Woman's Hour - The Female Con Artist

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Today we're looking at the female con artist. Have you watched Inventing Anna, the series about Anna Sorokin who duped New York's banks, hotels and high society into believing she was a multi-millionaire heiress?Or The Dropout, about Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes who claimed she had invented a technology that could test for diseases with just a pinprick of blood?Their cases have inspired countless TV series, movies, podcasts, books and even plays. But why are they so popular and what does it say about us as consumers of these tales?We explore what role their gender played in achieving their deceit and the coverage they've received. We'll also discuss the history, psychology and cultural depictions of the female con artist, and hear from a woman who Anna Sorokin left with a bill for $62,000.We're joined by Sara O'Brien, senior technology reporter at CNN Business; Vicky Baker, BBC journalist; Kathryn Claire Higgins, media scholar at LSE; Dr Nicola Harding, criminologist at Lancaster University; Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game; Alice Porter, journalist; Tori Telfar, author of Confident Women; and Rachel deLoache Williams, author of My Friend Anna.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucy Wai Editor: Beverley Purcell

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Woman's Hour. It is Bank Holiday Monday. Many of us will have been taking the chance, I hope, to kick back if you can, maybe catch up on our favorite podcasts or binge on some television. What am I looking at? Her name is Anna Delvey or Anna Sorokin. No one's sure. She's either a mega rich German heiress or she's flat broke and maybe she's Russian.

Vivian. That's the point. No one knows. I mean, it's embryonic, but I'm thinking something along the lines of solo house, but with gallery and exhibition space. Right. I'd like to showcase and support new talent alongside work from more established artists,

and of course it'd have to be a really cool place to hang out. Of course. The blood testing industry is run by two companies, Quest and LabCorp. And they are dinosaurs. The tech is ancient. These machines that are currently in use are archaic. These billion-dollar companies expect us to let them stick us with needles and then pay for their expensive tests.

No, this is America. We're cowboys, right? We should be in control of our own health care. You may recognise some of those clips. That was the Netflix series Inventing Anna, the BBC podcast Fake Heiress and Hulu's The Dropout, all centring on the female con artist, part of a wave of content about fraudsters and their audacious scams.

They're all based on real cases, and some have argued that the female con artist is having a moment, as it were. Personally, I binged on the BBC's Crypto Queen about Dr. Ruja. But why? Why are we so interested, or some of us certainly, in female con artists? Today, we'll be looking at Anna Delvey, the woman who conned New York banks, hotels and high society into believing she was a multi-millionaire German heiress, and Elizabeth Holmes, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who claimed to have invented a technology that would test for a range of diseases using just a pinprick of blood. Both women have been convicted for their crimes, but their stories continue to capture the popular imagination, spawning TV series, podcasts, books and plays, taking up column inches and social media threads.

But what role has being a woman played in achieving their deceit and the coverage they have then garnered? We'll also explore the history, psychology and cultural depictions of the female con artist and hear from a woman who Anna Delvey left with a bill of $62,000. But first to Elizabeth Holmes, hailed as the next Steve Jobs. Here's an extract of her TED Talk from 2014, courtesy of The Guardian Online. We've made it possible to run comprehensive laboratory tests from a tiny sample or a few drops of blood to eliminate the tubes and tubes of blood that traditionally have to be drawn from an arm and replaced it with the nanotainer. Well, Elizabeth was a 19-year-old Stanford

University dropout who founded the blood testing company Theranos. It promised to revolutionise healthcare with technology that would test for a range of diseases using just a pinprick of blood. Her idea captured the imagination of Silicon Valley, attracting over $900 million in investment from the likes of Rupert Murdoch to the Oracle founder Larry Ellison. But it was all based on a lie. The technology didn't work. Earlier this year, she was convicted of defrauding investors and will be sentenced in September. Her former partner and chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani, is currently on trial for the same fraud charges. She was dubbed

the world's youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes. So how did she convince everyone that her technology worked? And how did the fact that she was a woman perhaps play a role in her rise to the top as well as in her legal defence? Well, with me, Sarah O'Brien, Senior Technology Reporter for CNN Business, who has covered the story. Sarah, welcome to the programme. Thanks so much for having me. Should we just go back to the beginning with who was Elizabeth Holmes? Because she was born into quite a family. Yeah, so Elizabeth Holmes was born in Washington, DC. Her parents worked for government agencies. Her father once worked at Enron. And then she went to Stanford University

to study chemical engineering. And it was then, you know, after her first year at Stanford, she did an internship in Singapore where she came up with the kind of kernel that would become Theranos. And was it received well in Stanford when she talked to people about it? So it depends on who you ask. But she found a true believer in someone named Channing Robertson, who was an engineering professor at Stanford. And he sort of became a very important figure in her life and in the company's life. He joined the board and held a significant role. True believer. Did they actually see anything to make them believe? Because of course, when one finds out this hadn't worked, you think how on earth did she get somebody like him through to Rupert Murdoch on board?

What we did learn at the trial is she went to really great lengths to convince people that the technology was working, right? So there were things that were happening on the back end to make people feel like they were getting results, but actually those results were not examining the blood properly, right? So there were sort of demos that were being done on VIP people that were not actually showing the true capabilities of the technology, which were very limited and unreliable. Well, also she had a very specific look, didn't she? And style. And part of this program, looking at female con artists and this particular cultural moment, perhaps they're having, which some are saying, is about how much being a woman played into it.

