0:02

In the late 1870s, a

0:04

woman named Sarah Howe started a bank

0:07

called the Ladies' Deposit Company. Customers

0:10

at the Ladies' Deposit were given a book

0:12

with the bank's rules printed inside. It

0:16

read, the Ladies' Deposit

0:18

is a charitable institution for single

0:21

ladies, old and young. Sarah

0:25

Howe didn't advertise her bank in newspapers.

0:28

She asked new customers to tell their friends.

0:32

So she started off with word of mouth

0:35

advertising and got people to, you know,

0:37

bring somebody else. We

0:40

were right at the very beginnings

0:42

of the Industrial Revolution. People

0:45

were just starting to trust

0:47

putting their money in banks.

0:49

This is Robin Holsart, a professor

0:52

in forensic accounting.

0:55

One woman described the bank as sympathetic. Another

0:58

elderly customer said at other banks, the

1:00

tellers would grab her money and throw a

1:02

passbook at her without a word. But

1:05

at the Ladies' Deposit, she was given a seat

1:08

and kindly thanked for her business. A

1:11

Boston newspaper wrote that the furniture

1:14

at the Ladies' Deposit was upholstered

1:16

in raw silk with gold-figured

1:18

patterns and that all the ornaments

1:21

are rich and in good taste.

1:24

Not much is known about Sarah Howe. She

1:28

told the Boston Globe that she had been born in

1:30

Alexandria, Virginia in 1826 and that her

1:34

father was named David Chase. She

1:37

said she was an only child and that she'd been married

1:39

twice.

1:42

Before Sarah Howe opened her bank, she

1:44

worked as a fortune teller and was also

1:47

reported to be a, quote, female physician.

1:50

She had no experience in banking. Banking

1:54

in the 1800s was almost completely

1:56

unregulated. This is George Robb,

1:59

a professor who… studies 19th century business

2:01

and finance. Anyone really

2:04

could set up a bank, put a shingle

2:06

outside your home and call it a bank. And if you could attract

2:08

depositors, you could be in business.

2:12

There are a lot of savings banks at this time,

2:14

but they

2:16

would have been run by men. So a bank

2:19

run by women for women was

2:21

completely unique.

2:26

One lady's deposit customer told a reporter,

2:29

I am perfectly well satisfied with the security

2:32

of my own money, as well as that

2:34

of my friends.

2:35

And what did she promise

2:38

those women who were depositing

2:40

money? She guaranteed

2:43

them, I love this, this is my favorite part of the whole

2:45

story. She guaranteed them 8% interest

2:47

per month, paying

2:50

them the first three months ahead

2:52

of time. So the

2:55

math of that is when you gave

2:57

her $100, she

3:00

was going to give you $24 back, okay? $8 a

3:05

month times three months. But

3:07

the big payout is if

3:09

you left your deposit in through

3:12

maturity, which was one year, at 8%

3:15

per month, you would be getting $96

3:18

for

3:20

every hundred you put in.

3:25

There was another banker who in 1919 offered

3:28

incredible returns to his investors. He

3:32

promised a 50% return on their

3:34

money in 45 days. When

3:37

he paid out the first returns, word

3:39

spread. Six

3:41

months later, he had 20,000 investors who

3:44

had given him about $10 million. His

3:47

name was Charles Ponzi. The

3:50

problem with the Ponzi scheme is Ponzi

3:52

schemes are destined to

3:54

fail because unless you have a

3:57

consistent influx of new money.

3:59

We don't have money to pay out.

4:03

In 1920, the Boston Post revealed

4:06

that Charles Ponzi was not investing

4:08

anyone's money. Instead,

4:11

he was paying out returns with investments from

4:13

new customers. In

4:15

eight months, he'd taken in an estimated $15

4:17

million.

4:20

Later, he wrote in his memoir, We

4:24

are all gamblers. We all crave

4:26

easy money, and plenty of it.

4:29

If we didn't, no get-rich-quick scheme

4:31

could be successful. Charles

4:34

Ponzi made this kind of fraud

4:36

famous, but Sarah

4:38

Howe was doing it in the same city before

4:41

he was even born. I'm

4:44

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Tell

4:55

me, what was the thought about women

4:57

and money in the late 1800s? Well,

5:02

most people in business

5:04

circles, business men, almost all business

5:06

men, felt that women were not

5:09

suited to pursue

5:12

careers in business or finance, that

5:14

they were too emotionally

5:17

fragile, they were too delicate.

