Fakers, Fraudsters and Phonies: Everything's A Lie Now!

In this round-up of recent tales of fakers, fraudsters, and phonies, Zaron shares with Elizabeth a smorgasbord of stories of fake bears, phony medical emergencies on Mount Everest, and a fraudulent influencer abduction to get at the truth of why we can't trust anything any more. And get this: no AI was involved in this episode.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth Burnett. Oh yeah, what's up? Well? I was just
sitting in here talking to the interns, going do you
think she's gonna show up today? And all of a
sudden you breeze in and everyone's all happy to see Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Yeah, I go, you know what, it's a beautiful day.
But it's not the heat. It's the pepperoni. That's what
we like to say in the biz.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm sorry, I ate my pepperoni pizza in the studio.
Get used to this, like.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
A nineteen eighties round table.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah right, and they're kind of good. The red plastic
cups are by my touch to make it feel authentico.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
It does. It does a picture of root beer, please.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I got a question for you. Yeah, along with your
picture of root beer? Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:43):
You sure do? I sure do. This isn't ridiculous. Independent
baseball leagues.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Oh yeah, yeah. I love them because.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
They're not affiliated with MLB, which I'm not a fan
of these days.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh, because you're as.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, but they're more fun. It's like more immediate, authentic baseball,
and so the you know, there's like the Savannah Bananas
are part of that coastal league. It's like a collegiate
league Oakland Ballers or Pioneer League. And then there's this team,
the uh Madison Mallards.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Don't know them, I'm assuming Madison.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't familiar with their game. And
then a bunch of a bunch of rude dudes were.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Like, hey, look at this.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Okay, we are Oh so it's not a mashupdes but
it is a lot it's similar. It's one of those
weird promotions.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
You hook me and you're no.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
So the Madison Mallards for their July eighteenth game had
this thing where if you buy a ticket and you
enter in this promo code for twenty one dollars for
a grand stand ticket or forty eight dollars for the
bush light duck blind okay section the duck line, you
can get this promotion thing. So you know, with like

(02:01):
the a's used to get like bubble heads or little
mini bat night not a good idea, like little blankets,
I don't know, garbage stuff anyway. Yeah, so the Mallards
they're giving away a Wiener wallet and it's a belt
with a holster on it where you put.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
A hot dog alster like a gun on the side.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
There's a picture. We'll have them put that on Instagram
for it. And so yeah, it's like on the side
where you it looks like a gun holster, but you
put a hot dog in there, and then there's a
little pouch next to it for your squeezes of ketchup
mustard whatever. Yeah, so it has an expandable belt because
they said it fits no matter how many wieners you

(02:46):
put down. They there's the condiment pouch, blah blah blah.
And so they said, what can we use it for?
And then I'm glad you asked and they have like
an f a Q wiener wallets are perfect for And
I'm going to read you the list please. Times when
you want to wear your worst wu rs apostrophe, don't

(03:09):
when you got to have another red hot at the ready,
When you need a place to park your pork sword,
oh god, see yeah, if you need a holster for
your hot dog, when you need to tuck away your
tube steak, if you're looking for a carrier for your coney,
if you feel like a Frankfurt or fashionista, when you
got to gather your grease missiles when you're out of

(03:32):
places to grip your glizzies, and when you want a
pocket full of pigs in a blanket.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So when you want to keep that foot long on you,
you keep.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
That thing on you. Yeah, so that's what they have.
If you're in that area, try and score a ticket
that you can't buy them. It's a promotion attached to
the ticket. And uh yeah, wiener wallet.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
You cased meats.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Well that's kind of why I brought it up.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh well, thank you. If you're looking out for me.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
I think.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Every day, just stay strapped exactly. Well, I'll give you that.
That is ridiculous, and thank you for your dudes for
not letting that be a full mash up. Ely, Well, Elizabeth,
I got one for you.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Sure I'll take it.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Now. I have a modern version of the children's cautionary
tale Peter and the wolf kind of looks at the table.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Aolved not in this.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
But pretend there are just imagine them, so you know.
Peter claims he was attacked by an unseen wolf. Paul
Village is an uproar, but the wolf claims he was framed.
This always happened after a brief investigation. Please claim Peter
did it for clout or perhaps a quick payout. This

(05:03):
is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous. Yes, Oh, Elizabeth Saren. You
are a woman with many interests. Sure, some of them

(05:25):
we often touch upon on this show. Yeah, such as
your love of gardening, sure, your love of RuPaul's Drag Race,
British TV shows, Scottish detective novels, and of course, for
longtime listeners, your love of trains. Sure. But we also
have touched upon your love of bears.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
I do love bears like.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
You, legit love Alaska's Fat Bear. We do. You talked
about this in an episode on the Fat Bear Week
vote rigging scandal. Correct, now, I did. You've often told
me that you would like to one day hug a bear.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
I would love to hug a bear nuts.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Which is why I thought of you, And I also
thought you might remember this story. So when I was
reading it, I thought of you, and I thought, you
know what, Lizbeth might remember this. Over in China, there
was a story about a sun bear at a Chinese zoo.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Oh, there's like kind of light brown. Yeah, sun bear.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Now do you remember this news story from twenty twenty
three about a fake bear that was in an exhibit
at a Chinese zoo in eastern Hong Shiao City.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I have vague recollection.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Okay, lay it on me. When folks caught sight of
videos circulating online, people were convinced that the alleged sun
bear in a Chinese zoo is actually a man in
a bear suit right now, According to the Associated Foreign
Press back in twenty twenty three and I quote, a
Chinese zoo has been forced to deny that its sunbear
is actually a human in a costume after a video

(06:43):
of one standing on a tined legs raised online accusations
of a furry impostor. Now, in case you don't quite
recall what the alleged sun bear looks like, here is
an image of the suspected man in a bear costume.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, that does look like a dude in like he's
got his belly out, looks like his hands are on
his lips. I don't know. I'm not wearing my glasses
and you're holding that up and I'm doing my best.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Also noticed like the wrinkles around his posterior. Yeah, it
kind of looks like, you know, is is that a
bear suit? Because of how it just droops around, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Missing judge, that's I see. You're doing a lot of
body shaming for that bear.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
You should have more thickness to him.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, I got to ask you, and you don't have
to answer right away. I'll give you more time on this,
And so what's your call? Is this a real sun
Bear or is it a person in a bear costume?

