Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to stuff mom never told you. Now today, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty happy to talk about this topic. Um. This is
Speaker 1: a topic that kind of came on my radar on
Speaker 1: social media, specifically Twitter, and I was kind of obsessed
Speaker 1: with it. And then I was so pleased when a
Speaker 1: few people wrote in asking for us to do an
Speaker 1: episode on it. And that topic is scam Queen Anna
Speaker 1: delv Yes, Bridget was very, very very excited to talk
Speaker 1: about this, um, and I I kind of have read
Speaker 1: a little bit about it, and I'm excited because Bridget
Speaker 1: is excited, so I hope that everyone is kind of
Speaker 1: excited to learn about this. Yeah, scammers, famous scammers are
Speaker 1: my fan fiction. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. You know you
Speaker 1: should find fan fiction about famous scammers. I would that
Speaker 1: would make me too happy. I would die of happiness.
Speaker 1: It's a good way to go, though. It is a
Speaker 1: good way reading about Reading in depth are like fan
Speaker 1: fiction about scammers. I would die with a smile on
Speaker 1: my face. So one thing that people, if you listen
Speaker 1: to this show, you probably already know about me, which
Speaker 1: is that I have a love of things that are
Speaker 1: kind of problematic. Um. I like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: that series specifically on problematic fames that I was excited
Speaker 1: to do because I love so many people and things
Speaker 1: that are problematic. Um. I love Tanya Harding, I love
Speaker 1: bad movies and bad TV. And one of the things
Speaker 1: on that list of problematic, kind of messed up things
Speaker 1: that I kind of can't get enough of is scammers.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always been fascinated by people who pretend
Speaker 1: to be something they're not. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we kind of myself personally
Speaker 1: but as a culture, why I think that we're so
Speaker 1: interested in scammers, it's because, you know, you meet so
Speaker 1: many people that come off as confident, They come off
Speaker 1: like they know exactly what they're doing, and they are
Speaker 1: very good at you know, that authentic veneer of who
Speaker 1: they are, and then you find out, oh, that's all
Speaker 1: an act. Actually there's a scammer, Like they're scamming me
Speaker 1: right now. And I think that there's something in that,
Speaker 1: you know, part of me feels like we all sort
Speaker 1: of feel like we're scamming on some level, and that
Speaker 1: when you meet somebody who is has bold face perfected
Speaker 1: that scam, it's almost sort of even though they're doing
Speaker 1: something awful, at least for me, you almost kind of
Speaker 1: have to respect it. Yeah, and you are not the
Speaker 1: only one who feels that way, Bridget clearly because we
Speaker 1: have found some research into it. But um, why why
Speaker 1: do you think as a culture we are so into this? Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Over at The New Yorker, writer Gia Tolentino
Speaker 1: has this great theory that they kind of our fascination
Speaker 1: with scammers kind of comes in seasons, and she calls
Speaker 1: it grifter season. She writes, Grifters season comes a regularly,
Speaker 1: but it often comes in America, which is built around
Speaker 1: mythologies of profit and reinvention. Its spectacular ascent, the shady,
Speaker 1: audacious figures at its center, exists on a spectrum from
Speaker 1: folk hero to disgrace. The season begins when the public
Speaker 1: catches onto some series of scammers of a particularly appealing sort,
Speaker 1: the kind that provoked both shod In freuda and admiration.
Speaker 1: And I think that really kind of nails my sort
Speaker 1: of love hate relationship with scammers, because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's disgraceful somebody somebody scamming somebody else out of money,
Speaker 1: you know, abusing their trust. All of that is disgraceful,
Speaker 1: but it's difficult to sort of not respect a certain
Speaker 1: level of boldness of scams. Like there's this meme that
Speaker 1: was kind of popular, maybe like a year or two ago,
Speaker 1: Joanne the Scammer. It's an alter ego of a of
Speaker 1: a comedian where he's pretending to this scammer who was
Speaker 1: always running scams on people and coming up with sort
Speaker 1: of little witticisms about scams, things like, you know, scam
Speaker 1: today before today, scams you. I think it's a couple
Speaker 1: of things. I think it's a fascination with scamming in general,
Speaker 1: but I also think when it's a woman, I do
Speaker 1: think there's a little bit of an anti heroin thing
Speaker 1: happening where we so often expect women to be, you know,
Speaker 1: good and trustworthy, and when we think about scammers or criminals,
Speaker 1: we think about men. But then when a woman is
Speaker 1: doing the scamming, I think she almost there's almost this
Speaker 1: inclination to lift her up as an anti hero. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that for sure, And I think that's
Speaker 1: something we do see in our media and entertainment and
Speaker 1: another reason that in culturally we might have this this
Speaker 1: kind of love and respect of scammers is that scammers
Speaker 1: thrive in times of cultural unrest or unease. The writer
Speaker 1: Bridget mentioned before Gia Tolentino. In her piece, he uses
Speaker 1: a quote from Maria kna Ova from her book The
Speaker 1: Confidence Game. Cons thrive in times of transition, and the
Speaker 1: term confidence man was coined in eighteen forty nine by
Speaker 1: the New York Herald and pieces about a bumbling scammer
Speaker 1: who would ask strangers in the street, have you confidence
Speaker 1: in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow? No,
Speaker 1: I hope not. At that point in American history, the
Speaker 1: gold Rush was producing a swarm of swindlers in California,
Speaker 1: and free banking was enabling wildcat banks and counterfeiters to
Speaker 1: circulate worthless bills. Scammers love nothing better. ConA Cova notes
Speaker 1: than quote explorting the sense of unease we feel when
Speaker 1: it appears that the world as we know it is
Speaker 1: about to change, which it does make complete sense that
Speaker 1: that's the time when you would want to kind of
Speaker 1: play on people's in securities and unease. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: are for sure in the middle of a moment of
Speaker 1: cultural and social and political unease, goes on Terray One
Speaker 1: gets the sense that these days that such unease may
Speaker 1: become constant. The entire globe is getting hotter, market pressures
Speaker 1: are accelerating, technology is advancing at a dizzying rate. At
Speaker 1: some point between the Great Recession which began in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and the terrible election, of scamming seems
Speaker 1: to have become the dominant logic of American life. The
Speaker 1: things that people have historically used to build non scammy
Speaker 1: lives in this country, housing, higher education had deteriorated to
Speaker 1: the point where they are likely to punish you if
Speaker 1: you're not already wealthy. The bankers pushing reverse mortgages, the
Speaker 1: recruiters at for profit colleges, and the many startup founders
Speaker 1: hoping to take massive investor back losses until they eradicate
Speaker 1: the rest of the market understand the world better than
Speaker 1: we do. That's part of the reason they're so riveting.
Speaker 1: Down to the last details. Scammers show us the glitzy
Speaker 1: bullsh intrinsic to the stratospheric wealth in America. They show
Speaker 1: us that the best way to make money in this
Speaker 1: country is to treat everybody around you like a mark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about it, it's hard not
Speaker 1: to be fascinated by that, by that kind of social aim,
Speaker 1: treating everybody sort of yeah, Mark, and it kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of the Great Gatsby and how he sort
Speaker 1: of tricked his way up into that society. See. But
Speaker 1: but even when I'm so glad you brought up that story,
Speaker 1: because that story is sort of about the scam inherent
Speaker 1: to this idea of the American dream, right, that Gatsby
Speaker 1: has reinvented himself in kind of a scammy way, you know,
Speaker 1: bootlegging and lying about his identity and all of that,
Speaker 1: because like and like, on its face, it seems like
Speaker 1: the American dream that he bootstrapped his way up into
Speaker 1: into success. But actually the American dream is bullshit, and
Speaker 1: so of course it's a scam exactly. Yeah. Um, And
Speaker 1: there are plenty of quote good scammers of all genders.
Speaker 1: Billy McFarland of fire Festival fame, the British Royal Family expert.
Speaker 1: It was actually just a guy from upstate New York.
Speaker 1: But we want to focus on female scammers because there
Speaker 1: is something special about them, like Bridget mentioned earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also think part of it is that we love
Speaker 1: in this country to root for a woman and then
Speaker 1: we love when she falls, like we love to follow
Speaker 1: the demise of a woman, like we like we can't
Speaker 1: get enough of a story of a powerful woman gone wrong,
Speaker 1: or a woman who seemed like she had it all
Speaker 1: and then really it turned out she was scamming everyone.
