Take a Wild Ride With These 20 Scam Documentaries

Netflix’s “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Fyre Festival, an event coordinated by rapper Ja Rule and Fyre Media founder Billy McFarland. While guests paid up to $12,000 per ticket, the event was a disorganised fiasco, far from the once-in-a-lifetime experience it was marketed to be. Ja Rule and McFarland faced lawsuits by investors and attendees, and McFarland is currently in prison for charges of wire fraud and falsifying investment documents. While Fyre is well in the past now, McFarland has continued to leave an imprint on pop culture today – he’s even a character on Netflix’s “Inventing Anna,” which portrays him getting stiffed by Anna Delvey.

In the mood for a bookish scam? JT LeRoy was the writer who never existed at all! The celebrated literary figure, known for being a recluse, was actually Savannah Knoop, a gender-nonconforming artist who put on a disguise to portray their sister-in-law’s pen name. Up until 2005, Knoop played the fictional persona in literary circles, impressing the likes of Winona Ryder and Debbie Harry. “Author: The JT Leroy Story” features Knoop and the real author, Laura Albert, who didn’t want to write as herself. Curious about more JT LeRoy content? Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern also joined forces in “JT Leroy,” a 2018 biopic about Knoop’s life.

Imagine the terrors of the true-crime genre but on a political and global scale. Consisting of two seasons, Netflix’s “Dirty Money” follows high-profile corruption cases (think money laundering, toxic chemicals, and more) to highlight how corporate greed has impacted the world. The topics run the gamut from the HSBC drug cartel scandal, to shady deals involving former president Donald Trump (as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner). Other than focusing on companies and individuals who swindle on the large scale, “Dirty Money” also features in-depth analysis from seasoned investigative journalists, and testimonies by those who have suffered the dire consequences of systemic greed.

While looking into illegal doping in sports, filmmaker and amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel got in touch with Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory. Over the course of their correspondence, Fogel found out that Russia had a state-sponsored Olympic doping program. While he initially began the investigation on a small scale, Fogel witnessed this massive global sports conspiracy grow in size, and eventually became a whistleblower for the entire scandal. Rodchenkov testified that his team switched out steroid-tainted urine samples for clean ones, and went into witness protection. After reviewing evidence that Rodchenkov shared, the Olympic Committee would go on to ban Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics Games.

Uh, yes, we’d like a Big Mac with a side of scam. For over a decade, Jerome Jacobson, aka Uncle Jerry, sold winning pieces for major prizes (think cars, vacations, and cash) in the McDonald’s Monopoly game throughout the ’90s. While he was entrusted with pieces for the grand prizes, he built a network of conspirators with family and friends to rake in millions for himself. When an anonymous tip reached the FBI in 2001, Jerry’s schemes finally came to light. Two decades after the height of the scam, HBO explores the story of how he cheated the system for his personal gains.

Netflix’s “The Puppet Master” unpacks the crimes of British conman Robert Hendy-Freegard, who lied about his identity to steal money from his unfortunate victims. Hendy-Freegard would form relationships with women, telling them that he worked for MI5. He had a pattern of isolating these women from their loved ones in order to take money from them and force them into poor living conditions. Some victims were even reluctant to work with the police because he told them that authorities were other MI5 agents or double agents. Although Hendy-Freegard was caught and convicted of kidnapping, theft, and deception, he was eventually released after an appeal.

Netflix’s “Bad Vegan” centres on the bizarre case of Sarma Melngailis, a well-respected raw vegan restaurant owner whose conman husband promised to immortalise her and her dog. Throughout his courtship with her, Anthony Strangis proceeded to drive Melngailis’ restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, to the ground. According to Melngailis, Strangis encouraged her to steal $1 million from her business and forced her to send him money to prove her commitment to him. Because of this scheme, her staff members did not receive any payments before they inevitably lost their jobs. Like Bonnie and Clyde, the married pair fled from the authorities, only to be caught soon after.

