When we hear about confidence games, we think, “never me.” Welcome to The Grift, a show about con artists and the lives they ruin. Best-selling author and New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova takes us to the darker side of human nature and deceit. Ten stories about card sharks, cult leaders, art forgers, impostors, and more. Why do we fall for them time and time again?
Ferdinand Demara is quite possibly the greatest con artist you’ve never heard of.
36 Min
Jun 6, 2017
This week, we go inside the world of carnival game scams, why we fall for them even when we know the odds are against us.
29 Min
May 30, 2017
A fraud is lurking on most every block of most every city and town, all over the world: the psychic.
29 Min
May 23, 2017
Oscar Hartzell, born to humble beginnings, would go on to craft one of the most elaborate and successful mail fraud cons of all time.
Sam Israel not only ran one of the most successful Ponzi schemes in history, he would eventually go on to the single most extreme con there is.
Maria talks with the Atlantic’s Emily Yoffe about the most common grift of them all: the sweetheart scam.
A small secretive cult was started in the 1970s and operated out of New Jersey for decades without notice.
Cassie Chadwick was one of the most famous, or infamous, seductresses of the Gilded Age.
“Fast Jack” Farrell is one of the greatest card and dice manipulators of the twentieth century.
Coming soon from Panoply and Maria Konnikova, The Grift: stories about con artists and the lives they ruin.