What do you make of that with the way she presented herself? Sure. So, you know, it's important to kind of contextualize the time in which she came onto the scene. At that time in tech, there was the lack of, you know, female founders. There was a lot of conversation around getting more women into tech, getting more women into STEM. So being sort of this rare female founder figure, she was featured in a number of magazines, featured on the cover of magazines, like you said. And she adopted a lot of the things that we've seen some powerful men do, which is like wearing the same outfit always, right? So President Barack Obama, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, these are people that have famously worn the same outfit because they have, you know, tried to focus on what they're doing,

right? Like on their jobs and rather than like their attire. So she famously wore this black turtleneck, black slacks, blazer and kind of thick, you know, black eyeliner. And that was her what she became known as. Now, that black turtleneck also resembles Steve Jobs, who was her icon. So a lot a lot was talked about about her attire. Yes, and also she had people who used to talk about a very distinctive voice as well. Right, that's right. Now, no one ever can prove that she sort of has spoofed her voice

or lowered her voice, right? But she had a very distinctive low voice. And notably, one of the figures that she talked about was Margaret Thatcher. And so Margaret Thatcher also was sort of known for lowering her voice in order to kind of have people take her seriously. Yes, it was famous about it dropping by about an octave or so with that authority that she was hoping to convey and voice training that went alongside with it. You're right to bring up the time that this was. A very respected journalist for the Financial Times, Gillian Tett, wrote,

after a lifetime of writing about male entrepreneurs, I was eager to believe her story. And there's definitely a complicity, of course, in some ways within the media, looking to her, thinking about what she was saying, but perhaps not enough. And yet at the same time, it all came tumbling down with the media as well,

a Wall Street Journal expose. Tell us about that and how she reacted to it. Yeah, so this is really interesting. Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou had been investigating the company. She went to great lengths to try to kill the story. But it's also interesting that simultaneous to when, right around the time when that expose was coming out in October 2015, she also about how she had thrown around some ideas about how to counter the story. And one of those ideas was to accuse John Carreyrou of being a misogynist. Another idea was to talk about her sexual assault that had happened or something that had happened to her that made her kind of leave Stanford. So she sort of had these ideas of how she was going to counter what was happening. And a lot of them had to do with her gender, which was not something that she had talked about as a vulnerability.

It was something that, you know, allowed her to sort of be hailed on the cover of magazines until it seemed like she was looking for sort of a, I don't know if you want to call it excuse, but like an explanation of sorts for why she's being targeted. Which, again, you see, don't you, when you start covering the trial, because when a trial does begin, there's a huge media circus around. It was delayed first by Covid, I believe, and then because of her pregnancy. But again, she appeared differently, didn't she, through her defence? Yeah, well, you know, even before she took the stand, which was a big question, you know, will she take the stand? Her attire was very different to her look had softened completely, which, you know, we often see with criminal defendants. So she definitely had very natural eye makeup and makeup on wearing suit skirts. And we did not see the black turtleneck,

right. And then she took the stand and you saw her charisma on the stand and you sort of saw how she probably spoke in board meetings, you know, in media interviews with people. She talked about, you know, the origins of how she came up with the idea. And when she talked about the technology, she was just like alive, right?

She was very animated and kind of excited even still. And then there was a period of time where she broke down on the stand. She testified about how she experienced abuse. She alleges at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and Theranos former COO, Sunny Balwani. They were romantically involved for almost the entirety of her time building Theranos. Which he denies all those charges, we should say, as well. But in terms of the testimony also from female colleagues or patients, and particularly one employee turned whistleblower, Erica Chung, what struck you about their voices and what they had to say? Yeah, I mean, with Erica Chung, we sort of saw a young woman who believed the potential of Elizabeth Holmes. She said that she was starstruck, you know, when she when she first met Elizabeth Holmes and she was really excited to work for this rare woman in STEM.

Right. This rare female founder who had raised almost a billion dollars. Right. And had a company that was worth nine billion dollars, right, and had a company that was worth $9 billion. But then when she started to kind of see issues with what was going on behind the scenes, it really coloured her perspective on the public persona versus the internal reality of what was going on. And so you sort of saw this young woman kind of almost tormented by the fact that everybody else was sort of glowing in their praise of Elizabeth Holmes, and she was having this internal conflict about what was going on actually at the company. I mean, she was ultimately convicted of defrauding investors. Do you feel you ever got an answer from her or from her team about the fact it wasn't true?

You know, she really stood by the fact that she believed the technology could work. But how can you... Sorry to interrupt, but, but, you know, I'm a former tech reporter. It's quite, it's quite binary in technology and things related to, to that world about whether it works or not. Yeah. I mean, I think that she believes that if she had had more time, things would have eventually sort of worked. Now, of course, they were being, the technology was being used on actual human patients, right? So how do you square that? I don't think she ever really answered that question. I will say she was acquitted on the patient-related charges. So she was convicted on four of the investor fraud charges. Yeah, I think it's a very complicated situation. And I think the

one thing I will say about being in the room when she did learn that she was convicted on four of the fraud charges, she didn't make a sound. Right. Like she didn't there was no visible reaction from her, from her family members, nothing. And you think, you know, each each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. You sort of think that you're going to get some sort of human emotion, a shriek, a something out of somebody. And there was nothing. And I was also going to ask about Silicon Valley and any impact or consequences for women there. Because, you know, having greater diversity in the valley has been a huge issue. It's been something that people have paid a lot of lip service to.

