Two Grifters

Two Grifters
  • 5.0 (4)
  • True Crime
  • Daily

Two friends walk through history's greatest heists, cons, and scams: who planned them, how they worked, and the one dumb detail that brought them down. Hosted by Frankie and Ruby.

Episodes

  1. Oct 14

    Nothing but Paper to Give Us

    Leith, January 1823. The Kennersley Castle sailed for the Black River on the Mosquito Shore carrying close to two hundred Scottish tradesmen and their families, bound for the capital of the Territory of Poyais. They had bought their land by the acre at an office in London, read about it in a three-hundred-and-fifty-page guidebook that promised three crops of corn a year and rivers carrying globules of pure gold, and swapped their savings for Poyais banknotes printed in Scotland. The man who sold it all was Gregor MacGregor, a real general from the real wars of South American independence, who had come home calling himself the Cazique of Poyais, been received by the Lord Mayor of London, and floated a two-hundred-thousand-pound bond issue through a former Lord Mayor's bank. There was no capital and no country. There was the ditch of an abandoned fort under the brushwood, and when the settlers asked for their wages, the governor told them he had nothing but paper to give them. Accounts of how many died, and of whether MacGregor believed his own country, do not agree. He was tried in Paris and acquitted, kept selling Poyais into the 1830s, and was buried in Caracas Cathedral with full military honors. Also this week: Frankie owns up to the empty weeks, the show settles an open question from the sonogram episode, and The Modern Grift reads a letter from a listener who paid a deposit on a house that had somebody else's family living in it. Sources David Sinclair, 'The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Fraud in History,' Review/Headline, 2003Damian Clavel, 'What's in a Fraud? The Many Worlds of Gregor MacGregor, 1817-1824,' Enterprise & Society 22:4, 2021Alfred Hasbrouck, 'Gregor McGregor and the Colonization of Poyais, between 1820 and 1824,' Hispanic American Historical Review 7:4, 1927Matthew Brown, 'Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King: Gregor MacGregor and the Early Nineteenth-Century Caribbean,' Bulletin of Latin American Research 24, 2005James Hastie, 'Narrative of a Voyage in the Ship Kennersley Castle, from Leith Roads to Poyais,' Edinburgh, 1823Thomas Strangeways, 'Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, Including the Territory of Poyais,' Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1822Michael Rafter, 'Memoirs of Gregor M'Gregor,' London, 1820'The King of Con-men,' The Economist, 22 December 2012Memorandum and Order, United States v. Rippey, No. 18-20057, U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, 19 November 2019Court filings in United States v. Rush, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, September 2026Federal Trade Commission, 'Rental Listing Scams,' consumer.ftc.govFBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report, ic3.gov

  2. Sep 4

    A Sonogram She Found Online

    A couple in Delaware met a woman who was pregnant with twins and looking for a family to raise them. They moved her into their house for a month, bought her clothes and a phone and her food, and took her to the beach for two weeks. The sonogram she showed them was an image she had found on the internet. She was not pregnant, and she never had been. Chrystal Marie Rippey of Marshall, Texas worked at least four families across three states, asking for rent and utilities and living expenses while a licensed agency mailed her a birth mother packet and a couple in Shawnee, Kansas wired twenty-two thousand two hundred twenty-five dollars into an escrow account in California. It came apart when one family flew out to meet her. She pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, drew sixty months, and in 2018 walked out of a halfway house in Leavenworth and turned up in Louisiana. She was also not the only one running it: a woman in Kansas City took twenty-three couples with the same story and a co-defendant playing her landlord. Also this week: Ruby has news, both hosts have been buying things off strangers' baby registries, and The Modern Grift reads a listener's letter about the text message that says your package cannot be delivered due to an incomplete address. Sources: U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Kansas, 'Texas Woman Pleads Guilty in Federal Adoption Fraud Case in Kansas,' 2014U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Kansas, 'Texas Woman Sentenced in Federal Adoption Fraud Case in Kansas,' May 2015United States v. Chrystal Marie Rippey, No. 2:14-cr-20019, U.S. District Court for the District of KansasU.S. Attorney's Office, District of Kansas, 'Indictment: Woman Serving Fraud Sentence Walked Away From Halfway House,' 2018FBI Kansas City, 'Indictment: Adoption Fraud Targeted Would-Be Parents for Cash, Gifts,' 2011CBS News undercover investigation into a Kansas City adoption scheme, 2011Pacific Standard, 'The Fake Birth Mothers Who Bilk Couples Out of Their Cash by Promising Future Babies'FBI, 'Adoption Fraud' and 'FBI Warns the Public About Domestic Adoption Fraud Schemes,' fbi.govU.S. Postal Inspection Service, 'Smishing: Package Tracking Text Scams,' uspis.govFederal Communications Commission, 'How to Identify and Avoid Package Delivery Scams,' fcc.govFederal Trade Commission consumer guidance on text scams and reporting, consumer.ftc.govAARP, 'Package Delivery Problem? Maybe Not. Americans Are Swamped With Scam Text'