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Saren? I think I need more information.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
I think you do too. It's debatable. I mean, honestly,
if you look at the loose, wrinkled skin and the
way it sort of bunches oddly around the bear's butt,
as I've pointed out, it's you'd suspect, right, but this
could easily be like a person in a bear costume,
But it could just as easily be an actual sun Bear.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Now, despite all the online overnight bear experts in their
opinions that it was not a real bear and instead
it was a pathetic hoax that was giving fake bear,
officials at the Zoo insisted at the sun Bear was
a real, actual factual Bear the Bear debate crossed the seas,
and eventually The New York Times had to weigh in
on whether or not it was a real sun bear

(08:11):
or a person in a bear suit. As The New
York Times reported quote. The confusion appeared to begin in
late July when a video surfaced on the Chinese social
media site Webo of a sunbear named Angela standing on
a rock and its zoo enclosure with ramrod posture on
its hind legs. Okay, so now we got a name
Angela Angela.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
So what's the truth. Is Angela the Sunbear reel or
is Angela more like a college mascot? Well, folks in
China had good reason to doubt that Angela the sun
Bear was real. I mean, there have been multiple zoo
hoaxes in China reported in the past.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Could they could be saying, yeah, it's a bear, but
it's really like a very large hairy man inside the costume,
so technically it's a bear.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
In a costume. They're not lying your heads had now.
Back in twenty thirteen, there was a zoo in the
Hanan Province in China that claimed to have an African
lion on display, but it turns out the purported lion
was actually a Tibetan mastiff.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Oh, they kind of do a click lions. Did they
have like a wig on it?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, they kind of like, you know, they cut the
main to look a little bit. Yeah. So at the
BBC report at the time quote Chinese media reports said
the zoo had replaced its genuine lion with a Tibetan
mastiff dog. A zoo official and Hanan province said the dog,
owned by one of the workers, was put in the
cage when the real lion was sent away to a
breeding center. Outraged visitors to the zoo and lu Ouhu

(09:36):
City said they had been cheated.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
That those are those dogs. I've seen the videos of
those dogs getting grooms.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Oh yeah, but they had just their first of all,
they're normal, enormous. It is one of the biggest dogs.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
And then the hair situation is just crazy. See I
can see if you shave down the body and left
the top.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
I pay to see that the grooming all of it
or the end result. Okay, well for the.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Grooming the after as long as they're treating the dog.
Oh yeah, I'll give you five bucks.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
I'm with you on that now. The way the deception
came to light was kind of fun to picture. The
story goes a mother brought her son to the zoo
to check out the animals, like young kid, and she
was having fun introducing her child to all the animals,
and she was educating her son on all the different
sounds that animals make. And then when they approached the
enclosure with the alleged African lion, they watched this animal
for a while and the mother's like, you know, doing

(10:23):
the distinctive lion roar for her son. She's like, soon
he's going to do that, But instead, when the alleged
lion finally did make a sound, it barked. The kid
looked at it up his mom like, why are lying
to me? The mother, knowing what a lion should sound like,
was obviously shocked, and so this is when the deception
was revealed, or rather confirmed. So zoo keepers admitted that
their real African lion was away at the moment, and

(10:45):
they'd subbed in a Tibetan masta, you know, and it's like, look,
I know, it looks a lot like a lion, right,
And she was like, my child, So the deceived mother.
She's pissed, right, she told the local press quote, the
zoo was absolutely trying to cheat us. They are trying
to discus dogs as lions.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
I give him credit for it. Look, lady, you can
either go and have a sign that says, you know,
exhibit closed, or you can go and see a cool
your choice.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
All the kid's not gonna remember a good point. Now,
she may not have been wrong to level such accusations,
because it wasn't just the African lion that was fake
in the zoo. There was also a fake leopard. Visitors
who looked closely at the animals stalking in the so
called leopards den would notice it was actually a white fox. Yeah,
it's a big difference totally. And in the enclosure that

(11:36):
purportedly held a wolf, it was also a dog. The
zoo in question, they claimed the two cages were simply mislabeled,
which I find a little hard to believe.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, Plus, there were other incidents in China of doubtful
wild animals going down, like for instance, uh. Unlike with
that zoo, the other incidents did have good or at
least reasonable explanations. For instance, there was a reserve in
the Sechuan Province and the panda keepers. They would often
zip up a human sized panda costume and then they
would join the pandas in the enclosure. Yeah, in this case,

(12:10):
it wasn't meant to fool the humans because it was
clearly like, that's not a panda. It was meant to
trick the pandas because they want the zoop keepers. They
wanted to like slip on the panda costume to alleviate
the panda stress and if they got moved, or also
to help them overcome any like attachment with their human caregivers,
so they wouldn't be going up to people going do
you have bamboo shoots?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, you've seen the thing of the little baby panda
that makes a snarling face when breaking. Oh yeah, because
he learned not from an adult panda but from the
zoo keepers how to snap the bamboo. But everyone have
like a pained look on their face as they exerted
to snap the bamboo. Yeah, so this little panda bear
like snarls.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
It is a rough one.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
So they got to be careful. I see why they
do it. They're so sweet innocent.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Oh yeah, just little I love pandas. The by the
way the zip up panda costumes. They were often visually
troubling for visitors to the panda reserve. And you can
see why. This is what a human in a panda
costume looks like.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
That is disturbing. I feel like if he turns around,
the butt cheeks are like cut out.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's just it looks like a slender Man costume, but
for a panda.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well there's no padding and it's yeah, it's very droopy.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, exactly, It's just it's a low effort. It looks like.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Those seventies Halloween costume.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yes, you know.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
They would give kids like a plastic front, only mass
hard hard plastic, and then like a garbage bag that
had a like the outfit printed on it.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
But only the front because the back would be a
solid color.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
And if I'm sure that if it got caught on
a jack land and it would go up like like
a Roman candle.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Pretty much everything in the seventies was flammable. It's very true, yeah,
especially if it was for children. For children. So way
back to Angela the sun Bear, we need to resolve
this right, Yes, thanks to the fake lion, the fake leopard,
the humans in a panda suit. You can see why
Chinese zoogoers might have their doubts, sure right, and come
to believe it was a person in America.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Houl bitten twice, shy.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Totally, It's totally fair and on their part, I'm not,
you know, slighting them for being doubtful, suspicious, what have you.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
I'm not gonna victim blame.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
What's the truth. Was it a real sun bear or
a zoo keeper in a bear suit? What's your call, Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Why not both?

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh? Like that? I live in very diplomatic.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, it's live in the gray.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
So it turns out it was a real sun bear.
It was are so the zoo claimed. One of the
zoo keepers took to social media to defend Angela, and
they posted that quote, of course it's a real animal.
It's definitely not a person in disguise. Our place is
a state run facility. Such situations won't happen here.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
But I could see where they're like, we're not some
fly by night private But oh they're also like, Okay,
Angela's got a weird body. You guys don't like, don't
accuse her of being human. She's a real bear. She's
one hundred percent bear.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Now that same zoo worker also offered some reasoning as
to why I couldn't be a person in a bear suit.
They reasoned that it was way too hot in the
summer to throw on a bear costume just to con
some tourists for a couple of dollars or you know
you want.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
If anyone's ever been to like Disneyland or a theme park,
you know that no one cares. The owners of places
don't care how hot. Oh yeah, they'll put you in
a big old sweatsuit.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, as long as that sweaty stink doesn't come out
of the suit. They don't care what's going on inside
the exactly.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
So that you know what, I discount that point. Give
me your next argument, Chinese zoo.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Well, the zoo keeper wrote on social media, if you
were to wear a suit, you definitely couldn't bear it
for more than a few minutes. You'd have to lie down.
So fun puns aside.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Does that pun translate from Chinese?