And I wonder now if there have been different consequences because of this. Yeah, I think so. The consequence that we've seen is women getting compared to Elizabeth Holmes, you know, like it being an additional hurdle that women have to face when they're raising, trying to fundraise, when they're talking to the media about their companies. So I think rather than sort of paving the way, it ended up being an additional setback that some women have to face. Now, I think we've seen more female founders raise significant sums of funding go public since Elizabeth Holmes, right, which has helped. But it's probably going to be a long time before we

stop hearing the comparison of Elizabeth Holmes. Sarah O'Brien, senior technology reporter for CNN Business, who's covered this story. Thank you. Well, keeping with the female con artists and those who have captured the public imagination at the moment and in recent months and years, let's go to the story of Anna Delvey, who's become a household name following the dramatisation of her story in Netflix's Inventing Anna. Born Anna Sorokin to an ordinary family in Moscow, she moved to Germany as a teenager and she arrived in New York in 2013, transforming herself into Anna Delvey, a German multi-millionaire heiress with a trust fund in Europe. She used this persona to lead a lavish lifestyle,

convincing banks, hotels and even a private jet operator into believing that she could afford it. But it was all a con. She was found guilty in 2019 of theft of services and personal property, having scammed more than $200,000. She was released from prison in February last year, but many were convinced she remained unrepentant. And appearing on Newsnight in 2021,

she was asked whether she was proud to be a con artist and whether she wore the label as a badge of honour. Absolutely not. I feel it's inaccurate. Is it right to say you have no regrets? I feel like regret is a useless feeling. I feel like I've said it so many times. I felt like I did some things wrong and I'm just trying to fix them. I look up the definition of regret and it just pretty much says feeling sad. Do I feel sad? I don't feel so. Well, following her release,

she was rearrested and is now being held in detention by the immigration authorities in America for overstaying her visa and is fighting that. Anna continues to court publicity from the detention centre. Well, joining me now, Vicky Baker, BBC journalist and co-creator of the Fake Heiress podcast. Vicky, you obviously got drawn into this story, a whole podcast on it. What fascinates you about her?

I suppose Anna is this extraordinary character that she's part kind of every woman. Something about her feels a little bit relatable and part incredibly extraordinary to have done what she did and done it for so many years. I think a lot of people think this was just a flash in the pan that happened for, you know, a few months in New York or something. So it was an extraordinary story

of how she managed to get away with it for so long. And that's what we really wanted to find out with the podcast, Dig Into the Pen. Where did you come out on that in terms of her motivations and how she managed to do it? She's always said that she wasn't interested in the money, but it was the power and the ambition that drove her. She wanted to be taken seriously as a businesswoman, despite the fact that she didn't actually found anything. She just had this pitch deck, which looked quite impressive for the Anna Delvey Foundation, which she said was going to be the equivalent of a Soho house. But it never got off the ground, but she managed to get people to loan her money along the way and and how she how she did it for so long did you did you form a take on that

i think there's a mixture in how anna got away with things that's a mixture of some skill in the way that she's able to talk to people uh the way that she's able to talk the talk really slips into into those worlds can drop names of artists. She knows the financial lingo, so she can talk to financiers. There's a certain amount of luck, I think. She just keeps trying and trying. And I think that sometimes she failed and we just don't know about those attempts so much.

And just sheer recklessness. I mean, when it came to the end, some of the things she went doing, they weren't genius scams. It was check bouncing. And you're going to get caught if you do that. You're signposting exactly what you're doing to the banks. And was she famous before her trial? Because now, of course, Netflix acquiring the rights to her story, making her story. What was her level of notoriety? She came to public attention really when this big story came out in New York magazine, pre-trial, written by Jessica Pressler, which is basis for the Netflix programme.

And that's when it went completely viral. And a lot of people started engaging in the story. Who is this woman? And Netflix leapt on it instantly. And we should say at this point, it's a question I'm sure would be coming to people's minds. She couldn't profit from it. Is that right? Because there's a law that prevents criminals from profiting off their notoriety. What happened with that? There's a law in New York State called the Son of Sam law, which was introduced. I mean,

it's named after a serial killer, so you can't profit from crimes. And it hadn't actually been activated for about 20 years until this payment was made to Anna. Like I said, Netflix leapt on the story, and within two days after it going viral, they signed the contract. And I was able to get a copy of that via a Freedom of Information request because it had been registered with the authorities. And it was actually Netflix that alerted the authorities to this.

They wanted things to be done above board. They recognised that it was a tricky situation. In total, they paid her $320,000 and the deal was struck in pre-trial detention. So she does get that or she doesn't get that? The law wasn't invoked or it was? So it was and what happens is the authorities will step in and freeze the bank account and then the people that she has scammed

have the opportunity to make a claim to the money and a large proportion of it was claimed, but there was some that was left over which was used to pay for her legal fees. And she did have some left for herself. And of course, with the clip that we played just from the Newsnight interview there, seemingly still unapologetic. Is that still the case? I mean, still making noise, trying to make waves from the detention centre? Yeah, I mean, still doing. She's got someone who's managing her Instagram account for her

doing interviews with podcasts, sort of popular culture podcasts and I think slightly more, if anything a more repentant version of her on a news night than you see in some of these podcasts where she's kind of laughing along and going along with the joke