  3. Aug 24

    Eight Thousand Dollars and Eighty Names

    Chicago, 1974. A woman calls the police to report a burglary, fourteen thousand dollars in furs and jewels, and the detective who takes the report realizes he has taken it before, from the same woman, under a different name. The drinking glass she touches puts a real person under the aliases: eighty names, thirty addresses, thirty wigs, a fake heart surgeon named Dr. Connie Walker, a nurse, a reverend, a voodoo priestess, and a sudden secret daughter to a dead policy king with three quarters of a million dollars in cash in his house. The Chicago Tribune crowns her the welfare queen, a presidential candidate turns her into a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year legend without ever saying her name, and in 1977 the State of Illinois convicts the real woman of eight thousand eight hundred sixty-five dollars and sixty-seven cents. The record suggests the welfare may have been the least of it: a newborn taken from a hospital by a woman dressed as a nurse, a schoolteacher dead of an overdose while Taylor was her caretaker and beneficiary, and no one ever prosecuted for either. Also this week: the mailbox overflows and The Modern Grift goes triple, with weight-loss meds that turned out to be water, a rule for scam email, and a woman circling a college campus with a baby in the back seat, out of gas, needing exactly as much cash as you happen to have. Sources: Josh Levin, 'The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth,' Little, Brown, 2019Josh Levin, 'The Welfare Queen,' Slate, December 2013George Bliss and staff, Chicago Tribune coverage of Linda Taylor, September 1974 through 1978People of the State of Illinois v. Linda Taylor, Cook County Circuit Court, trial and conviction, March 1977'"Welfare Queen" Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign,' The New York Times, February 15, 1976NPR Code Switch, 'The Original Welfare Queen,' May 2019Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune coverage of the Paul Fronczak case, 1964 and 2019Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on avoiding scams and fake emergencies, consumer.ftc.govFederal Trade Commission guidance on recognizing and avoiding phishing, consumer.ftc.govFDA BeSafeRx guidance on buying medicine from safe online pharmacies, fda.gov

  4. Aug 19

    Five Hundred Dollars He Never Paid

    Chicago, 1886. A man named Herman Mudgett arrives in the city calling himself H. H. Holmes, buys an Englewood drugstore by mortgaging the drugstore's own shelves, and spends the next eight years building a career out of things that were never there: a glass-bending company with no technique, a machine that turned water into gas by way of a pipe into the gas main, a mineral spring that was really the hole the machine left behind, and a three-story building financed by simply not paying the people who built it. The legend says he murdered two hundred World's Fair tourists in a purpose-built murder castle. The record says something smaller and worse, and says that most of the legend came from Holmes himself, who sold his confession to the newspapers for seven thousand five hundred dollars and named several people who were still alive to read it. What actually ended him was an insurance fraud on a ten thousand dollar policy, a Philadelphia detective who walked into every hotel in eight cities, and a five hundred dollar finder's fee he promised a train robber and never paid. Also this week: The Modern Grift takes its second listener write-in, a romance scam that ran for nine months and ended at an airport arrivals gate, plus the red flags, who these crews actually target, and what to do the same night if it has already happened to you. Sources: Adam Selzer, 'H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil,' Skyhorse Publishing, 2017Harold Schechter, 'Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer,' Pocket Books, 1994Frank P. Geyer, 'The Holmes-Pitezel Case: A History of the Greatest Crime of the Century,' Publishers' Union, 1896Erik Larson, 'The Devil in the White City,' Crown, 2003John Bartlow Martin, 'The Master of the Murder Castle,' Harper's Magazine, December 1943Trial testimony of Carrie Pitezel, Commonwealth v. Mudgett, Court of Oyer and Terminer, Philadelphia, October-November 1895Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer coverage, July 1895 through May 1896Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on romance scams, consumer.ftc.govFBI Internet Crime Complaint Center guidance on confidence and romance fraud, ic3.gov

