Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth n Hi.
Speaker 3: How are you to do?
Speaker 2: Pretty well? Do you do? Oh? To you? I'm good, well,
Speaker 2: happy for you, thank.
Speaker 3: You, and I'm happy for you and all your joyful
Speaker 3: bounties and also with you. Yes, let us give thanks,
Speaker 3: let us give thanks and praise Saren.
Speaker 2: It is right to you, you know.
Speaker 3: Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I do the nineteen ninety four movie Clifford.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you know this film? Is that what a
Speaker 3: lot of people don't?
Speaker 2: Short? Wow? Look at you? Do you agree? Now?
Speaker 3: And then my brain works totally.
Speaker 2: Do you know the other star in that movie, Clifford Martin?
Speaker 2: And just think of a kind of a curmudgeingly humorous actor.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, my last name rhymes with Hoden.
Speaker 3: Charles Groden. Yes, that was like I was. I could
Speaker 3: see him and I was trying to remember his name.
Speaker 2: So Martin shirt is like this annoying character in the movie,
Speaker 2: and Charles Groden is a long suffering person. Right, yeah,
Speaker 2: Well you know who loves the film?
Speaker 3: Ummm, Saddam hussaying, no.
Speaker 2: Good, guess I'll tell you it this way. Martin Short
Speaker 2: was on a flight from LA to New York. And
Speaker 2: he had never met this person who loved the film,
Speaker 2: and this person wanted to talk to him all about it.
Speaker 2: And this is like, this is a movie was a bomb?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Nobody ever goes hey.
Speaker 3: Look was it Henry Kissinger?
Speaker 2: Good? Guess no, So I'll just I'll read you. This
Speaker 2: is how Martin Short tells the story. Okay, quote. Half
Speaker 2: an hour into the flight, I noticed a figure hovering
Speaker 2: in the periphery of my vision. Nicholas Cage crouched in
Speaker 2: the aisle beside me, his eyes locked on mine. Can
Speaker 2: I just say something to you? He said, a very
Speaker 2: Nick Cagy intensity in his voice. The dining room scene
Speaker 2: in Clifford with You and Charles Groden, where he's confronting
Speaker 2: you and you keep lying to him, a sustained battle
Speaker 2: of wits, much of it improvised, in which Clifford drives
Speaker 2: Groad's character the edge. Well, I broke my VCR watching it.
Speaker 2: I watched that scene twenty five times in a row,
Speaker 2: and I rewound it so much that the machine jammed
Speaker 2: and the tape broke. What Nick Cage man? I love
Speaker 2: Nick Cage. I want to meet him if you could
Speaker 2: ask me there if you have. If I met like
Speaker 2: a genie and they're like, you get three wishes, two
Speaker 2: of them would be Nick Cage.
Speaker 3: Related, Meet Nick Cage and what's the other one?
Speaker 2: Got to meet him again? He likes me, so we
Speaker 2: hang out and become friends. We like we race cars
Speaker 2: and we compare, like our various comic book collections, and
Speaker 2: our kung fu fighting and like weather Jack, I like
Speaker 2: your your karate g Have you seen my kung fu outfit?
Speaker 2: We show up surprise each other with sunglass gifts. Let's
Speaker 2: make that happen. I know, Nicholas Cage. If you're listening,
Speaker 2: we could be best. So there you go. It's ridiculous,
Speaker 2: right it is?
Speaker 3: And do you want to know what else is ridiculou?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm here.
Speaker 3: For social media influencers. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast
Speaker 3: about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always
Speaker 3: ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Damn right.
Speaker 3: Influencers in them. Yeah, I'm talking about the folks who
Speaker 3: leverage their online presence, yes, particularly on social media, to
Speaker 3: affect the opinions, the behaviors, the purchasing decisions.
Speaker 2: Yes, of consumers. I'm assuming their audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like that's an academic way to put it. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's very nice and how minded they build a following,
Speaker 3: like they create this engaging content, yes, and they interact
Speaker 3: with their audience and they establish themselves as like a
Speaker 3: credible source.
Speaker 2: Of information at an entertaining one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like and usually like in a specific niche.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so they lurk.
Speaker 3: They darken the doorways of social media platforms like Instagram totally.
Speaker 2: They're almost like street level famous YouTube.
Speaker 4: Yeah, YouTube, YouTube TikTok.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so they have or they want you to.
Speaker 4: Say, by the way, that is now called ekis in Spanish,
Speaker 4: Oh it's sekis Okay, so YouTube TikTok and ekis.
Speaker 3: And then Insta. So they want you to think that
Speaker 3: they have this like specialized knowledge experience or like authority
Speaker 3: so that their opinions are valuable.
Speaker 2: Totally, or a great life that you're envs like you.
Speaker 3: And they build this trust through interaction. What they want
Speaker 3: you to think is transparency totally and like a consistent
Speaker 3: brand voice.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the endorsements, the recommendations, they carry weight. They
Speaker 3: impact people's decisions on things including purchasing stuff totally products
Speaker 3: and services and and so, like you know, they focus on,
Speaker 3: like I said, a specific niche beauty, fashion, fitness, technology.
Speaker 2: Travel, gambling, advice.
Speaker 3: How do yeah, how do they do it?
Speaker 2: Zara? How do they do Elizabeth? Great questions Aaron.
Speaker 3: They create and share various types of content a.
Speaker 2: Photos, videos, steady stream of stuff, live streams.
Speaker 3: It's all just like tailored for this audience. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: do collabse that's true, very true, to promote these products
Speaker 3: or services. It's like sponsored content, reviews, ambassadorships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, brought to you by Yetti cooler, so you're.
Speaker 3: Like the toblerone ambassador. They get commissions for like hawking
Speaker 3: this stuff, and I understand, yeah, And then they have
Speaker 3: all like these affiliate links and stuff, and they can
Speaker 3: track the sales through their recommendations. Some of them sell
Speaker 3: their own stuff merch digital courses, and they do public events,
Speaker 3: they do conferences, met and greets.
Speaker 2: They've really changed the name of fame.
Speaker 3: They really really have. And here's something that I find interesting.
Speaker 2: What is that, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: We like to classify and label everything, including influencers. So
Speaker 3: there's a categorization for influencers based on their following. Oh
Speaker 3: really yeah, so mega influencers are celebrities and public figures
Speaker 3: with millions of followers. Millions, okay, so mega influencers, macro
Speaker 3: influencers have five hundred thousand to one million followers.
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know this was about brokenewer.
Speaker 3: Mid tier influencers they're fifty thousand to five hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Micro influencers they have ten thousand to fifty thousand followers.
Speaker 3: And then there's nano influencers and that's one thousand to
Speaker 3: ten thousand followers. Okay, So, and then there's me, the
Speaker 3: anti influencer.
Speaker 2: Wait, so wait a minute on Ekis on Twitter. Then
Speaker 2: I would have been a nano nano because I had
Speaker 2: like some like six thousand. Yeah, I didn't even know
Speaker 2: what I was.
Speaker 3: That it was right there in front of you. You
Speaker 3: could have monetized.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to tell my family I am.
Speaker 3: The anti influencer. Yeah, I have a private account. I
Speaker 3: have less than a thousand followers, and I'm an anti
Speaker 3: influencer in that if I were to profile a product
Speaker 3: or a lifestyle as cool, it would instantly make it
Speaker 3: uncool and.
Speaker 2: Lose money that's not true.
Speaker 3: I deflate brand, but I can.
Speaker 2: See people being less likely to buy that ruin fads.
Speaker 3: I am an anti influencer, but influencers, right, they're this
Speaker 3: great trope.
Speaker 2: By the way, just interrupt for a second. Would you
Speaker 2: want to be to have and wield that power? It
Speaker 2: feels like something you would hate.