Well, towards the end of the programme we will talk to somebody who was part of the scam, a victim of the scam, and how they've viewed it since, but also with the way that this has been represented across culture. Vicky Baker, BBC journalist and co-creator of the Fake Heiress podcast. Thank you. Let me now welcome the criminologist, Dr Nicola Harding, and the media scholar and cultural theorist

from the London School of Economics, Catherine Clare Higgins. Catherine, I was going to start on that point about social media. What strikes you about Anna's presence on there? Well, I mean, the first thing that is striking is that for someone with one million followers, there's a strikingly lack of content on her page. The posts are few and far between, which is substantively, you know, explained by the fact that she's been detained for the last year or so. But what is there? It's very, it's very cryptic. It's very kind of tongue in cheek, very sort of side glance. It's not very

forthcoming. There's lots of posts where you're not quite clear what it's referencing. And for anyone with a large social media following, that seems odd because it doesn't craft an obvious brand, which is ideally what a social media presence should do. But for Anna, in fact, it's quite intuitive and really quite clever because the thing she's famous for is for being insincere and for being inauthentic. So she's actually crafting a brand around inauthenticity. And just to keep with, of course, the appeal of these women, you know, some have commented on the fact that they're white and glamorous and, you know, are perceived in a certain way because of that contributes. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think that's certainly the case. And not just for extremely high profile people like Anna,

but across the board. I mean, Kerry Blakinger at the Marshall Project did some reporting last week about formerly incarcerated people using TikTok to kind of generate revenue, but also to spread messages about life behind bars. And she found that overwhelmingly, that's also a white dominated space and a white dominated vertical on social media.

So I think there's definitely a question, not just about who we consider to be a compelling subject in a media production, but also for whom criminality is something that can be leaned into to monetize and to cultivate an identity. And also, if we can forgive those individuals, if they even want forgiveness. Dr Nicola Harding, let me bring you in at this point. Do we know how to process unrepentant women? I think that when we have women who've gone through the criminal justice system, whatever for, particularly though around crimes that involve deception, we construct women into one of two ways.

So we construct them as either bad and therefore unrepentant and unsavable. We can't reform them. That's just who they are. And I think that Anna probably would fit into that category. Or we construct them as mad. So we put them alongside some kind of psychiatric illness. And we see that they didn't really have their own agency. So therefore they can almost be forgiven but are still in that category of not a normal

woman if you like. Of course some people want to get away from it right but they feel then they can't get away from it and this is all they've then got to use to make a career or try and make a name or keep their name out there. I work with two quite high profile

former criminals. So one of them is director of We Fight Fraud is Tony Sales, who was formerly known as Britain's greatest fraudster. He's now worked for the last kind of 12 to 15 years in loss prevention and fraud prevention. So he has gone 180 degrees the other way. The other one that I work with is Marissa Marico. She's known as the Mafia Princess. She was born into the Italian Mafia, but her mum's from Blackpool. And she was convicted in her early 20s of money laundering. She did time both in the UK and she then got extradited to Italy. After that time then, she tried to come back to the UK and the normal you know do normal jobs

stay out of the public eye she didn't want to have that focus on her however for both Tony and for Marissa every time there was some big fraud come up and even now we are now seeing an interest in their lives again so actually speaking about it writing their books allowed them to correct the narrative that was being put out there about them. Do you watch true crime stuff, Nicola? Do you like these podcasts? As a criminologist, are you saying just please, no more? I'm really, really interested,

not actually so much in what the former criminals put out there on social media. I'm interested in how we all talk about them. So I'm absolutely addicted to tiktok just to see what people are saying so it's not so much what anna's putting out there about herself but there is a whole trial of anna going on on tiktok where people looking at the people who she was hanging out with they're comparing photographs of her would you have believed her could she have tricked you because now we are so invested in would we have known? Could she have fooled us? Because of course, there's a lot of victim blaming when it comes

to the victims of fraud. Which we are going to come on to as well. And, you know, the appeal of this, but it is fascinating that you like looking at the reactions to people. Catherine, let me just throw this back to you. Do you think it's easier for male white collar criminals to rehabilitate their public image? How does that compare? I know that Nicola was bringing up a man and a woman there, but that was in reference to whether they can, either of them can get away from this, but in terms of how we feel towards male criminals versus female? I mean, the short answer is yes, certainly. It's definitely easier for men. But I think there's a few different reasons why. I mean, one is that a lot of the traits that kind of characterize the con artist, this kind of ruthlessness, this world, while sort of on the flip side, seeing them as kind of moral failures in women. So I think on the one hand, there's that. But on

a more fundamental level, I think that moral harms and moral transgressions, they mark women in a more substantive way than they mark men. They're seen as being indicative of who they are as people, not indicative of something individual that they did in their life. So, for example, you know, Jordan Belfort, who was the former trader who inspired the Wolf of Wall Street movie, which was in turn based on his book, he now is a motivational speaker on business ethics of all things. Can you write this stuff? Can you actually?

I know, I know. But the thing is, he's able to, I think, like Anna, in a similar way to Anna, and again, this is about whiteness and class, but he was able to kind of generate a kind of fame and a buzz based off the high profile of his crimes. I think where his story and Anna's might diverge is that he's been able to diversify that platform and seek sort of, you know, multiple income streams for himself based off this reputation. I think Anna will find that difficult. I think that this will

mark her more substantially. And while she might, obviously she's got the Netflix deal, she's got a book deal from what I understand, but I understand. But in terms of whether she'll be giving motivational speaking arrangements about ethics, I'm not so convinced. Well, when she's out of detention, I'd like her to come and talk to me on Women's Hour. So we'll see where she is and what she's got to say. Catherine Clare H the spotlight, and certainly in certain people's worlds. It may not be you. You may be thinking, what's this trial happening on TikTok? I've got no idea about this. But this is in spite of their crimes. But in fact, their crimes may have only made them more famous.