  5. Aug 4

    The Gold Bar Expense Report

    Northern Virginia, 2026. For seventeen years, federal prosecutors say, David Rush rose through the United States government on degrees he never earned: a Navy commission built on a Clemson transcript Clemson never issued, a master's from Rensselaer that Rensselaer has no record of, and a Navy pilot story he told along the way, all the way up to a Senior Executive Service post at the CIA with a top-secret clearance. The alleged fiction paid small at first: seventy-seven thousand dollars in phantom military leave, an imaginary promotion to captain. Then, over five months, he allegedly put tens of millions of dollars in gold bars on his work expenses, and the agency paid. When the FBI searched his Virginia home in May 2026, agents found 303 gold bars worth more than forty million dollars, about two million in cash, and nearly three dozen luxury watches. He has been charged, not convicted; we tell the story from the charging papers and say so on air. Also this week: The Modern Grift gets its first listener write-in, a Facebook Marketplace 'buyer' who needs you to read back a six-digit code to prove you're a real person, and why that little code is the whole robbery. Sources: ABC News, 'Former CIA officer allegedly defrauded government by lying about credentials,' May 27, 2026Al Jazeera, 'Gold rush: How a CIA agent stole $40m in gold bars via work expenses,' May 28, 2026Criminal complaint and FBI affidavit, United States v. Rush, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, filed May 2026Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on Google Voice verification code scams, consumer.ftc.gov

  6. Jul 30

    The Goat-Gland Doctor

    Milford, Kansas, 1918. A farm-town doctor with a mail-order diploma stitches a sliver of goat gland into a farmer, and one of the strangest American fortunes is born. John R. Brinkley charged seven hundred and fifty dollars an operation, built the most popular radio station in the country to advertise it, prescribed to listeners he had never met through a numbered-bottle kickback network, nearly won the governorship of Kansas as a write-in, and when the regulators closed in he moved his transmitter across the Mexican border and turned it up to a million watts. It ended with a libel suit he filed himself and a jury's finding that he was a charlatan and a quack 'in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words.' Also this week: the first Modern Grift segment. Ruby brings the story of a brand-new employee, an urgent email from the boss, and a gift card bought on a personal card, plus the three tells that give that scam away every time. Sources: Pope Brock, 'Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam,' Crown, 2008R. Alton Lee, 'The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley,' University Press of Kentucky, 2002Gerald Carson, 'The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley,' Rinehart & Company, 1960Morris Fishbein, 'Modern Medical Charlatans,' Hygeia, January-February 1938Brinkley v. Fishbein, 110 F.2d 62 (5th Cir. 1940), affirming the Del Rio jury verdictKFKB Broadcasting Ass'n v. Federal Radio Commission, 47 F.2d 670 (D.C. Cir. 1931)Kansas Historical Society, 'John R. Brinkley,' KansapediaPenny Lane (dir.), 'Nuts!,' documentary, 2016Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on gift card payment scams, consumer.ftc.gov