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I wondered that too.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's really interesting. Yeah, I don't think it does.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
I don't think so. I think it just happened to be.
It just lined up in English. But I could be wrong.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Maybe they're ready. I don't know. You know what, Now
I feel like we've blown this whole thing wide open.
I feel like that's a problem because was he writing
it in English?

Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, It's written in Chinese as far as I can tell.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
And then translates like perhaps if Chinese speakers can clarify
for it, it.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Could be the translator introduced the pun.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Oh took some liberties again. Now I'm just not I
don't know who to believe anymore, Sar, I don't know
what what's fake.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Well, all this gave me an idea. Whenever you finally
open your strip club for ladies who just want to
lie around on couches and robes slots, you should open
a roadside zoo attraction that's just people lying around wearing
half zipped bear costumes. Okay, right, just so for the outside,
you know, it's like kind of like you're like, hey, look,
we got a roadside attraction to bring in the truckers.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Sure, but I'll put the I'll put the fellows outside
in the.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, totally outside exactly, and the lady's gonna be inside
with the air conditioning robes.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, girl, Ladies to the front. Girls to the front.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
So back to Angela that maybe or maybe not Sunbar.
So what is the truth? Well, in order to convince
the public that Angela Sunbear was a real bear, the
zoo put out a press release allegedly written by the bear.
I don't now convince.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Okay, So now who tells the truth around here?

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Well do you check this statement? And I quote? Yesterday
after work, I received a call from the park manager
asking me if I was slacking off and had a
biped replace me. Much to my surprise, I'm just sitting
in the mountains and I go viral on the internet.
Some people think I look too human when I stand up.
It seems you really don't understand me. Previously, some visitors

(17:39):
even thought I was too petite to be a bear.
I want to emphasize again, I am a Malaysian sun bear,
not a black bear, not a dog, a Malaysian sun bear.
So that was the press release allegedly written by Angela
the sun Bear. It's not helping quell any of the doubts.
So if that didn't convince you, Elizabeth, we also have

(17:59):
test the money from Charles Robbins, director of research at
the Washington State University Bear Center, which I'm sure you
should follow on social media, and according to The New
York Times, Robbins assessed the bear question it offered his take,
saying that in his professional opinion and I quote, it
looks like a sun bear to me. Presumably the bear
has been rewarded with food by the crowd for standing,

(18:21):
so it learned very quickly to do just that. So
that's the whole he's getting rid of the standing part now.
Robin's also addressed the posture of the sun bear, adding
the quote, I have a grizzly bear that will stand
and walk two legged. So now he's just like bragging
on what he got.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, and I'm just okay, so what's it? Is he
in their pocket too?

Speaker 2 (18:39):
No, but he's the deciding factor in this one. So
there you go in the sun Bear innocent. Which brings
me to another big bad bear story where the nature
of the bear was in question. When this story hit
the press recently, a number of rude dudes reached out
to us and sent us this story.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Perhaps inspired by the Chinese zoos, a group of southern
California men got some notions for how they they might
pull off some bear bas crimes. First they got a
bear suit, Then they played rock paper scissors to see
who would wear the bear suit. Then on January twenty eight,
twenty twenty four, they took three cars and drove out
to Lake Arrowhead, which is up there in the mountains
above Los Angeles, where they then proceeded to stage their crime.

(19:18):
The men filmed an alleged bear breaking into their cars
and thrashing the insides.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, that just happened up in Tahoe a couple weeks
ago totally.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
And these cars, they were really nice, Like one was
a twenty fifteen Mercedes G sixty three AMG, another was
a twenty twenty two Mercedes E three fifty and the
third car was a twenty ten Rolls Royce Ghost.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Itok, a Rolls Royce up to Lake Arrowhead.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
I know right now. The men had a good thing going,
that is until they got greedy with it. Because you see,
they filed not one, not two, but all three different
insurance claims reporting that a bear broke in and damaged
their cars. And they filed the claims with different insurance
companies on and two of the insurance companies seem to
have been tricked. But the third company, the one that
ensured the Rolls Royce wasn't so easy to cause.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
To say, why did they go up there and then
film themselves trashing the car? Well, now I get it.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, insurance for the insurance fraud. So their ruse was
revealed on the video proof they submitted to polster their
insurance claims, which means they made the mistake of filming
their crimes one right, and then because you know, as
you point out, they needed the video proof for the
insurance companies. They also made the mistake of filing the
claims on the exact same date at the exact same
location and said, you know, here's how it goes, which

(20:26):
linked the claims. When one of the claims was for
the rolls, Royce triggered an investigation Elizabeth by the California
Department of Insurance. No one sees them coming never. The
investigation was cheekily called Operation bear Claw No No. Their
investigation into the alleged to bear attack on these string
of luxury cars. The insurance fraud investigators noted that when

(20:47):
they carefully considered it the video evidence, it sure looked
like the bear recorded inside the expensive cars looked a
hell of a lot like a man inside of a
bear costume. Thrashing around in the luxury cars, and I've
seen it and it definitely does really. Oh yeah. So
the investigators they took the video evidence to a group
of wildlife biologists who worked for the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife, and they asked them for their professional

(21:10):
opinion on the alleged bear attack video. It did not
take the wildlife biologists very long? Did it determine? That? Quote?
It was clearly a human in a bear suit?

