Lie, Cheat, & Steal

Kath tells Pat about the Mirai Botnet, supercharged form malware that caused such disastrous denial of service attacks that it managed to bring down internet service for the entire US eastern seaboard in 2016. Was this the work of a foreign actor, hoping to influence a crucial US election? The truth is even weirder.

Kath tells Pat about airbnb scams, and we explore a former real estate broker's illegal airbnb empire in New York City that netted tens of millions of dollars before getting busted.

Pat tells Kath about Carl Rinsch, a rookie director hired by netflix during the peak of the streaming wars to make a sci fi blockbuster series. What happened next is a wild ride involving cryptocurrency, vyvanse, Keanu Reeves, and 60 million dollars down the drain.

We're back! Pat brings us the rise and fall of a proposed libertarian, bitcoin-run, agrarian utopia in Chile called Galt's Gulch.

Kath tells Pat the strange tale of Arlan Galbraith, a Canadian farmer and pigeon racer who enlisted the Amish and Mennonite communities in a pigeon breeding ponzi scheme that resulted not just in exorbitant sums of money, but also in tens of thousands of pigeons.

Kath tells Pat about Bill Benter, the man who used math to successfully bet on a game that was previously considered to be impossible to statistically predict: horse racing. Listen to the full episode at patreon.com/liecheatandsteal!

Pat tells Kath the frustrating saga of Red Lobster, the universally beloved seafood franchise restaurant that fell prey to venture capital and is suffering the consequences.

Pat tells Kath about the world of counterfeit currency, and brings us a historical counterfeiting case that ensnared Sir Isaac Newton. Listen to the full episode at patreon.com/liecheatandsteal!

Pat and Kath discuss The Cut's recent article about Matthew Bergwall, a Miami college student who briefly became an incredibly prolific refund scammer - a brand new form of scamming enabled by internet retailers' lax return policies.

Kath tells Pat about the rise and fall of moviepass - a company that began with modest aims made an investment deal with the devil that eventually led to disaster - but not before we all got some free movie tickets out of it. To hear the rest of this episode as well as ad-free versions of our free episodes, check out our patreon at patreon.com/liecheatandsteal!