In the social media era, we can all present a slightly glossier version of ourselves: someone who is more successful, less stressed out, with fewer crow’s feet – thank you, Facetune! But some people – a vanishingly small number of audacious tricksters – have taken the idea of personal reinvention to extreme and morally reprehensible lengths. When we hear the story of “fake heiress” Anna Delvey, who defrauded banks and New York high society, or the infamous “Tinder Swindler” Simon Leviev, who posed as a mogul’s son to con women into lending him money, it’s hard not to be drawn in by the psychological intrigue.
What drove these people? How did they get away with it (at least to begin with)? And would we have been smart enough to rumble their ruse? Perpetrators of what we might call “prestige fraud” – high-stakes scams with the potential to boost bank balances and social status – are fascinating antiheroes who have us rapt. “I think on some level we’re dazzled by the audacity of these people,” says Charlie Webster, an award-winning broadcaster and journalist.
Webster made the hit podcasts Scamanda, about a woman who faked having terminal cancer to extract donations from acquaintances and strangers, and Unicorn Girl, which explored the bizarre exploits of Candace Rivera, the CEO of an anti-human- trafficking, non-profit organisation, who was jailed for using her charity to fraudulently obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars. “But whenever I tell a story like this in a podcast,” Webster adds, “people always say to me afterwards: ‘Imagine if that person had channelled all their energy and audacity into something good.’”