Speaker 3: No, I couldn't. I could. I wouldn't want to. I
Speaker 3: would find it exhausting. Yeah, Like I dabble on social media,
Speaker 3: so I'll post something every now and then, but like,
Speaker 3: I don't have how the interns do it with our
Speaker 3: Instagram account.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't keep up with that.
Speaker 2: I stay from social media now. It's all gotten lame anywhere.
Speaker 3: It's exhausting and I don't really care. And so you know, we.
Speaker 2: Also, I mean there's just when I go into Instagram now,
Speaker 2: it's like I don't see people who I follow anymore. No,
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, what happened? I didn't add any of
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 3: There's all this stuffy social media I have, But yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't go in there because it's ads and it's
Speaker 3: stuff I don't know why I'm being.
Speaker 2: Shown and they've really changed the game.
Speaker 3: And then if you look someone up who's a friend
Speaker 3: of yours and you see all this stuff that you missed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, do you have to pay to be an influencer?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: I mean, what's up?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but we need to get back to
Speaker 3: like group emails.
Speaker 2: There you go. There.
Speaker 3: It is so we got the trope of the influencer,
Speaker 3: like an airhead who can create the image of success
Speaker 3: and coolness and people just follow blindly.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: I like to see people in public trying to get
Speaker 3: into the game and create quote unquote content.
Speaker 2: Yes, like in restaurants and stuff, and they're like reviewing
Speaker 2: the food they're eating and they're alone, the cameras on
Speaker 2: like a little tripod on the table.
Speaker 3: You and I We're at Heifeiburger in Oakland and saw
Speaker 3: a guy doing that.
Speaker 2: Right, That's what I was thinking of.
Speaker 3: It was. It was a really weird thing to watch,
Speaker 3: Like he had multiple cameras set up.
Speaker 2: Totally on a table by himself. He turned his personality on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then was like talking. It was really strange.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's content. I don't like that word.
Speaker 2: Just like marry not content.
Speaker 3: You make stupid videos. It's not content, you make stupid videos.
Speaker 3: I have really set myself up to be like the
Speaker 3: grumpy old gal today anti influencer. It's nine days out
Speaker 3: of ten these days anyway, influencers in public. So it's
Speaker 3: wild and like you see them making their videos and
Speaker 3: like crowded airports.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I've seen that gyms parks their like yoga stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they've got like some friend filming them. Okay,
Speaker 3: take it from the top. Yeah, the light's really good.
Speaker 3: It looks foolish.
Speaker 2: It also just doesn't look like real or present or
Speaker 2: any of the things you would really want from somebody
Speaker 2: who is trying to influence you. But it's so performing.
Speaker 3: When you see it, it makes me think of like
Speaker 3: if I hear a jingle and a commercial, I automatically
Speaker 3: think about what it looked like when they were recording
Speaker 3: in the studio, Like, well, someone like shredding on a
Speaker 3: guitar and the guy from the ad agency is like,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but that's just not giving toyotas on right now,
Speaker 3: like I need to take it from the top. Or
Speaker 3: like a vocalist at the mic like singing her heart
Speaker 3: out and the producer clicks on the speaker and says,
Speaker 3: you know, that was great, but I need you to
Speaker 3: put a little more of a growl in the words
Speaker 3: Maxi pad and she's like, okay, got it, got it,
Speaker 3: Like okay's just again.
Speaker 2: Come on, grab the keys, let me go, let's go.
Speaker 3: So all that said, I have for you today some influencers,
Speaker 3: criminal ones, ones that ran afoul of the law while
Speaker 3: in the act of personal myth making. So that's what
Speaker 3: being an influencer is, right, it's personal myth making, creating
Speaker 3: a persona and a lifestyle that's simply not true, not attainable,
Speaker 3: it's mythic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to start outside of these here, United States,
Speaker 3: home of innumerable grifters and cons who sail the social
Speaker 3: media sees that we're going over to Bele Italia.
Speaker 2: Oh heck, yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to tell you about Kiara Feranyi. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: she is one of the most prominent figures in Italy
Speaker 3: and fashion media digital entrepreneurship saren. She was born in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven in Cremona, Italy. Her dad was a dentist.
Speaker 3: Her mom, Marina Degardo, is a Sicilian writer who worked
Speaker 3: as deputy director for the fashion brand Blue Marine. So
Speaker 3: she's in that.
Speaker 2: So she's kind of a nepo baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's got these sisters. And when she was
Speaker 3: sixteen years old, she got scouted by a modeling agency
Speaker 3: in Milan. Sixteen Oh okay, when she was six. They
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, look look at those gams.
Speaker 2: You're going You have a future, You have a future.
Speaker 3: So she modeled for a couple of years. She gave
Speaker 3: it up. In two thousand and nine, she and her
Speaker 3: ex boyfriend Ricardo Pizzoli, they started her fashion blog call
Speaker 3: The Blonde Salad.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, just a word salad.
Speaker 3: Maybe it means something, and it sounds better an.
Speaker 2: Italian sounds better than the original Italian?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Isn't a soup? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: His name is Rick Soup exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So twenty eleven teen Vogue named her Blogger of
Speaker 3: the Moment. So that's who I lost out to that year, apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: I thought you had a good shot that year. I know,
Speaker 2: I've been blogging it.
Speaker 3: Up her blog. Though her blog didn't just stay a blog,
Speaker 3: oh no, it evolved into a full scale talent agency
Speaker 3: and fashion brand. She had like a footwear collection. She
Speaker 3: was making millions of euros. Twenty fifteen, she became the
Speaker 3: first fashion blogger to appear on any Vogue cover for
Speaker 3: Vogue Espanya.
Speaker 2: Oh look at her.
Speaker 3: She got featured Forbes thirty under thirty.
Speaker 2: Don't you buy her way on into that?
Speaker 3: I think probably? And she was the subject of a
Speaker 3: Harvard Business School case study. Really a different kind of criminal.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So by twenty seventeen, Kiara had ten million followers on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Ten million.
Speaker 2: That's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of people.
Speaker 3: She launched these collections. She had a capsule collection, like
Speaker 3: literally with n Espresso in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: The coffee maker. So it wasn't closed, it was like
Speaker 2: which coffee.
Speaker 3: It was like special coffees. She had fragrance quote initiatives,
Speaker 3: as some sources called them. I have a fragrance initiative
Speaker 3: and I, you know, put on the old squirts and
Speaker 3: then walk out of.
Speaker 2: I have a fragrance initiative. Like when I've been in
Speaker 2: like a closed room for a while, someone comes up
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I know it's crazy in here.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's an initiative.
Speaker 2: We have to take an initiative.
Speaker 3: So she appeared in documentaries like Kiar for any unposted,
Speaker 3: and then she had this reality series The Ferragnz What
Speaker 3: and that ran from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Because he she married an Italian rapper called Fedes fed Easy.
Speaker 2: Oh so this was their portmanteau.
Speaker 3: And his real name is Fredriko Luccia.
Speaker 2: He didn't stay with that.
Speaker 3: That's a good nose, right, I mean, that's like that's
Speaker 3: you could be smooth, don't know, he's like one of
Speaker 3: those illustrated man types. He looks like the desk in
Speaker 3: a poorly performing high school's detention room. Like he's all
Speaker 3: scribble city. So the couple there they became known as
Speaker 3: Faragnez and I know I'm not saying that, like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, sure the benefit of their yeah Italy exactly.
Speaker 3: So they had two kids before separating in early twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. But they'll always have that reality show. I'm
Speaker 3: shocked it didn't last, to be honest. Oh so a
Speaker 3: lot so she served as a judge or like guest
Speaker 3: judge on shows like Project Runway, Making the Cut and
Speaker 3: the San Remo Music Festival. She's just everywhere sounds and
Speaker 3: she also she's got all these brand partnerships mashups. If
Speaker 3: he will late in twenty twenty two, she partnered with Balco,
Speaker 3: a well known confectionery company, to launch a limited edition
Speaker 3: pink Christmas Pandora, branded with her logo.