Speaker 1: I do think that there's something about the vigor with
Speaker 1: which that we enjoy these stories when it happens to
Speaker 1: a woman. That's my that's just my opinion. I think
Speaker 1: you seem like you're pretty well versed in this subject. Bridget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I actually would love to do an entire series
Speaker 1: of scammers. Scammers like Elizabeth Holmes you may know her
Speaker 1: as blood testing scammer. She had that entire company UM
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be able to give blood tests,
Speaker 1: you know, like you could go to a CBS and
Speaker 1: like prick your finger and it will be able to
Speaker 1: give you all these tests in real time. But it
Speaker 1: was actually just a scam. Like she'd gotten all this
Speaker 1: money and it didn't work, and she probably knew it
Speaker 1: didn't work, and a lot of people are like, she'd
Speaker 1: probably be in jail, but she's not in jail. So
Speaker 1: really interesting, fascinating, scammer. Also like black turtleneck scammer. You
Speaker 1: never saw a picture of her not wearing a black turtleneck,
Speaker 1: kind of ruin that look for everybody. To be honest
Speaker 1: with you, there is Vogue scammer Yvon Bannaghan, who was
Speaker 1: accused of siphoning away three thousand, five hundred sixty four
Speaker 1: dollars while she was Grace Coddington's assistant. So many good
Speaker 1: female scammers out there. So if you know of one
Speaker 1: that you would love for us to talk about, whether
Speaker 1: it's a scammer of today or historical female scammer, please
Speaker 1: let us know. But today we are talking about the
Speaker 1: undisputed scam Queen of Summer one, miss Anna Delvey. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love scam Queen of Summer. Yeah. I actually put
Speaker 1: out a I mean, this is an unsigned tofic pole,
Speaker 1: but I put out one of those Twitter polls asking
Speaker 1: who you thought the scam Queen of Summer was. I
Speaker 1: made the running Anna Delvy, Elizabeth Holmes, Jill Stein or
Speaker 1: like write in candidate. I think Anna Delavie actually ends
Speaker 1: up coming in second the right and candidate one Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: our President, came in first as the Summer's scam queen. Wow, well,
Speaker 1: congrats to no one. I mean, that's another that's another
Speaker 1: interesting point about why I'm so fascinated with scams because
Speaker 1: we associate scammers with a certain class. I believe, like
Speaker 1: when you think of scammers, you think of somebody who
Speaker 1: is not a wealthy person trying to become or pretend
Speaker 1: to be wealthy. We have like rich scammers all over
Speaker 1: the place. Like Scott Brubitt, former head of the e
Speaker 1: p A, was basically a scammer, but people people don't
Speaker 1: label him a scammer because he's male and well connected
Speaker 1: and rich and white. But homeboy was trying to use
Speaker 1: his connections in the government to get his wife a
Speaker 1: chick bil a franchise. Like, that's a scam. That is
Speaker 1: a scam. He is a scammer. Yeah, he also was
Speaker 1: trying to buy old mattresses. I can't wrap my head
Speaker 1: around that one. Honestly, there's so many like classic scams
Speaker 1: that if we stripped away the veneer of he's a
Speaker 1: high level White House administration official, whatever, it would just
Speaker 1: be any other scammer with like farragmo belt and like
Speaker 1: knock off chanel, like it is such a budget scam.
Speaker 1: The only reason we don't talk about it in that
Speaker 1: way is because of his connections. Like if you if
Speaker 1: you stripped all of those things away, which he actually
Speaker 1: resigned so they have been stripped away. If you didn't
Speaker 1: have that title, it would be it would be anybody
Speaker 1: else like scamming their way into free stuff. Like we
Speaker 1: like all scammers. Doe like he's not special just because
Speaker 1: he's Scott Bruett. Yeah, Scott Pruett, You're not special. But
Speaker 1: today we're not talking about just any scammer, right Ridget.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Anna delbe one of your favorite scammers.
Speaker 1: She's a good scammer. If there was like a scammer
Speaker 1: trading cards, she'd be the one that I would be
Speaker 1: really really stoked ticket. So let's get into who Annadelvie
Speaker 1: is for those of you don't know um and why
Speaker 1: she is the scam Queen of Summer. After this quick
Speaker 1: break and we're back. So Anna Delvie, first of all,
Speaker 1: she's my favorite scammer. I've read literally every piece of
Speaker 1: content on the Internet about her Horizon Fall, including a
Speaker 1: lot of comment threads. I don't know it was her
Speaker 1: or like her representative or whatever posted her mailing address
Speaker 1: in prison on her Instagram, and I sent her a
Speaker 1: snail mail letter asked her to come on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I will update you if we're able to get a
Speaker 1: phone interview with Anna Delvie on this podcast. If someone
Speaker 1: knows her, tell her that we would love to have
Speaker 1: her on. So shall we come? You know, hear her
Speaker 1: story and how she got to where she is. I
Speaker 1: hope put it that way. Which is prison? Which is prison?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we know how she got where
Speaker 1: she is. But that's the thing. It's like, when you
Speaker 1: read these articles, there was a really there are really
Speaker 1: good pieces in both Vanity Fair and The Cut that
Speaker 1: are super in depth about the con that she played
Speaker 1: and would of how she so successfully prayed on women
Speaker 1: a certain sort of class aspiration of these women. It really,
Speaker 1: it really is fascinating and masterful. So first, this Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair photo editor named Rachel Williams, she was actually scammed
Speaker 1: by delvi herself and it ended up costing her thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars. So she wrote this piece about what exactly
Speaker 1: happened in Vanity Fair. So basically, she meets Anna in
Speaker 1: a hotel and Anna says that she's a German heiress
Speaker 1: who lives out of a hotel. Anna has these grand
Speaker 1: plans to open what basically sounds like the Soho House
Speaker 1: of Art. So it's going to be quote a dynamic
Speaker 1: visual art center dedicated to contemporary art um And she
Speaker 1: talks about how she wants to use family trust money
Speaker 1: to afford this. She wants to get investors. She sounds
Speaker 1: like someone who has grand and ambitious plans. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. This kind of plan that if someone have
Speaker 1: you met somebody in a hotel, even if they seemed
Speaker 1: rich and they told me they had this this idea,
Speaker 1: the plan would still kind of sound preposterous. But that's
Speaker 1: one of the tenets of her scam, which is the
Speaker 1: same way that Tinkerbell only exists if you believe in her,
Speaker 1: like if you don't believe in her, she dies. And
Speaker 1: I had this way of making people believe these grand
Speaker 1: plans and these grand schemes of hers, even though they
Speaker 1: sounded preposterous, and in a kind of way, the reason
Speaker 1: that they are kind of believable is because they sound
Speaker 1: over the top. Rachel Rights. In my line of work,
Speaker 1: I had often encountered ambitious, well off individuals. So though
Speaker 1: her undertaking sounded grand, in scale and promising in theory.
Speaker 1: My sincere enthusiasm hardly outweighed a measure of skepticism. And again, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see how you know, someone meeting a rich
Speaker 1: girl in a hotel who's like, I have this grand
Speaker 1: idea to make this big, lavish club full of art
Speaker 1: and rich people. If anybody else told you that you
Speaker 1: would be, you'd think, oh, sure of course you're going
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah. Right. But because that sort of
Speaker 1: part of her scam is, you know, having this sort
Speaker 1: of las fair attitude about money and you know, having
Speaker 1: these grand plans that don't seem like they would ever work.