5:21

Their purity was best protected in

5:23

the home, and if they pursued

5:25

careers in business,

5:28

that this would contaminate

5:30

their purity.

5:32

In the early 1800s, it was against

5:34

the law for married women to own property,

5:37

manage money, or sign their own contracts.

5:40

And as soon as you got married, you

5:42

ceased being an individual. You

5:45

became what's called femme covert, which

5:47

means that you were like the property of

5:49

the husband.

5:52

In 1855, the state of Massachusetts

5:54

made it legal for a married woman to own property,

5:57

make a will, and have full control over

5:59

her. her money. By 1887,

6:03

two-thirds of the U.S. had passed

6:05

similar laws. But

6:07

even after that, judges often ruled

6:10

that a wife's earnings were her own

6:13

only when she was abandoned by her husband, or

6:15

he was proven to have misspent the family's earnings,

6:18

or to be unable to support the family.

6:23

Meanwhile, single women were

6:25

allowed to invest their money how they liked. The

6:28

ladies' deposit only took single

6:30

unmarried women and widows as

6:33

customers.

6:35

Sarah reportedly dressed in her best

6:37

clothes. And she sold

6:39

that to them under the

6:41

guise of, and you can be just like me.

6:45

And so it became like a sorority

6:47

for all intents. So

6:50

what she did was she went and created

6:52

this air of exclusivity in

6:55

this club. This

6:57

has been done over and over

7:00

and over. Bernie Madoff

7:02

would tell people, you had to give me all of

7:04

your money to get into our club.

7:07

She just did it in 1880. I

7:10

think Sarah Howe was very clever because in targeting

7:13

women, she could say to them, as

7:15

a fellow woman, I understand your situation.

7:18

You can trust me. I won't

7:20

cheat you the way that men often cheat

7:23

people in business. And there was this

7:26

general expectation that women were more honest, that

7:28

women were morally superior to men. So

7:30

I think she played upon that. She played

7:32

upon women's insecurity about

7:35

what to do with their money. And

7:37

she promised very extravagant returns

7:40

as well, which was very appealing to

7:43

a lot of the women who gave her money to invest.

7:46

And was she taking deposits from women

7:48

just in Boston? Originally,

7:51

the bank was operating only

7:54

in Boston, but it seems pretty

7:56

quickly women from

7:58

all over the country were sending her money.

7:59

money and since she wasn't advertising,

8:02

it's hard to know how

8:04

that came about. But probably what

8:06

happened is that women would write to friends

8:09

and family members in other parts of the country and tell

8:11

them about this wonderful opportunity in Boston

8:13

and they would send money in. Most

8:15

of the women who put money in the ladies'

8:17

deposit were mostly

8:20

women from, we would consider a working class

8:22

or a lower middle class background. Domestic

8:25

servants. There were some school teachers,

8:28

so there was a kind of informal

8:29

behind the scenes network of women

8:32

sharing information with other women.

8:34

For a while,

8:36

Sarah Housebank operated without much

8:38

attention.

8:39

But then, in January 1880, the Boston

8:42

Herald sent a reporter to the ladies' deposit.

8:46

The paper wanted to know how she was able to offer

8:49

such a high return on her customers' investments.

8:52

The reporter wanted to go

8:55

into the deposit and

8:58

investigate it. Well, of course they

9:00

weren't going to let him in. And

9:03

then after that, what he did

9:06

was he dressed up like a woman

9:08

and went back. And when he went back, dressed

9:11

up as a woman, he

9:14

was let in.

9:16

They told him what they told their other customers.

9:19

They would say stuff like, well, we don't solicit

9:21

your money. You don't have to deposit

9:24

unless you want to, you know, giving them

9:26

that out. And the journalist

9:28

wanted to know if he could have references.

9:31

They told him that they don't give out references.

9:34

And so what he did was he

9:37

just wrote an article. The

9:40

article was titled, How's This

9:42

for High?

9:43

Eight percent a month paid by a South End bank

9:46

for women only.

9:47

How this remarkable enterprise is conducted.

9:51

And in it he called Sarah Howe a fraud.

9:56

Another article in the Boston Herald included

9:58

an interview with her. She claimed

10:00

the bank was part of a Quaker-aid society.