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Oh no, I see videos like that all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Oh, I'm sure, both from Tahoe and from southern California.
So once the insurance frauds confirmed, charges were filed against
the purps. The men, Alfia Zuckerman thirty nine of Valley Village,
along with Reuben tamarazi In twenty six of Glendale, and
Vahi morod Kanian of thirty two, also of Glendale, were

(21:42):
all sentenced to one hundred and eighty days in county jail,
and the men were also ordered to pay restitution which
amounted to one hundred and forty one thousand dollars. Wow.
Now there was a fourth suspect, Era Rot Chirkinian thirty nine,
as also of Glendale, tell by the ian whose cas
His case is still pending. So there you go.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Did they rent these cars, like, did they own the They.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Own the cars. And then they were filing insurance claims
on the damage done and basically saying, oh, my car
has been total Exactly, a bear totaled my car from
the inside out.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
There's the one that happened up untill they showed they
didn't have the picture of the bear in there, but
the bear got stuck.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
And it was a legit bear. Though it was a
legit bear bears.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
When they showed the inside of the car, I mean,
like you see like the claw marks, and they just
that thing went to town and there.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
They do real damage to damage a human being could
not do. Exactly, you just don't have the musculature.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
No, no, So let's.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Unzip, step out of our bear costumes, and when we're back,
we'll get into some more fake emergencies. There were actually
ridiculous crimes, and we're back, Elizabeth, back, you're ready for

(23:14):
round two of Yeah, dude, fake uh, fake fakers, fakers,
fraudsters in this case, fake emergencies.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Oh oh yeah, that's not funny.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
So this next one is another recent news story. I
don't know if you saw this one on your news
feeds or perhaps on social media. It involves those folks
who pay large money to climb Mount Everest.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Oh those folks. Yeah, yeah, I try and ignore that stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
I figured, but as you might guess, people who are
willing to pay a lot of money to climb up
a mountain also make really easy marks to.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Con Oh, I can imagine. Have you seen the pictures
of them, like the traffic jam, it's just a line
of people. Oh yeah, and they're not even really like
there's one step.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
At a time, and they're holding onto the guide ropes
and it looks like, you know, like a line for Disneyland,
like you're waiting for Space mountain.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah, and then they leave their trash and then dead
friends all over the places. Bottles close it down, shut
down the mountain.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
So the story goes Sherpas the aka the mountain guides,
who you.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Get treated like garbage by the way, largely Yes.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, yeah, they leave these mountain climbers up the face
of Mount Everest, where allegedly now they are poisoning the
climbers halfway up the mountain. They're poisoning, poisoning them. Why
why would they do that, You may be wondering, is
it because they're so poorly treated? Possibly? But mostly it's
for the big payday.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Okay, like the big candy bar.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
No, but actual like here's your check. Nice work, like
poisoning the Western Yeah, like, how does poisoning your client
result in a payday? That's great questions, Elizabeth. It was
a classic case of insurance fraud because you see, if
you have a medical emergency on Mount Everest, you can't
just climb back down. You can't send up a traditional

(24:55):
ambulance to go pick them up. And due to the
often bad weather on the mountain and the lack of
negotiable roads past a certain height, is only one way
to get to them, which is a helicopter. So you
send up a helicopter ambulance and then those helicopter rescues
they aren't cheap, so the sherpas would conspire with the
helicopter companies to fake a medical emergency or would need

(25:15):
be cause one, so that way the helicopter ambulances would
have to take expensive rescue missions, and that we're paid
for by the Western insurance companies. Amazing right, As The
Daily Mail reported on a story that was first reported
by the Katmandu Post Quote. The fake rescue racket works
by getting a climber to stage a medical emergency. A
helicopter is then called and taken to a nearby hospital.

(25:37):
An insurance claim is then filed that bears little resemblance
to what actually happened. So it had fast become a
fifteen million pound insurance scam. Yeah, one that involves sherpas,
helicopter pilots, local doctors. It was a whole cottage industry. Again.
According to the Daily Mail and I Quote, Nepal's Police
Central Investigation Bureau identified two ways this game is manufactured.

(26:01):
The first involved tourists who don't want to walk all
the way back down tracks can take up to two
weeks on foot, so guides tell climbers to fake a
medical emergency so that a helicopter comes. But the second
method is far more troubling and involves tricking climbers into
thinking they're having a medical emergency. Oh wow, that's where
the poison comes in.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
And this, Elizabeth, is where I say, rather than me,
tell you about the poison. Yes, Elizabeth, close your eye
as I want you to picture it. It's a pleasant
day on Mount Everest, or at least it was when
you first began your ascent, But now after you've been

(26:43):
at it for a long while, the weather has started
to turn. You fight against strong gusts of wind that
whisks snow from the mountain side, creating a dramatic white
cloud from the snow spray effect. The reduced to visibility
has left you clinging to the guide ropes and the
mountainside itself. Turns out, this is your first time climbing

(27:04):
the famous tallest mountain in the world. You were excited
to come. You felt abuliant when you first began the
hike up Everest, but now as a weather turns more foul,
you've grown nervous about what could happen. You know the statistics,
and you've already had to step over more than one
frozen corpse of a hiker who failed the summit the
mountain and now resides permanently as a human popsicle landmark

(27:28):
on the trail to the peak. Luckily for you, you
have an experienced mountain guide with you, and your Shirpa
promises you he'll keep an eye on you and keep
you safe. He says he has a phenomenal safety record
This is reassuring, since at your current altitude, the air
has become thin, oxygen is scarce. At the moment, you
feel like you're breathing through a carpet, absolutely fighting to

(27:50):
replenish your oxygen after each hexhay and your Shirpa notices this.
He informs you that above three thousand meters, this is
a common experience. You know what he's referenced. It's called
altitude sickness. You were warned about it in the many
online forums you checked before you came to Everest, the
same forums and subreddits you read obsessively before you booked

(28:10):
your trip, and so you know all of the signs
of what to look for. Headache, a tangling sensation in
your limbs, and extremities. All of this is due to
the precipitous drop of oxygen in your blood. But that's
the odd thing. You aren't experiencing any of those telltale
signs of altitude sickness. So you argue that since you've
come this far, you want to push it. You want

(28:32):
to continue your ascent to the summit. Your Sirpa seems
disappointed in your response, which you find kind of odd.
Maybe he's just the worrying kind, because a dead hiker
is probably bad for his online reviews. Anyway, you manage
to press on your feet find purchase in the icy
mountain side. Your breathing is labored, but it remains steady

(28:54):
because you trained for this climb and you're convinced you
can make it. A little while later, your shurpa calls
for a rest. He says you all need to catch
your breath, rest your weary bodies, and eat something to
restore your energy reserves. You agree, so you and your
climbing partner who came along at your invite, and your
trustee sherpa all stop to eat. You tear open your

(29:16):
trail snacks. You gobble them up rather voraciously. After you've
sucked down your energy slurries and protein bars, you wash
it all down with some hot tea from a thermos
that your shurpa brought. It tastes good, i'llbeit a little
bit odd to your palate. After your brief rest, you
all reset the ice bikes of your climbing boots into
the icy mountain side. You get back to hiking. You

(29:38):
managed to put one foot in front of the other
for another hour or so, but you feel this rumbling
in your tummy. There's a strange, unsettling gurgling. As you
march up the mountain, your discomfort only grows more intense.
Soon enough, you're in actual physical pain. It feels debilitating.
You begin to doubt if you can go on. Your
Shirpa notices it. He stops you all again and says

(30:01):
he's worried about you. He says you don't look good.
It's altitude sickness, he says. He tells you he's going
to radio back down to the base camp and call
for an emergency helicopter to come up and get you.
You try to protest, but you can't make a meaningful
argument against a rescue chopper because you are in agony.
A little while later, you hear it long before you