And why are so many transfixed with female con artists? Perhaps you're starting to have some answers to this question. Does that lead, as we were just hearing there, to their victims being viewed differently or perhaps held to a higher standard? And what is it doing to us if we are indeed consumers of such tales? Now, this is a recorded programme today. I usually ask you to text in live or get in touch with me. Please don't do that today because I recorded this a few days ago. But we did ask you in advance of me recording this programme on our social media feeds for your responses on this. And it turns out many of you have watched or listened to programmes about such women. Pam got

in touch to say female con artists have an appeal because we're still stuck on old stereotypes of women tending to be good. Fiona messaged to say as a female entrepreneur I enjoy them these tales but I'm not 100% sure that they're doing us any good. While Jane says it's refreshing to see women protagonists regardless of depiction. Well, from a psychological and cultural perspective to have this discussion now, Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game, While We Fall For It Every Time, is on the line. And Alice Porter, freelance journalist who specialises in entertainment and digital culture. Welcome to you both. Maria, you know, I want to ask you why we are fascinated to get to some of this. Now we've told some of these stories, but I'm also aware of the slight irony of me doing

this entire programme on them. Yeah, it is ironic. And I had the exact same feeling when I was writing a book about them, because on the one hand, you realize these are terrible, terrible people who are taking advantage of the best in humanity. And I truly believe that because I think that the reason con artists are so effective is because they prey on hope and optimism and all of these wonderful things about what it means to be human. And they take this beautiful thing and they rip it apart and they leave all these lives in their wake. And yet here we are writing about them, talking about them, creating content about them. And I'd like to justify it a little bit by saying

that awareness is important and to be aware is to be prepared. So I think that that's one of the reasons. But I think that we're fascinated by them because they're what's called the aristocrats of crime. David Moore, who was a linguist who wrote the first kind of big book about cons, called them that. And I think that's exactly right. They are not violent criminals. They don't kill anyone. There's nothing bloody. And it makes them seem incredibly clever because the con actually means confidence as in trust. Do you have the confidence in me? Do you trust me? And they take advantage of other people's trust in a way that basically they don't steal. We give. They don't necessarily lie. We supply the

things that they don't say themselves, although they lie too. Do we secretly admire them? Yeah, absolutely. And you look at it and it seems very clever. And it seems like, oh, this is someone who is able to pull one over, who's able to trick. It's like a magician, but it's a magician on the stage of real life. And we love magic. We love magicians. And we actually just kind of, I think, have that halo effect to con artists as well and forget, very conveniently forget the victims. Well, I was going to say, just then on the victims, there's a kind of perversity,

which you can see in the worst of social media, which, you know, it sort of magnifies a lot of the time, which is that you can then go from thinking, well, they're incredibly clever to, well, I would never have fallen for that. How do you go from that to having often I see zero sympathy for the victims? You know, this is one of the few crimes where we tend to victim blame quite frequently. We say, how could you be so dumb? How could you be so greedy? How could you be so gullible? We even have expressions that are part of the common vernacular. You can't fool an honest man. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's absolutely not true. Honest people are the easiest to fool. Victims of con artists are not greedy. They're not gullible. They're not stupid. They're all of us. Because as I said, it takes advantage of just what it means to be human. If we blame the victim,

it means it can't happen to me. It means that, oh, I can admire this person and it's okay because I would never fall for that. I'm too smart. I'm too scrupulous. I would do my reference checks. I know when something is too good to be true. But here's the thing that people don't understand. If it's too good to be true, it is. It's great when it comes to other people, but nothing's too good for me. I deserve it all. I had this coming. Have you ever been the victim of a scam? I mean, because I do operate as, okay, what somebody's saying to me, it might not be the case. And that is an occupational hazard as someone who asks questions for a living. And yet I would always say I could fall victim. I try and remain open-minded about it.

And I'm sure I have. Nothing too catastrophic yet. But have you, Maria, have you ever fallen victim? I'm sure I have as well. And I'm sure that I did not know it. The best scams are ones where you have no idea that you were even a victim. That's why so many cons are underreported. I am going to feel spooked forevermore that they don't take, we give. That's going to be ringing in my ears at every message, email, or whatever is going to happen to me. Thank you for heightening an already good sense of paranoia. Alice Porter, to bring you in at this point,

you believe these two women that we've talked about, but obviously there are others, part of their success was about the timing and something called, or a culture of, I should say, girl boss. Alice, tell us a bit about this. Yeah, for sure. So I think when people like Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes came to the public consciousness,

it was just at the end of what I'd describe as the girl boss era. So the term girl boss is kind of used to describe a female CEO or a really successful businesswoman who is positioned as a feminist icon because of how they've succeeded in business. And there was women like Sofia Amoruso, who is the founder of Nasty Girl, and the author of Lean In. They were kind of positioned as these girl bosses in the mid-2000s. And just as they were kind of on their downfall, so Sophia Amoruso,

her company Nastia, went bust in 2016. Well, we should also say, sorry, if I may, I was just going to say, you mentioned Lean In, but of course that's by Cheryl Sandberg, who's not had a downfall per se,

still working and very successful at Facebook. But your point is this concept of girl boss was coming down. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Sheryl Sandberg was criticised by a lot of people, including Michelle Obama in 2017, 2018.