Speaker 1: That's kind of how rich people are. And if you
Speaker 1: want people to believe that you are rich, having some
Speaker 1: big undertaking that seems really far fetched would actually kind
Speaker 1: of solidify that in a kind of way. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. And I think just the way she was
Speaker 1: so she would just buy really expensive things at restaurants,
Speaker 1: she kind of did have this particular circle of people.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking, m I don't know about her,
Speaker 1: but then you meet other people and they seem to
Speaker 1: be in this circle of orbit and they seem to
Speaker 1: have accepted her, then you kind of start to accept, well,
Speaker 1: she must have passed this test. If she traffics in
Speaker 1: this group of people, then even if maybe she'll never
Speaker 1: succeed in this plan that I think is probably unrealistic,
Speaker 1: she must still have the money. She must still be
Speaker 1: in this class of people that she is saying she
Speaker 1: is in, right, And I mean I've I've actually had
Speaker 1: a few mild ammers in my orbit and political work,
Speaker 1: because anybody who's doing political work, like you will, you
Speaker 1: will encounter some scammers for sure. That's another thing that
Speaker 1: I think scammers really traffic in is having other people
Speaker 1: to kind of vouch for them or verify them. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of one scammer that who kind of like
Speaker 1: this is something I knew personally, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to like blow up their spot. I mean, they there
Speaker 1: was an entire article about their scam, but one of
Speaker 1: the things that was a hallmark of how he scammed
Speaker 1: was getting other respected political people to kind of vouch
Speaker 1: for him. And so once you're sort of in and
Speaker 1: one person that you know is like authentic and like
Speaker 1: legit like vouches for you, like you're kind of in it,
Speaker 1: kind of like you kind of like game handstamp and
Speaker 1: it sounds like Anna trafficked in wealthy, well connected people.
Speaker 1: So if you meet somebody who is actually wealthy and
Speaker 1: well connected and they're like, oh and as good people,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like a hand stamp. Yeah. I do
Speaker 1: find that if you the bigger the lie, the more
Speaker 1: you might be like, well, no one would tell something
Speaker 1: as ridiculous as that because it could be easily checked.
Speaker 1: But if you have to do it with confidence though,
Speaker 1: and kind of the way it sounds like her personality
Speaker 1: was one that kind of made you believe she was
Speaker 1: this type of person, the specific type of person, and
Speaker 1: that her accepting you and inviting you to things, it
Speaker 1: was kind of flattering and you sort of wanted to
Speaker 1: be someone that Anna delv wanted to have in her circle. Definitely,
Speaker 1: that's so part of it when someone, I mean, two
Speaker 1: of the people who extensively went on the record about
Speaker 1: being scammed by Delvy both talk about sort of how
Speaker 1: she seemed but the kind of person who didn't really
Speaker 1: let a lot of people in and like kind of
Speaker 1: seemed a little bit isolated, and that because she chose to,
Speaker 1: you know, want to travel with them and want to
Speaker 1: be good friends with them, it was almost sort of flattering.
Speaker 1: So basically, Rachel ends up going on this lavish trip
Speaker 1: to a villa and Marrakesh, and you might be thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a lot of money, Like I bet
Speaker 1: it was an expensive trip. Whatever you were thinking, it
Speaker 1: was so much more lavish than that. They traveled a
Speaker 1: full time butler who Anna was supposed to pay for,
Speaker 1: so Anna is supposed to be picking up the tab
Speaker 1: on this whole trip. Now here's where Rachel says that
Speaker 1: things took a turn. So Anna ends up booking a
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollar a night private riad, which if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard of that, I have not either. It's a
Speaker 1: Moroccan villa with an interior courtyard, three bedrooms, and a pool.
Speaker 1: And Anna ends up forwarding Rachel the confirmation email, but
Speaker 1: due to some seemingly minor snaff who, the plane tickets
Speaker 1: have been put on Rachel's American Express card, and Anna
Speaker 1: basically was like, oh, I'll pay you back. I'll pay
Speaker 1: you back, Rachel. I mean, part of me thinks is
Speaker 1: thinking that girl, what are you doing? Part of me
Speaker 1: kind of gets it. She says, since I did this
Speaker 1: all the time for work, I didn't give it a
Speaker 1: second thought, So you might be thinking, wow, I would
Speaker 1: never agree to this, But if you think your friend
Speaker 1: is rich, you like, maybe you would? Like I asked
Speaker 1: myself all the time, if I met this mysterious rich
Speaker 1: woman who seemed to be rich, other rich people knew her,
Speaker 1: she was throwing money around, she wants to take mary cash?
Speaker 1: You know, I can't. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: do it or not, but I can't say that my
Speaker 1: bullsh detector will be going off and then I wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. What about you? Yeah, I feel like reading
Speaker 1: this article was very enlightening to me, because if you
Speaker 1: just sort of hear the details without the sort of
Speaker 1: personal all of these personal aspects of it, it does
Speaker 1: sound like, wow, why would you ever agree to that?
Speaker 1: But at this point they had been friends for a while,
Speaker 1: and also she wasn't Rachel wasn't the only person going.
Speaker 1: A personal trainer was going as well. Yeah, if if
Speaker 1: it's your friend and she says she's going to pay
Speaker 1: for it, you've seen her put down a lot of
Speaker 1: money before. Um, it's it's a trip that you probably
Speaker 1: are excited to go on. I don't think you'd have
Speaker 1: any real reason if you've seen all these other people
Speaker 1: vouch for her to suspect otherwise I would be uncomfortable
Speaker 1: when it's like it would have to be on my
Speaker 1: credit card. I think I would be uncomfortable, But I
Speaker 1: don't think I would say anything, because you do want
Speaker 1: the friendship to work. And uh, I mean, I can
Speaker 1: just see it. I can see it. I can totally
Speaker 1: understand going along with this personally. Another aspect of it
Speaker 1: is sort of what I was talking about before, that
Speaker 1: if you were trying to maintain that you were a
Speaker 1: wealthy person, I do. I mean, this is going to
Speaker 1: sound like a vast generalization. It does make sense to
Speaker 1: me that someone who is massively, massively wealthy would also
Speaker 1: be the kind of person who might be a bit
Speaker 1: careless with what they perceived as small amounts of money.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who was very, very wealthy, and
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't work. She sort of was able
Speaker 1: to sort of work here and there in sort of
Speaker 1: creative field, and like was clearly being supported by her parents.
Speaker 1: But she never paid for a cab, She never paid
Speaker 1: for dinner. She would notoriously sort of walk out on
Speaker 1: the tab. It would be like ten dollars to eight
Speaker 1: dollars but because she just had a different sense of
Speaker 1: money than we did. And so for me, someone who
Speaker 1: is not rich, you know, if somebody picks up a
Speaker 1: tab for me, I make a mental note, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to get them back. I have to pay
Speaker 1: them back. This is thirty dollars whatever. But I got
Speaker 1: the sense from being around her that it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to explain, but because she was so rich, a
Speaker 1: certain kind of las, a fair careless attitude about money
Speaker 1: just kind of probably confirmed that she was rich. And
Speaker 1: a kind of way, does that make sense, It totally
Speaker 1: makes sense. I have I had a friend like that
Speaker 1: as well, where there's kind of some resentment and we
Speaker 1: had to talk about it because I always ended up
Speaker 1: paying for things and he had way more money, like
Speaker 1: way more money than I did, and it just didn't
Speaker 1: seem to even occur to him that it would be
Speaker 1: sort of a bigger deal for me. And like, I'm
Speaker 1: totally I wasn't saying he needed to pay for everything
Speaker 1: at all, but like equal let's share here, it just
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be is big a factor to him,
Speaker 1: So I'm not I'm not making this up. It does
Speaker 1: seem like gets a little bit of a thing. Anecdotally,
Speaker 1: it does seem that way. Yes, So here's where it
Speaker 1: all kind of starts to go south for Anna and Rachel.
Speaker 1: Well traveling, So Anna's card gets declined, and of course
Speaker 1: Rachel asks the thing that everyone always asks when your
Speaker 1: card is declined, oh did you tell your banks that
Speaker 1: you're traveling? And she's like, no, I didn't, And so
Speaker 1: this again sort of just is like, oh, well, she's traveling.
Speaker 1: It's probably some sort of bank issue. This is embarrassing
Speaker 1: to admit, but the times that I've had my credit
Speaker 1: card or my debit card declined, the cashier always gives
Speaker 1: you that very gracious you know, maybe you need to
Speaker 1: call the bank. It's probably a problem with your card.
