scams & hoaxes

A decade-long McDonald’s Monopoly Scam turns “random winners” into a pattern, and a single stolen game piece into a nationwide FBI operation with a name that sounds like a pub quiz answer.

A quiz show champion reaches the million-pound question just as suspicious coughs ignite one of Britain’s biggest TV scandals. We revisit the case of Charles Ingram to explore the evidence, the media frenzy, and the courtroom battle that followed.

A luxury music festival collapses spectacularly into chaos, exposing lies, financial fraud, and social media delusion. We revisit how Fyre Festival became the internet’s most infamous modern cautionary tale.

A reality show convinces contestants they’ve been launched into space, pulling off the most audacious hoax in British TV history. We explore how producers engineered the illusion—and why the participants believed it.

A viral campaign promises to stop Joseph Kony but collapses under scandal and backlash. We examine how Kony 2012 captivated the world—and why it ultimately failed to create real change.

In this episode of the Compendium, we're re-exploring the wild rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal that rocked Silicon Valley. Discover how Holmes, decieved investors with false promises and turned Theranos into a culture of se...

In this episode of the Compendium, we diving back into the audacious tale where eight Belgian nuns orchestrate an unlikely escape from a life of stringent spiritual commitments to chase a dream of freedom in the sun-drenched South of France.

An exploration of the 1973 Acali Experiment, where Santiago Genovés's attempt to study human aggression on a raft led to unexpected insights into cooperation and peace.

This episode explores the true story of Stella Liebeck's lawsuit against McDonald's, and the misconceptions surrounding the case and within the broader context of American tort reform and corporate influence.​

In this episode of The Compendium, we’re unpacking the Balloon Boy Hoax, the bizarre moment in 2009 when the world was glued to their screens, watching a silver helium balloon soar across the Colorado sky—supposedly with 6-year-old Falcon Heene trapp...