It was kind of this era that people were starting to see through this mentality that with hard work, women can have it all. Right, so that's what you mean by a downfall. I just wanted to clarify because downfall in this whole programme means something else with con artists.

Do carry on. Yeah, absolutely. And I think Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes, they positioned themselves as girl bosses. As Sarah said before, Elizabeth Holmes was considered this huge success story in tech as a woman. And I think as their trials showed them to be scam artists and as they were shown that the only way they achieved this level of success was through scamming and through

exploitation it also showed that the girl boss mentality was a scam and I think this really appealed people especially because they were able to show that you know they didn't achieve this level of success through working hard. They achieved it through stamming. I think that really appealed to people as they were kind of being told by, you know, women like Sophia Maruzzo, if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything.

It was quite refreshing to see people like Elizabeth Holmes and Adele the inadvertently admit that really you can't achieve this level of success or fame without exploitation. Yeah, I mean, of course, there's also, I know that when you wrote about this, people got in touch to say that Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Hodelvey were feminists. They took on the patriarchy, the privileged. They did manage to do some of that.

What was your response to that? Yeah, I mean, after my piece from Friday 21, that was a lot of the responses I got is that, you know, it's okay that these women committed these crimes because they only took down wealthy men. I mean, this just isn't true. I think there's an assumption

that they kind of only exploited people who were already extremely privileged. But Elizabeth Holmes in particular, she really targeted vulnerable people who were with Terran Ar But Elizabeth Holmes in particular, she really targeted vulnerable people who were with Terran Arson and Adele V, targeted people who we would consider to have regular incomes and drain them of their life savings.

So I think it's really a slippery slope to kind of assume that they were trying to take down the system with their actions and that they only did what they did because they wanted to do it as feminists. It's just not true. to take down the system with their actions and that they only did what they did because you know they wanted to they wanted to do it as feminists it's just not true I think they were quite self-interested and I also think it's dangerous to assume that they kind of were women who started at the bottom and made their way to the top because they both come from quite privileged

middle-class white backgrounds and they they're also both university educated they they had privilege before they started their scams if you say the girl boss culture was there at that time and that's changed what what is it given way to in terms of women and work is it too soon to say or what do you think's replaced it i think well i mean everyone was talking about the great resignation at the end of last year the idea that everyone's quitting their jobs after the pandemic. And I think this idea, maybe especially for me, but I think for everyone at the moment, that work shouldn't be at the centre of our lives.

And I think whereas alongside girl boss culture, hustle culture was really celebrated at the end of the 2010s, right now, hard work isn't cool. And especially for Gen Z and young people, I don't think people celebrate people who stay in the office until midnight and wake up at 6am to start work. That might have been cool in 2018. I don't think it's cool now.

And I think people's mindset, for the most part, and this is a huge generalisation, but as the great resignation goes to show, people's mindset is, how can I achieve the money I want to get there and the success I want to achieve without doing all the hard work it requires on a much larger scale? That's how Anna and Elizabeth looked at life. Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds a bit familiar in not such a great way. And also, I think, you know, there's also there's a bit of a myth about staying in the office. I mean, if people have even been unable to go back in, if they even have jobs, lots of ifs here. Because, you know, a lot of time spent online making content and doing all that sort of stuff, which I think does count as work in your leisure time, but is now the new leisure time as well.

But make of that what you will. We could do a whole other programme. Thank you very much for your views there, Alice Porter, who's a freelance journalist looking at entertainment and digital culture, and Maria Konnikova, who's the author of The Confidence Game, Why We Fall For It Every Time. Are you rethinking a few things while we're listening to this? Just to keep going, though, with the history, if you like, and make a link here about this naturally not being anything new per se, but maybe the focus on women. You may, of course, recognise the names of Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi or Frank Abagnale, immortalised in the film Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But you may have struggled until now to name a female con artist.

And yes, these female fraudsters, Annadelle V, Elizabeth Holmes, are enjoying a moment, but they aren't the first of their kind. And let's just talk to somebody who knows a bit more about women from past times who were pulling a fast one, shall we say. Tori Telfer, who's traced the history of the female con artists in her book, Confident Women, Swindlers, Grifters and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. Tori, do female con artists tend to be forgotten by history? I have found that just like with Anna and Elizabeth, they are often big in the media and even celebrated when their crimes are discovered, but then they get forgotten afterwards.

So all of the women in my book made the headlines. There was a fury and fascination about them. There were even products made about some of them even centuries ago. But then they don't become household names like Bernie Madoff, like Ponzi, like all the other men we've listed on this program. That might change with Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes, though. They might become household names. Did they use being a woman to pull a fast one? Was that part of it? Oh, yes, absolutely. Female con artists, I found, are totally unafraid of gender stereotypes, even unflattering ones. Female con artists throughout history will play a grieving widow or a poor housewife who doesn't know what she's talking about. You know, they have no interest in coming across as the most feminist of all,

because if they use gender stereotypes, even negative ones, it'll help them get what they want. Talk to me about the woman who one historian actually called a catalyst for the French Revolution. Oh, yes. Jean de Saint-Rémy was a scrappy little orphan who lived in the time of Marie Antoinette. And she pulled off a con so elaborate, I don't even think I have time to tell you all about it here. But she basically convinced, she basically got her hands on the most expensive diamond necklace in the world by impersonating Marie Antoinette through slightly sexual love letters that she sent to this very gullible cardinal. And when the scandal was discovered, it made Marie

Antoinette look so bad, even though Marie Antoinette was not the criminal in this case, but it made the queen look so bad that it damaged her already terrible public reputation. And yeah, some historians have sort of, you know, this scrappy orphan didn't cause the French Revolution, but she definitely helped speed things along through this con. That is quite something as a tale. I appreciate you truncating it for us. But what a story. I definitely want to know a bit more about that. And if we go to the 1840s, you also have told the stories of two teenage girls, Margaret and Kate Fox, who were mediums who admitted they were frauds. Yes, they truly started a religion as teen girls through a prank they were playing on their mother.