10:03

She said that it was really

10:05

a charity and that wealthy Quakers

10:08

in the city were financing this, and this was a charitable

10:10

operation to help women of humble

10:12

means.

10:13

She objected to the newspaper's coverage

10:16

of her business in a letter to the editor, writing

10:19

that her only offense was refusing to explain

10:21

herself to prying reporters.

10:24

In her letter, she implied that the Herald's articles

10:27

were libelous

10:28

and that she was prepared to sue them for it. And

10:31

so what happened was the newspaper

10:34

decided to back off because

10:37

they didn't want to be accused of malice.

10:41

The coverage only seemed to make the lady's deposit

10:44

more popular. The Atlantic

10:46

reported that the bank gained nearly 600 depositors

10:49

after the Herald's articles came out. The

10:53

deposit was doing well enough that

10:55

Sarah Howe moved the bank to a new location

10:58

in Boston's South End. She

11:00

bought a $50,000 mansion, paid $20,000 of that $50,000 in cash, which

11:08

was deposit money, obviously. And

11:10

if you think about it, that's $5 million

11:13

in cash in today's dollars.

11:15

So yeah, I'm going to say she lived pretty lavishly.

11:18

She reportedly

11:20

threw a party for her husband's birthday where

11:22

she invited total strangers so

11:24

she could have a crowd to

11:26

see the presents. But

11:28

it's still a little mysterious how she spent that

11:31

kind of money. Of course, part

11:33

of the money that she's collecting, she is also paying

11:35

out to people to draw

11:37

more money in. So it's a complicated

11:40

juggling act that's going on.

11:42

We always have enough money to pay the deposits,

11:45

she said. And if every one of

11:47

our book holders should come in this afternoon and

11:49

demand the principle,

11:51

it should be paid to the utmost dollar.

11:55

Then, in September 1880, the Boston-

11:57

Austin

12:00

Daily advertiser published a series of

12:02

articles about the lady's deposit under

12:04

the headline, A

12:06

Mysterious Bank.

12:08

The stories ran every day for three weeks.

12:12

The newspaper said that the lady's deposit was

12:14

a fraud. They said Sarah Howe

12:17

was paying long-time depositors with

12:19

the money coming in from new customers.

12:22

They started by saying she wasn't

12:24

really a bank, and the newspaper

12:27

wanted to make her out to be, you know, this

12:29

wicked witch of the West. And

12:32

they went through and they found all of her,

12:34

like, quote-unquote, past crimes,

12:36

like that she made her money telling

12:39

fortunes.

12:41

They also reported that she had been committed

12:43

to an asylum in 1865 and that she had been arrested

12:47

for fraud a decade later. Sarah

12:51

Howe wrote a letter responding to the articles.

12:54

She said that the reporter was floundering

12:57

like a bat in a fly trap, trying

12:59

to prove the bank was a fraud.

13:02

When the articles appeared,

13:04

customers began withdrawing their deposits

13:06

from the bank.

13:07

She said that she was going to make good on the principal,

13:10

but the principal was $196,000 at

13:13

that time, and she didn't have that kind of money.

13:16

She was always going to run out of money if she had

13:18

to pay everybody back. And so it

13:20

went downhill very, very quickly.

13:24

One of the bank's employees, Susan

13:26

Crandall, said that she was sometimes paying

13:28

out $40,000 per day.

13:31

Today, that would be the equivalent of $1

13:34

million. The

13:36

Boston Globe reported that Sarah

13:38

Howe tried to raise money by mortgaging

13:41

her own house and furniture.

13:44

On

13:44

October 4th, she started to

13:46

run out of money.

13:49

And then, on October 16th,

13:52

she was arrested. We'll

14:00

be right back.

14:11

Twitter was once a global town square, a

14:13

place where people broke news, shared real-time

14:16

footage that countered autocratic narratives, and

14:18

mobilized. Now

14:20

thanks to Elon, it's just a 24-7 toxic circus of bad

14:22

clowns. I'm

14:25

Neha Maraza and that's Kara Swisher, and we

14:27

make the podcast on with Kara Swisher.

14:30

This week we've got a great episode on the latest self-destructive

14:32

things that Elon has done, and

14:35

how he's swinging his power around in all

14:37

the wrong places. From helping censor Twitter

14:39

in Turkey on the eve of an election, to the

14:41

happy home

14:41

he's building for Tucker Carlson. And don't

14:44

forget all his recent sub-tweeting of racist

14:46

memes. That was nice too. Today we break

14:48

down the madness of King Elon, how his power

14:51

has changed the power of Twitter, and why it matters,

14:53

with two of the best beat reporters in the biz.

