These days, the world of true crime documentaries is vast, expansive and seemingly never-ending. We have grisly murders and thieves, white collar crimes and cover-ups, stings and mysterious cold cases. But if there’s one particular corner of true crime that tends to draw people in the most, it’s stories about scammers: people who pretend to be something they’re not for some kind of gain – financial or otherwise – hoodwinking everyone in the process.
Scammers are fascinating because they could literally be anybody. They could be your friends’ mum who has inexplicably become a millionaire after a vague invention that has yet to see the light of day. They could be that guy your friend’s dating who travels a lot and once asked for a bunch of money, but is definitely paying it back, right? Or they could – as revealed in the much-lauded recent HBO documentary Telemarketers, which follows two office workers who discover that they’re not actually raising money for firefighter and police charities after all – be your employer.
It’s true: scammers are everywhere among us, and we can’t get enough. With all of the above in mind, here are the 15 best scammer documentaries, ranked!
13 true crime documentaries that will destroy what little trust you had left in the world
13. Bad Vegan (2022)
Marital scams, embezzlement, deistic promises of immortality for beloved pets – There’s so much to unpack in Bad Vegan, Netflix’s dive into the scam that tore up New York’s hottest raw vegan restaurant. The series follows Sarma Melngailis, the once creme-de-la-creme of the New York restaurant circuit, riding high as the owner of two celeb-haunted joints in the early aughts. However, when workers started protesting and walking out over unpaid wages, the true scam at the heart of her theft began to unravel. Having married a man she met on the internet, Melngailis fell into enormous debt and stole money from her employees and her investors to fund a strange, god-like deity that her husband promised would make them all immortal. Yeah, it’s a lot to try and feel empathetic over, and proof that the greatest scammers can really make you believe in the most ludicrous things.
You can watch Bad Vegan on Netflix.
12. Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King (2022)
It seems like the coming years will bring a lot of crypto scam stories to the limelight. With any get-rich-quick scheme that promises exorbitant wealth based on a ‘just trust me bro’ pitch, the world of cryptocurrency is rife for cowboys. One of them was Gerry Cotten, who set up QuadrigaCX, Canada’s largest crypto exchange. When Cotten mysteriously died in 2018, he took with him the password to the wallet and the investment of almost $200m. Immediately, conspiracies started flying: Was Cotten really dead? Did he steal the money before going on the lam? Was he taken out when his operation was revealed to be a scam? Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is your classic Netflix doc, in that it talks to victims of Cotten’s crimes as well as the journalists who pulled the thread on the mystery surrounding Gerry Cotten as it was happening.