They would crack their joints and make these rapping sounds and they would say, oh, there's a spirit in the room. You know, they would say, rap twice if the answer is yes. And then they would crack their joints twice and their mother believed and then their neighbours believed and it truly spread like wildfire across the country. And that's where we get a lot of these cliches of the mediums of the levitating tables and the seance room and the ectoplasm and things like that. Well, you also go for Cassie Chadwick, who's a woman whose story has parallels with Anna Delvey. She poses as the illegitimate daughter of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie and scammed a bank out of how much? Banks, plural. And you're putting me on

the spot with numbers. I want to say there was a $40,000 somewhere in there, but people speculate that we will never know just how much she conned because a lot of these bankers, these men, it was so embarrassing to come forward and admit that this nobody had totally scammed them. So they just didn't want to necessarily have to deal with that, which is interesting in itself, because I understand from your work that female scammers of the age were called Cassies. That's how influential she was. Scammers were called Cassies. One druggist sold a bottle of Cassie Chadwick nerve tonic if you wanted to have her nerve, you know, her courage, because she really did pull off some audacious things. Like at one point, she went into the industrialist's house,

pretending that she was visiting her old daddy. Instead, she probably just chatted to the housekeeper who was probably like, what are you doing here? And then she waltzed back out carrying a whole sheath of papers and was like, you know, this is basically this is from my trust fund. My dad just gave this to me. Of course. Well, thank you for taking us through quite a lot of these stories that you have put in a book. Again, I suppose proving the point that people want to read about this. People want to know.

And the stories are compelling, if nothing else. Tori Telfer, thank you. The book's called Confident Women, Swindlers, Grifters and shapeshifters of the feminine persuasion. Now we have talked of course at length about the female con artists, the criminals, but how about their victims? And we mentioned earlier about perhaps also being harsher sometimes on those who have been conned by some of these women that we've learned a lot more about recently. And I'm joined now by Rachel Deloach Williams, someone who was a close friend of Anna Sorokin, although knew her as Anna Delphi. She was left with a $62,000 bill after Anna invited her to what she thought was an all expenses paid trip to a luxury resort in Morocco. She became a key witness in Anna's trial and her accusation formed one of the theft charges.

She told her side of the story in her book, My Friend Anna, and also features in that Netflix show, Inventing Anna. Although I know, Rachel, you've been rather critical of your depiction, something I promise we'll come to, and I definitely want to have your take on that. But could we go back to when you first met Anna and perhaps your first impressions? Sure. I met Anna in 2016 out one night just getting drinks in New York with some friends, mostly who worked in fashion and PR. So it was not like the most substantive of friendships off the bat. It was much more just about being very different than me in a lot of ways, which I think is part of what drew me to her. Just like people do now, I would sort of sit and puzzle over what her deal was because she was so one of a kind that it sort of just made you want to keep watching. And she was generous, I believe, as a person, as a friend, as someone to hang out with. She could be generous, yes. And part of that, I think, worked to sort of bolster

what many believed to be her identity. You know, she was living full time in hotels. So seeing her spend money kind of explained how she was able to do that and it really fit the pattern of of the character that she was pretending to be and you go on this trip together to Morocco your friendships continuing to grow and were you under the impression she or it was being paid for yes yeah so when we first decided to take a vacation, it was because Anna needed to leave the country in this way that's like, oh, I've already booked the villa. Like I've already done this. So she took it from a place where I could afford it to a place where it was way out of my price range. But she framed it as though it was a done deal. And how did you end up when you were there footing the bill?

I mean, it snowballed, I guess, is the shortest answer. It began when Anna's cards weren't working outside the hotel. And I did offer to cover those costs. And she was going to wire me money the week we were there. So it's kind of like once you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. And she just kind of kept adding to this quote unquote tab she had with me. But the hotel itself was something that transpired very differently. I would not have agreed. I didn't think I could, it was possible for me to agree to loan somebody $62,000. Like I, I'm still

shocked that I had enough credit on my credit cards to allow for that to have happened. But the hotel over the hotel over the course of the week began pulling Anna aside. And then by the day before we were scheduled to leave, these two managers appeared in the villa. It was not as dramatic as the Netflix show sort of portrays it. It was dramatic, I guess, in a different way, I should say. It was certainly dramatic, but they were not willing to leave the villa, nor would they let us leave the villa until they had a functioning card on file as they waited for Anna to continue resolving the situation, which at the time I believed she would do. And then I left before her the next morning. And as soon as I landed in France for the work trip, I got a text from Anna saying, oh, by the way, the hotel says thank you.

And I'll wire you the full amount today so that you have it by Monday. And she didn't? No, no, no, she didn't. And so began months of false promises and misinformation. I mean, we can't go into all the details now just purely for time. But you do describe in your book about, you know, working with the police to set up a sting operation, which led to her arrest. I can only imagine, you know, how that would have been and also testifying at her trial. Did you ever have it out with her?