14:56

Zoe Shiffer, managing editor at Platformer,

14:58

who has all the receipts, and Ryan Mack,

15:00

a tech and accountability reporter from the New York

15:02

Times. It's a great conversation and it's

15:05

live now. Search for on with Kara Swisher

15:07

wherever you get your podcasts.

15:11

In October of 1880, Sarah

15:13

Howe was charged with obtaining

15:15

money under false pretenses.

15:17

Many women had put their entire life savings

15:19

in the bank, so there was a lot

15:22

of panic. There

15:24

are historical accounts

15:27

of women who were ostracized

15:30

for bringing their friends in.

15:32

And so once it went bad, it went

15:34

bad in a hurry. There

15:38

was just

15:39

not much left at the end.

15:41

One woman told the Globe, I

15:45

wanted the interest so badly that

15:47

I placed a mortgage on my furniture to

15:49

secure the principle to deposit. I

15:52

wish I had it now, for I shall have my

15:54

goods sold from under my head.

15:58

There were women who

15:59

didn't want to believe that this had happened

16:02

to them. There were people who continued to think

16:04

that Sarah Howe had done nothing wrong,

16:07

that this in fact had been a scheme

16:10

by jealous men to destroy her business.

16:14

The Globe published an account of a

16:16

woman who went to the bank to deposit $192 in

16:18

gold, even

16:21

though Sarah Howe had already been arrested.

16:24

They also reported that a group of depositors

16:27

raised funds for her defense. The

16:30

women told the reporter that they were

16:32

not the ignorant, deluded women they

16:34

have been represented to be, and

16:36

that Sarah Howe was a persecuted woman.

16:39

And some women who had invested early probably

16:41

got all their money back.

16:43

So some of the early investors

16:45

hadn't lost their money. It's the later investors

16:48

who did the worst.

16:50

A list of customers was published in

16:52

the newspaper. It took up an entire

16:54

page and included women as far

16:57

away as Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine,

16:59

and even England.

17:02

Was there any way for these women to recover

17:04

the lost money? There wasn't.

17:07

There were cases in the 19th century where businesses

17:09

failed and

17:11

there would be relief efforts set up, charitable

17:14

relief efforts to try to help some

17:17

of the people who had lost their money.

17:19

That did not happen in this case. Once

17:22

the bank collapsed, there was

17:24

not

17:25

as much sympathy towards the women who

17:27

had put money in the bank than we might expect.

17:30

Some of the commentators blame the women. Well,

17:32

this is what you get for being so ignorant. Who but a

17:34

woman would be so stupid as to think she could make $96

17:36

on $100 over the

17:39

course of a year? There were

17:41

other people who said for a woman to give money

17:43

to another woman to invest is

17:45

a huge mistake.

17:47

If you have money to invest, give it to a male relative,

17:50

give it to a man of business to invest.

17:52

So, you know, this is

17:54

just what you get for thinking that

17:57

you as a woman can make decisions

17:59

about it.

17:59

about how to invest your money. Someone

18:02

wrote a letter into a newspaper to say

18:04

that the success of Sarah Howe's fraud proved

18:07

that we must despair of teaching

18:09

the female sex business principles.

18:13

Initially, Sarah Howe was very

18:15

defensive and claimed

18:18

that she was running a legitimate bank and

18:21

that jealous men

18:23

had

18:25

destroyed her business. But

18:27

once she was arrested and once she was facing trial,

18:30

then she tried to distance

18:32

herself from responsibility.

18:35

She claimed she wasn't the person who started

18:37

the lady's deposit and told

18:39

the story about having been a customer of a branch

18:41

in her hometown of Alexandria, Virginia.

18:45

She said that she'd gotten hired after a few

18:47

years and had been put in charge of

18:49

the Boston branch.

18:52

She also said she only earned $100 a month and

18:55

never handled a dollar of the customer's

18:58

deposits.

19:00

She said she was sure a man named Mr. Gardner

19:03

was angry with her for refusing to lend him $100.

19:07

She said, he

19:08

and a certain lawyer have stirred up the

19:10

banks and papers against us.

19:14

When she was arrested, the bank's accounting

19:16

books were missing.