Speaker 1: You know. They don't ever want to come out and
Speaker 1: said you have no money. That's always a very gracious,
Speaker 1: very gracious. So basically what happened after that is that
Speaker 1: the hotel kind of gets wind that there's no credit
Speaker 1: card on file for this extremely extremely lavish villa that
Speaker 1: they're staying in. Then I'm sure costs. I mean, at
Speaker 1: this point, if it's been thousand dollars a night, I
Speaker 1: meant this point, it's probably so expensive. And once the
Speaker 1: hotel gets wise. Basically Rachel has to flip the bill
Speaker 1: in order for them to leave, and again that would
Speaker 1: be so I mean, I don't know what I would
Speaker 1: do in that situation. If you're being held in a
Speaker 1: foreign country and you don't really have a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and you don't you're not able to leave and listen,
Speaker 1: a Vanity Fair photo editor probably does not make that
Speaker 1: much money. This is probably an intensely terrifying thing for her.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And in the article she talks about how
Speaker 1: hotel security was like in their room all the time,
Speaker 1: kind of waiting for them, not letting them go anywhere.
Speaker 1: The personal trainers that went with them, she had already
Speaker 1: left because she had like a stomach issue, so she
Speaker 1: Rachel was alone with Anna, and Rachel by this point
Speaker 1: was stressed out as well, and she wanted to go
Speaker 1: ahead and leave, and they wouldn't let her leave unless
Speaker 1: somebody paid, paid up, put a credit card down, and
Speaker 1: Rachel was the one that had to do it, and
Speaker 1: Anna was saying, you out, well, I can fix this.
Speaker 1: I can't do it now. She was kind of being
Speaker 1: she was very stressed about it and not being too
Speaker 1: clear about how to solve the problem. She She was
Speaker 1: sort of like, I'm not sure why this is happening,
Speaker 1: I don't understand, and not offering any real solutions. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would hope that if you're super wealthy friend, you know,
Speaker 1: was this was happening, that they would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me call my dad, let me do this, let
Speaker 1: me do that. But it doesn't surprise me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that Rachel was very frustrated, but it doesn't Again,
Speaker 1: the way that she was acting does not surprise me
Speaker 1: that it didn't immediately kick in that oh, this girl
Speaker 1: is broke and she's she's scamming all of us. So
Speaker 1: when they get back to America, Rachel is trying to
Speaker 1: get her money back, and it really sounds like she
Speaker 1: started to kind of unravel. She writes, stress consumed to
Speaker 1: my sleep and fueled my days. My coworkers saw me unravel.
Speaker 1: I came to the office looking pale and undone. This
Speaker 1: it sounds like this just take over her life. This
Speaker 1: one trip and this one arrangement with this one person
Speaker 1: that she happened to randomly meet in the hotel sounds
Speaker 1: like it was hurting to take over her full life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And wasn't it like seventy thousand dollars on her credit card.
Speaker 1: That's so much money. I mean in the article it's
Speaker 1: quoted as being more than her her yearly salaries. This
Speaker 1: is a year's worth of work that is gone because
Speaker 1: of this one person. That's an amount of money. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine if you you thought you a friend was
Speaker 1: going to foot it, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it's on you and you weren't anticipating it and you
Speaker 1: probably don't have it, that level of stress must have
Speaker 1: been unbearable. Yeah, that would that would ruin my life.
Speaker 1: So basically Rachel gets the police involved, and only then
Speaker 1: is the sort of grandness of this whole situation revealed
Speaker 1: to her. She was accused of falsifying documents from international
Speaker 1: banks showing accounts abroad with a total balance and approximately
Speaker 1: sixty million euro that's about seventy million American dollars, according
Speaker 1: to a press relation from the New York County District
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office announcing the indictment. In late she took those
Speaker 1: documents to the City National Bank and it attempt to
Speaker 1: secure a two million dollar loan creation for her arts
Speaker 1: foundation and private club. When City National Bank denied a loan.
Speaker 1: She showed the same documents to Fortress Investment Group in Midtown,
Speaker 1: New York. Fortress agreed to consider the loan if Anna
Speaker 1: provided a hundred thousand dollars to cover legal and due
Speaker 1: diligence expenses. On January twelve, seventeen, almost a month before,
Speaker 1: she returned to New York and secured a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar loan from City National Bank by convincing the bank
Speaker 1: representative let her overdraft her account. She allegedly promised the
Speaker 1: bank that she would rire funds shortly to cover the overdraft,
Speaker 1: which is a very familiar thing in her world. She
Speaker 1: gave the roan money to Fortress, so basically she was
Speaker 1: moving around so many different large quantities of money, like
Speaker 1: millions and millions of dollars and sort of kind of, um,
Speaker 1: what's the expression, like robbing Peter to pay Paul, Like
Speaker 1: getting money from getting a loan secured from one bank
Speaker 1: and then using that loan to get another loan from
Speaker 1: another bank, like a massive shell game where there was
Speaker 1: never really any money to begin with. It kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like a pyramid scheme, but with like people people
Speaker 1: in money, not at no products at all, just just
Speaker 1: one person convincing people she had money somewhere and she'd
Speaker 1: get it back to you exactly, exactly. And this quote
Speaker 1: that Rachel has from her piece kind of you know,
Speaker 1: chronicling her nightmare with Anna, really nails it. Anna represented
Speaker 1: the kind of life we all wish we could have.
Speaker 1: It's too good to be true. The reality of Anna's
Speaker 1: behind the scenes dealings, these figures flying from one account
Speaker 1: to another, remains daizy to this day. That she was
Speaker 1: allegedly orchestrating such an elaborate scheme while maintaining a believable
Speaker 1: surface cool building her debit cards to pay for dinners, workouts,
Speaker 1: beauty products, and spot treatments. She conjured a glittering, frictionless city.
Speaker 1: Whatever one wanted could be bought. Wherever one wanted to
Speaker 1: go was a cab or a plane right away. The
Speaker 1: audacity of her performance sold itself and to let collapse
Speaker 1: under the weight of its own ambition. It's part of
Speaker 1: why I believed her, to continue to believe her. Who
Speaker 1: would think to make this up such an elaborate tale
Speaker 1: and carry on like this for so long? Who was she?
Speaker 1: How do you know who anyone is? Really? And I
Speaker 1: think that line really does a great job with encapsulating
Speaker 1: what makes someone like Anna so so kind of mystifying.
Speaker 1: You know, she really represented this world where everything is possible.
Speaker 1: It's not surprising to me that it's all happened on
Speaker 1: the back drop of New York City, because when you
Speaker 1: live in New York, as I did for a few years,
Speaker 1: it seems like there are two cities, right, There's the
Speaker 1: one city where you are toiling and you're always sweaty,
Speaker 1: and everything is always a nightmare, and even something simple
Speaker 1: like wanting to get groceries or going to the bank
Speaker 1: is a huge ordeal, and everything is hard. And I
Speaker 1: just when I lived in New York, my my biggest
Speaker 1: memories were like toil and how everything was. It was
Speaker 1: always something like just to get groceries was the biggest
Speaker 1: pain in the world. And I always felt like I
Speaker 1: was sort of battling the city. And then you would
Speaker 1: see these rich, moneyed, wealthy, well connected girls who seemingly
Speaker 1: lived in a different city. Is like we lived. We
Speaker 1: lived in the same city, but we lived in two
Speaker 1: different cities in a kind of way. And I think
Speaker 1: Anna represented the possibility that you can live in a
Speaker 1: world where anything you want whether it's a massage or
Speaker 1: a private workout, or a trip to Marrakesh or a
Speaker 1: personalized gown. Whatever it is that you want, you can
Speaker 1: have it. Like that is so seductive, and of course,
Speaker 1: like who wouldn't want that? I think it is this
Speaker 1: sort of modern day great Gaps, the American dream, where
Speaker 1: you know, you can move to New York with nothing
Speaker 1: and reinvent yourself to be this, this German heiress for
Speaker 1: whom everything is possible, everything is at your fingertips. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I do love that aspect of the story that
Speaker 1: she was a German heiress. Um and that quote, I
Speaker 1: think it's really well written in Um. It does capture
Speaker 1: a lot of why you would you would go along
Speaker 1: with this, why it was believable. I mean, to witness
Speaker 1: someone outwardly so confident if the money isn't there, but
Speaker 1: they're just playing no outward signs that there's a problem.