Speaker 2: That's a bread, right, what is Pandora? What is Pandora? Elizabeth? Clearly,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm so good at asking.
Speaker 2: Yes, great question, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Pandora is a traditional Italian sweet bread. Okay, you have
Speaker 3: it during Christmas?
Speaker 2: Her pan, I just assume bread.
Speaker 3: It's a golden bread, a Dior.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it came from Verona Fair, Verona.
Speaker 2: The gentleman, come from there.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's known for its golden color. It has like
Speaker 3: a fluffy Brioche like text. Oh that sounds good, signature
Speaker 3: eight point star shape. You bake it into a special.
Speaker 2: Mold Okay, there we go.
Speaker 3: It gets dusted with powdered sugar. It looks like snow
Speaker 3: covered mountains. It's delishes.
Speaker 2: Sound good?
Speaker 3: You've actually had it at my place?
Speaker 2: Have I?
Speaker 3: Because Sarah Tasioni, the Colabrian cutie. Yes, she always brings
Speaker 3: one over.
Speaker 2: The it is Okay, I would like to try it
Speaker 2: again because it sounds amazing. Apparently the first time you.
Speaker 3: Did, you did, but she just don't remember these things.
Speaker 3: You know, you got drunk on Pandora and then we
Speaker 3: had to wheel you out the door. So these things
Speaker 3: are everywhere in the shops at holiday times, all right,
Speaker 3: and they come in like those cool boxes. It's like
Speaker 3: a curved top cardboard box, like a dome almost, and
Speaker 3: the boxes are a lot of times really beautifully decorated.
Speaker 3: Hers was special. It was a stylish pink box with
Speaker 3: a red ribbon on top, and there was matching pink
Speaker 3: icing on the Pandora.
Speaker 2: Okay, the millennial, yes.
Speaker 3: And there are all sorts of pictures of her pretending
Speaker 3: to take a bite of a slice of it where
Speaker 3: she's like yeah, and then you know she's like spits
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 2: I like it if she did that, and then like smile,
Speaker 2: there's just crumbs all on her teeth and like I
Speaker 2: love these Whereas.
Speaker 3: They caught her like mid where it's just like half
Speaker 3: the pieces left, she's like and like a hand mark
Speaker 3: of so it. But it wasn't just that the packaging
Speaker 3: was cute and the was cute and she's cute. The
Speaker 3: campaign was promoting a charity initiative.
Speaker 2: What's the charity initiative?
Speaker 3: I'm so glad? I asked that buyers they were led
Speaker 3: to believe that a portion of each cakes I believe
Speaker 3: would be donated to the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital in
Speaker 3: Turin to support Turino, to support sarcoma and youing sarcoma.
Speaker 2: Research, dear god, children's cancer, and that of.
Speaker 3: Course didn't happen, which is really you know why we're
Speaker 3: talking about her. So in reality, the company Baloco, they
Speaker 3: made a single donation of fifty thousand euros before the
Speaker 3: promotional campaign began, okay, and.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 3: No further donations tied to sales volume, which is how
Speaker 3: those things normally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 3: And these these cakes were priced at around nine euros each,
Speaker 3: and that's compared to the normal like you know, three, three,
Speaker 3: seventy or four euros.
Speaker 2: So there's very specific like that.
Speaker 3: So there's like a steep mark. Her companies made nearly
Speaker 3: a million dollars in licensing promotional revenue, and remember peeled
Speaker 3: off only fifty k for kids cancer. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there was this journalist, Silvaggia Lucerelli, and she, like herself,
Speaker 3: is pretty problematic and has been sued fifteen ways to
Speaker 3: Sunday for privacy violations defamations right now, Well, she uncovered
Speaker 3: the discrepancy, so I'll say, okay, good job.
Speaker 2: Get on her. Yeah.
Speaker 3: By early twenty twenty four, Italy's antitrust authority had opened
Speaker 3: an investigation into both Farani and the Pandora company Ploco.
Speaker 3: So they figured that the consumers had been misled into
Speaker 3: thinking that the purchases triggered donations, when in fact the
Speaker 3: donations was independent.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she and her companies were fined over a million euros,
Speaker 3: and then the cake company got fined around six hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy five thousand. She publicly apologized. She said she
Speaker 3: believed that no trial necessary to prove her innocence, and
Speaker 3: she's like, you know what, I'm going to go ahead
Speaker 3: and donate a million euros to the hospital, and I'm
Speaker 3: never going to mix charity and commerce in future promotions.
Speaker 3: And then people started digging around some more and they
Speaker 3: found other like hanky charity stuff. She did Easter Eggs
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, and then
Speaker 3: all these other branded collaborations that were supposed to have
Speaker 3: a charity aspect to it. A similar structures payments to
Speaker 3: her brands while no conditional donations were made. This consumer
Speaker 3: group CODACONS filed complaints across all these Italian jurisdictions. Multiple
Speaker 3: investigations were initiated into all this like aggravated fraud. So
Speaker 3: October of twenty twenty four, Milan prosecutors concluded that she
Speaker 3: had realized an unjust profit of two point two five
Speaker 3: million euros via all these schemes, and they wanted to
Speaker 3: do indicteror for aggravated fraud. By it's December of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, she reached a settlement with CODACNS, agreeing to
Speaker 3: compensate all the affected consumers with one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: euros each, reimbursed legal expenses, and donate two hundred thousand
Speaker 3: euros to an anti violence charity for women.
Speaker 2: She essentially stole some two and whatever million euros from
Speaker 2: all these charities, and she gets off with a slap
Speaker 2: on the rest essentially.
Speaker 3: And then they withdrew their complaints. So despite the settlement,
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty five, the Milan prosecutor formally indicted her
Speaker 3: on aggravated fraud charges, along with Bloco's leadership and her
Speaker 3: former manager Fabio Dmato. So a trial is set to
Speaker 3: begin in September.
Speaker 2: Oh so she actually still catch some with justice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she faces up to five years in prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Simultaneously, the scandal triggered legislative change, a sort of Jackie
Speaker 3: Cougan situation. In early twenty twenty four, Italy enacted the
Speaker 3: Ferrani Law, requiring influencers with over one million followers to
Speaker 3: clearly disclose and legally structure charitable promotions to combat false
Speaker 3: advertising and fraud.
Speaker 2: That's amazing they put her name on the law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you got over a million. So let's let's
Speaker 3: stop there for a bit. I need to hear some ads.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping for one for some influencer stuff. That would
Speaker 3: be amazing. When we come back, more social media scamming
Speaker 3: Zareneth Saren All right, are you ready to influence?
Speaker 2: You don't have to get ready.
Speaker 3: If you stay ready, let me tell you something. Belle Gibson, like,
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the star of such his as lethal
Speaker 3: weapon three, what women want? Daddy's home too, tim and
Speaker 3: boss level but with a stuffed up nose Bell Gibson,
Speaker 3: which I have quite a bit anyway, because I'm a
Speaker 3: delicate orchid. In the slightest thing sets my systems up.
Speaker 2: This is true.
Speaker 3: No, I said Belle Gibson, not Mel Gibson. Belle is
Speaker 3: another Aussie and one who's also full of it. Oh
Speaker 3: really yeah, So she was born Annabelle Natalie Gibson.
Speaker 2: Does she Do you think she intentionally tried to make
Speaker 2: it Bell Gibson. So it's kind of had like.
Speaker 3: That, probably Bell Gibson. Belle Gibson with boord and like
Speaker 3: to do well in Tasmania Devil. She dropped out of
Speaker 3: high school. She moved to Perth, Australia. She got work
Speaker 3: at like a catering supply company, and she got super
Speaker 3: into skateboarding culture there. Good for her, right, and she
Speaker 3: was a big online presence in that community because that's
Speaker 3: where all the action takes place with skateboarding is online totally.