(30:22):
see it, and then boom, you spy it, the rescue chopper.
It emerges from the wispy white clouds. It's rotors whip
and swirl the wind blown snowspray, and seeing the chopper,
you feel defeated, but you begrudgingly accept the help. Your
shurface secures you in the basket, and then you're winched
up to the helicopter and brought inside safe and secure

(30:44):
after a humbling white back down from where you were
high above the clouds. You were flown directly to a
hospital where the well practiced admitting staff takes you in
it begins to treat you for altitude sickness. You're both
angry and a little embarrassed that you had to be rescued.
Oh well, maybe you'll have better luck next time. Okay,
So there you go, Elizabeth. That's what a medically induced

(31:06):
helicopter rescue looks like. Yeah, in practice, or in your
imagined case, your shirp has slipped you some baking soda
into your tea in order to trigger a medical emergency
so he and his partners could scam the system and
necessitate a mountainside rescue. You see, he gets a cut
from the helicopter service for calling out the cavalry to
come save you, because they all know the Western insurance

(31:28):
companies will pay top dollar for your medical care. Who
gets hurt here, you know? And like I said earlier,
since they were scamming insurance companies, the fraudsters often went
for every dollar or pound they could finagle, which means
the purpose would claim that every single person that gets
rescued required their own chopper, even though the rescue choppers
were designed to carry multiple distressed or injured climbers, and

(31:50):
if each person needs a fresh chopper, that makes multiple
paid in Now, if you're wondering, the rescue flights would
charge the insurance companies about nine thousand pounds per rescue,
which is about twelve thousand dollars American. Okay, not bad
for a scam. Sounds so bad, it really doesn't.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
In fact, that's cheaper than like if you don't have
an insurance and you have to be airlifted after an
action of this country.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I forget about tie hundred thousand dollars exactly. Yeah,
so I would rather call one of them. I'm like,
flyover from the ball exactly now. In order to have
all their ducks in a row, the purpse would also
fake the paperwork, such as flight manifests and load sheets.
That's the kind of paperwork that pilots had to fill out. Yeah,
and at the hospital they'd have medical aid professionals doctor

(32:30):
up some of pony paperwork. So they'd even use like
the digital signature of a doctor who never even saw
the faked patients oftentimes didn't even know he was being
involved in the scam.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
So in the time between twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty five, investigators found that there were over three hundred
confirmed fake rescues. Oh no what Oh yeah. In total,
those paid out about fifteen million pounds in fraudulent insurance claims. Wow,
which is about twenty million dollars. Now what's curious is
that this scam was well known. Like, in fact, back
in twenty nine there was so much insurance fraud going

(33:02):
down that policy reforms were put in place by NEPAUL
to stem this new trendy crime wave. But that reform
backfired and it led to more fraud.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Oh you're kidding.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, just ask Minaj Kumar Casey, who is the head
of the Central Investigation Bureau of the Nepol Police. He
told the catman do post quote. The scam continued due
to lacks punitive action. When there is no action against crime,
it flourishes. The insurance scam two flourished as a result,
and so now this year, rescue chopper fraud is once

(33:32):
again making headlines, especially after thirty two people were charged
for making phony insurance claims. Yeah, nine of them have
been arrested, which included pilots and staff from three different
helicopter companies, along with doctors and it admin's staff from
three different hospitals. So it's a widely engaged yeah, exactly.

(33:52):
But there's more to this story, Elizabeth, because you see
when news stories broke about the charges being brought against
the quote thirty two tour managers, rescue coordinators, hospital owners, doctors,
and trekking guides who face charges under the Organized Crime
Prevention Act is Climbing Magazine reported those news stories focused
on the trend of poisoning mountain climbers in order to

(34:13):
necessitate a chopper rescue, like what happened to you in
the picture now. However, according to Climbing Magazine, that's not accurate,
not according to the accounting of what is really happening.
They have the receipts, Elizabeth. They can prove it based
on the seven hundred and eighty four page charge sheet
for the thirty two named Purpse. Insurance fraud is certainly

(34:34):
going down on the mountain. Nobody doubts that. That's not
up for debate. But the poisoning part seems to be
a bit of a lie, or at least a major exaggeration. Now,
remember having the picture that you were poisoned with and
I didn't tell you, but it was baking soda I
just put in the tea in order to necessitate an
emergency chopper back. Well, poisonings like that didn't happen, at

(34:55):
least not often. However, reported news stories about the charges
in the insurance fraud, that was often the headline, like,
you know mountain guides pol climbers.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Is then it turns out of these poor innocent climbers
exactly nasty locals.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, and it totally plays into all of our biases
and some orientalism. Throw that in there, right. So, as
these news stories around the world focused on the sensational
allegations that mountain guides were poisoning their clients for big,
big money, yeah, none of that ended up showing up
in the seven hundred and forty eight page charging documents.
And to confirm this, climbing magazine they like went through

(35:30):
all seven and forty eight pages with their highlighter pen
and then once they were satisfied with that, they reached
out to folks from the Central Investigation Bureau of the
Nepal Police and they were told via email to date,
the official investigation has not found any evidence of poisoning.
Really yeah, as well, Senior Superintendent of Police Kumar Shreshed
the put out a press release to quell the online

(35:52):
fear mongering because this is big business for Nepal. They're
like use of Mount Everest money. Yeah. So in his
press release, the Police super tenant he informed the public
and the press that quote the CIB Serious attention has
been drawn to news reports broadcasted across national and international
media regarding the fake rescue of tourists. These reports alleged
to the Trekking guides in the Everest region made tourists

(36:14):
ill by mixing poisonous substances into their food to facilitate
fake rescues. During the investigation conducted so far, no facts
have been found to suggest that poisonous substances were mixed
into food. So then where do where the start? Well,
as best as can be determined, it began with a
repeated rumor. One mountain guide, a man named Uga Bajador Tappa.

(36:37):
He said that quote, I've heard that foreigners are made
ill by mixing bacon powder into their food. So that's
all it took. I have heard, And then everyone just
ran with it.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Well, and I would imagine that some of these guys
who are just you know, really full of themselves and
have the money to do Everest and if they they
poop out they can't make it. Oh, then they're like,
you know what, I think I was poisoned by this
mysterious Sherpah they do.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
They go into a subreddit and they see someone report
this and they're like, that's what happened to me. Yeah,
that's why I couldn't make it.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
But I mean, like I think because that's what you
were talking about, Like this sense of disappointment is the
helicopter crests and the person wants to you know, push through.
I could see that, But then I could also see
them being jerks and being like, well, I'm going to
blame someone. I'm gonna blame the.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
She they poisoned.

