Showing results for "Fake!" in Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

Wealthy heiress Anna Delvey was one of the international jetset. Her Instagram account was a window on a glamorous world, filled with art launches, champagne brunches, VIP parties and stays in high-end hotels. Due to come into a $67m trust fund on her 26th birthday, she planned to establish the Anna Delvey Foundation, a multi-million dollar visual-arts centre in the heart of New York and wined and dined the city’s wealthy elite to secure investment for her project.

Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington.

After meeting through mutual friends, the 'Russian heiress' Anna Delvey and Rachel DeLoache Williams soon became inseparable. Theirs was an intoxicating world of endless excess: high dining, personal trainer sessions, a luxury holiday and Anna footed almost every bill. But after Anna's debit card was declined in a Moroccan medina whilst on holiday in a five-star luxury resort, Rachel began to suspect that her increasingly mysterious friend was not all she seemed.

Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks, all before he was twenty-one.

The third of a trilogy, this collection features 16 of the world's most outrageous scams and hoaxes. They all really happened, and were taken from firsthand accounts, newspaper reports, or historical documents found in public libraries. They date as far back as the late 1800s, but most are more recent. However, you won't find any defrauded widows or orphans in these stories; the victims are institutions or corporations quite capable of defending themselves, and the crooks who match wits with them are just as savvy. You could almost call it a fair fight!

Ehrlich währt am längsten, bekommt man als Kind ständig eingebläut. Und trotzdem: Immer wieder ist von Fakes im großen Stil die Rede, schummelt jemand oder wird betrogen. "Ggf. wahr!" ist der Original Podcast, der vom schönen Schein, von halben Wahrheiten und von echten Lügen erzählt. Von Menschen, deren Identität gestohlen wird, die Weinfälschern auf die Schliche kommen oder an Verschwörungstheorien glauben. Menschen, die lügen, weil sie können oder müssen. Unsere Reporterinnen treffen Spaßvögel und Hochstapler, Schummlerinnen und Betrügerinnen.

Ehrlich währt am längsten, bekommt man als Kind ständig eingebläut. Aber unehrlich geht einfacher und macht mehr Spaß. Warum sonst mogeln wir uns ständig irgendwo durch und geben etwas vor, was vielleicht gar nicht so ist? "Ggf. wahr!“ ist der Original Podcast, der vom schönen Schein, von halben Wahrheiten und von echten Lügen erzählt. Von Menschen, die eine Scheinehe führen, sich als Politiker_innen ausgeben oder ganze Firmen erfinden.

Deepfake technology can create video evidence of just about anything: Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie in an orgy, Chinese president Xi Jinping declaring nuclear war, basketball legend Michael Jordan winning the World Cup. The only limit is the imagination. In a time where fake news and disinformation is becoming harder and harder to identify, it is more essential than ever to understand the dark origins of deepfakes. Journalist Michael Grothaus goes down the rabbit hole as he interviews the often morally dubious, yet incredibly skilled creators of this content.