  7. Jul 27

    Fifty Percent in Forty-Five Days, Guaranteed

    Boston, summer 1920. A dapper little man with a gold-handled cane is taking in a quarter of a million dollars a day from an office on School Street, promising fifty percent interest in forty-five days, guaranteed, and paying it, on time, every time. The engine underneath is supposed to be humble postal reply coupons; when the auditors finally count them, they find sixty-one dollars' worth. The story of Charles Ponzi: the bank teller who watched the trick from the inside years before he ran it, the furniture salesman whose nuisance lawsuit started the unraveling, the newspaper that did the arithmetic, and the crowd that cheered a man while he robbed it. His investors got back less than thirty cents on the dollar. He got the dictionary entry. Sources Mitchell Zuckoff, 'Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend,' Random House, 2005Donald H. Dunn, 'Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons,' Broadway Books, 2004Boston Post investigative coverage, July-August 1920, including Clarence Barron's analysis (July 26) and William McMasters' exposé (August 2); awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Public ServiceCharles Ponzi, 'The Rise of Mr. Ponzi,' self-published autobiography, 1936Mary Darby, 'In Ponzi We Trust,' Smithsonian Magazine, December 1998Cunningham v. Brown, 265 U.S. 1 (1924), the Supreme Court decision unwinding the scheme's final payouts

  8. Jul 22

    The Forger Who Fooled Göring, Then Had to Prove It

    In May 1945, Dutch officers arrested a rich Amsterdam painter for selling a Vermeer to Hermann Göring, and the charge carried a possible death sentence. His defense was the last thing anyone expected: there was no Vermeer. Nobody believed him, so they gave him an easel, a guard detail, and an audience, and he painted his proof. The story of Han van Meegeren: the critics who called him unoriginal, the fake that fooled the world's top expert, the trade that swindled a hundred real paintings out of the Nazis, and the confession that bounced. Sources Jonathan Lopez, 'The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren,' Harcourt, 2008Edward Dolnick, 'The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century,' Harper, 2008Frank Wynne, 'I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger,' Bloomsbury, 2006Abraham Bredius, 'A New Vermeer,' The Burlington Magazine, November 1937P. B. Coremans, 'Van Meegeren's Faked Vermeers and De Hooghs: A Scientific Examination,' J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1949Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, collection records for 'The Supper at Emmaus'

  9. Jul 21

    The Count Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.

    In the spring of 1925, a man with printed letterhead and a borrowed title invited Paris's biggest scrap dealers to a grand hotel and sold one of them the Eiffel Tower. Nobody reported it, so he came back and sold it again. The story of Count Victor Lustig: the money box, the tower, the counterfeit hundreds that spooked the Treasury, and a daylight escape down the side of a New York jail. Sources Jeff Maysh, 'The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.', Smithsonian Magazine, March 2016James F. Johnson and Floyd Miller, 'The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower,' Doubleday, 1961United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz, inmate records for register no. 300 (Robert V. Miller, alias Victor Lustig), U.S. National ArchivesNew York Times reporting on the September 1935 escape from the Federal House of Detention and the Pittsburgh recaptureLa Tour Eiffel official site, history section: 'Who sold the Eiffel Tower?'

  10. Jul 21

    The Great Train Robbery: Undone by a Monopoly Board

    In August 1963, fifteen men stopped the Glasgow to London mail train at a rigged red signal in the Buckinghamshire countryside and unloaded 2.6 million pounds in used banknotes in under half an hour. No guns fired, no alarm raised, the biggest cash robbery Britain had ever seen. Then they holed up in a farmhouse to wait out the manhunt, and somebody dealt out a game of Monopoly. Sources Piers Paul Read, 'The Train Robbers,' W.H. Allen, 1978Bruce Reynolds, 'The Autobiography of a Thief,' Bantam Press, 1995Nick Russell-Pavier and Stewart Richards, 'The Great Train Robbery: Crime of the Century,' Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013The National Archives (UK), case files on the 1963 Cheddington mail train robbery, DPP 2/3715 series and HO 287/1496BBC News coverage of the robbery's fiftieth anniversary and the December 2013 obituary of Ronnie Biggs

  • 10 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

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out of 5
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About

Two friends walk through history's greatest heists, cons, and scams: who planned them, how they worked, and the one dumb detail that brought them down. Hosted by Frankie and Ruby.

Information

  • Creator
    Two Grifters
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Two Grifters
  • Show Website
    Two Grifters