Speaker 1: It's it's impressive in a way. It really is. I
Speaker 1: like am someone who I have usually when I have money,
Speaker 1: even if I'm always like expecting my credit card to
Speaker 1: get turned down, like I always am like here's my
Speaker 1: credit card with a question mark. Used free credit cards
Speaker 1: like gift cards, so you're like, there might be something
Speaker 1: on this one, and I'm just like secretly in turmoil
Speaker 1: that it's going to come back. They're gonna be like, well, sorry, man,
Speaker 1: but this did not go through. Meanwhile, she's got Anna
Speaker 1: Deelvia's no money, and it's just like confident again. Like
Speaker 1: I know she's a bad person for scamming people who
Speaker 1: didn't have a ton of money, but part of me
Speaker 1: has to sort of admire that confidence where when you
Speaker 1: walk up to a cashier and you give your credit
Speaker 1: card to buy something lavish and your credit card is declined,
Speaker 1: instead of being like, oh, I don't have any money,
Speaker 1: which all of us would do somehow making it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, let me talk to a manager. It's like
Speaker 1: the person who has that kind of audacity, that person
Speaker 1: is so not me, and I am fascinated by that person.
Speaker 1: She really took fake it until you make it to
Speaker 1: its ultimate, its highest, highest point, to the most extreme. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So another sort of major player in the whole Anna
Speaker 1: Delvie saga is Nef Naff really has emerged that sort
Speaker 1: of the folk hero that we all deserve in this story. Uh,
Speaker 1: Nef is like me, a black girl from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Netflix executives who are already turning Anna
Speaker 1: deelvie story into a Netflix show. If you need someone
Speaker 1: to play Nev, please call me because this was the
Speaker 1: role I was born to play. Um Nev worked at
Speaker 1: the hotel where Anna Delvi was living and really gives
Speaker 1: a different a different glimpse into these scams. So basically,
Speaker 1: Nef says that Anna Delvi, one of the sort of
Speaker 1: layers of her scam was that she would treat the
Speaker 1: people in the hotel very, very nicely, like basically become
Speaker 1: their friends. And bear in mind, this is the hotel
Speaker 1: where she was living and not paying the bill, so
Speaker 1: she was like ragging up thousands of dollars. But by
Speaker 1: befriending the staff, it kind of gives you a certain
Speaker 1: kind of power to be able to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want you since you're nice to them. They want
Speaker 1: to believe that you are a next person and that
Speaker 1: their money is They're like, they want to give you
Speaker 1: that benefit of a doubt. Exactly. My favorite quote about
Speaker 1: Anna from Nef, she says, you know how Rihanna walks
Speaker 1: out with wine glasses, That was Anna, and they let
Speaker 1: her by miss Selvie. So if you don't know what
Speaker 1: that means, basically, Rihanna is often photographed pretty much illegally,
Speaker 1: like leaving restaurants going onto the street. Was a full
Speaker 1: glass of wine for the restaurant where she was just dining.
Speaker 1: I think that's against the law to like leave to
Speaker 1: like get a drink at the bar at a rest
Speaker 1: and then like, unless you're in New Orleans, to de
Speaker 1: stroll out onto the street. But they let her, And
Speaker 1: that's what she's saying, Like Anna Delvy had that kind
Speaker 1: of vibe where she would do these things and people
Speaker 1: would just let her right And um nev noticed the
Speaker 1: same rich people who act nonchalantly about money vibe as Rachel.
Speaker 1: That is, it seems to be one of the key
Speaker 1: things that sold her scam. When you're super rich, you
Speaker 1: can be forgetful in this way, which is maybe why
Speaker 1: no one thought much of the instances in which Anna
Speaker 1: did things that seemed odd for a wealthy person calling
Speaker 1: a friend to have her put a taxi from the
Speaker 1: airport on her credit card, or asking to sleep on
Speaker 1: someone's couch, or moving into someone's apartment with the tacit
Speaker 1: agreement to pay rent and then not doing it. Maybe
Speaker 1: she had so much money she had just lost track
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, that actually reminds me my rich friend
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier. I helped her move out of
Speaker 1: her place and I put her you haul on my
Speaker 1: credit card because I was picking up a you Hall
Speaker 1: to meet her, and she never paid for it. It
Speaker 1: became a big thing, and eventually when I was like,
Speaker 1: I need my money for that you haul, she had
Speaker 1: just forgotten it. It It just slipped her mind. And that
Speaker 1: that like, that's what I'm saying. This is not it's
Speaker 1: for someone who is super wealthy. This does not sound
Speaker 1: strange to me. It may seem strange, but it would
Speaker 1: only maybe think like, oh, she's one of those rich
Speaker 1: people who doesn't think about money like that. Yeah. From
Speaker 1: what I read, she kind of had this flighty vibe
Speaker 1: being sort of forgetful. So I can see just sort
Speaker 1: of writing it off as a part of her personality
Speaker 1: as well totally. And it does kind of sound like
Speaker 1: throwing money around and making it so that people kind
Speaker 1: of owe you or feel obligated to not point out
Speaker 1: the inconsistencies of your scam is kind of part of
Speaker 1: her armor. Neff writes, about how she once called something
Speaker 1: out that she found a bit odd about Anna. This
Speaker 1: rich person who actually legitimately was rich. Anna had told
Speaker 1: Nef that this person's father they were thinking about being
Speaker 1: investment partners. This person like had stock in this hotel.
Speaker 1: And so when NiFe mentioned this to the to the
Speaker 1: rich guy, the rich guy was like, don't you think
Speaker 1: that if my father had an investment partner staying at
Speaker 1: a hotel where he kind of that he kind of owns,
Speaker 1: that person will be staying in a suite, not like
Speaker 1: a little deluxe room. When Nif asked Anna about this,
Speaker 1: Anna said, do you ever just have someone do you
Speaker 1: so many favors you kind of want to pay them
Speaker 1: back in silence? And I mean, come on, that is
Speaker 1: a great line. Like that is like something out of
Speaker 1: a movie. It really is. It's Hollywood, Hollywood, kitten, write
Speaker 1: something better than that. It's so good. It's so good,
Speaker 1: It's so good. Another great tidbit about Anna's story is
Speaker 1: just what a bold faced scammer she was. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite points is that the personal trainer that you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, when Anna was still stuck in Marrakesh and
Speaker 1: she had been low key scamming this woman. Anna didn't
Speaker 1: have a way to get back to the United States,
Speaker 1: so she asked if this woman could put a plane
Speaker 1: ticket on her credit card and then Anna would quote
Speaker 1: pay her back later, but we all know how that goes.
Speaker 1: And the woman said, sure, I guess I will, and
Speaker 1: Anna asked, can you get me first class US? Which, again,
Speaker 1: it's such a impressive display that it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to not sort of love it. I think she she
Speaker 1: really tapped into that kind of how people behave when
Speaker 1: you are used to that type of money. That if
Speaker 1: you're used to first class and you think money is
Speaker 1: no big deal and that's just something you sort of expect,
Speaker 1: you would ask for first class. I think she sort
Speaker 1: of understood this class of people pretty well, and she
Speaker 1: played the role very well. Yeah, like I think she
Speaker 1: I think you're right that she knew the markers of
Speaker 1: how to make these people who were not moneyed but
Speaker 1: who were in her orbit believe the scam. Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like how magicians they have like a flashy thing
Speaker 1: and that they know that you're going to your eye
Speaker 1: is going to be drawn to it, but that it's
Speaker 1: actually you know, a misdirect. You know, it's like these
Speaker 1: little things that make you believe in the scam. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So we have a little bit more to talk about,
Speaker 1: but we're going to pause for one more quick break
Speaker 1: for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you, sponsor.