Speaker 3: That's really the spot really where everything happens. In July
Speaker 3: of two thousand and nine, she moved to Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne,
Speaker 3: Melbourne and the next year, when she was eighteen, she
Speaker 3: had a kid. Congratulations. A couple of years go by
Speaker 3: then she made it to the big time. She opened
Speaker 3: an Instagram account. H No, she w buddy, I wish,
Speaker 3: I wish. So she has this Instagram account. It has
Speaker 3: now been deleted. I think healing underscore bell and she
Speaker 3: claimed that she had multiple cancers, including a terminal brain tumor.
Speaker 3: Tragic news and then she's like, oh, ps, I also
Speaker 3: I healed myself through natural diets and holistic health approaches,
Speaker 3: so you know that's the way it works with terminal
Speaker 3: brain cancer and other cancers. I have had it up
Speaker 3: to hear with pseudoscience, like science denial. Food is medicine, yes,
Speaker 3: but it's not the only medicine. Yes, eat your color
Speaker 3: is very important, but it's not the only medicine. If
Speaker 3: you buy into this, please don't message me or email
Speaker 3: us or leave some like wounded comment. I'm glad you
Speaker 3: feel like you've accomplished something, but we are seeing people
Speaker 3: dying as a result of the ignorance that blossoms in
Speaker 3: this BS wellness culture.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know, legit, people that likely have been dying.
Speaker 2: Amanda from MTV she died press cancer, which she could
Speaker 2: have been treating it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And TikTok not a source of health information.
Speaker 2: Now, all the short form videos just generally.
Speaker 3: Pasteurization important and safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true.
Speaker 3: Vaccines save lives. Yeah, yeah, Gibson was going around telling
Speaker 3: the media that she had this brain cancer. She also
Speaker 3: had blood, spleen, uterine, liver, and kidney cancer.
Speaker 2: What the hell?
Speaker 3: What bad luck? Right? Bad luck? No, not bad luck.
Speaker 3: She said she got all of those as a reaction
Speaker 3: to the Gardasle cervical cancer vaccine.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So she threw shade on real legit vaccine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and she's like, I got all the cancer.
Speaker 3: But she's like, you know, the thing is, what's great,
Speaker 3: I cured my cancer with Whole Foods.
Speaker 2: So a.
Speaker 3: Year after starting her Instagram account, she debuted The Whole Pantry,
Speaker 3: which was a mobile app that blended healthy recipes, positive affirmations,
Speaker 3: and wellness philosophy.
Speaker 2: Now you know, I grew up eating health food. I
Speaker 2: was a vegetarian as a kid, so I understand and
Speaker 2: will argue for the benefit of food being key. But
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I cannot stand this stuff that people
Speaker 2: have been doing because now it's hard for people to
Speaker 2: find the real science because of.
Speaker 3: These exactly exactly, so, this app, The Whole Pantry, was
Speaker 3: downloaded two hundred thousand times in its first month, and
Speaker 3: then it was later selected as one of Apple's best
Speaker 3: food and drink apps in twenty thirteen. That is who
Speaker 3: we lost out to that year's Zarin right. Okay, so
Speaker 3: it was also slated to be pre installed on the
Speaker 3: new Apple Watch in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Like a youtwo song.
Speaker 3: Well you know how great Apple is when it comes
Speaker 3: to judgment and pre installations.
Speaker 2: No products, it never failed, no, no always good ones. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so around, I still can't get that YouTube bottom of
Speaker 2: my computer, my phone, my iPad.
Speaker 3: It never around the same time, she secured a cookbook deal,
Speaker 3: and when the book was launched in November of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: she wrote in the preface that she had been quote
Speaker 3: stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer.
Speaker 3: But that didn't match up what she'd said in the
Speaker 3: press and in her social media, Like she was telling
Speaker 3: magazines that the cancer had reached her liver and her kidneys.
Speaker 3: She posted on The Whole Pantry's Facebook page that her
Speaker 3: cancer had spread to her brain, blood, spleen, and uterus.
Speaker 3: And then she doubled down. She's like, you know what,
Speaker 3: it's I don't just have cancer, I have heart failure too.
Speaker 2: I also have hair cancer.
Speaker 3: She said, that's that. Get damned hair cancer. She said
Speaker 3: she had to have heart surgery quote several times.
Speaker 2: Several times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then she even died on the table once
Speaker 3: and they were all clear and they brought her back.
Speaker 2: She didn't start doing near death experienced stuff and I
Speaker 2: went to heaven and came back.
Speaker 3: But like, was that enough? No? No, what story people
Speaker 3: would say, can we interview your doctors and look at
Speaker 3: your charts? Like we've never seen anything like this for
Speaker 3: someone who'd undergone multiple heart surgeries. She was shockingly scarfree.
Speaker 2: Oh no, zipper or no, it was the chest.
Speaker 3: No, nothing, no, raised, it was you know.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Through the nose. So, like I said earlier, and we've agreed,
Speaker 3: food is medicine. That's undisputed. And the whole pantry was
Speaker 3: actually like a good thing in terms of promoting movement
Speaker 3: and exercise and positivity and healthy eating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'll name some good stuff and what they're catching
Speaker 2: app wasn't. That's why it gets confusing.
Speaker 3: The app wasn't the problem. The problem was Old Girl's
Speaker 3: Instagram account. So that's where she was like touting snake
Speaker 3: oil stuff like coffee enemas, juice cleanses, detox liver cleansing,
Speaker 3: which ps, that's what your liver does. For a living
Speaker 3: and then like really dangerous stuff like anti facts and
Speaker 3: drinking the pasteurized raw milk brainworm City basically. So either way,
Speaker 3: she's making moves, she's doing deals, and she was living
Speaker 3: large too, Like she had this really posh townhouse, she
Speaker 3: drove a luxury car, elegant office space. She was getting
Speaker 3: like cosmetic dental procedures. Yeah, she wore designer clothes. She
Speaker 3: took all these really extravagant international vacations, sales of the
Speaker 3: app and the book combined to bring in more than
Speaker 3: one hundred million Australian dollars for our miracle gal. What
Speaker 3: she was on the brink of expanding out into a
Speaker 3: brand called The Whole Life, not just the whole Pantry,
Speaker 3: the Whole Life, which seems like a lot, The Whole
Speaker 3: Life all that's everything.
Speaker 2: I'm still stuck on one hundred million, the Australian dollars.
Speaker 3: Right, No, one million million? Did I say it? It's
Speaker 3: one million anyway, So she of course claimed charitable intentions.
Speaker 3: So I feel like the Kardashians are the only ones
Speaker 3: on this ship of fools who just take the money
Speaker 3: and don't try to do some bogus I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe they do. I don't know willingly follow what they do.
Speaker 3: Everything I know is through osmosis. I watch a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff on TV, like a lot, but I draw
Speaker 3: the line at around on that, Oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 3: so living my truth and honest and transparent. Anyway, So,
Speaker 3: Gibbson said that she donated substantial proceeds up to three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars to various causes, including like children with cancer,
Speaker 3: maternal health care, but investigative reports revealed that only a
Speaker 3: few thousand dollars were actually donated, like two percent of
Speaker 3: what she claimed. Yeah, And since rumors about her possible
Speaker 3: fraud started to spread, people looked into all her business
Speaker 3: dealings and it came out that her charitable contributions from
Speaker 3: both twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen never made it to
Speaker 3: the stated destinations. And Gimbson is like, that's a lie.
Speaker 3: And the press were like, no, you're the lie. You
Speaker 3: are one big lie.
