|
Swindled
''Swindled'' is an American true crime podcast written and hosted by an anonymous man that uses the pseudonym "A Concerned Citizen". The scripted series explores the world of white-collar crime, con artists, and corporate greed. Production In a Q&A with BBC News, the anonymous host, a former government worker with a background in graphic design and audio production, claimed the inception of the podcast was motivated by the immorality of a "capitalistic culture". According to the Tampa Bay Times, "A Concerned Citizen" created ''Swindled'' after failing to find an existing podcast on similar topics. The host explained to MEL Magazine that the underlying theme in all of the episodes is greed and a "social culture that values getting rich as quick as possible." Each episode begins with a prelude story to the main subject, followed by the theme music consisting of stringed and brass instruments, and then a structured narrative interspersed with archival audio, suspenseful scoring, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rita Crundwell
Rita A. Crundwell (née Humphrey; born January 10, 1953) is the former Comptroller and Treasurer of Dixon, Illinois from 1983 to 2012, and the admitted operator of what is believed to be the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. She was fired in April 2012 after the discovery that she had embezzled $53.7 million from the city of Dixon for over 22 years to support her championship American Quarter Horse breeding operation, as well as a lavish lifestyle away from work. Crundwell pleaded guilty to her crimes and was sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison. She spent less than years (43% of her sentence) in prison before being released in mid-2021 to a house confinement at her brother's farm in Dixon. Crundwell's Quarter Horse breeding operation, RC Quarter Horses, was one of the best-known in the country; her horses won 52 world championships and she was named the leading owner by the American Quarter Horse Association for eight consecutive years prior to her arrest. Earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
True Crime
True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people associated with and affected by criminal events. The crimes most commonly include murder; about 40 percent focus on tales of serial killers. True crime comes in many forms, such as books, films, podcasts, and television shows. Many works in this genre recount high-profile, sensational crimes such as the JonBenét Ramsey killing, the O. J. Simpson murder case, and the Pamela Smart murder, while others are devoted to more obscure slayings. True crime works can impact the crimes they cover and the audience who consumes it. The genre is often criticized for being insensitive to the victims and their families and is described by some as trash culture. History Zhang Yingyu's ''The Book of Swindles'' () is a late Ming dynasty collection of stories about allegedly true cases of fraud. Works in the related Chinese genre of court case fict ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valeant Pharmaceuticals
Bausch Health Companies Inc. (formerly Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc.) is a Canadian multinational specialty pharmaceutical company based in Laval, Quebec, Canada. It develops, manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products and branded generic drugs, primarily for skin diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, eye health and neurology. Bausch Health owns Bausch & Lomb, a supplier of eye health products. The company in its present form is the result of a merger between Valeant and Canadian firm Biovail. The company retained the Valeant name and J. Michael Pearson as CEO, but was incorporated in Canada and kept Biovail's headquarters. Valeant was originally founded in 1959 as ICN Pharmaceuticals by Milan Panić in California. Under the leadership of J. Michael Pearson, Valeant adopted a strategy of buying up other pharmaceutical companies which manufactured effective medications for a variety of medical problems, and then increasing the price of those medications. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Shkreli
Martin Shkreli (; born March 17, 1983) is an American former hedge fund manager. Shkreli is the co-founder of the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management, and MSMB Healthcare; the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals (now Vyera Pharmaceuticals); and the former CEO of start-up software company Gödel Systems, which he founded in August 2016. In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price by 5,455% (from to $750 per pill). In 2017, Shkreli was charged and convicted in federal court on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud, unrelated to the Daraprim controversy. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and up to $7.4 million in fines.Tom Hays & Colleen Long'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli cries in court, is sentenced to 7 years for secur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Popoff
Peter George Popoff (born July 2, 1946) is a German-born American televangelist and debunked clairvoyant and faith healer. He was exposed in 1986 for using a concealed earpiece to receive radio messages from his wife, who gave him the names, addresses, and ailments of audience members during Popoff-led religious services. Popoff falsely claimed God revealed this information to him so that Popoff could pretend to cure them through faith healing. He went bankrupt the next year, but made a comeback in the late 1990s. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Popoff bought TV time to promote "Miracle Spring Water" on late-night infomercials, and referred to himself as a prophet. "We've done so many stories about him, but it never does any good," said Ole Anthony, founder of Trinity Foundation, which has investigated Popoff and other faith healers since 1987. "His scams are endless." "Miracle Spring Water" promotions were still running on TV channels in the United States and Canada in 2022. Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Bakker
