July 27, 2026 • 37 mins
In honor of our newest podcast, Royal Swindle, this week’s hometowns are scam-themed. Stories include a 19-year-old fake doctor and an Arabian horse pyramid scheme.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite to my favorite murder,
the minisode.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And this week we have a very special themed episode
for you. We're celebrating exactly Wright's brand new limited series podcast,
Royal Swindle. It premiered on Thursday, July twenty third.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And Royal Swindle tells the story of two fabulously wealthy
Australian women who charmed their way into British high societies
in the nineteen nineties. But behind all the glamorer and
country houses, these women are hiding a dark past, some
very bad intentions, and a truly wild con.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So in honor of our new show, Royal Swindle, we
are going to be reading all scammer emails.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
This is my favorite theme.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Let's just change the minisodes to all scammers because I
couldn't stop laughing.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
There are many podcasts would have a problem with us.
I true, we really got into that space. Wohl, Do
you want to go first?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Sure? Do it?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Okay, here's a hotel scam story from the employee perspective. Hi.
I'll admit I'm not a day one listener, but I
have been listening for a long time, to the point
where my husband mentioned my love of that Murder Podcast
in our wedding boughs my God and had been waiting
for the day i'd have something to write in. I
(01:31):
just listened to the recent episode about Anna Delvy and
cackled at the part where you mentioned all of the
hotel staff fighting to.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Take care of her because she tipped so well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Because me and my fellow employees did that once with
a woman who turned out to be scamming the hotel. Yes, well,
not the hotel directly, but I'll explain. About ten years ago,
I was working at a restaurant that was attached to
a hotel. One day, this lady started calling in for
room service and tipped at least twenty bucks every time
you brought her something, regardless of how much or how
little you brought. We all noticed because we were a
(02:01):
money hungry little monsters, and people started fighting over who
got to take care of her, like to the point
people would stand by their room surface phone just waiting
for her to call smart I mean.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And also, have you ever stated at a hotel where
it felt like someone was standing directly by the room
service phone like, Oh, I didn't think I wasn't ready
to order my life.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I don't know what I want.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Day two or three of her stay, her daughter came
with her kids to stay with her. They told us
the daughter got rich recently when she quote fell into
a job selling private airplanes. I know, I know, it's ridiculous.
I can't believe we fell for it. But anyways, look
just really quick.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, because there's a lot of people who fly on
private airplanes, so they don't own the plane.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But it seems like the daughter sold those planes to
the rich people.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yes, I'm just saying hard job because there's not that
many who can actually be like right, no, no, no,
we don't just want to rent the plane for this
one trip for an egregious amount of money.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
It's a very specialized field. Probably, yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
By day six or seven, one of the restaurant managers
got suspicious and told the hotel manager they should run
her credit card and make sure.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It was valid.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I assume this is normal practice when someone hits a
certain dollar point, but I don't know. They ran the
card and it went through, but my manager had a
bad feeling and said the hotel manager should call the
credit card company to have them reach out to the
person who held the account to make sure it was
the lady putting charges on the card, so not shockingly,
it was a gender neutral name, so we hadn't questioned.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It turns out.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
This lady had met a man at a bar across
the street and they decided they wanted to do a
little horizontal tangoing and got a hotel room. The next morning,
the guy left, but he never checked out of the hotel.
As a walk in, there was no checkout date on file,
so the room just kept charging the card.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I have I walk out all the time. I didn't
know you had to check out.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I mean these days you usually don't, right, like they're
gonna kick you out at eleven no matter what. Yeah,
that's right, And you can't charge anything after the time
you're kicked out.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
You know that you could. I guess you could, though,
well I don't know. I am maybe not. I thought
we had solved it.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I thought we were done with this, and then that's
why I'm roading this one. Apparently this lady waited around
for checkout, and when no one came knocking, she decided
to stay.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She is a scammer.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
She got a week long all expenses paid vacate on
this guy's dime, and he didn't have a clue until
the credit card company called him. She ended up racking
around four thousand dollars between the room, food, and booze,
and they wouldn't reverse the charges because they made it
clear when he checked in that he would also need
to check out.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Anyways, turned out the lady had a warrant for her
arrest for check fraud, so the cops asked the hotel
manager to keep it quiet until they got there so
they could arrest her. She invited her daughter and grandchildren.
Like her daughter who sold planes, she said, you've got
to get over here. I have a free fucking room.
Let's have a vacation.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Do you think the daughter really does sell planes or
do you think they were making up jobs.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I think they were like, try to sound rich, and
then she's like, I don't know what a rich people
do sell fucking private play You.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Know how rich people fly on private planes?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
I sell my someone's got to sell them.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We watched from the parking lot as they took her away,
and I got to say a lot of us were
feeling bad for her. The guy had to press charges
and would need to take her to court to get
his money back, but don't feel bad for him. He
told the hotel he wanted to handle it privately because
he was mar because he didn't.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Want to have to tell his wife. She'll have to
I know.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So the moral of the story is, don't cheat on
your wife and always make sure you check out of
your hotel room.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
My best friend and I write your Chicago show in
November and had an amazing time. We met a bunch
of girls at the show who were freaking awesome and
we ended up going out to a couple of bars
with them after bonding over the love of all things
true crime. Love you all so much. Thank you for
all the laughs and comfort you've brought every one of
us listeners.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Laura, Thanks Laura, Thank you Laura. That was a great story.
That is like you just never know what someone else
is fucking enough to.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Also, I think all those ways that we can like
close and lock the door behind us technologically is like, yes,
why don't I take three minutes and check out of
a hotel?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
We're very spoiled. Okay, here's my first one.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
The subject line is nineteen year old fake doctor and
it's not our guy.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A lot of these scammers are people like this is
what I did. It's not like other people scamming.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
It's so good. They're like they're confessing on themselves.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yes, and it's fun because it's like listen everybody. I
think when you're young, you like tell yourself I'm bad
if you do a bad thing. It's like everyone's bad
and everyone's good. Everybody gets into these situations like I'm
not saying please don't steal.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Money, saying please steal money from people. Oh, I mean
like it's just the opposite though.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It's like you when you're young, you have your experiences
with that and then you feel the extreme self revulsion
after you do it, like, oh, I guess I'm I
guess I'm a bad person.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That just means you're human, And it's a good sign
if you are like a little bit guilty that you
did something shitty.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, that's a good sign. But yeah, pay people back
and say sorry. Somebody calls in Karen stole twenty dollars
out of my purse, Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But she said sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
But she said sorry fifty years later, Hi Karen and
Georgia and all the amazing people at exactly right heart
shape heart emoji sorry heart shaped emoji.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
It's shaped like a heart.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I've been a Day one listener since February of twenty twenty,
oh the dark days when I discovered your show and
immediately went back to listen from the very beginning. It
took me about six months to catch up, and during
the time you were with me through COVID, buying my
first house, getting divorced and selling that same house, meeting
the love of my life, and having our son, who
somehow is already.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Two years old. Oh wow, quite an arc.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Thank you for being there through so many of the
base moments of my life, all the highs and lows
in between. I'm from Denmark and English is not my
first language, so please excuse any errors.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Grammar.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, there's the first one airs grammar.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Did you highlight the should highlight circle? That will send
it back to her in red errors.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Grammar okay, it says more specifically, they're from a town
in the suburbs of Copenhagen called.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You got it vitrov h vitrov. But look at the
way it's spelled h v Yeah, that sounds right, oh vitrovra.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, I'm kind of The story I'm about to tell
you is a true hometown story for me. In the
summer of twenty nineteen, a nineteen year old man walked
into Vitro for hospital just outside Copenhagen where now I'm
mispronouncing Copenhagen, wearing a white lab coat and claiming to
be a medical student. For about a month, he moved
between hospital departments, examined patients, wrote medical records, and even
(08:36):
prescribed medication, despite having no medical training at all. Doctors, nurses, patients,
and families all believed he belonged there. Yeah, why tall,
white blonde one of his patients. All they have in
cop that's true flavor, then is what's the where's the privilege?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Where's the prejudice?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
One of his patients was a six month old baby girl.