Speaker 1: So NeXT's version of this story kind of begins to
Speaker 1: unravel the same way they did for Rachel, which is
Speaker 1: having to pick up a big bill for a price
Speaker 1: e meal. Um, it sounds like they went on to
Speaker 1: this big meal. The waiter came back to the station
Speaker 1: and began entering the credit card numbers. So basically it
Speaker 1: sounds like Anna gave him a bunch of credit card
Speaker 1: numbers and had the waiter put a bunch of them
Speaker 1: in to see if they would work, and none of
Speaker 1: them did. Next says, I started to sweat because I
Speaker 1: knew the bill was mine. The amount of the bill
Speaker 1: was about three dollars, which isn't a lot of money
Speaker 1: compared to the other bills that Anna was racking up,
Speaker 1: but it was a lot of money for somebody like
Speaker 1: Nev who ended up having to cover the bill, And
Speaker 1: she says that doing so made her feel sick, But
Speaker 1: after all the money Anna it spent on her, she
Speaker 1: understood that it was her turn. Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can I can see that too, Like, you don't want
Speaker 1: to argue about money necessarily with someone who has been,
Speaker 1: at least in your understanding paying for the bill up
Speaker 1: and to that point exactly, exactly, um, and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really when things sort of took a turn. And really
Speaker 1: for Nef, what I think was really the hard part
Speaker 1: here was this idea that this was so intersected with
Speaker 1: Nef's work because she was staying at the hotel where
Speaker 1: networked and so at one point they realized Anna has
Speaker 1: no credit card on file and she'd basically been living
Speaker 1: in this hotel, and the management of the hotel came
Speaker 1: to to help her sort it out, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you did you know this person was staying here
Speaker 1: without a credit card? Like blah blah blah. And then
Speaker 1: a classic scammer move when this was brought up to
Speaker 1: Anna by NEF, Anna compensated by buying bottles of expensive
Speaker 1: champagne for the hotel staff, thinking that like, oh, if
Speaker 1: I get them a pricey gift, maybe that will smooth
Speaker 1: things over. Anna didn't pay, and eventually they locked her
Speaker 1: out of her room again with Scott Prewitt that happened
Speaker 1: to him too. Yes, more similarities, more similarities. So in April,
Speaker 1: Anna deposited a hundred and sixty dollars with a bad
Speaker 1: checks into the same account and someone was able to
Speaker 1: withdraw from that account before they were returned, and that's
Speaker 1: how she managed to pay off her hotel. So again,
Speaker 1: really like moving money around, using one scam to pay
Speaker 1: off another person that she had scammed. And again keep
Speaker 1: in mind, Nef and Anna were really cozy. They were
Speaker 1: buddy buddy, and Nef worked at this hotel, so of
Speaker 1: course it got her into all kinds of hot water
Speaker 1: with her job. I'm sure. Nef writes in the cut
Speaker 1: that at one point they called her into the office
Speaker 1: and they said, Nef, did you know about this? She
Speaker 1: says she started dying laughing, and she says that he
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of a boss move. So not
Speaker 1: what I really see eye to eye here in a
Speaker 1: kind of way where even though it's a massive scam,
Speaker 1: you kind of gotta respect it. Yeah, it's pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: just the level of it, the scale, to have so
Speaker 1: many people sort of pulled into it. There's a part
Speaker 1: of part of you that sort of has to ask
Speaker 1: to respect. I gotta give credit where credit is due
Speaker 1: on this one. So later Anna deposited two bad checks
Speaker 1: into an account she had at Signature Bank, netting her
Speaker 1: eight thousand, two hundred dollars, and this is how she
Speaker 1: ended up being able to take what she called a
Speaker 1: planned trip to California, where she was arrested outside of
Speaker 1: passages in Malibu and brought back to New York, where
Speaker 1: she would faced six counts of grand larceny and attempted
Speaker 1: grand larceny in addition to theft of services according to
Speaker 1: the indictment. And the cut got to the real Anna
Speaker 1: behind the scam. Anna Sarkin, who was born in Russia
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one and moved to Germany in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven when she was sixteen with her younger brother
Speaker 1: and her parents. Anna attended a high school in a Schweiler,
Speaker 1: a small working class town sixty kilometers outside of Colonia
Speaker 1: near the Belgium and Dutch border. She's not actually an heiress.
Speaker 1: Her dad worked as a chuck driver and later as
Speaker 1: an executive at a transport company until it became insolvent
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen, whereupon he opened a heating and
Speaker 1: cooling business specializing in energy efficient devices. So even though
Speaker 1: there was no truth to her being this rich German heiress,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Americans, myself included, probably know
Speaker 1: so little about Germany that if she said, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: from this like small town in Germany, it was even
Speaker 1: that even if you knew that town was not, you know,
Speaker 1: fancy and wealthy, it sounds like a working class town,
Speaker 1: you might buy into it a little bit like, oh,
Speaker 1: she says she's from this town in Germany, sounds fancy. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny because I think it also plays
Speaker 1: on the fear that we all have of looking stupid, right,
Speaker 1: or being embarrassed. You want to sound like, oh, sure,
Speaker 1: I know where that is, Like you're educated and you're
Speaker 1: aware of that world. You don't want to admit that
Speaker 1: you don't know something. So it kind of plays on
Speaker 1: just the human nature of trying to to fit in
Speaker 1: and sound and tell in front of people. Well, that
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of another scammer couple that I love,
Speaker 1: the couple that scammed their way into the Obama administration's
Speaker 1: state dinner. So their last name was Salahi, and somebody
Speaker 1: wrote that because this was a state dinner, and you
Speaker 1: had lots of like foreign diplomats and foreign important people.
Speaker 1: Because their name sounds a little bit like important, can important,
Speaker 1: it could be the name of an important couple from abroad.
Speaker 1: That that was one of the reasons they were able
Speaker 1: to scam their way into this dinner so easily, because
Speaker 1: nobody wants to look at the doorman who is giving
Speaker 1: this important foreign couple a hard time, So maybe it's
Speaker 1: just better to just let them in even though they
Speaker 1: aren't an important couple. But you know that that idea
Speaker 1: of not wanting to a embarrass somebody who was important
Speaker 1: or be be embarrassed because you didn't know who this
Speaker 1: important person was definitely feeds into it. Sure. And like
Speaker 1: a fear of being called out on your your ignorance
Speaker 1: on something or causing like a kind of a scene,
Speaker 1: I can completely understand, and wanting to avoid that and
Speaker 1: just going along with it and then finding out that, uh,
Speaker 1: it was all a big, a big lie. So another
Speaker 1: thing I love about this whole Anna situation is that
Speaker 1: when the cut interviewed her from prison, she still sort
Speaker 1: of maintained that this these grand ideas opening this fancy
Speaker 1: art club for rich people. She still maintains that they
Speaker 1: were actual plans that she had. They weren't. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a scam. She actually believed that she could move enough
Speaker 1: money around and fund this thing and make all the
Speaker 1: money back. Yeah, and uh, if it's true, it's always
Speaker 1: a more believable story if there is a little bit
Speaker 1: of truth to it, you know, if there's like just
Speaker 1: a peppery ing of of true things in there. That's
Speaker 1: the crux of any good scam is a little bit
Speaker 1: of truth. Yes, exactly. So this lie at the cut
Speaker 1: I think crystallizes for me why this is such a
Speaker 1: fascinating story. They're right about her her grand play hands
Speaker 1: to open this art club. They right. Maybe it could
Speaker 1: have happened in this city where enormous amounts of invisible
Speaker 1: money trade hands every day, or glass towers are built
Speaker 1: on paperwork promises. Why not if Abby rose in the
Speaker 1: son of Holocaust survivors, could come to New York and
Speaker 1: fill skyscrapers full of art, If the Kardashians could build
Speaker 1: a billion dollar empire out of literally nothing, if a
Speaker 1: movie star like Dakota Johnson could sculpt her ask so
Speaker 1: that it could become the anchor of a major franchise.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't Anna delve. During the course of my reporting,
Speaker 1: people kept asking why this girl. She wasn't super hot,
Speaker 1: they pointed out, or super charming, She wasn't even very nice.
Speaker 1: How did she manage to convince an enormous amount of cool,
Speaker 1: successful people that she was something she clearly wasn't. Watching
Speaker 1: the Riker's guards shove Fast Company into a Manila envelope,
Speaker 1: I realized what Anna had in common with the people
Speaker 1: that she'd been studying on the pages of that magazine.
