When Jan Lewan escapes to the United States from Poland in the 1970s, he uses his musical talent to become a larger than life polka star and pursue the American dream. Fueled by his charm and charisma, he performs for presidents, gets nominated for a Grammy, and attracts a devoted following. But like any good showbiz story, there’s a dark underbelly to Jan’s world: he uses his fanbase to fuel a Ponzi scheme. But when his wife’s pageant competition gets mired in a mysterious scandal, Jan’s shady dealings come to light, and his career unravels in bitterness and tragedy. Until, that is, a legit Hollywood star steps in to give him an unlikely third act.
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Scamfluencers
Brian Reader made his name as “The Guv’nor” in the 1960s and 70s by pulling off daring, Ocean’s Eleven-style heists that turned him into a tabloid sensation. By the 2010s, his glory days were long gon...
When Jan Lewan escapes to the United States from Poland in the 1970s, he uses his musical talent to become a larger than life polka star and pursue the American dream. Fueled by his charm and charisma...
By the late 1980s, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter is now known as New York City bond trader Christopher Crowe. But even the Wall Street lifestyle is not quite glamorous enough for him. So he decides to...
We’ll be back in one week with all-new Scamfluencers episodes. In the meantime, we’re returning to one of our favorites. In the late 1970s, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter leaves his small Bavarian vill...
We’ll be back in two weeks with all-new Scamfluencers episodes. In the meantime, we’re returning to one of our favorites. It’s hard to know what to believe about George Santos’ wild origin story. Sinc...
As Erika Jayne’s pop star career blossoms, questions continue to mount about her husband Tom Girardi’s finances and his legal practice. His clients have been waiting in limbo to receive the settlement...
Think business is boring? What about when your streaming bill goes up, or your favorite restaurant files for bankruptcy? Do you ever wonder what’s going on behind the scenes? Business Wars gives you a...
We’ll be back in four weeks with all-new Scamfluencers episodes. In the meantime, we’re returning to one of our favorites.Tom Girardi dreams of being a do-gooder lawyer like his childhood hero on the...
Frustrated by the racist, sexist stereotypes keeping her down, Doris Payne started swiping precious jewels out of spite as a teen. For the next seven decades, she executed heists across nine countries...
Guo Wengui was a billionaire real estate mogul in China, but when the government cracks down on his empire, he flees to the U.S. From a Manhattan apartment and a luxury superyacht, Guo publicly decrie...
Fugees founder Pras Michel is struggling to pivot to a new career when he meets Malaysian billionaire playboy and criminal mastermind Jho Low. He’s handsomely rewarded for helping Jho make political c...
Lisette Lee is a party girl heiress who uses money, mean-girl bullying, and her early 2000s glam to control everyone around her. But when daddy’s cash isn’t enough to sustain her lifestyle, she manipu...
Phil Kitzer was a globe-trotting scammer who spent more than a decade creating fake banks and insurance companies, ripping off customers to pay for his lavish lifestyle. By the late 70s, Phil’s scam i...
Singer-actor Earl Washington turns out to be a triple threat when he takes up carving wood blocks to make ends meet while hustling to make a life as an entertainer in Los Angeles. But just like any ot...
Polish immigrant Hershel Geguzin fled to the U.S. from the faltering Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century. And like many scammers around this time, he adopts a fabulous new identity: as Prin...
Rocky Aoki, the son of a vaudeville performer and a tango dancer, grows up in the wreckage of post-war Tokyo. With his natural flair for entertainment, he opens his first Benihana restaurant in Manhat...
Multi-level marketing businesses like Mary Kay, HerbaLife, and Amway are so ubiquitous, it's almost hard to imagine where they started or how deep their influence goes. In this special episode of Scam...
We’ll be back next week with all-new episodes, but in the meantime, we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our grossest-ever Scamfluencer: Brian Johnson, aka The Liver King. Brian grows up a sc...
Teal Swan’s self-help empire is on the rise, and so is the backlash to some of her most controversial techniques. Teal fights back against her critics, releasing long rebuttals and detailed explainers...
We’ll be back in two weeks with all-new Scamfluencers episodes. In the meantime, we’re returning to one of our favorites. After surviving a difficult childhood, Teal Swan starts a family and reinvents...
Paul Bragg used showmanship and outrageous claims to grow his health food company into a wellness empire. But after he died in his 90s and passed the company to his daughter, Patricia, people started...
Michael Milken is known as the King of Junk Bonds. In the early 80s, he pioneered a novel way to finance companies that traditional investors normally wouldn’t touch. His high-risk, high-reward invest...
Francois-Marie Banier is facing an uphill battle in French courts when he learns he’s being sued by Liliane Bettencourt’s only daughter, Francoise. When the French media learn of the accusations of fi...
Francois-Marie Banier overcame indifferent parents to reach the heights of the Parisian art scene. His novels, plays, and photography gained him famous friends like Salvadore Dali, Princess Caroline o...
Conrad Black turned ownership of a single Canadian newspaper into a global media empire, and he used his wealth and status to cozy up to conservative superstars like Magaret Thatcher and Henry Kissing...
After her latest biography flopped, Lee Israel was hard up for money to buy booze and cat food. So, she used her research skills to access celebrity letters in prominent archives, stealing them and ad...
When Thelma and Louise was being made in the early 1990s, production was in and out of financial trouble. Behind this shortage of cash was an Italian businessman and epic scammer named Giancarlo Parre...
Billy Mitchell became the king of arcade games when he achieved a perfect Pac Man score, and held the highest score in Donkey Kong. But in the early 2000s, a documentary about an upstart trying to be...
We’ll be back next week with all-new episodes but in the meantime we’re bringing back a very timely episode. In 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people in one day… includin...
The Matharoo sisters have gone from globe-trotting tastemakers to detained prisoners. Stuck in an airport hotel without their passports or phones, they decide to take matters into their own hands – an...