He examined her, prescribed medication and sent her home when
she didn't improve, Her parents' return to the hospital a
few days later, where a real doctor diagnosed her with
pneumonia and treated her successfully. Things got even weirder. One
day he walked up to an ambulance parked outside the
hospital and told the EMTs, we have to leave right now.
(09:17):
There's been a hanging. As you can imagine, that's never
how an ambulance is sent to an emergency.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
The doctor runs.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Down with a note let's go, that always comes through
the emergency dispatch center. When the EMTs didn't react to
the guy's orders, he walked off. The EMTs went in
and sounded the alarm, and the next time the guy
showed up at the hospital he was arrested for suspicion
of fraud. He went on to be investigated, tried, and
later convicted. During the trial, it was revealed how he
(09:48):
was not a medical student. In fact, he had not
made it into med school that year. He just really
badly wanted to be a doctor. It had been his
lifelong dream.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Okay, was my lifelong dream. But not enough to try.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Not enough to study well enough to pass tests or
be a good doctor. I just want to do it,
and I don't care how good or bad I am
at it.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
I feel like that way about podcasting. Yeah, just get
it done.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I just want to do it, and if people die,
they die. He was convicted of impersonating a medical professional
and practicing medicine without authorization. Because he received a relatively
short sentence, Danish media have never published his identity due
to a court ordered reporting restriction. And Danish press ethics
surrounding criminal cases with short sentences.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
They're so fair there, I mean, they're they're doing it right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
His sentence you ask thirty days of suspended imprisonment and
forty hours of community service. He walked out of court
a freeman. What's that community service? Shopping stay away from
the blood drive? And that's somehow not the craziest part
of the story.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
We're not there yet.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
The following year, he was admitted to medical school.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Really like fair and square. He isn't pretending anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
He's actually studying medicine and could eventually graduate and work
as a physician in Denmark. Well guess what, And maybe
this is I'm saying this from the luxury of being
in America and not in Denmark.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
He really wanted it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
He's gonna be bet or not. He's either going to
be the best doctor ever or the worst one, and
we won't know because they didn't give his name. I
feel like an impersonation case, we should have the name
of the impersonator for future reference.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I mean, at least could the hospital administrator have the
name of the impersonator, just so they know where they're standing.
Did he go back to the same. Well, let me finish,
I won't guess, I'll just read. Danish universities do not
require applicants to submit a criminal record certificate. By the
time he applies for employment as a doctor. The conviction
may no longer appear on his criminal record, depending on
(11:48):
the applicable disclosure rules and how much time has passed.
That means the families he deceived, including the parents of
that baby, could theoretically one day meet him again, this
time with him wearing the white legally, that's crazy. The
whole story has sparked years of debate here in Denmark,
not only about his actions, but about hospital security, accountability, rehabilitation,
(12:09):
and whether some professions should have stricter background checks than
they currently do.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, because also, like, if he had been an actual
doctor and had been like lying about what he knew,
he would have been disbarred, but instead he's allowed to
go on to be a doctor.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
It just feels like he's a scammer.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
He should be he that would be so wrong of
him to do as a doctor that he would not
be able to be a lawyer, right because he's disbarred.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
No, I know what you mean, disbarred to medicine.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
But whatever, No, you're completely right. And also it's the
ethical thing of like do you want a person that's
working on you that's like, well, if I can cheat
and scam my way through whatever we're doing, let's do
that way.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It should be their.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Choice, the persons.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yes, the lawyer's lawyer doctor.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Okay, so it says it's one of these stories that
sounds like catch me if you can, until you realize
it happened in a pediatric word. Thank you for an
amazing show and for being some really cool older sisters, cousins,
aunties sharing important stories with me and all your listeners.
What you do is important and significant to all of us.
And that's someone in Denmark. Wow, they don't like anybody.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
S stgo just kidding. I don't know what they do
in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
S SDGM, yasmin or, yasmine and ps. If you ever
come to Denmark, please let me know. I'd love to
go to a show or be your tour guide.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Love it. And we go to that hospital first and we.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
All wear different white coats and see who can get
the furthest yes into the staff.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
It's you, like, I don't even have to could I
do it.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'll get far into the cafeteria, gat a bunch of
free food.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
But you could be a lunch lady with all your
pastor here's me as a doctor, a newly od this.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yes, I'll take the temperature. I'm kind of a new
kind of hot flash. That's Oh, my scalp.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Is hot flash. Only get the air. Get two hats
some air. Look what I have for my purse.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Two's a beanie girl.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Slay all day, sweat all day. That's so cute and small.
Yeah I want it. Yeah, I really like it. You
can have it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
This can just be the standing hot flash fan. Yes, absolutely,
just to let people know and maybe it was start
bringing up like a graphic that's like hot flash blinking
on the bottom. And then you can call in if
we're having a hot flash. You can call the eight
hundred number and win and win a bunch of tiger ball,
and then you can see what it feels like to
be a lady.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Fuck you as a rage. There's the rage and brain fogs.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Okay, I am not stupid, and neither are you. Red
flag alert so this is a real one, uh, like
a warning one, which is so great. Georgia and Karen formal.
I am writing to you with tears still in my
eyes after being the victim of falling victim to I
don't like that at all, as it puts the power
in the hands of the wrong doers. So being the
(15:14):
unwitting participant of a scam, I hope that by sharing
I can help other people pleasers from going through what.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I just went through for the last three hours. Oh God,
we got We had one in Italy, a scammer.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
We Vince got a text saying because we drove, we
got a car and drove that he had a ticket and.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
He went to pay it. They don't do it like that.
They don't text you about your chicks, they won't personally
text you.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I'm surprised, missus. He just wanted to take care of
business and yeah he's yeah, he's so okay.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I've received a phone call this afternoon from a police
officer who proceeded to spell his name and give me
his badge number after I specifically asked regarding my failure
to show up to jury selections several months ago, I
was given two citation numbers and two separate fines. Being
the aforementioned people pleaser, I was terrified of getting in trouble.
So I immediately said, I'm so sorry. I must have
(16:03):
missed the notice. Now, to be clear, I actually did
get a notice and I did not attend the selection
full Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's wrong, and I knew it was wrong. But insert
excuses here.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Alas here we are so you might understand that when
the officer brought that up.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I thought, fuck, I've been caught.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
He proceeded to provide instruction the one out of every
ten person, I mean more than that, probably.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I would say seven out of ten people. That's all
people do is try to get out of jury duty.
Carylan's like us, where they're just like, let me get
down there.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So fun, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He proceeded to provide instruction that I was not to
get off the phone with him. Red flag number one.
Write a couple of these. I read, don't hang up
the phone, or we're coming for you.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, they said, yeah, the people that are from jury duty, right,
don't hang up the phone. This is the most important
way we're going to communicate.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, we can't call you back.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, and that if I did, I would have a
warrant issued for my arrest.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Civil disruption. That's fucking scary.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Secondly, I must immediately pay two hundred and fifty dollars
per citation in cash, and then it says my cheeks
start to read in yes, flag number two. Then I
must stay online while I drive to the sheriff's office,
which I didn't get to because I was instructed to
pull over and complete the transaction over the phone. Yes
a flag, to sign a document noting that I agreed
(17:25):
to pay the fee. So you pay the fee, and
then they're like, but go to the sheriff's office. That
seems legit, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
They're they're sending you to the place where they would
never want you to be to talk about what's actually happening.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Totally. Now you ask why did I not run away?
