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We are living in a golden age of deception. It feels like everyone has an angle and that, everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to scam you. Chameleon is a new weekly show from veteran journalist Josh Dean (co-creator and host of The Clearing, Hooked, White Devil, and the original Chameleon season, Hollywood Con Queen) that takes you inside an incredible, stranger-than-fiction story about someone—or some people—pretending to be something they aren’t. Are you obsessed with cons, frauds, and impostors? Then this is the podcast for you. Get your new weekly true crime obsession every Thursday from Campside Media and Audiochuck.
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Who is Swagg Man? The Rapper Scamming His Fans
Swagg Man wanted you to know he was rich. He drove Lamborghinis through Miami, covered himself in designer logos, and told his millions of followers that he’d made it from nothing. But Swagg Man was just a character. A character that became
Queen of Her Own Mind: A QAon Cult Takes Over a Tiny Canadian Town
Romana Didulo emerged from the chaos of the pandemic as a QAnon conspiracy influencer, building a devoted following with promises of a new vision for Canada where taxes, mortgages and government no longer existed. She declared herself Queen
Defrocked: There’s a Plagiarizing Pretend Parson on the Run
Robert Peters was almost none of the things he claimed to be. For decades, Peters moved all over the world, talking his way into universities, teaching jobs and churches with forged references and invented qualifications. He married at leas
The Rise and Fall of Michael Avenatti: An Anti-Trump Hero Who Flew Too Close to the Sun
In 2018, Michael Avenatti seemed to appear out of nowhere. A brash, flashy lawyer riding shotgun with the porn star Stormy Daniels as her allegations against Donald Trump exploded into a national scandal. Avenatti was everywhere and was eve
Program Pusher: A Trojan Horse Cult For Troubled Teens
When Esther was a teenager, her parents supported her in joining a group that promised to help her with her drug problem. She found a world of secret rituals, forced confessions, endless meetings — and a community that for a while at least,
The Problem Dog Whisperer: Too Good To Be True
Steffen Baldwin was a tattooed dog whisperer with an apparent gift for rehabilitating dangerous animals. He was a beloved local celebrity with a reputation for saving the most difficult dogs from being put down. But after one pit bull named
Jacob and the Lion: A Cult, A Gangster And A Billion Dollar Tax Fraud
Jacob Kingston wanted money, status and the approval of his family. Then he met a charismatic Armenian oil tycoon called The Lion. What began with a deal over a shipment of stranded biofuel turned into a sprawling billion dollar scam where
The Four Mrs Wilsons: The Spy Thriller Author with a Real Life to Match
When Mike Shannon was nine years old, he was told that his father had died fighting the Germans at the Battle of El Alamein. Michael’s father hadn’t died at all. He’d been a successful novelist and, quite possibly, a spy. We follow one jour
REVISITED: The Undead Tour: How The Fake Zombies Fooled America
A British band called The Zombies had a smash hit single in America with ‘Time of the Season’ in the late 60s. Shortly afterwards, four handsome Texans hit the road pretending to be the Zombies. This is the unbelievable true story of rock’s
A View To Deceive: An Artist Goes Undercover To Expose The Uber Rich
The views from New York's luxury high-rise apartments can be spectacular. And the higher up you go, the more exclusive, and expensive the properties become. An artist became obsessed with those views, and the hidden world hiding behind them
The Artist of Cons: The Unbelievable but Totally Real Life of Milwaukee’s Most Interesting Man
As a teenager in Milwaukee, Art Rapkin became a hustler, karate champion and a fake Bob Dylan. Then he started smuggling cocaine, before ending up in a Mexican prison, where he was tortured, before working with he FBI and DEA. Read Poison f
Lie in The Sky: Is Frank Abagnale Jr's story too good to be true?
