The Fraud Influencers: How Internet Fame Can Lead to Prison



Mixing fraud and fame is a bad idea. In this episode we discuss two scammers who inexplicably thought they could be both con men and social media influencers at the same time. Predictably, both found prison in addition to internet fame.

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Theodore Robert Wright III went from cell phone case kiosks as a teenager to crashing airplanes for fun and profit as an adult and took the bold move of filming himself after (intentionally) crashing a plane into the Gulf of Mexico and trying to pitch the accident to the cell phone case company to create a “Red Bull moment.” If you like our content, please become a patron to get all our episodes AD-FREE.

It's all very strange, and well detailed in the article written by Katy Vine for the Texas Monthly about our man Theodore, which details how his scheme to set a private jet on fire at the Athens, Texas municipal airport got Theodore in the sights of ATF agent Jim Reed, and ultimately landed him in the slammer. 1

We also discuss whether ostriches should be shoes, how it's totally fine to get a manicure as a man if she thinks you're hot already, how to bum money from a sultan for the CIA and then instantly lose it because you are bad with account numbers, and last but not least, how getting your secretary pregnant is a pretty good way to get divorced and thus lose your private flying hobby.

Lastly, we cover the case of a guy who decided to be a fake Saudi prince. While it's not technically illegal to be an imaginary persona on Instagram, it is illegal to impersonate a diplomat apparently. And certainly illegal to use that persona to defraud foolish business partners out of about 8 million dollars. It turns out that Prince Khalid al-Saud from Instagram is really not Prince Khalid al-Saud, but rather Anthony Gignac from Michigan.

In this part of the episodes we discuss whether a dog needs a grill, which is cooler out of gold beheading swords or gold stoning stones, and how botox may or may not give your camel an unfair advantage in the camel show. 2, 3


1. Katy Vine, The Wildest Insurance Fraud Case Texas has Ever Seen, Texas Monthly, September 2020. 

2. Ian Lecklitner, Braces For Dogs Aren't as Dicey as They Seem, Mel Magazine, 2020. 

3. Mohammed Tawfeeq and Jack Guy, Camels Ejected from Beauty Contest Over Botox Use and Other 'Tampering', CNN, December 2021. 

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