Why did I not hang up? And then it says,
in all caps, why did I pay them from the
cash app? Then my Apple pay in access in excess
of one thousand dollars after they couldn't accept the funds
because and here's the no surprise.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Kicker, I was scared.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, I am, with the above exception, law abiding citizen.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I don't think you could call you as all that,
but that's how they get you. You're guilty. Yeah, no,
you did bad. You're not one of those people that
doesn't care. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I have three kids and I teach them right and wrong,
and I knew that I had done wrong. These scammers
preyed upon that and held me hostage on the phone,
and I went with it, too afraid to be arrested
in front of my family, too afraid to have a record,
too afraid to get in trouble. Yes, I was lucky
in my bank did alert me to the fraud, which,
when I said out loud, the officer told me it
(18:30):
was because it was the first time I'd used the app,
and I believed him because it was. I ended up
driving to the bank with the ill advised intent to
transfer funds from them to law enforcement directly. However, when
I walked in the doors the bank, it dawned on
me and my husband, whom I with whom I was texting,
that this was no real deal. And I said, still
(18:50):
on the phone with them.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Can I speak to the sheriff. She's still on the
phone with them.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, going to transfer funds because none of the other
apps worked.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
They all worked.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, it's thousands of dollars like vince when he put
its credit card, none of them would work.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The credit cards accept that one entering information and passwords
immediately cancel all his cards.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I know. And when they put me on hold, I
told a bank employee, I think I'm actively being scammed,
and they hung up. I write this as someone who
listens to you ladies on a weekly basis and has
for years. I am a woman of a certain age you,
and consider myself that's them.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Ew you ew oh, I thought she said I'm a
woman of a certain age.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
You.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I mean, I guess we all are either way, and
consider myself reasonably informed. We watch true crime docu series
featuring regular people, listen to podcasts, et cetera with people
who might have known better. And I'm here to tell
you that these scammers are professionals. They know they're demographic,
They are smart, they have a narrative in place, And
though I hope you never find yourself crying at the
(19:55):
bank after believing that a law enforcement officer has contacted
you and you might be arrested non compliance, you are
actually all good. These people are relentless. I want to
share the scam, which I'm sure happens all too often,
but also remind those that they have participated with regret
that you are not at fault. These people are skilled
(20:15):
con artists. They know the game and put you in
as an unwitting player. I would advise myself and anyone
else to tell such a caller thank you for letting
me know.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I will be in touch.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It is always okay to trust and verify. I hope
that you read this and others learn that shit happens
to good people. Fuck politeness and always get a callback number.
S Yeah, but even the callback number, right.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Even the callback number. But here's the thing that just
popped into my head is you can also do the
thing anytime anyone's rushing you. You know, that's an element
of it. Rushing is a big thing. But you can
just do a thing where you talk as if you're
normally talking and hang up on yourself mid sentence and
it looks like you got cut off. Then you see
what they do because they can't blame you for getting
cut off, you didn't know whatever. And then it's like
(21:00):
and then are they calling you back?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Crazy?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Is it like?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Whatever? Also?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I think, and I could completely be wrong. So maybe
there are people who like work at county offices.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Who know.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I think, isn't it when you have to pay stuff
like that? It's like check own.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, there's no way it'll ever be cash or like
never cash only, cash only or even an app.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I can't like what if they were like cash only
or any weed you have or just like this seems fake.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
But okay, i'm McDonald's coupon the Christmas book.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh yeah, legend. Okay, that was amazing and great, great,
like takeaway for everybody.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
The subject line of this email is my grandma helped
expose a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
In the eighties.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Wow, all the things I love greeting's MFM gang. My
girlfriend has been bugging me to write this email since
we went out to dinner with my grandmother several months ago,
but now we finally have a free moment to write it,
so here you go. My dad's mom, Sylvia, is a
very Southern lady. During the eighties, was a badass single
mother of five living in Charlotte, North Carolina. A single
(22:04):
mother of five, a living saint at the time, she
was working as the sales manager for the local Sheraton hotel,
and she was really good at her job. I mean
she was like the top producing sales manager in the
whole country. So when the people at the top saw this,
they offered her a new position as the national sales
manager without a raise. And then in parentheses it says,
(22:25):
fuck you, corporate.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Sexism, offering you a new position. It's a higher position.
You can't say no.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
No raise, right because they're like, you can take the
position right at.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
What a time in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Later that month, she was at a social event and
was approached by a man named Thomas McColgan, who offered
her a job at his company that paid way more
than she was already making. The company was called IBC
Arabian Investments, and it was a company that allowed people
to purchase Arabian horses in full, so like when the
horse was pregnant as stock.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
After the baby.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Horses were born and several years old, they could be
sold again as a return on the initial investment. The
selling point to this idea was that people invested in
small groups about ten people, so a share was only
one tenth of the price. So it's like a probical
time time shares. Yeah, a horse time.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Share, Okay, sounds legit.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I want the hair and I want his main This
scheme was largely targeting middle class people who would not
normally invest in something like Arabian.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Horses among us.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I mean, so, my grandmother agreed to work for him,
and over the course of a year, traveled all around
the Western United States. She stayed in condos in Las Vegas,
went to Exotic horse auctions and Flagstaff, Arizona, and even
once flew with my dad and aunt to California on
company money. Thomas McColgan had been paying Price Waterhouse to
do the corporate taxes for IBC Arabian. When he presented
(23:56):
the business plan to the potential investors, he had to
show them the financials of his business so the investors
could see that what they were getting into. Once, while
she was in Las Vegas shooting a commercial for IBC
with Wayne Newton and then just a bunch of question
marks and exclamation points, my grandma received a call from
her coworker back in Charlotte. Her coworker had said that
(24:17):
Thomas asked her to go all around Charlotte and look
for a typeface font that matched that of Price Waterhouse.
Thomas McColgan was forging financial documents to show to his
investors to get money. It was later found out that
he actually used money from investors to buy more horses.
Very illegal because that money is not supposed to be
touched for years. Yes, that's the classic Ponzi scheme. When
(24:39):
my grandma found out about all of this, she immediately
left the video.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Shoot, wow, hee, Swayne, this is bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know it.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Even you Wayne Newton can't keep me here.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Shame on you, Wayne, This is god. How much were
they paying Wayne Newton?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
I mean just to come on and be like that
guy was amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, anytime he showed it commercial athough, I guess it
didn't get.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Do you lack Arabian horses?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And maybe I'm thinking of who's the guy from the
morning show? I'm thinking of Richess Philbin.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I'm so sorry. Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So she flew back to North Carolina on her own money,
so Thomas did not see that. She bought a plane
ticket back.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Very smart.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
She called Price Waterhouse and set up a discreete meeting
and a hotel lobby in Charlotte. When she told the
person she met with about what she heard, they said
that Thomas was about to get in big trouble. My
grandma did not testify in court because she was only
involved in the sales part of the business. Thomas McColgan
was found guilty of securities fraud, and my grandma has
not heard from him since. She described him as an
(25:36):
egomaniac and a stupid, greedy man. My grandma went on
to work for the state of North Carolina, fighting for
women's rights and even helping write new legislation on.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Sexual assault laws. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Needless to say, my grandmother is a badass, powerful, caring
woman and I love her and all of her stories
so much. I mean incredible, say sexy, and don't invest
in horses because it's probably a pyramid scheme, burt.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Okay, but what happened to the Arabian ponies?
Speaker 2 (26:02):
They're just trotting around looking for investors.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Ah, so sad, so sad. Wayne Newton's just like, what
are we doing?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
One little foal has a PowerPoint presentation. Come on, believe
in us invest.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Okay, here's my last one.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Uh, I was a preteen con artist. Hey, ladies, this
story has everything. A trash mom, a mystery, an inappropriate joke.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So let's get started.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Hell.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yes, the year is nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And my mother decided the perfect family vacation for my
brother ten and me twelve would be a.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Trip to Vegas. I've been there as a child. But why,
you might ask.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
While her living boyfriend at the time loved to gamble
Wayne Newton, the movie Casino had just come out, and
he was obsessed to the point that he had bought
a roll out craps table to play at home.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Oh, red Flag everybody.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Like he likes Rubert de Niro teaching these children how
a gamble. Cassina is an amazing movie, though, because Don
Rickles plays a pretty big party and it's so good,
great outtakes.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So yeah, my mom booked her boyfriend's dream vacation and
dragged my brother and I along. Oh, single mom's boyfriends.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
You just don't really get over it, Yeah, because your
mom's forced into a bit of a pickmy situation that
like you just subconsciously understand but don't actually understand.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Remember, every single one update this relationship did not scand
the test of time, no what, I still see the
trip through my jerk twelve year old eyes. I get
it so much more now that I have a twelve
year old daughter of my own. But I have to
admit we had a good time. My mom did a
great job of finding a kid friendly fun Vegas had
to offer. Plus we ate a buffett and got a
(27:50):
swim a ton a kid's dream, It's all that mattered.