Speaker 5 (37:22):
Otherwise I would have be sprinted. The last half I
was doing record time they were carried him. No one
has gone this fast like I was carrying.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Two sherpas on my back and then they poisoned me.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Now, since Tenseig nor Gay have seen.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
It made them look so bad, so as.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Were the actual insurance broud it largely stemmed from guides
convincing hikers that they were experiencing a medical emergency and
then calling a chopper to rescue them, and then charging
the Western insurance companies for the medical emergency that actually
was happening. Right like. For instance, consider the case of
Tensing Sherpa. He's a guide for Panorama Himalayan Trekking expedition.
He was named in the criminal indictment and he stands

(38:03):
accused of radioing for a chopper to rescue a Canadian
woman who was experiencing a medical emergency. The woman named
Sylvia Albierre was choppered off the mountain and when she
gets home to Canada, she sees in her latest bill
her insurance was charged eighty two hundred dollars for the
rescue plus thirteen hundred and two dollars for hospital treatment.
And when she saw that bill, she did what many

(38:23):
folks do these days, She went and got mad. On Facebook.
She saw stories about similar fake rescues. She deduced that
she too was scammed, so she wrote an email to
the CIB in Nepal.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
Well did she she took a helicopter ride?

Speaker 2 (38:38):
She did take a legitimate She went to the hospital
in you got the full trip ext So when she
wrote her email to the CIB in Nepal, she told
investigators her story, and in her email in January of
this year, she wrote that she and her fellow climber
were both duped, or she put it, we were denied
the right to descend on foot as we intended. So

(38:59):
apparently her email led to charges against Tensing Shirpa. Now
in all, honestly, can you imagine know how pissed you'd
be if you spend all this time preparing, all that time,
securing of visa to climb Ount Everest, all that money
to outfit yourself or your arduous mountain climb, and then
when you finally get there, a guy's like you're having
a medical emergency.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
It might be you know.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
That's the thing is, it's like you don't get to
actually make the climb.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Well, I mean she was on her way down. I
could see where they're just like they have to make
that call of Joe. I want as someone who's going
to keel over, and a lot of people don't want
to admit.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yes when they aren't.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
They don't have anyben to finish something. And you can
see the egos on these people to go do this
in the first place.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Good point, and they're not going to.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Be the one like, yeah, you know what, I don't
think I can finish this. They're oh, I'm going to
do this. But there was a case recently where these climbers,
you know, we're having trouble getting up or whatever. I
don't know what happened, but one of them collapsed and
the sherpa picked him up, put his own pack down,
picked the guy up and carried.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Him back to back then a base camp, and.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Then he gave it was some well known person. So
it was like a press conference, doesn't think the It's
like I want to thank my team and I want
to think the King of England, but like you're just
naming all these people and the shirp is like, oh
my god, I just carried this big, you know, sack
of potatoes down here, and what am I chap liver?

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Oh? And also I mean there's like in the mountain
climbing community, there's a lot of stuff about like your
climbing partner. You have to like you have to recognize
you both are facing life and death and decisions, so
you have to be very honest very truthful. It's like
a bond. You're literally tied to each other, right, and
if something happens to them, they break their legs. You're
supposed to be like, I'm not going to the mountain.
I got to help you get down to Basecam. There's
whole documentaries about that. Now. Obviously, as you pointed out,

(40:42):
it's a tremendous debacle to climb Mount Everest. These tastes,
I mean quite honestly. I mean, not only do you
have to step over the bodies of the frozen climbers
died in the mountain and who are now frozen corpses
who never get removed ever, they're they're for good. Yeah. Also,
you spend most of your time on the mountain, like
like I said, like you're at Disneyland righting in line.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
And they leave their trash everywhere, including oxygen.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Bottles huge yeah, big break green.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
And I think they're framing the Sherpas quite frankly, because
if you have all these Western tourists who are like,
oh this is you know, this is fraud.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
They're making me do this.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
The government, like you said, they want that Everest money,
oh yeah, big money, and the communities need that money,
So if they're gonna say, oh yeah, okay, we'll crack
down on it. And then I think gets curious that
they don't do anything, because it's not really happening. The
justice for the spas now.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Also, I was thinking, if they can do helicopter rescues,
why can't they clear the bodies of the dead hikers
Just strap them onto the winch and pull them up,
you know.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
Just get one of those big old helicopters and say
we're going to close the mountain for a couple of
days while we clear up the body.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
On the Soviet eraic cargo choppers. You can just like
land in a field anywhere, like this field can be
a swamp, doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
But then they also have to be blaring the supremes
like the beginning of China Beach. And then yeah, I
just want, like I want to blend all that imagery,
all the stuff.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
And Cold war imagery a running rampant in current day.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
I like it. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I like your imagination, thank you so much. So this
story is bleak and ridiculous, right, so let's take them
another little break, watch this one out of our heads,
and when we're back, we'll dive back into another fake
emergency for fun and profit, in this case influence. We're back, Elizabeth. Hello,

(42:46):
So now are you ready for another fun with fraud
and faked emergencies? Right? So, you know how you love
online influencers and all that they bring to the world. Well,
I've saved the best for last.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Great.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
This is another modern one. This one went down recently,
obviously since it's about an influencer. So the story goes
twenty seven year old Brazilian influencer Monarchy Fraga had a
big idea and so you can better picture her as
I tell you the story. This is Monica Fraga.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Okay, so she's like a like a bikini model.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
She's exactly that. You're correct.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, me, it's just like you say, like imagine like
an influencer. So it's like she has.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
A specific kind like she's not like doing the like
I have. I'm involved in beijed life, you know, like
some of them are right, some are like, oh, I'm
a food influencer and they're just like, oh, they have
like tattoo sleeves and they.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Have top hair that long hair.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Okay, I don't know the influencer.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
I don't like you jes honestly, Like.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
My social media feed, isn't it just not all influencers
like yours?

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, but influencers like Inina Garden, that's my my influencers.
I don't think I could name an influencer. Can you name,
aside from the ones you're about to tell me about,
can you name an influencer right now?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, there's tons of them, all.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Right, give me a name, Give me one name.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Jake Paul Is that.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
The boxer he's done about all they do, that's all
he does, gets beat up for fun.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
No, that's what his sideline is. But he started as
an influencer and then he's just branched out, like mister
Beast is not a game show host, but now he is.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
He is. I think he's like a c I A oh.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
He's got dead eyes.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
There's something. There's something like and I don't even know
like what he does or who he is, but he
makes cookies or something.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Now I have no idea. I mean he does everything now,
he just he has like an talent agency to stuff
escape from this house I set on fire? How long
do you live in this?