Speaker 1: She saw something others didn't. Anna looked at the soul
Speaker 1: of New York and recognize that if you distract people
Speaker 1: with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the
Speaker 1: indica of wealth, if you show them the me, they
Speaker 1: will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the
Speaker 1: thing was, it was so easy. I love that quote
Speaker 1: so much because I think it's true. I mean, Anna
Speaker 1: Delvi scammed her friends, a lot of whom didn't really
Speaker 1: have that much money to begin with. And side note,
Speaker 1: we actually don't even know the depths of her scams.
Speaker 1: But when you look at like it does kind of
Speaker 1: make you think, is in America kind of one big scam?
Speaker 1: And in a kind of way, that is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we're so fascinated by her story and
Speaker 1: stories like hers, because we see people sort of scammed
Speaker 1: their way into success all the time, and in a
Speaker 1: kind of way, it just seems like what this country
Speaker 1: is built on. Yeah, I love that quote too, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of reminds me of um. Every time I
Speaker 1: go to Las Vegas, I have a weird this's just
Speaker 1: a weird feeling in being there that I can't look
Speaker 1: away from this. This is like humanity and its basis
Speaker 1: like pleasure, entertainment seeking. It's really hard to describe, but
Speaker 1: I think that Anna was able to tap into if
Speaker 1: you do have a large amounts of cash or shiny
Speaker 1: things to distract people, that we are so hung up
Speaker 1: on this, and it's sort of like reveals the superficial
Speaker 1: aspect of humanity that is both fascinating and kind of upsetting.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting dichotomy. Definitely, I'm sure folks are
Speaker 1: so tired of hearing me make this connection, But I
Speaker 1: do think there's a little bit of a social media
Speaker 1: aspect to this, because Annadelby's an Instagram is still up
Speaker 1: and she has the artifice of someone living the lifestyle
Speaker 1: of like a of a mysterious, wealthy, traveling you know,
Speaker 1: rich girl. She has that down so well. And I
Speaker 1: think it's what you're saying. It's like, if you could
Speaker 1: have the trappings of wealth and that sort of shiny
Speaker 1: artifice of wealth, that really it can be so distracting
Speaker 1: even though you know it's not real, you kind of
Speaker 1: let yourself believe it. And I think that's what Anna
Speaker 1: traffic in. Even though we know, like there is no
Speaker 1: free lunch. If someone befriends you and says they're going
Speaker 1: to whisk you away to Morocco for free, that's probably
Speaker 1: not true, but it feels so good to believe that
Speaker 1: you could live a life like that. I just this
Speaker 1: really just remind us me of my times living in
Speaker 1: New York when I would just look at these these
Speaker 1: these young women who were the same age that I was,
Speaker 1: and I would want their life so badly. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget this time I had to go to Kinkos to
Speaker 1: fill because I was filling out this paperwork and it
Speaker 1: was this really intense like involved having to get things
Speaker 1: copied and triplicate and all of this. So I had
Speaker 1: to go to Kinkos. Kinkos was a little bit far
Speaker 1: away from my apartment, and the subway wasn't working, and
Speaker 1: so the only subway that I could take to get
Speaker 1: there was was not working. So I had to walk,
Speaker 1: and so I walked. It was like a few miles
Speaker 1: and the hot, hot sun. When I got to Kinkos,
Speaker 1: it was closed, and I was like overcome with this
Speaker 1: feeling of dread and sort of turmoil. And I turned
Speaker 1: around to go back to you know, walk back home,
Speaker 1: because there was no way other way to get home.
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford a cab. The train was down. What
Speaker 1: was it? When I turned around, I turned around too
Speaker 1: quickly and I ran smack dab into a road sign
Speaker 1: and it broke my glasses. And so so I sat
Speaker 1: down on this stoop in Williamsburg and somebody opened the
Speaker 1: window of the stoop I was sitting at, and I
Speaker 1: was like, can you leave? Can you not sit on
Speaker 1: my stoop? And right in that moment, this black car
Speaker 1: full of beautiful, thin young girls, probably my same age,
Speaker 1: got out of this car, and they were impeccably dressed.
Speaker 1: They were like hipster sheek, they were laughing, were the
Speaker 1: epitome of Brooklyn, care free, and I remember thinking we
Speaker 1: live in two different cities. At that moment felt so
Speaker 1: I just felt I've never felt dirtier or sweatier, or
Speaker 1: grosser or more sort of down on my luck. I
Speaker 1: want to be clear, there are people who are living much,
Speaker 1: much harder lives than I was living in Brooklyn, But
Speaker 1: in that moment, I felt very down. And seeing this,
Speaker 1: these glittering girls who just seemed to float on air
Speaker 1: getting out of a town car, like like a private
Speaker 1: town car, I just remember wanting that so badly, so badly,
Speaker 1: wanting to know what that life would be like to
Speaker 1: just wherever you wanted to go, there's a it's a
Speaker 1: town car way, you know what. I'm sure these girls
Speaker 1: have problems. I'm definitely projecting my own stuff on them.
Speaker 1: But I see that in Anna, where you know, a
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair photo editor who makes sixty grand a year
Speaker 1: in one of the most expensive cities in the world
Speaker 1: probably sees someone like Anna and what they offer as
Speaker 1: so just intoxicating and the idea that you could that
Speaker 1: you could be within grasp of it. I don't blame
Speaker 1: anybody for getting caught up in her in her whirlwind, No,
Speaker 1: I don't either. It's like a tale of two cities
Speaker 1: for these are modern times. It is though I know,
Speaker 1: I know what are thinking, like, why did you do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on this, but it is. It really
Speaker 1: demonstrates a lot of class aspiration and sort of the
Speaker 1: perversion of class aspiration. I think, yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: completely correct. So that's been our our first and what
Speaker 1: will probably be a mini series on scammers. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I could talk scammers all day. There was one time
Speaker 1: I was I was watching this documentary on Netflix and
Speaker 1: somebody came over to my house and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've been trying to watch this documentary on on wine
Speaker 1: on Netflix for so long. And he was like, documentary
Speaker 1: about wine on Netflix. That does not sound like something
Speaker 1: that you'd be into. And I was like, Oh, actually,
Speaker 1: it's about this wine scammer who ended up scamming all
Speaker 1: these fancy wine types and buying like counterfeit wine. And
Speaker 1: he said, oh, that sounds that sounds right. I was
Speaker 1: figuring you would not be watching just a straight by
Speaker 1: the books documentary about wine. Somebody would have to be
Speaker 1: getting scammed for you to be interested. Well, if your
Speaker 1: listeners any suggestions for um for scammers that we should
Speaker 1: talk about, please send them to us. And if you're
Speaker 1: a scammer, if you're currently scamming, give us a call.
Speaker 1: Well let's talk. Let's talk about your scams. Yes, Bridget,
Speaker 1: Bridget would love love more more than anything to your
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah. And in the meantime, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some the listener male Okay. Jacqueline wrote sports fandom Slash.
Speaker 1: This is about our fan fiction episode. It exists. Our
Speaker 1: PF is not slowly limited to one direction. I myself
Speaker 1: these days, tend to read and write football RPF. I
Speaker 1: think our demographics plants a little bit older than average.
Speaker 1: Most folks I know in it are in the mid
Speaker 1: twenties to mid thirties. I also know people who write
Speaker 1: a lot of hockey AIRPF, but I don't follow hockey
Speaker 1: enough to really know more than some of the main
Speaker 1: players and ships in both cases, though, I think, in
Speaker 1: addition to exploring everything you mentioned about deeper relationships between
Speaker 1: folks we already see in Cannon, there's something kind of
Speaker 1: interesting about exploring masculinity, issues of homophobia, and very public life,
Speaker 1: particularly in exclusively male spaces. Maybe I like pretending to
Speaker 1: be a fly on the wall. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: that's definitely part of it. There's also a contingent who
Speaker 1: writes fim slash, usually about the American Women's National Team.
Speaker 1: Women's football outside of US w n T tends to
Speaker 1: be pretty small fandom generally, so if you like me
Speaker 1: and follow Brazil w NT or Chelsea Ladies, you're just
Speaker 1: s O L. It's interesting because my academic research has
Speaker 1: put me in contact with several professional footballers, some of
Speaker 1: whom appear periodically and FICK. The ones I know aren't
Speaker 1: that famous, but it's happened, and they definitely know. Some
Speaker 1: of the guys who regularly star logically be kind of weird.
