living large with overseas trips, luxury cars, and high-end fashion. The podcast seeks to uncover: What happened to the money and what happened to Melissa?

Listen here.

5. Scamfluencers

Unlike the previous podcasts, this Wondery series focuses on a few different scams — it’s perfect for people with shorter attention spans who can only commit to one or two episodes. Every episode, co-hosts Scaachi Koul and Sarah Hagi unpack stories of deception from the worlds of social media, fashion, finance, health, and wellness.

My personal faves are the episodes on the ‘Ballet Lethal Start-Up’, ‘The Hollywood Ponzi Scheme’, and ‘The Yoga Hustler’.

Listen here.

6. Queen of the Con

In an attempt to fit in with an affluent Laguna Beach community, Lizzie Mulder starts to lie about everything.

She pretends to be an accountant so she can swindle every client who hires her and steal their life savings, all while impersonating a slew of compelling characters. Throw in a rumoured extramarital affair with a local cowboy which gets a police detective’s attention, and you’ve got one hell of a tale.

Listen here.