Speaker 2: You're the lie. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Fairfax Media they found that she had quote failed
Speaker 3: to hand over the proceeds solicited in the name of
Speaker 3: five charities and had quote grossly overstated the company's total
Speaker 3: donations to different causes When asked about this, two of
Speaker 3: the charities backed it up. They were like, she used
Speaker 3: our name in fundraising drives, but that was like as
Speaker 3: far as we got involved, some of them got shady
Speaker 3: little bits of money or no money at all.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: One of the big claims was that the whole pantry
Speaker 3: donated three hundred thousand to charity, not just the cancer stuff,
Speaker 3: but like you know, healthcare and impoverished countries and like
Speaker 3: schools and sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 2: Oh that that old.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People always picked the same ones because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're doing such good work with those ports children and
Speaker 2: some South in Africa who don't even have deaths at schools,
Speaker 2: and those kids with cancer.
Speaker 3: Tell me the name of the country or the city
Speaker 3: or the village, like no, just deepest, darkest stuff. So
Speaker 3: at one point she said she was working with twenty
Speaker 3: different charities. Twenty Yeah, that was a major exact.
Speaker 2: It's also a nice round number. She should have gone
Speaker 2: with eighteen, I know.
Speaker 3: So they presented with all this damning evidence of her fraud.
Speaker 3: She admitted like, okay, yeah, that is a major exaggeration.
Speaker 3: So the press they really start digging in. They calculate
Speaker 3: that she had donated a total of about seven grand
Speaker 3: spread among three charities, and that's a long way from
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: The best kind of Reporters also found she doesn't even
Speaker 2: tip at restaurants.
Speaker 3: Well, and then a thousand of that seven thousand was
Speaker 3: only donated after the media investigations came to light. She's
Speaker 3: got to throw another thousand in it. And some of
Speaker 3: the seven thousand wasn't even donated in her name or
Speaker 3: the company's name. It was just under someone else's name.
Speaker 3: Because you know, I make a lot of really big donations,
Speaker 3: but I do it under my other name, Mackenzie Scott,
Speaker 3: like the same name as ex wife of Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 3: happens to donate billions or sometimes I donate under the
Speaker 3: name Bill Gates. Oh yeah, the pet name that my
Speaker 3: friends have for me.
Speaker 2: Your longer name Bill and Melinda Gates.
Speaker 3: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Yeah yeah, that's it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, a family thing.
Speaker 2: Thank you for all the money, you.
Speaker 3: Know, me and Darlene shyly So. One of the charities
Speaker 3: that Gibson said that she was fundraising for was to
Speaker 3: support treatment for a kid with brain cancer. The only
Speaker 3: thing is her parents never saw a dime. They didn't
Speaker 3: know that their kid was being used as a fundraising too,
Speaker 3: And then they were like starting to wonder if she
Speaker 3: only befriended them and their kid in order to do
Speaker 3: research on what it's like to have brain cancer?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Apparently she was like asking a lot of questions which
Speaker 3: you don't really need to ask if you yourself have
Speaker 3: brain cancer, She's like.
Speaker 2: Does it hurt on side of your head or like
Speaker 2: in the center?
Speaker 3: Totally. So in February of twenty fifteen, things started to
Speaker 3: come crashing down. A close friend of Gibson's confronted her, like,
Speaker 3: have you been cheating the charities? And do you have
Speaker 3: cancer in the first place? You have to tell the truth.
Speaker 3: Her friend told her, No, said Gibson, I do not.
Speaker 2: Have to tell the truth.
Speaker 3: So her friends saw that Gibson was not just getting
Speaker 3: one over on people. She was hurting people people with cancer.
Speaker 3: So she's like, I know what I gotta do. I'm
Speaker 3: going public. She got in touch with the cops, a lawyer,
Speaker 3: and an investigative journalist. Oh no, that's the start of
Speaker 3: a joke right there.
Speaker 2: Seriously, I'll walk into a bar but here's the.
Speaker 3: Thing, none of them really interested in what she had
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But then was she not good at telling the stories?
Speaker 3: You walk in, my friend, you'll find that a lot
Speaker 3: of people don't want to step to these influencers. They
Speaker 3: just like that thing, you know. Yeah, you'll see. So
Speaker 3: the Melbourne newspaper The Age, stepped up. They broke the
Speaker 3: story and in March twenty fifteen, after reports identified her
Speaker 3: charity frauds, it was revealed that she made up her
Speaker 3: cancers and then also lied about her age, her personal
Speaker 3: life or history so she couldn't escape it now. In
Speaker 3: April of twenty fifteen, she admitted to Australian Women's Weekly
Speaker 3: that her claims about all of her cancers were just fiction.
Speaker 3: As she said, quote, none of it's true. And she
Speaker 3: said it wasn't her fault though, I mean, it never is.
Speaker 3: She claimed that it was the way that she was
Speaker 3: brought up. Her mom neglected her. She said she had
Speaker 3: to take care of her. Yeah, she said, you had
Speaker 3: to take care of herself. And her autistic little brother
Speaker 3: from a very young age.
Speaker 2: Was he really autistic?
Speaker 3: She never got to be a kid. It was everyone
Speaker 3: else's fault. Throughout the whole interview, she never apologized. It
Speaker 3: should be noted that her mom then gave an interview
Speaker 3: stating that that was all her claims were false and
Speaker 3: that her little brother is not as I knew. I know,
Speaker 3: I know, I don't know how. So here you have
Speaker 3: this woman who has all these deals, books, apps, with Apple,
Speaker 3: lifestyle brands, you name it, and it's all built upon
Speaker 3: her having a bunch of different cancers and treating it
Speaker 3: with stuff like apple cider, vinegar.
Speaker 2: And nobody was suspicious.
Speaker 3: No, and then now she admits made it all up,
Speaker 3: never had cancer.
Speaker 2: I'm a fraud.
Speaker 3: And so this made people wonder, like, what's up with
Speaker 3: these big corporations or shoveling cash? He like, didn't they
Speaker 3: investigate before signing on to like basically endorse her brand
Speaker 3: And where's the due diligence? Yeah, so we're talking about
Speaker 3: like her cookbook publisher was Penguin Books. So and then
Speaker 3: you got Apple and the watch launch, all that breathless,
Speaker 3: fawning coverage in the Australian press. Everyone seemed to look
Speaker 3: the other way because the story was just too good
Speaker 3: and she was making them too much money. So let's
Speaker 3: look at Penguin. I like to go after publishers. So
Speaker 3: Lantern Books was the imprint, the Penguin imprint that put
Speaker 3: out the cookbook. They were like, hey man, it's a cookbook.
Speaker 3: We only vet the recipes. It actually looked into her
Speaker 3: sort of Before the book was published. They made her
Speaker 3: answer questions on video about the information in her preface
Speaker 3: that told her sob story, and I guess they thought
Speaker 3: it was good enough, like you know, things got hot though,
Speaker 3: So Penguin pulled the from the shelves. Claimed it was
Speaker 3: because it was asking Gibson for confirmation of her stories
Speaker 3: and she wasn't providing it, And they wound up having
Speaker 3: to pay thirty thousand dollars to the Victorian Consumer Law
Speaker 3: Fund as a penalty for not validating her you know,
Speaker 3: the veracity of.
Speaker 2: Claimed and doing their due diligence essentially, Saren, what about Apple?
Speaker 2: What about Apple? Isabeth Pocket?
Speaker 4: Apple?
Speaker 2: Long?
Speaker 3: Last you ask a question? At first, Apple refused to
Speaker 3: pull the whole pantry app from the app store?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: They said that the only thing they cared about was
Speaker 3: that the app worked like it said it would, And
Speaker 3: they're like, it's functional, or get off our backs Wow.
Speaker 3: But then they quietly removed it from the Apple Watch,
Speaker 3: like she didn't get the U two treatment. They just
Speaker 3: like pulled it. And then they quietly took the app
Speaker 3: off the app store and erased all the promotional material
Speaker 3: that included whole pantry And like, did they explain themselves?