Frank Abagnale Jr. became America's most famous con artist. He said he stole millions of dollars, posed as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, before working for the FBI. His story became a bestselling book, a Hollywood blockbuster and a Broadw
Cultivated: The Self-Proclaimed Prophet Hiding In Plain Sight
In the summer of 1991, a young woman walks into a police station in Ogden, Utah. She claims that just blocks away, amongst the manicured suburban sprawl, a self-proclaimed prophet has spent years building a secret religious empire — fuelled
The Archangel Made Me Do It: The French Mayor And The “Fortune Teller” Who Has His Ear
The mayor of an idyllic seaside town in France had seemingly fallen under the spell of a glamorous mystic who claimed she could speak to the dead. Their relationship soon pulled the whole town into a mind-blowing scandal that blurred the li
Big Man on Campus: The Hoops Phenom Who Tried High School Twice
A promising high school basketball star seemed to appear out of nowhere—a talented homeless kid trying to rebuild his life after Hurricane Harvey. But Rashun Richardson was no ordinary freshman. In fact… He wasn’t even a teenager. Chameleon
Going Places: The College Art Students Who Fooled a Nation
In the late 1990s, a group of art students from Leeds, England, announce a week in Spain as their latest “conceptual artwork” — and Britain’s tabloids lose their collective mind. But as the headlines pile up, it becomes clear the “holiday”
The Wannabe Pilot: Fish Swim, Birds Fly, and Randy Lies
His friends, family and a string of partners all believed a version of the same thing. That Randy was a former marine who now flew commercial airliners. But as the people around him started to look more closely, their ideas about who this c
For The Love Of Dogs: The Scam Shelters Abusing Animals For Clicks
A network of animal shelters in Uganda started posting heartbreaking videos of starving, mutilated dogs on social media, begging for donations from animal lovers. But as a group of women around the world began comparing notes, they uncovere
REVISITED: The Kid Who Couldn’t Stop Playing Cop
In 2009, Vincent Richardson walked into a Chicago police station and reported for duty. No one noticed he wasn’t actually a cop. No one noticed he was 14 years old. This is the story of the teenager who fooled the system time after time. Wa
Mother of All Stories Part 2: Mom On The Run
When Heidi Cloud was twelve years old, she became the first child in America to be sent to jail for refusing a court-ordered visit with her father. As she grew up, Heidi came to understand that the real danger had been much closer to home.
Mother of All Stories Part 1: A Daughter Falls Under A Spell
Heidi Cloud's childhood never stood a chance of being normal. A mother with a warped way of seeing the world keeps the family on the run and embroiled in an impossible custody battle with a historic and horrific conclusion. How does Heidi b
Mr 10 Percent: The Suburban Dad Who Fleeced Global Soccer
He rode a mobility scooter through Central Park with a parrot on his shoulder. He also helped pull off one of the biggest financial scams in sports history. This is Chuck Blazer, the flamboyant soccer bureaucrat turned FBI informant whose c
Fetal Attraction: The Reality Star And The Woman He Wished He’d Never Met
When Clayton Echard’s season of The Bachelor ended, he thought the public humiliation was behind him. Then a woman he barely knew claimed she was carrying his twins — something which, according to Clayton, was impossible. As the story explo
Laundry Man: The Wild Ride of the Pig Butcher's Banker
A swashbuckling South African expat, Benjamin Mauerberger, rose up as a boiler-room stock hustler in Southeast Asia, then reappeared years later with a diplomatic passport and extraordinary wealth. When reporters start pulling at threads, t
Introducing: Crimeless
Join your Chameleon host Josh Dean and his partner in (dumb) crime, comedian Rory Scovel, as they dive into the incredible story of a shady Swami who scammed Newark, New Jersey into adopting the Hindu city of Kailasa as a “sister city.” The
Dumpster Fire Phoenix: The “Festival” Organizer Who Just Can’t Stop Himself
Fyre Festival was sold as the most exclusive party on earth — a luxury music festival in the Bahamas for influencers, celebrities, and the ultra-wealthy. It became one of the most shared disasters of the social-media era, but by the time th
Catch Him if You Ken: The Dating Scammer Who Targeted Influencers
The story of a mild-mannered guy who charmed his way into the lives—and bank accounts—of women on two continents by posing as a wealthy heir with big crypto dreams. But Ken’s real talent isn’t getting your money — it’s disappearing before a
Whiteout: The Olympic Snowboarder Who Became A Cocaine Kingpin
A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder should have been a footnote—a guy who raced once, finished 24th, and faded away. But in early 2026, Ryan Wedding resurfaces as a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, accused of running a sprawling co
High Stakes: Life inside a Vampire Cult
As a lonely, grieving teenager in the early days of the internet, Celeste Mott is drawn into a secretive message board called "The Looking Glass": a place where self-proclaimed vampires demand total belief, reward devotion, and punish doubt
The Journalist And The Voyeur: It’s Not So Easy When You’re The One Being Watched
Gay Talese thought he’d landed a once-in-a-lifetime story every journalist dreams about: a motel owner who built a hidden viewing platform so he could watch guests in their most private moments and kept meticulous “research” notes for decad