Speaker 3 (44:44):
See? This is what I'm talking about. Man and the
Jake Paul Guy. He came from that. He was an influencer,
influencing people to.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Do be their worse self. I don't know it makes sense.
It's you also have a mixture, not because you have
like the people who do like like I Show Speed.
He's like a streamer where he's just constantly I show speed.
He's this young black athlete essentially, and he just goes
around the world doing fantastic things like with professional athletes,

(45:11):
and you're just like, how he runs really fast. He
can like do a jump and they drive like a
sports car under him. He can like you know, do
things that other like professional gymnasts can do. He's like
he just goes Yeah, he's an incredible athlete, but he's
just like too small to be a professional athlete in
most American sports. So he ends up doing it online
and people are just like he's like a huge star, right.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
And he makes money doing this.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, But he's basically a streamer, not really influence. He's
not like telling people like, hey, wear are these shoes?
Or like here's where I go to eat to do
get energy for my you know, crazy stunts.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
So how does he make money as a street He
does this on live Internet.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
People like donate money and then now brand partnerships is
a big part of it. People like fly him over
to Dubai to like, you know, jump a camel or whatever.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
I'm so old and I am so cranky.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
So like, yeah, I can name plenty, but they've become
I couldn't get her.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
I can't just just something. That's the only one I like.
But she's a comedian. She's the one who does your
eccentric friend and okay, has all the crazy outfits. Oh right,
I'm not sure she makes any money on it, but
she's amazing and I love her. She's my favorite. She's
like if my friend Sarah and I had a baby.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Who's is she the one who does like I'm going
to punch you that that thing?

Speaker 5 (46:22):
No?

Speaker 2 (46:23):
I love her. What did she say?

Speaker 3 (46:24):
I don't know what her name is like, but yeah,
she like quietly threatens to punch. I haven't seen her
in a long time. Okay, but no, this one is
she's just jolly or something like.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
She's probably a comedian. I got cha.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, and she she just like wears really outlandish outfits.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well that brings us back to Moniky Franco whole thing,
which is she wears outrageous outfits. They're just always bikinis.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Okay, yeah, no, that's not what this count does now.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
A year ago, in April twenty twenty five, Rakha posted
to her forty eight thousand followers that she had gone
through it in the jungle. She informed her fans and
followers that she and her husband Lucas were near their
home in Karasu, Burbazil, when they were accosted by three
well armed men and what followed was a veritable nightmare
Elizabeth and her video explainer of the attack. Sure when

(47:14):
she told everyone what she got.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
For the first thing I want to do after an emergency,
Yeah is a video.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Explainer, so monikey. She claimed that the three well armed
men kidnapped her and her husband. They were then dragged
into the jungle where they were beaten and tortured. Her husband, Lucas,
was allegedly beaten until he agreed to hand over valuables
like some gold chain or something, and she had been
posting about it before. That's what alerted them, Like you've
got that gold chain, we want that anyway in other

(47:40):
valuables as well. So the pair they're held in the
jungle against their will for hours, and then they eventually
are ransomed off to their family, like if you pay,
release them, and so then the family pays and then
they get released. Elizabeth, you have to understand this story
was extra scary for her fans and followers to hear
because Monarchy was a mommy influencer.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yes, the twenty seven year old mother of small kids
told her fans and followers through tears, Elizabeth, Yeah, but
and I quote, I spent hours in the woods. I
didn't know if I'd make it back.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Where were her kids when this was happening.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Behind the camera. She also claimed that from what she
could recall, there was a river there and the whole time,
I thought they were going to kill me and throw
me in there and I'd never see anyone again. All
I could think about was my children. Meanwhile, all she
could think about were her children, right, so, wherever they were,
she had to witness her husband get his face rearranged

(48:36):
by the bad men while she's thinking about her children,
or she put it, they beat up Lucas they were
after some gold chains I'd posted about, and I said
those gold chains weren't mine, which is like a big
time influencer truth, Like I was boring, right, stuff exactly.
That's not my private plane. So this all obviously sounds horrendous, right,
It's like something that might happen to a real celebrity,
Like when Kim Kardashian got robbed for her jewelry in Paris.

(48:59):
I thought that was fake, of course. I mean, I'm
right there with young on the fence.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
But everything, Zaron, everything's sake.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
See, I go both ways on my things. I'm like,
this could be fake. It might not be fake. I'm
like that old Taoist story about the horse, like when
they they go, yes, this happened, I'm like, it could
be yeah, maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Every time you say to me, did you see like
when celebrities like get into relationships, I'm convinced they're all fake.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Yes, you always say that this is pr and I
believe on this set and they were both reading the
same book Nothing's real. So in this Brazilian influencer's case,
her story wasn't as believable as a Kardashian tail. So
because when the Brazilian police investigated the alleged attack, they
found that there were no well armed bad men who

(49:44):
beat and tortured the couple instead, the police claimed it
was all a stage stunt meant to build online cloud
for Monique Fraka. You see the police they did their job.
Yeah they would they first, they have a job. When
they first heard of the alleged kidnapping, they launched a huge,
sprawling operation to investigate the crime. And as they investigated,
they found evidence of her story didn't line up with reality. Shocker,

(50:08):
no right, So, according to Detective Clay Anderson, as the
investigation progressed, it found indications that the alleged kidnapped for
ransom was in fact nothing more than a plot between
the supposed victim and one of the perpetrators. So that's
when the police launched a second investigation into the couple,
an operation which they called smoke Screen of Likes.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Smoke screen of likes.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Instead of lies. Likes is a one. Yeah, so I guess.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Go back, start from the drawing board on this. We
need to workshop the tel.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Maybe it sounds better than the original Portuguese Perhaps, as
Detective Anderson told local press, the investigation suggests she's not
only knew about it, but agreed things in advance and
stayed in contact with one of those involved afterwards.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
She like hired her boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
That's what I'm thinking. See, now we're on the city.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
I like to imagine them just sitting in the woods,
punching each other in the face. Her husband cooked it out,
maybe with the rock.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Yeah, try this one.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Oh oh that's too hard, too hard. But yeah, now okay, yeah,
so let's just say I'm gonna put on my.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Detective hat please.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
She she had her boyfriend beat him up.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
I like that. I like where your head's at, good
and suspicious.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
So, once thirty officers were taking part in the operation
Smoke Screen of Likes, then it came a series of
arrests and property searches as the truth of the stage
attack began to come to light. It was revealed that
it was partly true since the influencer Frago's husband was
unaware that the beating was fake, because it sure felt

(51:42):
real to him when he was getting beaten and tortured.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
When his teeth were all over the floor.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah, he was legit beaten. She arranged that part, like beat.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Him up, but didn't she she supposedly got beaten, but yeah,
not really, we've.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Been She didn't walk out with the the way he looks, yeah, exactly.
So back to Detective Anderson, as he said, at all times,
he has maintained that he genuinely believed it was a
real kidnapping. Now, meanwhile, despite evidence that she arranged the
kidnapping of her and her husband, she was also in
contact with one of the three alleged kidnappers, her boyfriend,
and she insists that she's innocent and she knows nothing

(52:14):
about any publicity stunt right. Yeah, she faces now charges
of blackmail, also wasting police time with a phony man hunt,
and obstruction of justice.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Trouble for her is one of her alleged accomplices is
now behind bars and another one is facing charges for
receiving the ransom cash her boyfriend. I'm willing to bet
that one, if not both, oh yeah, are likely to
testify against her in exchange for lesser charges. So there
you go. A quick around the world survey of faked
emergencies for fun and profit and fraud with tourists.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
This leaves me to ask you, Elizabeth, Yeah, what's our
ridiculous takeaway here?