Speaker 2: Probably not, of course not.
Speaker 3: They're Apple, They're the big dogs. They owe no one
Speaker 3: anything like.
Speaker 2: Back off saren why asking somebody? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Elle Australia magazine they wrote a glowing piece on her
Speaker 3: in their December twenty fourteen issue. It came out, they
Speaker 3: got a couple tips that like, you know, she's not
Speaker 3: really telling the truth, everything's actually made up. Magazine ignores it.
Speaker 3: Then another magazine, Cosmopolitan, which has like the same publisher
Speaker 3: as El Australia, they gave Gibson its twenty fourteen Fun
Speaker 3: Fearless Female Social Media Award, and then they also got
Speaker 3: tips via email like hey, look, she's not what she
Speaker 3: says she is. They ignored them.
Speaker 2: We already gave her the three f awards, so we're
Speaker 2: going with it. There.
Speaker 3: It is then Gibson admits to the lies. Everyone figured
Speaker 3: they'd do something like, you know, Stripper of the Award
Speaker 3: the award that you and I should have won totally.
Speaker 2: I mean, if anybody's a fun, fearless female, if you're me. No.
Speaker 3: They claim that she had been quote reader nominated and
Speaker 3: reader voted, like, so blame the reader. Yeah, nice, don't
Speaker 3: worry that. When the award came out, the magazine's associate
Speaker 3: editor said, they quote put forward the nomination myself. So
Speaker 3: it was the readers or was it the staff? Does
Speaker 3: anyone tell the truth around here?
Speaker 2: Is there any accountability anymore? Zero?
Speaker 3: May twenty sixteen, consumer Affairs Victoria cav initiated civil proceedings
Speaker 3: against Gibson and her company. They cited misleading and deceptive
Speaker 3: conduct under Australian consumer law. March twenty seventeen, the Federal
Speaker 3: Court of Australia upheld most allegations. They figured that like
Speaker 3: Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer,
Speaker 3: and that she had engaged in deceptive conduct.
Speaker 2: She should have stuck with skateboarding.
Speaker 3: Honestly, like it'd be a different world for her right now.
Speaker 3: They tried to enforce the judgment that like search warrants
Speaker 3: on her property.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty twenty twenty one, Raids and Stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they tried to recover the unpaid debts, which like
Speaker 3: at this point is north of five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: February twenty twenty one, a court registrar classified the case
Speaker 3: as abandoned, though, but enforcement actions continued. In early twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, Netflix least a dramatized series called Apple Cider Vinegar,
Speaker 3: dramatizing her story and against wellness scams, and that was
Speaker 3: based on the investigative book The Woman Who Fooled the
Speaker 3: World by bo' donnelly and Nick Toscano. I have neither
Speaker 3: read nor watched either influencer. Hell, that's where we are,
Speaker 3: So let's take a break, little breather, listen to some ads,
Speaker 3: maybe they will influence you. And when we come back,
Speaker 3: I have one more for you, Zaren. Hey, Hey, I
Speaker 3: got one more influencer for you today, Elizabeth Dunnon.
Speaker 2: During the break, I was practicing influencing the interns. They
Speaker 2: just looked at me and kind of hung their like
Speaker 2: shaggy heads and they're like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but look they're all wearing your exact same outfit.
Speaker 2: Who I didn't even notice you influenced them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: good job. Thank you. I've learned so much today.
Speaker 3: How many followers do you have? I have two and
Speaker 3: their dogs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got the same too and their dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Carolyn Callaway, Yeah, she was the ultimate New York
Speaker 3: lifestyle right. Was born in nineteen ninety one in Falls Church, Virginia.
Speaker 3: She went to the Tony Boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy.
Speaker 3: Her great grandpa was a real estate mogul who developed
Speaker 3: most of Sarasota, Florida.
Speaker 2: Oh fun fact, there you go.
Speaker 3: So she started out as an undergrad and art history
Speaker 3: at NYU, New York University, and then she got fixated
Speaker 3: on going to Cambridge like just like determined. It took
Speaker 3: her three applications, but in twenty thirteen she went to
Speaker 3: Saint Edmund's College, Cambridge. She had to fake her transcripts
Speaker 3: to get in, but whatever, what do you mean she
Speaker 3: cheated her way into Cambridge?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she made a name for herself there, but
Speaker 3: not academically. No. She joined Instagram and it was on
Speaker 3: that platform that she created a highly stylized feed like
Speaker 3: and her signature were these long diaristic captions.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I remember people talking about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So her Instagram journey that began with glamorized depictions
Speaker 3: of her student life at Cambridge, and she bought followers
Speaker 3: and used targeted ads to build her following. Her feed
Speaker 3: was aspirational, it was dreamy. She got the nickname Gatsby
Speaker 3: of Cambridge.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: I'm not Kiddingaty of Cambridge?
Speaker 2: I mean you do know who? Did you read the book?
Speaker 3: I haven't read the book, but we all know that
Speaker 3: what we see on Insta isn't the honest truth at all.
Speaker 3: It is a created identity.
Speaker 2: A couple of friends of mine who just post pictures
Speaker 2: of food that they've horrifically cooked.
Speaker 3: My god, when people post pictures of dinners and you're like,
Speaker 3: don't tell anyone you maybe.
Speaker 2: Did your car run over that?
Speaker 3: And it's like the flash was on and it's just
Speaker 3: and it's two colors on an entire play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like something like you know, in two
Speaker 2: year olds make your food out of mud.
Speaker 3: It's so brutal. Or the worst is like, look at
Speaker 3: this beautiful party spread and you're like, oh.
Speaker 2: Money, don't take don't you are those paper napkins? Yea?
Speaker 3: Is it a plastic table cloth? I am the biggest
Speaker 3: stob in the world. So if you think that I'm
Speaker 3: going to look at an Instagram feed and not judge,
Speaker 3: no I am. I am judge, jury executioner, Lady Justice.
Speaker 3: I am a pcently lady host justice exactly all right. So,
Speaker 3: but we had, like, you know, this beautiful thing on Instagram.
Speaker 3: The basics of life, though, like getting rejected from colleges,
Speaker 3: not being able to pay your rent, looking frumpy. Those
Speaker 3: things aren't interesting unless you're an anti influence.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, she's at the height
Speaker 3: of her Instagram, okay, and because of that, she secured
Speaker 3: a six figure US book deal with Flat Iron Books
Speaker 3: for a memoir that was supposed to be titled and
Speaker 3: we were like and we were like multiple outlets. New
Speaker 3: Yorker The Cut reported different amounts. The Cut said it
Speaker 3: was three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars with a one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars advance, so that brought it up to
Speaker 3: four seventy five. Carolyn herself sometimes refers to it as
Speaker 3: a five hundred thousand dollars book deal. All I can
Speaker 3: say is that is insane. That's an insane Amountred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars is an insane advance like this, Just we don't
Speaker 3: see numbers like that, not.
Speaker 2: In publishing, not anymore, not even like authors who actually
Speaker 2: do write their books. I do have like a history
Speaker 2: of writing books.
Speaker 3: No, no, So the book was pitched as an expansion
Speaker 3: of her Instagram captions. It was like coming of age
Speaker 3: story right Instagram the Empire. It was set against her,
Speaker 3: like romanticized Cambridge years. But the reason you haven't heard
Speaker 3: about it it was never published. The deal fell apart
Speaker 3: before the manuscript was delivered, so she had to return
Speaker 3: what was left of the advance to Flatirn. And she
Speaker 3: claimed that she walked away from it because the publishers
Speaker 3: wanted to quote a cookie cutter memoir that didn't reflect
Speaker 3: her true voice. But there's another account, one that painted
Speaker 3: a different picture, that the project collapsed due to Carolyn's procrastination,
Speaker 3: her chaotic process, her reluctance to edit or refine drafts.