It really was a fun place to be when you
were a kid. It's like, this is sketchy as fuck
and I love it. And those just meet all these
fucking like free range kids.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yes, his parents are like also his parents, I mean,
what a mix. Pretty great.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
One of my favorite memories is when my mother let
my brother and I walk the Strip alone at night
while they gambled the nineties.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Man Jesus, well, they had each other. I think I've
heard that before. They're getting little with each other.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
They're getting those sex pamphlets from the guys that are
wo definitely thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
So my mother had scheduled for my brother and I
had to fly back a few days early so she
could have a lone time with her boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Ew.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I mean, letting us one to the city streets while
she gambled in the casino had to have been.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Stressful, one would hope.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Anyway, So my brother and I flew on our own,
with the plan being that my dad would pick us
up at the airport back home. The flight was pretty
uneventful and tallwey landed. While we were sitting and waiting
to get off the plane, I checked to make sure
that the twenty three dollars I had left from my
trip spending money was still in my purse, only to find.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
It was done, done done. Missing in that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Amount of money might not seem like a big deal,
but that's forty four dollars and thirty two cents in
today's moolah.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Well done, well done.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
And I was twelve, it might as well have been
forty four thousand dollars. So I proceeded to lose my shit, sobbing, snotting, hyperventilating.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But the worst part I.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Refused to get off the plane until the money was found.
The stewardess says, we're literally begging me to do plane,
and I just simply would not guess.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
That was until the pilot came out to see what
was going on.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Once he heard the story, he pulled out a crisp
twenty dollars bill and put it in my psychotic little
tween hand. I magically calmed after that and made my
way off the plane.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It's like, I'll give you twenty bucks to get the
hell out.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
We're trying to fucking go home to war families.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We have fifty two more flights rights today.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
From there, we were escorted by the airport employee over
to my dad waiting for us outside the terminal. The
employee looked at me and asked, is this your dad? Well,
apparently I was riding high on the mayhem. I just
called from the plane because I looked at her and
dryly joked, I've never seen this man before in my life.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
She's got a cigarette, she's picked it up in Vegas,
and then she's got her the twenty tech behind her ear.
And she looked shocked.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
My dad looked pissed, and I just stood there laughing hysterically.
I've never seen this man a day in my life.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Also punish the dad for letting him. Let the mother
take you to vagil.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
All of it.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Eventually, the whole thing was sorted out and we headed
off home with my still fuming dad. You might wonder
what happened to that twenty three dollars that somehow went missing.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Well, on the drive back.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
From the airport, I thought to unzip the little inside
pocket of my spree purse, only to find my not
so missing money safely hidden inside. That's right, I caught
that pilot out of a fresh twenty dollars and almost
doubled my money.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Jack pot question mark, question mark question mark.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
They really absorbed something in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
They knew how to do it.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Well, keep doing, but you're doing it every way. I'm
a thoroughly medicated and therapized person. I appreciate all of
the light you shine on mental health. Without help, I
might still be throwing bits on planes. We can't have that.
Maybe I'll write in some stories about my mom next.
She may have been a nineties trash mom, but she
was also a criminal attorney for forty years. Is that
(31:22):
how she met this gambling boyfriend?
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Really, I could have sworn the boyfriend stole the money
out of the little kid's perse, right. I'm like, that's
kind of the dirt baggiest way to end it, right,
It's so fun.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Gail has seen some shit.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Love to you all, Stay sexy, and what happens on
a plane from Vegas doesn't count.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Kate with the.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Sea incredible, Kate, God damn, someone will give me twenty dollars.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Is a big sister move too. Yeah, although I could
see a little sister doing it.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I mean, it's just gutsy and then she got her money. Okay,
here's my last one. Kind of similar. The subject line
of this email is the Devil's Child and it says, hey,
badass bitches and Stephen. When I was five years old,
a Jiffy Mart opened in our tiny town, not far
from our house, and it created quite the impression on me.
(32:09):
If you're not familiar with them, a Jiffy Mart is
just a convenience store, so not really that exciting, but
to a five year old candy obsessed me, it was everything.
We only went one time to check it out, and
my mom let me purchase a package of six lits,
little round candy coated balls with chocolate.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Have you ever had a six lit? I can't think
I have. It was like the.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Hydrocks to Eminem's Boreo, so they were around, but they
were basically Eminems. And also the package was like a
little tube.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
This is interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Inferior to Eminem's for sure, but again I was five.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well after I had that bag of chocolate to dip
red dye number five treasures. They were all I could
think about. How on earth would I ever get the
money to get more? And then I had it, the brilliant,
fool proof plan to go door to door in my
neighborhood telling people my little brother was sick and we
needed money.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
For Oh my god, it's like a Facebook scam.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Before there's Facebook.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yep, there's a living, five year old GoFundMe scam.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
What's wrong with that plan? Nothing in the child's mind.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I'm going to take this to the neighborhood and see
if they want me to have six lips, because I
think they do, and or my brother to get better. Okay,
And then it says yep, I was a five year
old drifter. Shockingly, no one was taking the bait. They'd
simply look at me strangely and say go home. Then
I came to her house, the weirdo church lady at
the end of the block. I didn't know much about her,
(33:32):
but I knew church people loved to do things for others,
so I forged head. After my little spiel, she felt
so terrible for me that she cleaned out her change
purse and I traped home hands brimming with coins.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Feels so good.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I wasn't stupid enough to let my mom know what
I had done, so I did what any five year
old would do. I hid behind the chair in the
living room to count the money. Almost immediately my mom
was on to me. I guess watching me sneak behind
a piece of her mature and the sound of clinking
coins was.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
A dead giveaway. Where did you get that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
She asked me. I've had it, I said, unconvincingly. Within
minutes she had the whole story out of me, And
because we were also church people, I was told I
had to return the money, apologize, and tell the woman
what I had done. You do so my mom drove
me to the end of the block and made me
get out by myself, all caps. I trembled my way
(34:24):
to the door, and when she answered, I blubbered and
cried and apologized and admitted my lie. Church lady's eyes
flared with anger, and instead of the pat on my
head I expected, I was met with this, you little liar,
You're the devil's child and you're going to help on
what she've done.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
My god, it's.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like every nun in my grammar school. And then she
slammed the door in my tiny face sobbing. I turned
to my mother, who was still in the car, and
showed her the money and shrugged, like what do I
do now?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
She didn't take the money, No, she's okay.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Screaming at her, she yelled at me to leave it
on the porch, and when I got back in the car,
I told her what the woman said, in shock herself.
My mom took me home and got on the phone
with my grandmother to tell her about the escapade.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
While they laughed and laughed.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Confused and traumatized, I tried to find the humor in
it too.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Stay sexy and don't scam your neighbors, A she her.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I was hoping she'd somehow get the sixth and what
are they called cic lit?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Six lilits like s get.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Sicklets out of it, like her mom would feel bad
that she got screamed at by a psychotic woman.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
If it was twenty twenty six, they'd get on like TikTok,
and then six lits would be like, where, don't worry,
we got you covered.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
There'd be a ring, doorbell, camera, the whole fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
But this instead, this one's like maybe I am a devil?
