Showing titles in Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

A Jacket Off the Gorge peels back the layers of the criminal mind, revealing a fascinating look at one man's struggles within himself and with others. Jon's story raises questions about incarceration versus rehabilitation, lack of mental health treatment for offenders, and abuses by those we entrust to uphold the law.

Márcame, amo es una recolección de las explosivas revelaciones alrededor del juicio de Keith Raniere, llevado a cabo entre mayo y junio de 2019 en la corte este del Estado de Nueva York. En sus páginas están los antecedentes del grupo que formó alrededor de él, sus cómplices y víctimas principales, y los mecanismos que le permitieron a Raniere convertirse, de un estafador de ligas menores, en el líder de una peligrosa secta de esclavas sexuales con presencia en Canadá, los Estados Unidos y México.

New York Times Bestseller #1. Die unglaubliche wahre Geschichte des begehrtesten Betrügers der Welt, die von Leonardo DiCaprio im Spielfilm von Steven Spielberg verewigt wurde. "Von Behörden und Nachrichtenreportern wurde ich als einer der gerissensten Scheckbetrüger, Trickdiebe und Gauner dieses Jahrhunderts bezeichnet, als Hochstapler vom Format eines Academy Award Preisträgers. Ich war ein Schwindler und Schauspieler mit erstaunlichen Fähigkeiten."

We live in a secular, skeptical, and cynical age. Americans have lost faith in its institutions - including the church. Although the vast majority of Christian leaders serve faithfully, examples of financial fraud, greed, sexual and emotional abuse, and other systemic problems are almost everyday occurrences. And a watching world has a right to ask even those who are faithful ministers of the Gospel: “If you knew this was happening, why didn’t you say something?”

"Millionaire" had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history.

I Was Scammed: Don’t Be Scammed by Identity Fraud features the different methods that scammers use to steal one’s personal identity, followed by ways to avoid such scams. The book describes the growing identity theft problem, the many data breaches that have occurred, the ways scammers use your personal information, how to protect your identity from theft, and how to repair the damage after a scam. Besides describing the scams, the book provides tips on how to avoid becoming a victim, and what to do if you are.

This is the story of an unforgivable con man. Vulnerable families were his prey. His promise was an impossible dream and a lie. Peter Candlewood understood the system. That’s how he could commute prison sentences and reunite hopeless families with incarcerated loved ones. For a price. Except there was no Candlewood. No hope. Just a lowly Texas con artist who bet on the desperate - and won. And he wasn’t working alone. The multimillion-dollar deception cost the betrayed more than their savings.

Dr. James Kauffman and his wife, April, were the perfect couple: a respected endocrinologist and a beautiful radio host. But under the surface lurked a world of drugs, sex, and biker gangs. A world Dr. Kauffman would kill to keep secret.

Edgar Laplante was a small-time grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader - and total fraud.

The ultimate collection of Australia's craziest cons and mad schemes from a master storyteller. Australia is the birthplace and setting of some of the wildest, craziest and least-likely-to-succeed cons and rorts in history. From the cleverest double-crosses to the most unlikely and maddest schemes, master storyteller Jim Haynes reminds us that we've never been shy of pulling a trick or two.

Get inside and conquer the world of cons. The world can be a deceptive place. There are individuals out there who will do anything to gain something regardless of who they hurt or who they have to deceive. Unfortunately, this practice is only becoming more of the norm.

Mikhail Popkov may be the most prolific serial killers in world history. He led a double-life as a family man with a wife and a young daughter. But after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Popkov was able to take advantage of the lack of police authority to get away with his most barbaric fantasies.

Not all unknown forces are amiable to us humans, and some may be quite worth the fear that we instinctively feel when it comes to these forces. The idea of being confronted with a paranormal phenomenon of any kind is enough to flabbergast most people. But what if that paranormal phenomenon is coupled with a crime? Seeing a Bigfoot in the wilderness would be stunning enough, but imagine one grabbing your wallet and running off with it!

After her father died in 2003, Susan Fensten turned to a genealogy message board to search for surviving relatives. Days later, she was delighted to receive an email from someone claiming to be a distant cousin. In fact, Susan had just been ensnared by a relentless sociopath. She soon became the target of an elaborate cyber-hoax involving dozens of frightening characters, including known sex offenders, who made threats of kidnapping, murder, rape, torture, and cannibalism. Remarkable in its complexity, this story of Internet stalking is also a harrowing tale of courage in the face of madness.

Everyone got married in the 1950s, then started to produce the soon-to-be-famous baby boom. For Americans who had survived the Great Depression and World War II, prosperous married life was a triumph. The unwed were objects of pity, scorn, even suspicion. Women over twenty-three were consider old maids. But Eva Eldridge— who’d left the farm for a job in a wartime shipyard where she made a hasty and disastrous marriage—finds herself left out. Now in her thirties and marginally employed, she is the perfect target for handsome Vick, who promises everything.

WHEN ANNE HANSON'S DAD FIRST ASKED her to investigate the secret past of his parents, little did she know what she was getting into. For two decades, despite all her digging, she failed to unearth even the tiniest speck of evidence that the families of her grandparents, Frank and Ida Hanson, had ever existed. If her quest were a detective novel, its title would have been, "The Case of the Missing Ancestors."

When a beautiful young prom queen becomes the latest victim of a deadly bombing campaign, detectives Marty Sinclair and Al Alvarez must battle to find the killer before he can strike again. But when a rare documents dealer becomes the seriously injured next victim, is he really an innocent victim or something far more deadly?

This second edition of Boxes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes continues the history-changing story of Eva McLelland and her reclusive life married to a mystery man she discovered was Howard Hughes.

When Mark Kilroy vanished while on spring break in Matamoros, Mexico, the search for the missing pre-med student led to a gruesome discovery on a lonely stretch of land called Rancho Santa Elena: a mass grave containing Mark's mutilated corpse along with the remains of thirteen other people. The investigation uncovered how the victims were brutally killed at the hands of drug trafficker and cult leader Adolpho Constanzo, known by his followers as El Padrino, or The Godfather.

P. T. Barnum, best known for his own use of hoaxes in his popular Barnum & Bailey Circus, found that the use of hoaxes was acceptable when the audience was getting the entertainment they paid for. When it came to religious hoaxes, fraud, and swindling, Barnum was avidly against it. He even went so far as to offer $500 to any medium who could prove that they actually could reach the dead. In this exposé of humbugs and the scams they perpetuate, he goes after religious quacks, witches and sorcerers, and other forms of frauds in all walks of life.