Speaker 1: There's a really firm separation and compartmentalization, and the fandom
Speaker 1: between ships pick and real life characterization is thick. Is
Speaker 1: mostly drawn from interviews and social media personalities. But I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone thinks, oh boy, I don't know much
Speaker 1: about sports. These two sports folks are secretly in love
Speaker 1: or whatever present them with slash fan works and person
Speaker 1: which I suppose does make it a bit different from
Speaker 1: some live action fandoms like Supernatural or Avengers. Maybe a
Speaker 1: year ago there was actually a bit of panic when
Speaker 1: an editor from dead Spin wanted to do an article
Speaker 1: on football RPF centered around New York City FC players.
Speaker 1: This led to me and some other folks I know
Speaker 1: changing the privacy settings on some postings on AO three. Happily,
Speaker 1: I think the article was dropped. While I don't think
Speaker 1: many of us are ashamed of our writing hobby per se,
Speaker 1: sports fandom can get super toxic, and our little corner
Speaker 1: AO three and Tumbler tends to be pretty much troll free.
Speaker 1: The concern was that added attention from say, our slash
Speaker 1: shocker would lead to writers being harassed. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that concern was really logical, but hey, like the
Speaker 1: rest of fan fiction, football RPF is very much produced
Speaker 1: and consumed by women and non binary folks. The few
Speaker 1: cis gender men I know who exist around it, and
Speaker 1: I don't even think these two right are gay. And
Speaker 1: this was in the wake of gamer Gates, so I
Speaker 1: think everyone on the internet was still on high alert. Naturally,
Speaker 1: most of us have been put through the fake geek
Speaker 1: girl test at least once. We all have individual horror stories,
Speaker 1: but usually they go something along the lines of some
Speaker 1: dude at a pub thinking we're only there for a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: or if we are there alone, it's only because the
Speaker 1: players are cute. Ironically, the folks that produce fick in
Speaker 1: this fandom are some of the biggest tactics and history nerds.
Speaker 1: I know. If some dude really wants to quiz them
Speaker 1: on who was in the typical Manchester United starting eleven in,
Speaker 1: I say go for it. Jokes on you, random public ads.
Speaker 1: I dragged my male friends to matches from my clubs,
Speaker 1: and I can augle in Hazard's bubble, but while still
Speaker 1: knowing when he's offside and that drys Marten's is the
Speaker 1: superior Belgian striker. I totally butchered that name. Apologies at
Speaker 1: any rate. Female football fans are often victims of gate keeping,
Speaker 1: not unlike female fans and more traditionally geek spaces. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't try it with the fan fake writers. They
Speaker 1: know there's anyway this has gotten long if you've made
Speaker 1: it through many things for your patients. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: the women in queer folks side a football fandom, and
Speaker 1: I always love sharing it with interested parties. It's been
Speaker 1: incredibly supportive and a wonderful way to meet folks from
Speaker 1: all over the world. Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I thought that was really interesting because I cannot
Speaker 1: only imagine, uh kind of the intersection of fan fiction
Speaker 1: and sports fandom can get pretty toxic, and I'm happy
Speaker 1: to hear that there are these pockets on the Internet
Speaker 1: that have gotten away from that, and it sounds fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, of course people out there are writing
Speaker 1: fan fiction about athletes. This never occurred to me, but
Speaker 1: as soon as we read the email, I thought, of
Speaker 1: course people are doing, Matt, of course they are. I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah, I do too. Um, and please keep
Speaker 1: sending in everyone who sent in their fan fiction, thank you,
Speaker 1: and please keep them coming. Please do Next letter, Nicole wrote,
Speaker 1: I was so excited to listen to this two parter
Speaker 1: on fan fiction. Well, I read a little fan fiction
Speaker 1: as a team. I am now in my mid twenties,
Speaker 1: and I've recently begun to write some fan fiction because
Speaker 1: I find it fun. I'm relaxing, creative outlet and good
Speaker 1: actors providing my own original fiction as well. You touched
Speaker 1: a little on how women can explore their sexuality through
Speaker 1: fan fiction, and I wanted to share my own experiences. Well,
Speaker 1: I have not read any fan fiction of a sexual content.
Speaker 1: Identify as bisexual, and I recently married to a great
Speaker 1: guy I had been with most of my adult life.
Speaker 1: I have found that the more quote smutty fan fiction
Speaker 1: is a way to express and acknowledge the aspects of
Speaker 1: my sexuality that fall outside of my heatero monogamous relationship.
Speaker 1: Through the safe, independent medium of reading fanfic, I have
Speaker 1: also learned about many different kinks that I have discovered
Speaker 1: new ones I have brought in a conversation with my husband,
Speaker 1: and we both agree it has supported us and being
Speaker 1: more open and more sex positive than we were raised
Speaker 1: to be. Recently, a thirteen year old female friend of
Speaker 1: the family was caught reading some sexually explicit thick on
Speaker 1: her what Pad account, and I felt the reaction of
Speaker 1: her parents was a little shaming, including banning or from
Speaker 1: the account and sharing their concerns with others. While there
Speaker 1: are certainly some smutty thick out there that is questionable,
Speaker 1: such as incest, fix much of an explore sexuality in
Speaker 1: a healthy way, and often in a way that acknowledges
Speaker 1: emotional aspects of sex as well. I think in this way,
Speaker 1: explicit fan thic might just be one more positive way
Speaker 1: to explore sexuality and most porn, which is certainly something
Speaker 1: that many parents would struggle they had caught a son
Speaker 1: rather than a daughter looking at ps. Your comment at
Speaker 1: the end of part two about making lemonade out of
Speaker 1: lemons might have been funnier than you know. Lemon is
Speaker 1: a term for smuddy scenes and fan fic. Who knew,
Speaker 1: Nicole think I'd love to say that we knew that,
Speaker 1: and that we were making a really clever joke. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Annie, did you? I did, but
Speaker 1: I didn't catch it when you when you made that
Speaker 1: that comment, I did not put together. But that is
Speaker 1: really funny. Um. I had a friend when we were
Speaker 1: probably thirteen. Her parents caught her reading some dirty fan
Speaker 1: fiction and I mean dirty for thirteen year olds, perhaps, um,
Speaker 1: and they banned her from her account, and I shared
Speaker 1: my printed fan fiction with her. I was a little
Speaker 1: little instigator trying to keeper with the hook up. I
Speaker 1: love it. I love that you were like well underground
Speaker 1: fan fiction network. Yeah, I kind of was. Um. So
Speaker 1: I love all these these letters about people who have
Speaker 1: found community and fan fiction. I'm really happy that that
Speaker 1: exists exists for us on the Internet, and it does
Speaker 1: sound like it can be a healthy sexual outlet, oh
Speaker 1: for sure. For sure. And even I just think that
Speaker 1: since I do feel we publicly don't really allow young
Speaker 1: women to express sexuality or talk about it, I think
Speaker 1: that it is a way to explore things and figure
Speaker 1: out things about yourself, um, safely. And there are definitely
Speaker 1: problematic things in fan fiction, and I'm not saying there aren't,
Speaker 1: but I think in general it is a positive thing
Speaker 1: that it is. It is out there and it is
Speaker 1: a way to to talk about to explore these things
Speaker 1: about yourself. Definitely, um And honestly, it seems like the
Speaker 1: fan fiction episodes really struck a chord with folks. I'm
Speaker 1: happy that folks are still writing in and like any said,
Speaker 1: please keep sending usselves fan fictions. Yes we're still We
Speaker 1: were not joking about the fan fiction. Uh. With high
Speaker 1: production value, well higher production value, we'll see what we
Speaker 1: can do um like many series, So keep keep sending
Speaker 1: them in. We are working on that. You can email
Speaker 1: us at a mom stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can also find us on social media. Can't
Speaker 1: you bridget you? Absolutely can. We are on Twitter at
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast and we were on Instagram at stuff
Speaker 1: Mom never told you. And thanks as always to Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan and Kathleen Quillian for helping us make this show happen.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always, and thanks to you listeners. Please keep
Speaker 1: those letters coming. Who do I do