Child and carries that into adulthood.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
And comes a total goth.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, thank god, another goth is made. Thankfully, Well, that
was our scam show. Let's ready to celebrate Royal Swindle.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Let's read the ending. Royal Swindle is out now.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
New episodes will be released weekly on Thursday, and please
follow Royal Swindle now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
From Blanchard House, Exactly Right Media and USD Audio.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
It's the rom.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Con of the summery. It's Royal Swindle. Stay sexy and
don't get murdered.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie? This has been
an Exactly Right production.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Our editor is Aristotle asce Vedo.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
the remind Me buttons. That's the best way you can
support our show.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Goodbye,
Hello, and welcome to my favorite to my favorite murder,
the minisode.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And this week we have a very special themed episode
for you. We're celebrating exactly Wright's brand new limited series podcast,
Royal Swindle. It premiered on Thursday, July twenty third.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And Royal Swindle tells the story of two fabulously wealthy
Australian women who charmed their way into British high societies
in the nineteen nineties. But behind all the glamorer and
country houses, these women are hiding a dark past, some
very bad intentions, and a truly wild con.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So in honor of our new show, Royal Swindle, we
are going to be reading all scammer emails.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
This is my favorite theme.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Let's just change the minisodes to all scammers because I
couldn't stop laughing.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
There are many podcasts would have a problem with us.
I true, we really got into that space. Wohl, Do
you want to go first?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Sure? Do it?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Okay, here's a hotel scam story from the employee perspective. Hi.
I'll admit I'm not a day one listener, but I
have been listening for a long time, to the point
where my husband mentioned my love of that Murder Podcast
in our wedding boughs my God and had been waiting
for the day i'd have something to write in. I
(01:31):
just listened to the recent episode about Anna Delvy and
cackled at the part where you mentioned all of the
hotel staff fighting to.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Take care of her because she tipped so well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Because me and my fellow employees did that once with
a woman who turned out to be scamming the hotel. Yes, well,
not the hotel directly, but I'll explain. About ten years ago,
I was working at a restaurant that was attached to
a hotel. One day, this lady started calling in for
room service and tipped at least twenty bucks every time
you brought her something, regardless of how much or how
little you brought. We all noticed because we were a
(02:01):
money hungry little monsters, and people started fighting over who
got to take care of her, like to the point
people would stand by their room surface phone just waiting
for her to call smart I mean.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And also, have you ever stated at a hotel where
it felt like someone was standing directly by the room
service phone like, Oh, I didn't think I wasn't ready
to order my life.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I don't know what I want.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Day two or three of her stay, her daughter came
with her kids to stay with her. They told us
the daughter got rich recently when she quote fell into
a job selling private airplanes. I know, I know, it's ridiculous.
I can't believe we fell for it. But anyways, look
just really quick.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, because there's a lot of people who fly on
private airplanes, so they don't own the plane.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But it seems like the daughter sold those planes to
the rich people.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yes, I'm just saying hard job because there's not that
many who can actually be like right, no, no, no,
we don't just want to rent the plane for this
one trip for an egregious amount of money.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
It's a very specialized field. Probably, yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
By day six or seven, one of the restaurant managers
got suspicious and told the hotel manager they should run
her credit card and make sure.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It was valid.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I assume this is normal practice when someone hits a
certain dollar point, but I don't know. They ran the
card and it went through, but my manager had a
bad feeling and said the hotel manager should call the
credit card company to have them reach out to the
person who held the account to make sure it was
the lady putting charges on the card, so not shockingly,
it was a gender neutral name, so we hadn't questioned.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It turns out.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
This lady had met a man at a bar across
the street and they decided they wanted to do a
little horizontal tangoing and got a hotel room. The next morning,
the guy left, but he never checked out of the hotel.
As a walk in, there was no checkout date on file,
so the room just kept charging the card.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I have I walk out all the time. I didn't
know you had to check out.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I mean these days you usually don't, right, like they're
gonna kick you out at eleven no matter what. Yeah,
that's right, And you can't charge anything after the time
you're kicked out.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
You know that you could. I guess you could, though,
well I don't know. I am maybe not. I thought
we had solved it.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I thought we were done with this, and then that's
why I'm roading this one. Apparently this lady waited around
for checkout, and when no one came knocking, she decided
to stay.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She is a scammer.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
She got a week long all expenses paid vacate on
this guy's dime, and he didn't have a clue until
the credit card company called him. She ended up racking
around four thousand dollars between the room, food, and booze,
and they wouldn't reverse the charges because they made it
clear when he checked in that he would also need
to check out.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Anyways, turned out the lady had a warrant for her
arrest for check fraud, so the cops asked the hotel
manager to keep it quiet until they got there so
they could arrest her. She invited her daughter and grandchildren.
Like her daughter who sold planes, she said, you've got
to get over here. I have a free fucking room.
Let's have a vacation.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Do you think the daughter really does sell planes or
do you think they were making up jobs.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I think they were like, try to sound rich, and
then she's like, I don't know what a rich people
do sell fucking private play You.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Know how rich people fly on private planes?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
I sell my someone's got to sell them.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We watched from the parking lot as they took her away,
and I got to say a lot of us were
feeling bad for her. The guy had to press charges
and would need to take her to court to get
his money back, but don't feel bad for him. He
told the hotel he wanted to handle it privately because
he was mar because he didn't.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Want to have to tell his wife. She'll have to
I know.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So the moral of the story is, don't cheat on
your wife and always make sure you check out of
your hotel room.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
My best friend and I write your Chicago show in
November and had an amazing time. We met a bunch
of girls at the show who were freaking awesome and
we ended up going out to a couple of bars
with them after bonding over the love of all things
true crime. Love you all so much. Thank you for
all the laughs and comfort you've brought every one of
us listeners.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Laura, Thanks Laura, Thank you Laura. That was a great story.
That is like you just never know what someone else
is fucking enough to.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Also, I think all those ways that we can like
close and lock the door behind us technologically is like, yes,
why don't I take three minutes and check out of
a hotel?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
We're very spoiled. Okay, here's my first one.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
The subject line is nineteen year old fake doctor and
it's not our guy.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A lot of these scammers are people like this is
what I did. It's not like other people scamming.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
It's so good. They're like they're confessing on themselves.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yes, and it's fun because it's like listen everybody. I
think when you're young, you like tell yourself I'm bad
if you do a bad thing. It's like everyone's bad
and everyone's good. Everybody gets into these situations like I'm
not saying please don't steal.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Money, saying please steal money from people. Oh, I mean
like it's just the opposite though.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It's like you when you're young, you have your experiences
with that and then you feel the extreme self revulsion
after you do it, like, oh, I guess I'm I
guess I'm a bad person.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That just means you're human, And it's a good sign
if you are like a little bit guilty that you
did something shitty.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, that's a good sign. But yeah, pay people back
and say sorry. Somebody calls in Karen stole twenty dollars
out of my purse, Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But she said sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
But she said sorry fifty years later, Hi Karen and
Georgia and all the amazing people at exactly right heart
shape heart emoji sorry heart shaped emoji.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
It's shaped like a heart.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I've been a Day one listener since February of twenty twenty,
oh the dark days when I discovered your show and
immediately went back to listen from the very beginning. It
took me about six months to catch up, and during
the time you were with me through COVID, buying my
first house, getting divorced and selling that same house, meeting
the love of my life, and having our son, who
somehow is already.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Two years old. Oh wow, quite an arc.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Thank you for being there through so many of the
base moments of my life, all the highs and lows
in between. I'm from Denmark and English is not my
first language, so please excuse any errors.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Grammar.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, there's the first one airs grammar.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Did you highlight the should highlight circle? That will send
it back to her in red errors.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Grammar okay, it says more specifically, they're from a town
in the suburbs of Copenhagen called.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You got it vitrov h vitrov. But look at the
way it's spelled h v Yeah, that sounds right, oh vitrovra.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, I'm kind of The story I'm about to tell
you is a true hometown story for me. In the
summer of twenty nineteen, a nineteen year old man walked
into Vitro for hospital just outside Copenhagen where now I'm
mispronouncing Copenhagen, wearing a white lab coat and claiming to
be a medical student. For about a month, he moved
between hospital departments, examined patients, wrote medical records, and even
(08:36):
prescribed medication, despite having no medical training at all. Doctors, nurses, patients,
and families all believed he belonged there. Yeah, why tall,
white blonde one of his patients. All they have in
cop that's true flavor, then is what's the where's the privilege?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Where's the prejudice?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
One of his patients was a six month old baby girl.