Gerald Cotten, the CEO of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, unexpectedly died when cryptocurrency prices crashed in 2018. Without Cotten, there were no passwords to retrieve the bitcoin – this meant that $190 million of customers’ holdings were more or less locked inside an online black hole. Soon, conspiracies theories of Cotten faking his death started floating around. While diving into Cotten’s mysterious passing, Netflix’s “Trust No One” considers some of these theories as it follows a group of crypto investors who suspect Cotten may have stolen from them. The documentary also looks into Cotten’s history of shady past dealings and gambling to create a more complicated picture of the tech leader.

Not entirely convinced if the “WeCrashed” Apple TV+ miniseries is worth your time? Check out the WeWork documentary to get the short-and-sweet breakdown of WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s rise and fall. Banking on his charisma, Neumann brought in billions of dollars in venture capital from investors to sell his concept of a revamped office space experience. The idea was that he was transforming real estate through tech was thought to be the next Silicon Valley unicorn. However, WeWork didn’t have a solid business model and spent its money lavishly, which resulted in it losing billions. The company’s failed IPO in 2019 eventually forced Neumann to step down as CEO.

If you enjoyed “Fyre Fraud,” it might be worth looking into “LuLaRich,” which comes from the very same creators. The Amazon docuseries follows the dubious business plan of the billion-dollar clothing company LuLaRoe, which is more or less synonymous with the stretchy, colourful clothing that it sells. The doc details the rise of this fashion empire, whose owners eventually became accused of using a pyramid scheme to con thousands of women into promoting its brand. Although those at the top of the company grew rich, many low-ranking representatives were overwrought by debt and poor-quality products. In fact, things got so dire that some women were allegedly encouraged to sell breast milk to foot startup costs.

It’s no secret that the rich have unfair advantages, but the 2019 college admissions scandal was particularly engrossing as it implicated celebrities such as Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. It was revealed that wealthy families secured spots for their children at elite universities through bribery. Netflix’s “Operation Varsity Blues” focuses on Rick Singer’s central role in operating the bribing schemes. Essentially, parents sent money to Singer’s sham nonprofit organisation, and Singer bribed test administrators and university coaches to vouch for unqualified students. In the 2021 documentary, Matthew Modine portrays Singer in dramatised re-enactments.

“The Tinder Swindler” follows the bizarre true story of an Israeli man named Shimon Hayut, who posed as diamond magnate heir Simon Leviev on Tinder. Hayut would take women on ritzy dates on private jets and give them lavish gifts to build relationships with them. Eventually, he’d tell them that he was being targeted by his enemies. Hayut would then get women to send him money by saying that his credit cards and bank accounts weren’t working due to breaches in security. With this insidious dating scheme, Hayut allegedly gained $10 million in total. Talk about a bad date gone really wrong.

If fine-art scamming is just your speed, “Art and Craft” is for you. The PBS documentary follows the life of Mark Landis, an American painter who’s best known for gifting famous works to American art museums for three decades. But here’s the twist: Landis forged his donations. The documentary reveals Landis’ remarkable knowledge of art history and abundance of technical skills, which undoubtedly helped him as he replicated the works of everyone from René Magritte to Charles Schulz. Ultimately, no feasible legal case could be made against Landis, who didn’t reap any financial gains from his prolific forging. According to NPR, he would donate pieces to museums for free, even going as far as using aliases to approach curators.

Here’s another fine-art scam that’s much more high stakes than Mark Landis’ mischievous tricks on museums. In Netflix’s “Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art,” we get an insider look of the largest art forgery scandal in the United States. New York City’s prestigious Knoedler Gallery had sold around $80 million worth of fake art allegedly by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. The gallery’s former director, Ann Freedman, had been convinced by a dealer named Glafira Rosales that she was getting authentic paintings. It turned out that the esteemed pieces were actually counterfeits manufactured by Rosales, her boyfriend, and Pei-Shen Qian, a 75-year-old artist and math teacher.