Speaker 3: Who told that side of the story.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth told that side of the story, Thank.
Speaker 3: You, Natalie Beach. She met Carolyn at Nyuka or Caroline
Speaker 3: at Nyu. Beach has said that she ghost wrote many
Speaker 3: of Caroline's long Instagram captions, the ones that like established
Speaker 3: her dreamy, diaristic style. I can't get over ghostwriting Instagram captions.
Speaker 2: I'm still thinking about ghostwriting the Whip, so i can't.
Speaker 3: But like there's like the Lana del Rey of it
Speaker 3: all is a little.
Speaker 2: Jills bear verjacent.
Speaker 3: It's very yeah, and but like ghost writing Instagram captions
Speaker 3: come on as a.
Speaker 2: Job as a job.
Speaker 3: And then Beach said she also co authored the book
Speaker 3: proposal that landed the deal, and that you know, Caroline
Speaker 3: just handled the photos, the ideas, the editing, the vibe
Speaker 3: she vibed out on it. To September of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: Beach published I was Caroline Callaway in The Cut, and
Speaker 3: the piece revealed their friendship, collaborative work, and then the eventual.
Speaker 2: Fallouts like printing text messages and yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Talked about like Caroline's manipulation, erratic behavior. She had all
Speaker 3: these emotional episodes, like you know, she would allegedly threaten
Speaker 3: to self harm if Beach pushed back on anything. There
Speaker 3: was the strain Beach had of being uncredited while her
Speaker 3: writing is like building this brand, and the essay became
Speaker 3: The Cut's most read story of the year. Reignited interest
Speaker 3: in the collapsed book deal. I remember reading it when
Speaker 3: it came out.
Speaker 2: Sound like this is so much and you said her name.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh I remember this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So with no book deal, what's a gal to do?
Speaker 2: I do not know Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: I don't know either. So how can she make the
Speaker 3: money to support her dreamy install lifestyle. I wouldn't know
Speaker 3: what to do?
Speaker 2: She knew what to show, how savvy girl.
Speaker 3: She started holding things called creativity workshops.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 3: She announced a creativity workshop tour in December of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and it was going to be this like multi city
Speaker 3: road show. Is going to cost one hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: five dollars a person, and attendees were promised creative guidance,
Speaker 3: lunch care packages, personal letters, and fresh orchid crowns.
Speaker 2: She's going to monetize her fan base.
Speaker 3: Yes, the tour would hit cities like Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, DC. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It really quickly began to fall apart. The first problem
Speaker 3: is that she never booked the venues.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me that right there?
Speaker 3: That's a problem. Yeah, and then she ordered twelve hundred
Speaker 3: Mason jars for the care packages. But she had no
Speaker 3: place to store.
Speaker 2: Them, so she did a total four seasons landscape.
Speaker 3: Yes for the events.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then she shows up with like, here's some
Speaker 2: stuff I got at the Dollar Star.
Speaker 3: She's not a logistics lady. So the press and critics
Speaker 3: they drew parallels to the disaster of the fire festival,
Speaker 3: Oh y, we need to do it. And under mounting
Speaker 3: scrutiny from Twitter users like Kayleie Donaldson, who called it
Speaker 3: a quote scam, Caroline announced cancelations and refunds, but despite
Speaker 3: the chaos, she did hold two in person workshops, one
Speaker 3: of which took place in Brooklyn. A reporter from New
Speaker 3: York Magazine attended the event and shared a vivid account. Yes, Zarines,
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. You are an aspiring
Speaker 3: Instagram influencer. Your feed is all hydro flasks and Chanel
Speaker 3: shopping bags and sun dresses and of course you and
Speaker 3: all of it. Standing in front of a field of sunflowers,
Speaker 3: your hands shielding your eyes from the sun, facing out
Speaker 3: to the ocean, wearing a suggestion of a swimsuit, holding
Speaker 3: up a peace sign at the color correct at sea.
Speaker 3: You are a waif of a girl. You've got the
Speaker 3: thy gap and the long brown hair meant for social
Speaker 3: media stardom. You only have four seven hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five followers. Though your feed is a little scattered, you
Speaker 3: haven't seemed to lock into a real esthetic. You want
Speaker 3: more than just the image. You want to create things.
Speaker 3: You aren't sure what you want to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: You aren't one hundred percent sure what that means, but
Speaker 3: it's what you want to that end. You've purchased a
Speaker 3: ticket for Caroline Calloway's creativity workshop. You love her. She's everything.
Speaker 3: She's so beautiful and stylish and witty and messy. You
Speaker 3: wish you were her, and this would be the best
Speaker 3: way to try and get as close to that happening
Speaker 3: as possible. You took a couple trains to get to
Speaker 3: Brooklyn early this morning. You walk up to a loft building,
Speaker 3: triple checking the address on your phone with the one
Speaker 3: on the building. This should be the place cars sit by.
Speaker 3: People chat outside a coffee shop on their way to work.
Speaker 3: You sit on a nearby stoop and wait. Pretty soon
Speaker 3: people start showing up all manner of young white women
Speaker 3: stream in from ride shares and public transportation and even
Speaker 3: a bike. They are all impossibly cool in your estimation,
Speaker 3: and you realize you are one of them, so you
Speaker 3: must be cool too. You look up at the sky
Speaker 3: to remember this moment when everything came together and your
Speaker 3: journey truly started right here on the sidewalk in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: right here in the coolest place on earth. Your heart
Speaker 3: is full, brimming with potential and serious bravitas of the moment.
Speaker 3: Then a pigeon alights next to your shoe, hoops on
Speaker 3: the sidewalk, coops and flies away. Wasn't supposed to go
Speaker 3: like that? Those are yeazis. That was a close call.
Speaker 3: Oh you saw Suddenly the door the loft swings Olga.
Speaker 3: You get to a large open space and mingle with
Speaker 3: the other attendees. You scan the crowd, but you can
Speaker 3: see Caroline. You pour yourself a coffee with oat milk,
Speaker 3: stroll through the root and listening in on conversations. One
Speaker 3: woman tells another she came up from Florida. Another chimes
Speaker 3: in that she's in town from Seattle. You pass a
Speaker 3: woman talking about going to an Ivy League college with another.
Speaker 2: Who's in nursing school.
Speaker 3: They discuss the difficulty of juggling posting with studying. One
Speaker 3: woman clears her throat and sings a high note. Apparently
Speaker 3: she's trained to be an oppersit. That's a good angle.
Speaker 3: You think to be cute and sing opera and wear
Speaker 3: European designer clothes and travel to European cities and speak
Speaker 3: various European languages, just like the europe of it all.
Speaker 3: It's a good gimmick. As dreamy pop music plays, a
Speaker 3: staffer hands you a personalized journal with your name on it.
Speaker 3: You are prepared to cherish it forever. You also get
Speaker 3: a tot, a candle, a crystal, and a mason jar
Speaker 3: seated for a DIY garden. The event tickets said you'd
Speaker 3: also get an orchid crown, the pinnacle of Instagram cool.
Speaker 3: Not just a flower crown, an orchid crown. You ask
Speaker 3: about it and you're told there won't be crowns, but
Speaker 3: you will get one orchid to wear in your hair
Speaker 3: or pin to your top. You just have to make
Speaker 3: sure you return it before you leave. Suddenly, the room
Speaker 3: goes silent. Caroline has arrived. She's wearing a T shirt
Speaker 3: that says scammer under a cart again. Across one side
Speaker 3: of the room is a banner reading fire Festival in
Speaker 3: handcut aqua paper letters. Caroline playfully identifies and waves at
Speaker 3: the journalists present. She then declares that she won't allow
Speaker 3: them to take photos with the orchids. For the next
Speaker 3: few hours, you break into groups of five or show
Speaker 3: and share your creations, poems, artwork that one woman sings
Speaker 3: an aara. You wrote a stream of consciousness paragraph about
Speaker 3: the beach. Caroline walks by as you read it and
Speaker 3: gives a nod, moving on to the next group. Soon
Speaker 3: the whole thing is over and you all spill out
Speaker 3: onto the street. You have to admit it was kind
Speaker 3: of a mess. That's Caroline. Knowing it's a mess and
Speaker 3: still feeling it was worth it makes you in on it.