James Orsen Bakker (; born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist and convicted fraudster. Between 1974 and 1987, Bakker hosted the television program ''The PTL Club'' and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with his then wife, Tammy Faye. He also developed Heritage USA, a now-defunct Christian theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. In the late 1980s, Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce. Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri, and reestablishing the PTL ministry. He currently hosts ''The Jim Bakker Show'', which focuses on the end times and the Second Coming of Christ while promoting emergency survival products. Bakker has written several books, including ''I Was Wrong'' and ''Time Has Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeffrey Locker
Jeffrey Locker (died 2009) was an American self-help author and motivational speaker. Death and aftermath In 2009, Locker hired Kenneth Minor to kill him so his family would collect $18 million in insurance benefits. Minor claimed that Locker, a married father of three from Long Island, hired him to "do a Kevorkian". Locker was found dead in his car, in East Harlem, bound and stabbed. Longtime Allegheny County Medical Examiner The Office of Allegheny County Medical Examiner investigates cases of persons who die within Allegheny County, Pennsylvania from criminal violence by casualty or by suicide, when unattended by a physician; under correctional custody or any other s ... Dr. Cyril Wecht testified as a defense expert on behalf of Minor. Minor was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of Locker. Minor is appealing his conviction. In October 2014, his sentence was reduced to 12 years. Eventually Federal Judge William Kuntz ruled that the $4 million policy issued by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greg Skrepenak
Gregory Andrew Skrepenak (born January 31, 1970) is an American former county commissioner in Pennsylvania and retired professional football player. He was an offensive lineman in the National Football League (NFL) for the Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders and the Carolina Panthers. Skrepenak's professional football career spanned the final three years the Raiders played in Los Angeles, California from 1992-1994 and the first year they returned to Oakland, California in 1995. Then, it continued with consecutive seasons (1996 and 1997) with the Carolina Panthers in which he did not miss a start. Prior to the NFL, Skrepenak had starred as a college football player in the Big Ten Conference for the Michigan Wolverines. He was a two-time All-American, team captain, and four-year starter from 1988-1991. Skrepenak played on four consecutive Big Ten champion teams, appeared in three Rose Bowls and won a Gator Bowl MVP. Previously he had been a scholar athlete at G. A. R. Memorial Junior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kids For Cash Scandal
The "kids for cash" scandal centered on judicial kickbacks to two judges at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, US. In 2008, judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at the PA Child Care for-profit detention centers. Ciavarella disposed thousands of children to extended stays in youth centers for offenses as trivial as mocking an assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building. After a judge rejected an initial plea agreement in 2009, a federal grand jury returned a 48-count indictment. In 2010, Conahan pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison. Ciavarella opted to go to trial the following year. He was convicted on 12 of 39 counts and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. In the wake of the scandal, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overtu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institute, West Virginia
Institute is an unincorporated community on the Kanawha River in Kanawha County, West Virginia, United States. Interstate 64 and West Virginia Route 25 pass by the community, which has grown to intermingle with nearby Dunbar. As of 2018, the community had a population of 1,489, 54% of whom were African American. The town was founded by a formerly enslaved woman, Mary Barnes. Institute is home to West Virginia State University (formerly the ''West Virginia Colored Institute'' and the source of the town's toponym) and the West Virginia State Police Academy. Its economy includes several major industrial plants, which have had a number of environmental incidents polluting the local community. Industry In August 2008 a chemical plant explosion here killed two and injured eight at the Bayer CropScience facility. History Prehistoric community The community is the location of the prehistoric Shawnee Reservation Mound, one of three remaining Adena-era earthwork mounds and enclosur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bhopal Disaster
The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a chemical accident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. Considered the world's worst industrial disaster, over 500,000 people in the small towns around the plant were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate (). Estimates vary on the death toll, with the official number of immediate deaths being 2,259. In 2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Jim Bakker")
