Persona: The French Deception

Reporter Evan Ratliff joins the hosts of Wondery’s ongoing series Scamfluencers, Scaachi Koul and Sarah Hagi, to discuss how he pieced his investigation on Gilbert Chikli together and shares his insights into the culture of scams.

You never really know someone…especially online. In today’s world, the power of influence can be the quickest path to money and fame, and it often ends in ruin. These are the stories of the world’s most insidious Scamfluencers. And we are their prey. On Wondery’s new weekly series, join co-hosts Scaachi Koul and Sarah Hagi as they unpack epic stories of deception from the worlds of social media, fashion, finance, health, and wellness...

In the season finale, a confounding clue in Gilbert Chikli’s case sends Evan back to the dossier to see if someone else might have orchestrated the Le Drian affair. The search takes him from the world of high-stakes professional poker, to the office of a lawyer with a curious role in the case, to an apartment building full of unmarked doors. Finally, we return to the very start of Chikli’s mythology, and the Persona team receives a mysterious phone call of our own...

Gilbert Chikli finally appears in court. The evidence appears stacked against him, including forensic comparisons of his voice to recordings of the scam. The prosecution lays out their story, while Chikli turns the trial into one final media frenzy. When Evan looks closely at the science, it appears less convincing. But will the court see the flaws in the case built around Chikli's scamming legend? When it’s all over, Evan comes across a new detail that calls everything into question...

The French police are on the trail of a leader of the Le Drian affair, but all they have to go on is a nickname, “the Fat One.” Meanwhile the scammers have hooked their biggest target yet: a Turkish billionaire ready to hand over tens of millions of dollars. A new set of secretly recorded tapes brings Evan closer than ever to the center of the con. But revelations about the offshore money movements of the scam’s largest marks cast the villains and victims in a new light...

As a new scam emerges in the south of France, investigators stumble upon a tantalizing new clue. Meanwhile, reports begin to circulate that some victims haven’t just talked on the phone to the Le Drian impersonator – they’ve spoken to him on video. Evan journeys to a medieval town in the heart of French wine country for new leads from a man who came face-to-face with the fake Minister. Please support us by supporting our sponsors! See Privacy Policy at https://art19...

A series of mysterious phone calls to French embassies around the world prompt the authorities to start a new investigation. Someone is impersonating the French Minister of Defense, targeting foreign governments and wealthy French speakers. As the scammer fleeces an influential billionaire for $20 million, the police believe there’s only one man audacious enough to have pulled it off. Years later, Evan gains access to the case file and begins to retrace the investigators’ steps...

When a young graphic designer is detained crossing the Bulgarian border, he finds himself inside a nightmare that lasts for years. The scam is wreaking havoc, and not always on who you’d expect. Gilbert Chikli’s invention has gone global, raking in billions of dollars a year from multinational corporations, tempting the most unlikely of co-conspirators, and cementing Chikli’s legend around the world. Please support us by supporting our sponsors! See Privacy Policy at https://art19...

Gilbert Chikli was known to friends and family in Israel as a flamboyant local celebrity, a Robin Hood figure, and an innovator who by necessity ended up on the wrong side of the law. But as Chikli galivants around town with new yachts and suitcases of money, the French authorities begin closing in. The situation may call for a daring escape.

In Paris, a banker receives a bizarre call from her boss. He says she'll soon be contacted by a secret agent about a confidential government operation.The instructions provided by the agent are simple: wait in a bathroom stall, listen for the password and then hand over a bag stuffed with hundreds of thousands in cash to a stranger through the stall door. Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 miles away in Israel, a musician is drawn into his new friend’s underground network...