19:17

She claimed that someone had stolen them.

19:21

Her trial began on April 20, 1881.

19:25

The trial was covered all over the United States.

19:28

So Boston in particular was widely

19:30

covered. But newspapers all over the United States

19:32

covered the case. It was considered quite a

19:35

sensational and

19:38

interesting trial, the fact that a woman

19:41

had to come up with a scheme like that. There

19:43

are many trials of men who

19:46

defrauded people out of money in the 19th century. But

19:48

this is the first high-profile case of a woman

19:50

who had done something like that.

19:54

So for a woman to commit a crime

19:56

of any kind needed

19:58

some special action. explanation.

20:01

It wasn't seen as something that a woman would

20:03

normally do. Reporters

20:06

tried to figure out what kind of woman

20:08

could do something like this. They

20:11

looked into the details of her marriages, debating

20:13

whether she'd been married two or three times.

20:17

They printed rumors that she'd been married to two

20:19

men at the same time.

20:20

They really focused a lot on what

20:23

they saw as a depraved sexual

20:25

character. She had three husbands. Having

20:28

one or two divorces was a very

20:30

unusual thing for women in the 19th century.

20:34

So that was something that later

20:37

was brought up as an example of Sarah Hyle

20:39

being a,

20:41

a moral woman. Rather

20:43

than just let her be somebody that built

20:45

these women out of money, what they

20:47

did was they spent days

20:50

publishing stories about how she was

20:52

ugly, you know,

20:54

how she couldn't put two

20:56

cohesive words together to make a sentence, how

21:00

she had deplorable manners,

21:02

you know, and they just went after her and they just

21:05

shamed her and shamed her and

21:07

were relentless.

21:09

And so it was difficult for anybody to feel

21:11

much compassion for

21:13

her.

21:14

The newspaper was I guess

21:17

what we would call the social media of the

21:19

time.

21:21

How much money did she

21:23

end up getting from the scam? It

21:26

was at least $250,000, which

21:28

would be the equivalent of many millions of dollars today.

21:32

But because Sarah Hyle was not keeping careful books, it

21:34

could have been much more.

21:36

There is speculation that she defrauded

21:38

as many as 800 people out of about a

21:40

half a million dollars. And in today's dollars, that

21:43

would equate to about 13 million.

21:47

During the trial, the prosecution

21:49

called on Francis Miller, a Quaker who used to live in

21:51

Alexandria. He

21:55

testified that they had never established

21:57

a charitable fund for a woman's bank.

22:00

A former Ladies' Deposit customer testified

22:03

that when she tried to withdraw her interest, Sarah

22:06

Howe told her that she would have the money

22:08

for her later that week.

22:10

But when she returned,

22:11

the bank refused to let her in.

22:15

On April 25,

22:19

1881, Sarah Howe was found guilty of obtaining money

22:21

by false pretenses. And

22:24

what was her sentence?

22:25

She was sentenced

22:27

to three years in prison, which

22:30

seems a fairly light sentence for defrauding

22:33

people of such a large

22:35

amount of money.

22:37

After three years in prison, Sarah

22:40

Howe was released.

22:43

And then, she opened a new bank.

22:51

We'll be right back.

23:06

When Sarah Howe was released from prison

23:08

in 1884, she opened

23:10

a new bank in Boston. Quite

23:13

surprisingly, she set up another one of these Ponzi

23:15

scheme banks. And she did this for about

23:18

a year before the authorities caught

23:20

on to it.

23:21

It seems incredible that in the

23:23

same city where she had committed

23:26

this first fraud, and it was so highly publicized

23:28

that she could get away with it again. Partly,

23:31

there were some women who had invested in the first

23:34

bank who didn't lose money and who still had

23:36

faith in her. But also, in

23:38

a city like Boston in the

23:40

1880s, every year there were hundreds of thousands of

23:42

immigrants coming from all over the world, many

23:45

from Ireland. So there would have been, three

23:47

years after the first fraud, there would have been a

23:49

lot of new people who would not even

23:51

have known about the first fraud

23:54

and who saw this as just a great investment

23:56

opportunity.

23:59

The second bank was discovered. She

24:02

got out of Boston before anyone could press

24:04

charges. She moved

24:06

to Chicago, and she opened a third

24:08

bank called the Ladies' Provident Aid.