Or was it through the trial process you felt you achieved that? Oh, no. Yeah, I had it out with her for months before the trial process. It was really a last resort. And I was very transparent about the fact that I can't afford to sustain this debt. This is not my debt to hold. If you can't actually make things, you know, if you can't fix it, I have to just keep going. I'm going to involve lawyers. I don't have a choice. So I told her that the whole time she knew it. And by the time we had, we did have this sort of sit down in a show, it's called an intervention, whatever you want to call it. We, like some of the trainer who had come to Morocco, me and this one other woman sat down and just tried to get at the truth. By that point, I went into that knowing, like fully believing Anna was a con artist, like to the extent that I recorded that entire intervention. Like I, I knew like, and so I was quiet because I was just sort of watching for confirmation and seeing the way that she deflected every line of questioning, that she had excuses for everything. And that she constantly would shift, you know, other people being like, oh, Rachel's life is falling apart.

Why don't you feel sorry for her too? Why don't you feel sorry for me?'s life is falling apart why don't you feel sorry for her to why don't you feel sorry for me my life is falling apart like she had a way of constantly making herself the victim so has she has she ever has she ever apologized to you or shown any contrition no and I don't I don't at this point I don't care like I know you might not I just wonder because you know you did go through a process there to try and get your money back, to try and have those conversations. And you had obviously built up a bond of sorts. Yeah. And I knew her for a year. We were close friends for around three months. By the end of Morocco, I knew, you know what, this is not somebody I need to be close friends with.

So it was certainly a close friendship. It wasn't that deeper lasting of a friendship, obviously. And yet... I think she apologized. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, sorry, if I may just come in there. And yet this depiction of you is there now of this friendship on Netflix, on the drama. And what do you make of that?

You know, it's kind of tricky for me to be the one verbalizing what I make of it because I think it's very troubling. And of course, personally, I'm offended by it and it's inaccurate. And why am I offended about it? Because it's untrue and it is painting a picture of me that is completely false and has given, you know, the largest streaming platform in the world has has created a false narrative about who i am as a person and about what transpired with anna that many people believe

to be true it's like i have an angry mob of people who believe i am some like freeloading opportunistic so for people who for people who haven't seen it, that's your issue with how it paints you? Well, yes, that's my issue for how it paints me. But I think it's creating a precedent in terms of what it does for people who are victims of sort of manipulative tactics. So that's kind of the bigger picture. I mean, I should just say at this point, Netflix doesn't claim it's true. Every episode reiterates a sort of i don't know playful disclaimer the whole story is completely true except for the parts that are completely made up

right which you know is is too convenient it that's actually to my mind that's that's more dangerous than being fully fiction and it's obviously not fully fact they say as much but what it does is it gives viewers enough information that they can Google and find, oh, this is true, that really happened, which gives them a reason to believe the rest. That's how a con works too. You know, weaving together fact and fiction is exactly how the storytelling done by somebody like Anna is effective

because we believe stories were told sometimes more than we do when we're just told facts. I just wonder though about for you I mean you've obviously got a book deal HBO I understand optioned your story if you feel uncomfortable about I suppose this being entertainment or the genre what why have you done those things? It's not actually that I find it problematic for it to be entertainment or drama I think with portraying real people comes real responsibility. I think there's a way to do it that is, you know, actually useful for the Anna story. Like what actually happened is very different than what's portrayed.

Anna wasn't out at like, it glamorized her and it glamorized what she did in a way that really diverges from from just simple dramatization has it stopped you watching other such things not me personally like i think it's a storytelling is important entertainment is important and i wouldn't tell people not to to watch or enjoy or you know like i just think it's important to be aware of what's happening behind the scenes and and to question the story that being is being presented to you um when it comes to things that are portraying real life events do you feel you've moved on from this well sure yeah

like I personally am happy healthy fully moved on today the only reason I am still talking about it is because I have this platform that I didn't want. You know, I'm stuck in this weird spotlight, whether or not I choose to engage with it. And it seems like having lived through this negative thing and worked so hard to make it positive, you know, the book or like these reasons that people think I don't qualify as a victim, which in itself is something that I think we don't have time to fully unpack, but that's a bizarre thing. I think it's really important to use the spotlight. It would be a wasted opportunity. Attention is so rare and valuable that to have it and not redirect it towards things that actually matter seems like a wasted opportunity. The reason I'm talking today

is not because I'm asking for pity or because I'm asking or like complaining about Anna. I'm not interested in Anna and I don't need pity. I'm just suggesting that if we look at this story, we think differently about what is actually happening here. People ask me what were the red flags. I am speaking up because watching the Netflix show or seeing the way that Anna's being given platforms, you know, after her jail time, but not being held to any sort of accountability. Not, you know, she says she's interested in prison reform, but, you know, actions speak louder than words. Like, I'm speaking up because to me, I see a new round of red flags. And I just would encourage people to really look differently or think critically about what it is that's happening here. That's a very powerful note for this programme to end on.

Thank you very much for talking to me. Rachel Deloach Williams there. And we should say at this point, we have approached Netflix for comment, but have not heard back. Tomorrow, we'll be joined by Fiona Hill, one of the top Russia advisers under President Trump, for her latest take on the war in Ukraine. You may remember she was catapulted into the public eye for her latest take on the war in Ukraine. You may remember she was catapulted

into the public eye for her testimony at the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, where she debunked the theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, attempted to interfere in the 2016 election. All coming up on tomorrow's programme. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.