Speaker 5 (52:51):
Everything is fake, that is, and it's only worse now
with AI, like, because we were already bad just on
our own.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
And now we've introduced the worst bad actor you can.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Oh yeah, we have. We've had like lies about you know,
world events from governments. Oh okay, so we have like
the top level bad lies. And then you can just
it just keeps going.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Influences start lying about their like what their lives are like.
But oftentimes they're.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Your whole thing is a lie. And then you have
you know, I think everything is a lie.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Also small time lies like oh yeah, boss, I'm at work,
I'm working remote. And then they like use like whatever
like however they do with your cursor to figure out
whether or not you're really logged on. So they are
alling even on the most smallest levels. Right, it's just
lies everywhere.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
But it's also you know, it's we have built up
this public persona of you know, not even just the influencers,
but you know, you look at people's social media persona
is a lie most of the time.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
You know, there are friends that I'm close with and
I see like what they put on social media.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
True, yeah, it's like, well I was with you that day.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Well no, it's not even like a lie, but it's
like a misrepresentation and so you know, some of them
are more egregious, where you're like, I know that your
life is falling apart and you're looking like happy mommy.
It does, and I feel for you, you know, and
like mine like you. All of us curate, which I
hate that word, but we very carefully release like what

(54:21):
people can see.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
I don't. I just I neither post things, right, don't.
The curation is what you post and what you don't. Well, no,
the don't is just like the picture didn't turn out.
Like if I take a picture to share it, I
share it. Yeah, there is no like, oh I want
to show people. I just take a picture of my life.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Right, it's not you're not trying to give a narrative.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
No, I don't. I don't care what people think about me.
That's that's that's the big secret for me.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
It really is.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
I'm very honestly sharing. I'm like, look, I want you
guys to see this. Yeah, I mean it.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
We create narratives, and we've always done that, even prior
to to social media. We create narratives to people that
we know.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
See like I need traffic.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yes, we're like, no, I swear to God, like I
wasn't doing that no, I really do have my seatbelt on.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
I turned the music down. I make sure my seatbelt
is not behind me and actually over my shoulder.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
Yeah. So we we've always done that, right, but it
gets magnified with social media so that you can create
a narrative. And then the extreme of it are these
influencers who are going to create a narrative that doesn't
exist in reality of not even just like what they
look like. Like there was a thing that I saw
today about this this Chinese influencer who had a face
o filter on and it was slitching.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
That the one in the car with the kid. Oh no,
that's a different one. She was in Chinese.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, yeah, this this woman was like she's like a streamer,
influencer whatever it was. I think she's a streamer and
she was doing her thing and her face filter started flitching,
so it was like normal person anime figure. I went
back and forth, back and forth, and she lost all
these subscribers and all stuff, because it's like that's not
that's not reality.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
No, and a lot of people who've been wearing the filters,
it's it's very convincing too.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
It was a lady who got abducted really and the
problem that the police had is that all the photos
that our family had were social media that were so
heavily filtered anything like yeah, just but yeah, I mean
that's the thing. And like that's another thing. You you know,
you know people who you see their social media feed
and you're like, none of these.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Are years I saw you on Tuesday. That's not what
you look like.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
That's not what you look like. And it's either the
filter or they hide behind like the kitty cat face
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Sure, it's just strange. Well, so, I mean I kind
of go back to when you're in school and their
teachers will tell you about using a calculators, like, well,
you're not going to get better at math. And it's
kind of like also like if you go like in
the boy Scouts, like what they would tell you things
about like morality, which essentially, if you lie to others,
you're really lying to yourself because the rest of us
aren't paying that much attention, right, that's the thing, and
you start thinking that you've conned people, and so now
you're the one who's really believing your lies. So that's

(56:50):
my ridiculous takeaway. Elizabeth, Thanks for asking.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Good, that's glad. I'm glad you were able to get
that out.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Now that we've done that, are you in the mood
for talkback?

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Always in the mood.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Produce a d Can you favors the one? Oh my God,
I love cheek.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
Hi Elizabeth Zieron and producer D. I don't know if
I just sent you a message or not. I got
very confused. It's the Messa from Texas. I listened to
your Dolphin episode. I really wanted to tell you that.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies
was this horrible movie called Dave of the Dolphins starring
George C. Scott is awful. You must see it. He
teaches the dolphins how to talk, and they talk like

(57:33):
this podcast mackness back and as an adult I realized
how bad it was.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
But it's full of intrigue. There are hush the dolphins
are trying to silence her. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Anything with George's gottall watch anything with dolphins. I will
watch if they're together. This hit it's on.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
It's on.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
So thank you for this. So if you would like
to reach out to us, you can go to Ridiculous Crime.
On social media, Instagram is usually the best one to
reach out to, so it send a DM there if
you'd like. Also, you can see pictures from all of
our episodes, or you can go to Blue Sky and
you can see links to the episode, so you can
also DM us there if you like. Or you can

(58:17):
go to Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and people
Pop Pop Pop write us an email, and of course
we have our account Ridiculous Crime pod pod on YouTube.
They have animations and all the same shows there. If
you'd like to listen to your podcasts on YouTube, go
for that. And of course we have our website ridiculous
Crime dot com and it's filled with the gifts and

(58:38):
all sorts of award winning recipes by Elizabeth that you
can check out. And I'm just kidding there's no recipes there,
but go check it out. I think you will enjoy it. Also,
there is merch though that issue is a legit thing.
And obviously we love your talkback, so please go to
the iHeart app download it, leave us a talk back
and maybe you'll hear your voice here you'd love to hear.
Thank you for listening and as always, we will catch

(58:59):
you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaron Burnett. Produced and edited by our favorite bear
in a human costume, mister Dave Cousten and starring Annalice
Rucker is Judith. Research is by our resident rescue Chopper
pilots Marissa Brown and Jabbari Davis. Our theme song is

(59:22):
by Brazil's top Influencer band Seniors Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
The host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred. Producer Deve's
wardrobe provided by Mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair
and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are
two men in a one man bear suit, Ben Bolin
and Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Reds Why Say It One More Times? Cry Ridiculous Crime
is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the r heart a radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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