24:13

When newspapers discovered her, she

24:15

went back to Boston. She

24:17

was arrested again on December 8, 1888. Was

24:23

it common for people in the late

24:25

1800s who were doing these types of financial

24:27

scams to be caught?

24:30

When financial scams unraveled,

24:34

you could evade justice fairly easily

24:37

if you got out of town before the

24:39

police arrested you. So

24:42

I mean, part of the reason that Sarah Hye was able to get

24:45

away with this or other frauds were able to get away with

24:47

this is there was no fingerprinting.

24:49

There was no good form of criminal identification.

24:52

So you could change your name. You could change your

24:54

identity. You could move from one town to another.

24:58

And operate a very similar kind of scheme.

25:00

And it was very difficult for the

25:02

police to share information about these crimes

25:04

from city to city.

25:06

Why do you think she was successful so many

25:09

times? I

25:11

think there were a lot of Americans who didn't

25:14

understand

25:16

business principles very much. And

25:18

I think there were a lot of people

25:21

who were desperate to make money. And

25:23

it seemed like a good thing to them.

25:25

And there were very few opportunities for women to make

25:28

very good money in the 19th century.

25:31

So this seemed to be something that was being

25:33

done by a woman to benefit other women.

25:36

It was a very well executed

25:39

affinity fraud. It was very well executed

25:42

in that

25:43

she so closely identified

25:47

with her target market. These

25:49

women that weren't married

25:52

were thought to be not

25:55

necessarily in the best social situations

25:58

and everything.

26:00

And because she identified so closely

26:03

with them, she

26:05

knew exactly how they thought

26:07

and what they were looking for, and

26:10

she manipulated that to her advantage

26:13

to the tune of $500,000 over less than a year. It was carefully

26:18

orchestrated.

26:21

She knew exactly what she was doing.

26:23

The

26:24

problem is she never thought

26:26

the money would run out.

26:30

And she thought that she had protected herself

26:32

because she had cloistered these women

26:34

away from men, and men are

26:37

the ones that, you know, at the time had

26:39

the business acumen to figure

26:42

out that this was never going to work.

26:46

These things still happen. In 2008,

26:49

Bernie Madoff was arrested

26:51

for defrauding investors out of an estimated $17

26:54

to $20 billion in what's been

26:58

called the largest Ponzi scheme in

27:00

history.

27:02

A

27:02

few years ago, a woman named Johanna

27:04

Garcia started a company that

27:07

promised investors a 10% return on

27:09

their money in a year. Investments

27:12

were supposedly loaned to small businesses who

27:15

needed startup money. Once

27:17

the businesses were doing well, they'd pay

27:19

back the loan with interest, which

27:21

would go back to the investor.

27:24

This also turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

27:27

In 2021, she was charged with defrauding

27:30

investors out of nearly $200 million.

27:35

Before her arrest, she described herself

27:37

as Mother Teresa because of how

27:40

many small businesses she had helped.

27:47

After her third bank was shut down, Sarah

27:50

Howe returned to fortune telling. She

27:52

died in 1892 in Boston.

27:56

The New York Times reported in her obituary that

27:58

she died penniless. renting a room

28:00

in a boarding house. Did

28:03

she ever own up to the fraud? No.

28:06

No. In

28:08

fact, when she was living in the

28:10

boarding house and living on a government subsidy,

28:13

you know, people periodically would track

28:15

her down to try to talk to her about the ladies'

28:18

deposit, and to her dying

28:20

day, she maintained that it wasn't

28:22

her, that it was her husband's brother's

28:24

wife that did that.

28:28

At one point, Sarah Howe told

28:30

the Boston Globe, There's

28:33

another Sarah Howe mixed up in this matter, and

28:35

if I was allowed to tell you all I know, I would

28:38

soon clear myself.

28:40

We didn't use the word con at the time,

28:42

but she was nothing more than a con artist.

28:45

She went and found jobs that she was no

28:47

more prepared to do than a man in the world, and

28:49

nobody has ever given any rhyme or reason

28:51

on why she would do it. She

28:53

just was a con and would try

28:56

it all, and it was always, you know, trying to get

28:58

rich.

29:00

She must have had a lot of confidence. Well,

29:03

you know, fraudsters do. One

29:05

of the traits of a fraudster is that they can do

29:07

no wrong, and they're the smartest person in

29:09

the room.

29:12

What she did was she went out and she just

29:15

sold a story.

29:24

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29:32

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30:23

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.