Speaker 3: Caroline's in her presence, her authenticity content be damned. And then,
Speaker 3: like the end of Animal House, a text comes on
Speaker 3: the screen and it turns out you gave up on
Speaker 3: being an Instagram influencer. You moved to Florida and you
Speaker 3: got your real estate license. Good for you. There you go.
Speaker 3: The workshops were a bust that didn't stop Caroline. She
Speaker 3: held two workshops under a cheekier title, the aptly named
Speaker 3: the Scam. No press was invited for those, but one
Speaker 3: reporter did go undercover. Attendees were refunded if they were journalists,
Speaker 3: and some semblance of delivery took place, but still it
Speaker 3: was underwhelming. In April of twenty twenty, she responded to
Speaker 3: Beach's essay with I am Carolyn Calloway, and she self
Speaker 3: published it behind a paywall to raise money for COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen relief efforts. Raised nearly fifty grand that's how we
Speaker 3: people paid to read it. Then in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: she released her memoir called Scammer, and it's a collection
Speaker 3: of sixty seven vignettes, some new summ repurposed public and
Speaker 3: critical response was mixed, but you know, amused, intrigued. A
Speaker 3: guy from The New Yorker called it funny, engaging and
Speaker 3: full of genuine insight. Really yeah, she continued building a
Speaker 3: bizarre patchwork career. She joined OnlyFans in twenty twenty. Oh
Speaker 3: and she sells literary themed softcore content and it apparently makes.
Speaker 2: A literary theme softcore on her body.
Speaker 3: No, so she does like cosplay of characters from stuff
Speaker 3: like Harry Potter, Matilda and Beauty and the Beast, basically
Speaker 3: like kid stuff. Oh and then there are partially undressed
Speaker 3: photographs of herself captioned with details of her father's autopsy.
Speaker 3: What yeah, yeah, yeah, there it is. Apparently she makes
Speaker 3: a lot of money doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone only apparently does. So.
Speaker 3: She went around saying in the interviews that she started
Speaker 3: her naked lady journey thanks to your alma mater, Playboy.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go, and according to her stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she said. The magazine commissioned a photoshoot of her
Speaker 3: addressed as a student in a library, but then Playboy
Speaker 3: released the statement saying quote, Playboy does not have and
Speaker 3: did not have any photoshoot planned with Caroline Calloway. Yeah. Oof.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty one, she launched a DIY skincare product that
Speaker 3: called snake Oil, and it was like grape seed and
Speaker 3: essential oils. Dermatologists were skeptical.
Speaker 2: If she leans into it, The hill Scammer shared sneak bar.
Speaker 2: She was like, you know what, you're.
Speaker 3: In on it, but you're still spending the money. But
Speaker 3: you know it doesn't matter, Like you could buy it
Speaker 3: and be in on the joke. That's what I get it.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three, she relocated to Sarasota, Florida with her
Speaker 3: cat Matisse, where.
Speaker 2: Her grandfather had founded the town.
Speaker 3: October of twenty twenty four, she made headlines again, not
Speaker 3: for a scandal, but for refusing to evacuate during Hurricane
Speaker 3: Milton despite mandatory orders. So why didn't she evacuate? Well,
Speaker 3: she said she had trauma from her previous evacuation during
Speaker 3: Hurricane Ian. She also doesn't know how to drive, and
Speaker 3: the airports were closed. And then she posted updates from
Speaker 3: her house promising that her forthcoming book would come out
Speaker 3: quote if I survive yeah, and social media like she
Speaker 3: got the world's worst influencer. Yet here's the thing about
Speaker 3: Caroline Callaway. She embodies influencer culture's excess. I mean she
Speaker 3: had all this mess with like she was getting evicted,
Speaker 3: not paying a rent and it was just lawsuits against
Speaker 3: her for that persona though was outpacing substance. She had
Speaker 3: this painfully chaotic result. I am an agent of chaos,
Speaker 3: as you like to say, but I like that chaos
Speaker 3: to be organic. I just do one little thing to
Speaker 3: set it in motion. But I don't orchestra you see
Speaker 3: the earth with Yes, I want authentic chaos. So these influencers, like,
Speaker 3: are they con artists? Performance artists? Deeply troubled, you know,
Speaker 3: charismatic trying to navigate this brutal digital era. I'd like
Speaker 3: your thoughts on that, because that question is my takeaway.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, wow, that's quick. You know, like if you
Speaker 2: don't like trim a tree and then a tree limp
Speaker 2: falls on her person and hurts them, that seems to
Speaker 2: be her mess. Yes, it's not like you with the
Speaker 2: I seated the earth and this grew of the earth
Speaker 2: with the conditions of sunlight and water. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: let's see what pops up. This is more like where
Speaker 2: did that come from? Why didn't someone do their due
Speaker 2: diligence and trim this tree? And she's like, I'm just
Speaker 2: so messy.
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, messy people are entertaining to a certain.
Speaker 2: Yere right up. Util the mess is on you and.
Speaker 3: It gets exhausted.
Speaker 2: I sent you to the hospital or bankruptcy or.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know what I need. I need to talk back.
Speaker 3: That's my kind of social media.
Speaker 2: Oh oh my god, could you just see that? I
Speaker 2: led get.
Speaker 3: Hi, Zaron and Elizabeth, you want to hear something ridiculous.
Speaker 1: When I was in the Navy back in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: we used.
Speaker 2: To fly from Chicago to California, buy cors beer at
Speaker 2: five dollars a case, take it back to Chicago, and
Speaker 2: sell it for twenty dollars a case. Now that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You were doing smoking in the bandit in the air force.
Speaker 2: I love that, even though I don't like cors beer.
Speaker 3: How in the world was cores cheaper in California?
Speaker 2: Well, because you know, back then you couldn't get cores
Speaker 2: east of the Mississippi. The whole thing in the smoking
Speaker 2: the band it was legit. Like my father, I remember
Speaker 2: when we went to Colorado. We were driving to California
Speaker 2: and he was all excited to be able to get
Speaker 2: COR's beer.
Speaker 3: He's like, we're going to go in Colorado and California.
Speaker 3: I guess this is just fun.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because all you have to do is you
Speaker 2: go somewhere west and then you can fly somewhere back
Speaker 2: east and all of a sudden, now it's super valuable.
Speaker 2: We don't have that kind of regional fund anymore.
Speaker 3: Beer list, No, we really don't.
Speaker 2: I love that. Thank you.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, And that's it for today. You can find
Speaker 3: us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. We just one
Speaker 3: lady Blogger of the seventeenth Century, awarded by Doanes Backpills
Speaker 3: It's pretty Big Deals, Aaron, don't laugh. We're also at
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram all the sash halls.
Speaker 3: If you're on YouTube, It's Ridiculous Crime pod YouTube, Email
Speaker 3: us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave a
Speaker 3: talk back on the iHeart app, Please reach out. Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
Speaker 3: and edited by Chief Ridiculous Crime brand Ambassador Dave Cousten,
Speaker 3: starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by travel influencer
Speaker 3: with two point eight million followers, Marisa Brown. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Tummy t Enthusiast Thomas Lee and face
Speaker 3: Tuned flip Flop TikToker Travis Dunton. Post wardrobe is provided
Speaker 3: by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and mister Andre. Executive producers are feed curator Ben Boleen
Speaker 3: and professional Instagram real consultant Noel grind dis Crime Say
Speaker 3: It One More Time Geous Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
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