He examined her, prescribed medication and sent her home when
she didn't improve, Her parents' return to the hospital a
few days later, where a real doctor diagnosed her with
pneumonia and treated her successfully. Things got even weirder. One
day he walked up to an ambulance parked outside the
hospital and told the EMTs, we have to leave right now.
(09:17):
There's been a hanging. As you can imagine, that's never
how an ambulance is sent to an emergency.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
The doctor runs.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Down with a note let's go, that always comes through
the emergency dispatch center. When the EMTs didn't react to
the guy's orders, he walked off. The EMTs went in
and sounded the alarm, and the next time the guy
showed up at the hospital he was arrested for suspicion
of fraud. He went on to be investigated, tried, and
later convicted. During the trial, it was revealed how he
(09:48):
was not a medical student. In fact, he had not
made it into med school that year. He just really
badly wanted to be a doctor. It had been his
lifelong dream.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Okay, was my lifelong dream. But not enough to try.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Not enough to study well enough to pass tests or
be a good doctor. I just want to do it,
and I don't care how good or bad I am
at it.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
I feel like that way about podcasting. Yeah, just get
it done.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I just want to do it, and if people die,
they die. He was convicted of impersonating a medical professional
and practicing medicine without authorization. Because he received a relatively
short sentence, Danish media have never published his identity due
to a court ordered reporting restriction. And Danish press ethics
surrounding criminal cases with short sentences.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
They're so fair there, I mean, they're they're doing it right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
His sentence you ask thirty days of suspended imprisonment and
forty hours of community service. He walked out of court
a freeman. What's that community service? Shopping stay away from
the blood drive? And that's somehow not the craziest part
of the story.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
We're not there yet.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
The following year, he was admitted to medical school.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Really like fair and square. He isn't pretending anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
He's actually studying medicine and could eventually graduate and work
as a physician in Denmark. Well guess what, And maybe
this is I'm saying this from the luxury of being
in America and not in Denmark.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
He really wanted it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
He's gonna be bet or not. He's either going to
be the best doctor ever or the worst one, and
we won't know because they didn't give his name. I
feel like an impersonation case, we should have the name
of the impersonator for future reference.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I mean, at least could the hospital administrator have the
name of the impersonator, just so they know where they're standing.
Did he go back to the same. Well, let me finish,
I won't guess, I'll just read. Danish universities do not
require applicants to submit a criminal record certificate. By the
time he applies for employment as a doctor. The conviction
may no longer appear on his criminal record, depending on
(11:48):
the applicable disclosure rules and how much time has passed.
That means the families he deceived, including the parents of
that baby, could theoretically one day meet him again, this
time with him wearing the white legally, that's crazy. The
whole story has sparked years of debate here in Denmark,
not only about his actions, but about hospital security, accountability, rehabilitation,
(12:09):
and whether some professions should have stricter background checks than
they currently do.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, because also, like, if he had been an actual
doctor and had been like lying about what he knew,
he would have been disbarred, but instead he's allowed to
go on to be a doctor.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
It just feels like he's a scammer.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
He should be he that would be so wrong of
him to do as a doctor that he would not
be able to be a lawyer, right because he's disbarred.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
No, I know what you mean, disbarred to medicine.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
But whatever, No, you're completely right. And also it's the
ethical thing of like do you want a person that's
working on you that's like, well, if I can cheat
and scam my way through whatever we're doing, let's do
that way.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It should be their.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Choice, the persons.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yes, the lawyer's lawyer doctor.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Okay, so it says it's one of these stories that
sounds like catch me if you can, until you realize
it happened in a pediatric word. Thank you for an
amazing show and for being some really cool older sisters, cousins,
aunties sharing important stories with me and all your listeners.
What you do is important and significant to all of us.
And that's someone in Denmark. Wow, they don't like anybody.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
S stgo just kidding. I don't know what they do
in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
S SDGM, yasmin or, yasmine and ps. If you ever
come to Denmark, please let me know. I'd love to
go to a show or be your tour guide.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Love it. And we go to that hospital first and we.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
All wear different white coats and see who can get
the furthest yes into the staff.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
It's you, like, I don't even have to could I
do it.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'll get far into the cafeteria, gat a bunch of
free food.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
But you could be a lunch lady with all your
pastor here's me as a doctor, a newly od this.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yes, I'll take the temperature. I'm kind of a new
kind of hot flash. That's Oh, my scalp.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Is hot flash. Only get the air. Get two hats
some air. Look what I have for my purse.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Two's a beanie girl.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Slay all day, sweat all day. That's so cute and small.
Yeah I want it. Yeah, I really like it. You
can have it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
This can just be the standing hot flash fan. Yes, absolutely,
just to let people know and maybe it was start
bringing up like a graphic that's like hot flash blinking
on the bottom. And then you can call in if
we're having a hot flash. You can call the eight
hundred number and win and win a bunch of tiger ball,
and then you can see what it feels like to
be a lady.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Fuck you as a rage. There's the rage and brain fogs.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Okay, I am not stupid, and neither are you. Red
flag alert so this is a real one, uh, like
a warning one, which is so great. Georgia and Karen formal.
I am writing to you with tears still in my
eyes after being the victim of falling victim to I
don't like that at all, as it puts the power
in the hands of the wrong doers. So being the
(15:14):
unwitting participant of a scam, I hope that by sharing
I can help other people pleasers from going through what.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I just went through for the last three hours. Oh God,
we got We had one in Italy, a scammer.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
We Vince got a text saying because we drove, we
got a car and drove that he had a ticket and.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
He went to pay it. They don't do it like that.
They don't text you about your chicks, they won't personally
text you.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I'm surprised, missus. He just wanted to take care of
business and yeah he's yeah, he's so okay.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I've received a phone call this afternoon from a police
officer who proceeded to spell his name and give me
his badge number after I specifically asked regarding my failure
to show up to jury selections several months ago, I
was given two citation numbers and two separate fines. Being
the aforementioned people pleaser, I was terrified of getting in trouble.
So I immediately said, I'm so sorry. I must have
(16:03):
missed the notice. Now, to be clear, I actually did
get a notice and I did not attend the selection
full Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's wrong, and I knew it was wrong. But insert
excuses here.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Alas here we are so you might understand that when
the officer brought that up.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I thought, fuck, I've been caught.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
He proceeded to provide instruction the one out of every
ten person, I mean more than that, probably.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I would say seven out of ten people. That's all
people do is try to get out of jury duty.
Carylan's like us, where they're just like, let me get
down there.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So fun, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He proceeded to provide instruction that I was not to
get off the phone with him. Red flag number one.
Write a couple of these. I read, don't hang up
the phone, or we're coming for you.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, they said, yeah, the people that are from jury duty, right,
don't hang up the phone. This is the most important
way we're going to communicate.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, we can't call you back.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, and that if I did, I would have a
warrant issued for my arrest.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Civil disruption. That's fucking scary.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Secondly, I must immediately pay two hundred and fifty dollars
per citation in cash, and then it says my cheeks
start to read in yes, flag number two. Then I
must stay online while I drive to the sheriff's office,
which I didn't get to because I was instructed to
pull over and complete the transaction over the phone. Yes
a flag, to sign a document noting that I agreed
(17:25):
to pay the fee. So you pay the fee, and
then they're like, but go to the sheriff's office. That
seems legit, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
They're they're sending you to the place where they would
never want you to be to talk about what's actually happening.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Totally. Now you ask why did I not run away?
