Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's Another FAKE Billionaire - The Christian Gerhartsreiter Story

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

Christian Gerhartsreiter’s story is one of the most bizarre cases of deception in modern history. Born in Germany, he came to the United States in the late 1970s and reinvented himself multiple times, adopting false identities, most famously posing as a Rockefeller, a supposed heir to the wealthy Rockefeller family.

So this guy is a con artist who successfully pretends to be one of the wealthiest men in America. Now the guy's name is Christian, and Christians around 20 years old when the story starts, living in California, and there's a picture of him, you know, he's a handsome guy, I guess. And Christian, he's just a liar. Like his goal seems to be to scam anyone he comes into contact with and never get caught. And one day, around 1985, he's in some master's classes at the local university, and he meets this nice older woman, Didi. And Didi has lots of money and a nice big property that includes a guest house.

So Christian cons her into letting him stay in her guest house. And so he's living in this guest house for a while, but then he runs into a problem. Didi has an adult son who will just call son. And one day, son and his wife, they move into Dede's house. Why is that a problem? Because son was hoping to stay in the guest house, but this random-ass dude, Christian, is already staying there. And Christian,

he's a shady dude, so pretty quickly, son starts to get suspicious that Christian is taking advantage of his mom, D-Dee-D. And he's right. And one day, Son has had enough of this nonsense. And he allegedly confronts Christian about all this. And Christian, he's a psychopath. And so, boom, he bashes son over the head with a blunt object. And then he's slithes. stabs him, and this, unfortunately, unalive's son. Then, Christian takes him and buries him in the backyard. Now, we don't know exactly what happened to son's wife, but around this time, she also disappears, so we'll just assume that Christian had something to do with it.

But now, two people are missing, and Christian has to cover his tracks. And so he goes to Didi, and he convinces her that son and his wife went to Europe. on a top secret mission for the government or something. And that Christian is actually son's official contact, so he'll keep her updated on son's whereabouts. And I guess Didi believes him for some reason, and she trusts Christian. Now, while Didi believes Christian,

son's friends and other relatives have a lot of questions. And after about two months, they haven't heard from the couple in a while. And they start calling Didi and Didi's like, he's on a secret mission in Europe. But these people are like, no. And so eventually they call the police and file a missing person's report. And so police, they show up to Dee Dee's house and they start questioning her,

and she still insists that son and his wife are on some top secret mission in Europe. And so the police, they go to the guest house and they knock on the door to see if the other guy living on the property knows anything. And Christian answers, butt-ass naked for some reason, and he claims he's a nudist and a desist. descendant of British royalty because he's just a weird-ass guy. But he also backs up Didi's claims saying that son and his wife are in Europe on some top secret mission. And so at this point, there's nothing police can do, and so they leave. About five months later, Christian decides it's

time to get the hell out of there. And so he cleans out a bunch of money from Dede's estate, steal son's truck, and he leaves and drives across the country. And now that Dede's supposed contact with son is gone, she stops getting updates on him, and so she eventually wises up and realizes that he actually is missing, and she goes and files a missing person's report, but police still don't have any evidence that anyone did anything wrong, and so there's not much they can do. And so Christian, he gets away, and he drives from California all the way across the country and he ends up in Connecticut. And there he changes his name, he tells everyone he's this big time TV producer who works on one of Alfred Hitchcock's shows and he cons his way into a mortgage broker job despite having no experience in the field at all. Then he cons his way into a job for some Japanese financial company and he becomes the vice president of one of the departments despite having no experience in that field. I guess these people just don't do background checks. But anyway, then it starts to get worse for Christian because here is where he screws up.

It's now 1988, and he's still living in Connecticut, and he sells that truck that he stole from Sun. And the guy who bought it tries to register it at the DMV, and it shows up as belonging to Sun, the guy who is now declared missing for the past few years. Now, eventually, the police get involved, because Christians drive. driving a missing guy's truck. And I guess he gets word that they're looking for him in connection with son's disappearance and he knows it's time to get out of town. And so he tells his co-workers some bullshit story that his family has been kidnapped in Pakistan for some reason and that he has to go and rescue them. And I don't know if they believe him or what, but regardless he flees town. And four years go by. And this guy must be off the grid now because no one knows where he is. I guess he's keeping a low-price. But then in 1992, he finally shows up again in New York City, and he's been hanging around this local church that rich people are known to go to, and he's changed his name again. Now he starts telling everyone that his name is Rockefeller and that he is part of the

Rockefeller family, who was the richest family in American history at one point. So he's telling people that he comes from a wealthy family and people are buying it. And now he lives this life as a fake Rockefeller. And he eventually meets a woman at church and he gets married, has a kid, all under this fake Rockefeller persona. His wife doesn't know he's a con artist. His friends don't know. Obviously his kid doesn't know. And he's able to keep up this act for years.

And no one has caught on. So I guess he's just going to keep this con going. Until... Until around 2000. 2006, when it all starts to fall apart for Christian. And it starts with his marriage. His marriage, it's not doing too well. And I don't know if his wife has gotten suspicious of him or what,

but she ends up hiring a private investigator to look into him. And so this private investigator looks into him and is like, I don't know who this guy really is, but he's definitely not a Rockefeller. And so, boom, his wife ends up divorcing him. Not only that, but in that divorce, she demands custody. of the kid they have together, and she ends up offering him $800,000 to forfeit custody of the kid, and he would only be allowed supervised visitation. And because Christian is a conman who likes money so much, he's like, $800,000, sweet. But here's the thing, $800,000, that's nice and all,

but I guess after a while, he ends up having second thoughts and changing his mind. And when he finally realizes that he'll barely get to see his daughter anymore, he gets really pissed off. And so his dumb ass decides that he's going to kidnap his own daughter and go on the run. And so one day, it's like 2008 now, he's on one of the supervised visits with his daughter that he agreed to. And so it's him and the daughter and a social worker and they're all together walking down the street. When suddenly, skirt, a black limousine pulls up to the curb next to them and pow,

Christian pushes the social worker out of the way, and he throws his daughter into the car, and then he jumps inside himself, and the limo speeds away. Now eventually, Christian gets his daughter to a townhouse in Baltimore that he had recently purchased, and I guess they're going to hide out there for a while. However, since this was a kidnapping, the FBI is already on the case, blasting his information publicly and all over the news and stuff, and the real estate agent who had sold him that town, townhouse that he's hiding in, recognizes his photo, and they report him. And so, bam,

finally Christian is arrested. Here's his mugshot. And the FBI is eventually able to correctly identify him and connect him all the way back to son's murder. And he ultimately goes to trial, he's found guilty, and he sentenced to 27 years to life in prison.