Cheat!

Greg Priore was thrilled to be named the head archivist and manager of the special collections room at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’d been trained in archives management and had an appreciation for the rare books he was now expected to protect. 25 years after Priore’s appointment to the role, the library decided to do an inventory of their special collection. That’s when th...

Since we aired this episode in November 2021, the story has progressed, and Alzo will provide an update on the options injured Black players now have to get fair compensation from the NFL. The NFL’s 2013 class-action settlement with retired players over claims that the League concealed a connection between game-related hits to the head and long-term cognitive damage was the first of its kind in sp...

Boxing. It's one of the most popular sports in the world, watched by millions of people both at ringside and on television. But have you ever stopped to wonder who is putting together the fights in the first place. This week on Cheat, we’re going to the '70s, to the golden age of boxing—where historical fights like Rumble in the Jungle and Thrilla in Manilla are being fought. At the centre of it a...

H.G. “Hache” Carrillo was unlike any professor that Paula Mejía had experienced in college. An acclaimed author who taught creative writing, Professor Carrillo was charismatic, exacting, and generous. He engaged with questions of belonging and identity in his work—often examining his Afro-Cuban heritage.  When he passed away in the spring of 2020, his loss was mourned greatly. Especially by his fo...

Layton Davies and George Powell take a drive to Herefordshire in the UK one June day in 2015. They’re going to walk around a field…with their metal detectors. They’re detectorists and they plan to spend the day searching the ground for any goods. To their surprise, they strike on literal gold. They found treasure.  And now they’ve got to figure out what they’re going to do with it because, as the...

We’ve all watched reality tv shows like Survivor and thought…”I could do that”. But have you ever wondered how the sausage is made? Who these people are coming up with these crazy ideas in the first place? And how they find the people willing to put themselves in these ridiculous situations? In the early 2000s one student had an idea for the next big reality show. He promised his contestants a lif...

Nick had been modding, or modifying, games like Halo since he was 8 years old. By the time he was in his early 20s, he could turn his hacking skills to pretty much anything. When the latest FIFA game came out, Nick teamed up with four guys he met online and together they took millions from EA Sports. They thought they wouldn’t get in trouble with the law because they tried to do everything by the...

For families seeking to adopt, Tara Lee’s Always Hope Pregnancy and Education Center was an ideal option. Not only did Tara organize matches between prospective families and birth mothers quickly, but she also prioritized providing emotional and financial support for the birth moms. Sure, Tara was a bit disorganized. And hard to track down. But she was busy organizing adoptions and tending to her...

For families seeking to adopt, Tara Lee’s Always Hope Pregnancy and Education Center was an ideal option. Not only did Tara organize matches between prospective families and birth mothers quickly, but she also prioritized providing emotional and financial support for the birth moms. Sure, Tara was a bit disorganized. And hard to track down. But she was busy organizing adoptions and tending to her...

We wanted to share a show which we think you’ll want to listen to. Power: Don King. In a sport famed for money and excess, what does it take to get to the top...and stay there? Rising from a life of hardship and crime, Don King became the most successful boxing promoter the sport has ever seen—and the first Black man to do so. He is his own American Dream. His flamboyant appearance and commanding...

Robert Courtney is a pharmacist who was not what he seemed. Putting his community members’ lives at risk instead of ensuring his clients were getting the medicine they needed. A Kansas City staple: the local pharmacist at Research Medical Tower, he spent his days behind the counter, distributing medication, or in the backroom where he mixed chemotherapy IVs to deliver to doctors who have patients...

In 2007, a customer walked into a copy shop to get over 700 pages of information copied onto CDs. The shop assistant, a massive Formula 1 fan, recognised the Ferrari logo on the documents and took a closer peak. It was page after page of diagrams and highly confidential notes on Ferrari’s F1 car.  But the customer who brought it in was married to McLaren’s Chief Designer - one of Ferrari’s biggest...