Why did I not hang up? And then it says,
in all caps, why did I pay them from the
cash app? Then my Apple pay in access in excess
of one thousand dollars after they couldn't accept the funds
because and here's the no surprise.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Kicker, I was scared.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, I am, with the above exception, law abiding citizen.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I don't think you could call you as all that,
but that's how they get you. You're guilty. Yeah, no,
you did bad. You're not one of those people that
doesn't care. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I have three kids and I teach them right and wrong,
and I knew that I had done wrong. These scammers
preyed upon that and held me hostage on the phone,
and I went with it, too afraid to be arrested
in front of my family, too afraid to have a record,
too afraid to get in trouble. Yes, I was lucky
in my bank did alert me to the fraud, which,
when I said out loud, the officer told me it
(18:30):
was because it was the first time I'd used the app,
and I believed him because it was. I ended up
driving to the bank with the ill advised intent to
transfer funds from them to law enforcement directly. However, when
I walked in the doors the bank, it dawned on
me and my husband, whom I with whom I was texting,
that this was no real deal. And I said, still
(18:50):
on the phone with them.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Can I speak to the sheriff. She's still on the
phone with them.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, going to transfer funds because none of the other
apps worked.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
They all worked.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, it's thousands of dollars like vince when he put
its credit card, none of them would work.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The credit cards accept that one entering information and passwords
immediately cancel all his cards.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I know. And when they put me on hold, I
told a bank employee, I think I'm actively being scammed,
and they hung up. I write this as someone who
listens to you ladies on a weekly basis and has
for years. I am a woman of a certain age you,
and consider myself that's them.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Ew you ew oh, I thought she said I'm a
woman of a certain age.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
You.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I mean, I guess we all are either way, and
consider myself reasonably informed. We watch true crime docu series
featuring regular people, listen to podcasts, et cetera with people
who might have known better. And I'm here to tell
you that these scammers are professionals. They know they're demographic,
They are smart, they have a narrative in place, And
though I hope you never find yourself crying at the
(19:55):
bank after believing that a law enforcement officer has contacted
you and you might be arrested non compliance, you are
actually all good. These people are relentless. I want to
share the scam, which I'm sure happens all too often,
but also remind those that they have participated with regret
that you are not at fault. These people are skilled
(20:15):
con artists. They know the game and put you in
as an unwitting player. I would advise myself and anyone
else to tell such a caller thank you for letting
me know.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I will be in touch.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It is always okay to trust and verify. I hope
that you read this and others learn that shit happens
to good people. Fuck politeness and always get a callback number.
S Yeah, but even the callback number, right.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Even the callback number. But here's the thing that just
popped into my head is you can also do the
thing anytime anyone's rushing you. You know, that's an element
of it. Rushing is a big thing. But you can
just do a thing where you talk as if you're
normally talking and hang up on yourself mid sentence and
it looks like you got cut off. Then you see
what they do because they can't blame you for getting
cut off, you didn't know whatever. And then it's like
(21:00):
and then are they calling you back?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Crazy?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Is it like?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Whatever? Also?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I think, and I could completely be wrong. So maybe
there are people who like work at county offices.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Who know.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I think, isn't it when you have to pay stuff
like that? It's like check own.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, there's no way it'll ever be cash or like
never cash only, cash only or even an app.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I can't like what if they were like cash only
or any weed you have or just like this seems fake.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
But okay, i'm McDonald's coupon the Christmas book.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh yeah, legend. Okay, that was amazing and great, great,
like takeaway for everybody.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
The subject line of this email is my grandma helped
expose a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
In the eighties.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Wow, all the things I love greeting's MFM gang. My
girlfriend has been bugging me to write this email since
we went out to dinner with my grandmother several months ago,
but now we finally have a free moment to write it,
so here you go. My dad's mom, Sylvia, is a
very Southern lady. During the eighties, was a badass single
mother of five living in Charlotte, North Carolina. A single
(22:04):
mother of five, a living saint at the time, she
was working as the sales manager for the local Sheraton hotel,
and she was really good at her job. I mean
she was like the top producing sales manager in the
whole country. So when the people at the top saw this,
they offered her a new position as the national sales
manager without a raise. And then in parentheses it says,
(22:25):
fuck you, corporate.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Sexism, offering you a new position. It's a higher position.
You can't say no.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
No raise, right because they're like, you can take the
position right at.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
What a time in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Later that month, she was at a social event and
was approached by a man named Thomas McColgan, who offered
her a job at his company that paid way more
than she was already making. The company was called IBC
Arabian Investments, and it was a company that allowed people
to purchase Arabian horses in full, so like when the
horse was pregnant as stock.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
After the baby.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Horses were born and several years old, they could be
sold again as a return on the initial investment. The
selling point to this idea was that people invested in
small groups about ten people, so a share was only
one tenth of the price. So it's like a probical
time time shares. Yeah, a horse time.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Share, Okay, sounds legit.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I want the hair and I want his main This
scheme was largely targeting middle class people who would not
normally invest in something like Arabian.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Horses among us.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I mean, so, my grandmother agreed to work for him,
and over the course of a year, traveled all around
the Western United States. She stayed in condos in Las Vegas,
went to Exotic horse auctions and Flagstaff, Arizona, and even
once flew with my dad and aunt to California on
company money. Thomas McColgan had been paying Price Waterhouse to
do the corporate taxes for IBC Arabian. When he presented
(23:56):
the business plan to the potential investors, he had to
show them the financials of his business so the investors
could see that what they were getting into. Once, while
she was in Las Vegas shooting a commercial for IBC
with Wayne Newton and then just a bunch of question
marks and exclamation points, my grandma received a call from
her coworker back in Charlotte. Her coworker had said that
(24:17):
Thomas asked her to go all around Charlotte and look
for a typeface font that matched that of Price Waterhouse.
Thomas McColgan was forging financial documents to show to his
investors to get money. It was later found out that
he actually used money from investors to buy more horses.
Very illegal because that money is not supposed to be
touched for years. Yes, that's the classic Ponzi scheme. When
(24:39):
my grandma found out about all of this, she immediately
left the video.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Shoot, wow, hee, Swayne, this is bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know it.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Even you Wayne Newton can't keep me here.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Shame on you, Wayne, This is god. How much were
they paying Wayne Newton?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
I mean just to come on and be like that
guy was amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, anytime he showed it commercial athough, I guess it
didn't get.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Do you lack Arabian horses?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And maybe I'm thinking of who's the guy from the
morning show? I'm thinking of Richess Philbin.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I'm so sorry. Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So she flew back to North Carolina on her own money,
so Thomas did not see that. She bought a plane
ticket back.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Very smart.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
She called Price Waterhouse and set up a discreete meeting
and a hotel lobby in Charlotte. When she told the
person she met with about what she heard, they said
that Thomas was about to get in big trouble. My
grandma did not testify in court because she was only
involved in the sales part of the business. Thomas McColgan
was found guilty of securities fraud, and my grandma has
not heard from him since. She described him as an
(25:36):
egomaniac and a stupid, greedy man. My grandma went on
to work for the state of North Carolina, fighting for
women's rights and even helping write new legislation on.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Sexual assault laws. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Needless to say, my grandmother is a badass, powerful, caring
woman and I love her and all of her stories
so much. I mean incredible, say sexy, and don't invest
in horses because it's probably a pyramid scheme, burt.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Okay, but what happened to the Arabian ponies?
Speaker 2 (26:02):
They're just trotting around looking for investors.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Ah, so sad, so sad. Wayne Newton's just like, what
are we doing?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
One little foal has a PowerPoint presentation. Come on, believe
in us invest.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Okay, here's my last one.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Uh, I was a preteen con artist. Hey, ladies, this
story has everything. A trash mom, a mystery, an inappropriate joke.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So let's get started.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Hell.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yes, the year is nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And my mother decided the perfect family vacation for my
brother ten and me twelve would be a.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Trip to Vegas. I've been there as a child. But why,
you might ask.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
While her living boyfriend at the time loved to gamble
Wayne Newton, the movie Casino had just come out, and
he was obsessed to the point that he had bought
a roll out craps table to play at home.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Oh, red Flag everybody.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Like he likes Rubert de Niro teaching these children how
a gamble. Cassina is an amazing movie, though, because Don
Rickles plays a pretty big party and it's so good,
great outtakes.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So yeah, my mom booked her boyfriend's dream vacation and
dragged my brother and I along. Oh, single mom's boyfriends.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
You just don't really get over it, Yeah, because your
mom's forced into a bit of a pickmy situation that
like you just subconsciously understand but don't actually understand.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Remember, every single one update this relationship did not scand
the test of time, no what, I still see the
trip through my jerk twelve year old eyes. I get
it so much more now that I have a twelve
year old daughter of my own. But I have to
admit we had a good time. My mom did a
great job of finding a kid friendly fun Vegas had
to offer. Plus we ate a buffett and got a
(27:50):
swim a ton a kid's dream, It's all that mattered.
It really was a fun place to be when you
were a kid. It's like, this is sketchy as fuck
and I love it. And those just meet all these
fucking like free range kids.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yes, his parents are like also his parents, I mean,
what a mix. Pretty great.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
One of my favorite memories is when my mother let
my brother and I walk the Strip alone at night
while they gambled the nineties.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Man Jesus, well, they had each other. I think I've
heard that before. They're getting little with each other.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
They're getting those sex pamphlets from the guys that are
wo definitely thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
So my mother had scheduled for my brother and I
had to fly back a few days early so she
could have a lone time with her boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Ew.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I mean, letting us one to the city streets while
she gambled in the casino had to have been.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Stressful, one would hope.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Anyway, So my brother and I flew on our own,
with the plan being that my dad would pick us
up at the airport back home. The flight was pretty
uneventful and tallwey landed. While we were sitting and waiting
to get off the plane, I checked to make sure
that the twenty three dollars I had left from my
trip spending money was still in my purse, only to find.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
It was done, done done. Missing in that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Amount of money might not seem like a big deal,
but that's forty four dollars and thirty two cents in
today's moolah.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Well done, well done.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
And I was twelve, it might as well have been
forty four thousand dollars. So I proceeded to lose my shit, sobbing, snotting, hyperventilating.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But the worst part I.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Refused to get off the plane until the money was found.
The stewardess says, we're literally begging me to do plane,
and I just simply would not guess.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
That was until the pilot came out to see what
was going on.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Once he heard the story, he pulled out a crisp
twenty dollars bill and put it in my psychotic little
tween hand. I magically calmed after that and made my
way off the plane.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It's like, I'll give you twenty bucks to get the
hell out.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
We're trying to fucking go home to war families.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We have fifty two more flights rights today.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
From there, we were escorted by the airport employee over
to my dad waiting for us outside the terminal. The
employee looked at me and asked, is this your dad? Well,
apparently I was riding high on the mayhem. I just
called from the plane because I looked at her and
dryly joked, I've never seen this man before in my life.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
She's got a cigarette, she's picked it up in Vegas,
and then she's got her the twenty tech behind her ear.
And she looked shocked.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
My dad looked pissed, and I just stood there laughing hysterically.
I've never seen this man a day in my life.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Also punish the dad for letting him. Let the mother
take you to vagil.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
All of it.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Eventually, the whole thing was sorted out and we headed
off home with my still fuming dad. You might wonder
what happened to that twenty three dollars that somehow went missing.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Well, on the drive back.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
From the airport, I thought to unzip the little inside
pocket of my spree purse, only to find my not
so missing money safely hidden inside. That's right, I caught
that pilot out of a fresh twenty dollars and almost
doubled my money.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Jack pot question mark, question mark question mark.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
They really absorbed something in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
They knew how to do it.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Well, keep doing, but you're doing it every way. I'm
a thoroughly medicated and therapized person. I appreciate all of
the light you shine on mental health. Without help, I
might still be throwing bits on planes. We can't have that.
Maybe I'll write in some stories about my mom next.
She may have been a nineties trash mom, but she
was also a criminal attorney for forty years. Is that
(31:22):
how she met this gambling boyfriend?
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Really, I could have sworn the boyfriend stole the money
out of the little kid's perse, right. I'm like, that's
kind of the dirt baggiest way to end it, right,
It's so fun.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Gail has seen some shit.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Love to you all, Stay sexy, and what happens on
a plane from Vegas doesn't count.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Kate with the.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Sea incredible, Kate, God damn, someone will give me twenty dollars.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Is a big sister move too. Yeah, although I could
see a little sister doing it.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I mean, it's just gutsy and then she got her money. Okay,
here's my last one. Kind of similar. The subject line
of this email is the Devil's Child and it says, hey,
badass bitches and Stephen. When I was five years old,
a Jiffy Mart opened in our tiny town, not far
from our house, and it created quite the impression on me.
(32:09):
If you're not familiar with them, a Jiffy Mart is
just a convenience store, so not really that exciting, but
to a five year old candy obsessed me, it was everything.
We only went one time to check it out, and
my mom let me purchase a package of six lits,
little round candy coated balls with chocolate.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Have you ever had a six lit? I can't think
I have. It was like the.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Hydrocks to Eminem's Boreo, so they were around, but they
were basically Eminems. And also the package was like a
little tube.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
This is interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Inferior to Eminem's for sure, but again I was five.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well after I had that bag of chocolate to dip
red dye number five treasures. They were all I could
think about. How on earth would I ever get the
money to get more? And then I had it, the brilliant,
fool proof plan to go door to door in my
neighborhood telling people my little brother was sick and we
needed money.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
For Oh my god, it's like a Facebook scam.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Before there's Facebook.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yep, there's a living, five year old GoFundMe scam.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
What's wrong with that plan? Nothing in the child's mind.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I'm going to take this to the neighborhood and see
if they want me to have six lips, because I
think they do, and or my brother to get better. Okay,
And then it says yep, I was a five year
old drifter. Shockingly, no one was taking the bait. They'd
simply look at me strangely and say go home. Then
I came to her house, the weirdo church lady at
the end of the block. I didn't know much about her,
(33:32):
but I knew church people loved to do things for others,
so I forged head. After my little spiel, she felt
so terrible for me that she cleaned out her change
purse and I traped home hands brimming with coins.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Feels so good.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I wasn't stupid enough to let my mom know what
I had done, so I did what any five year
old would do. I hid behind the chair in the
living room to count the money. Almost immediately my mom
was on to me. I guess watching me sneak behind
a piece of her mature and the sound of clinking
coins was.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
A dead giveaway. Where did you get that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
She asked me. I've had it, I said, unconvincingly. Within
minutes she had the whole story out of me, And
because we were also church people, I was told I
had to return the money, apologize, and tell the woman
what I had done. You do so my mom drove
me to the end of the block and made me
get out by myself, all caps. I trembled my way
(34:24):
to the door, and when she answered, I blubbered and
cried and apologized and admitted my lie. Church lady's eyes
flared with anger, and instead of the pat on my
head I expected, I was met with this, you little liar,
You're the devil's child and you're going to help on
what she've done.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
My god, it's.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like every nun in my grammar school. And then she
slammed the door in my tiny face sobbing. I turned
to my mother, who was still in the car, and
showed her the money and shrugged, like what do I
do now?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
She didn't take the money, No, she's okay.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Screaming at her, she yelled at me to leave it
on the porch, and when I got back in the car,
I told her what the woman said, in shock herself.
My mom took me home and got on the phone
with my grandmother to tell her about the escapade.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
While they laughed and laughed.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Confused and traumatized, I tried to find the humor in
it too.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Stay sexy and don't scam your neighbors, A she her.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I was hoping she'd somehow get the sixth and what
are they called cic lit?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Six lilits like s get.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Sicklets out of it, like her mom would feel bad
that she got screamed at by a psychotic woman.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
If it was twenty twenty six, they'd get on like TikTok,
and then six lits would be like, where, don't worry,
we got you covered.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
There'd be a ring, doorbell, camera, the whole fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
But this instead, this one's like maybe I am a devil?
Child and carries that into adulthood.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
And comes a total goth.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, thank god, another goth is made. Thankfully, Well, that
was our scam show. Let's ready to celebrate Royal Swindle.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Let's read the ending. Royal Swindle is out now.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
New episodes will be released weekly on Thursday, and please
follow Royal Swindle now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
From Blanchard House, Exactly Right Media and USD Audio.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
It's the rom.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Con of the summery. It's Royal Swindle. Stay sexy and
don't get murdered.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie? This has been
an Exactly Right production.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Our editor is Aristotle asce Vedo.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
the remind Me buttons. That's the best way you can
support our show.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Goodbye,
Hosts And Creators
Georgia Hardstark
Karen Kilgariff
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