In 2002, Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois—the first Democrat to hold the seat in thirty years. He entered office with a progressive agenda and a promise to clean up the wide-spread corruption that had plagued Illinois' government. But all of that changed with the 2008 presidential election, when Blagojevich saw an opportunity to capitalize on…for his own gain. A Somethin’ Else prod...

Is it cheating if it is state sanctioned? It’s the late 20th century and the UK is going through a period of civil unrest, there are protests and demonstrations every week. In an effort to control the protests, British police hatch a secret undercover operation…one that would take them behind the picket lines and into the heart (or hearts) of many activist groups. A Somethin' Else Production. Lear...

When biographer Lee Israel’s career falls apart, she tries desperately to find a way to support herself. No one wants to work with her, she’s behind on rent, and her beloved cat needs urgent medical attention. With less than $40 dollars in her pocket, she notices that there's demand for old letters from deceased authors. So, she buys a bunch of typewriters and starts forging her own. In this episo...

In 2003 news spread of a government backed raid on a small laboratory near the San Francisco airport. The lab was called BALCO. As two journalists at the local paper started to dig deeper they began to realise this raid would uncover secrets that would change the face of sport forever. What they didn’t realise however was how this story would test their own resolve and put their freedom at risk. A...

In 2007, two Iowa-born brothers launched an artisanal chocolate company, Mast Brothers, out of an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—the hipster heart of the growing farm-to-table movement. Mast quickly became a well-known operation, partly because their focus was on creating quality chocolate that only required two ingredients: cocoa beans and sugar. And these speciality bars—hand wrapped in exp...

The Kabbalah Centre took off when Madonna changed her name to Esther and joined their ranks. Soon enough, Ashton Kutcher, Victoria Beckham and many other celebrities were wearing the Kabbalah Centre’s signature red string bracelet. But, the centre’s teachings were unconventional. They claimed that you could simply scan the words of the Zohar, even if you didn’t understand the Aramaic text, and rea...

In the US, around 700,000 gay, lesbian or bisexual people have received some form of conversion therapy. In the UK, thousands of LGBTQIA+ people have been offered or are undergoing it. But why and how do so many people end up going through this experience? And paying for it. Chaim Levin was a 13 year old Jewish boy from an orthodox background the moment he realised he was gay. He was stood in a sy...

On the outside Helen Naylor had a pretty standard childhood. She had a father, a mother and roof over her head. But all was not as it seemed. In 2016, 2 years after her mother’s death, Helen discovered her diaries. And in those diaries lay not only the truth about her mother’s medical conditions. But also the truth about Helen’s upbringing. A Somethin’ Else Production. Learn more about your ad cho...

Towards the end of 2008, hundreds of people across the United States were falling ill with salmonella poisoning. The outbreak was eventually traced back to one company: The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). But this wasn’t your average case of corporate misconduct. In fact, federal investigations into PCA revealed a much more sinister (and sickening) story.  A Somethin’ Else Production. Learn m...

Hey folks, happy holidays! We're taking a week off. We'll be back next Tuesday with another episode for you. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you.  It could be a specific cheat you want to hear about or you might just want to say hi! Email cheat@somethinelse.com A Somethin' Else production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When $242 million dollars went missing from a bank in Dubai and the bank manager swore that something supernatural was going on, journalist Brigitte Scheffer was intrigued. She followed the story in disbelief as the bank manager pointed the blame at one man, Foutanga Sissoko. Sissoko had a reputation for splashing millions of dollars like it was nothing - he would buy cars as gifts and on Thursday...

Bernard Tapie was a star in France. He had his own TV show ‘Ambition’. He was a brilliant business man. And his soccer team, Marseille, were dominating the French national league, year after year. Everything Tapie touched turned to gold. That was until 1993, when his win at all cost mentality got the better of him. And he made a decision that would eventually tarnish the glory of his players, his...

Ex-FBI officer Allen Ezell had been investigating the trade in fake educational qualifications for decades. But when he got tipped off about a so-called degree mill operating out of Pakistan, he couldn’t believe the scale of it.  The operation was making hundreds of millions of dollars. Their degrees were bought by doctors, lawyers, pilots—and even politicians. And the whole scam was operating in...