White Collars, Red Hands

Anglo Irish Bank had one motto: if you can’t afford it, lend it anyway. With Sean FitzPatrick at the helm, the bank inflated Ireland’s boom and then helped detonate its bust. After billions vanished and investigators uncovered hidden loans, the whole thing unraveled into a courtroom saga that become one of the longest in Irish history.

Join us as we unpack the rise and fall of Anglo Irish, and how one banker helped sink a nation.

On the season 20 finale we discuss Texas oil tycoon T. Cullen Davis who was once the richest man in the state until his life exploded into a double murder case, a bitter divorce, and a dramatic courtroom drama. After his stepdaughter and his ex-wife’s boyfriend were killed, Priscilla Davis identified Cullen as the gunman, but with immense wealth and a powerhouse legal team, he walked free not once, but twice.

While the financial crisis was unfolding and ruining the economies of the world, China had a little more to contend with. In 2008 babies began to contract kidney stones, and all of them were fed with the same baby formula produced by Sanlu Group. Join us this week as we discuss how milk in China became contaminated, how it affected the world's dairy trade, and how it led to the deaths of multiple people.

This week we discuss Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli ye Gon, who operated one of the largest drug manufacturing plants in Mexico. The only problem is that the drugs he was manufacturing were less than legal. Join us on the journey that pseudoephedrine took from China, to Mexico, to the meth pipes of America all transported in Zhenli's back seat

This week we discuss master art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who created paintings to fill the holes of lost work by great artists. Holes that had largely been left after the Nazis destroyed many pieces of artwork during WWII. Find out if he was a genius, or just an egotist, on this week's episode.

This week we discuss one of the craziest stock market manipulations in history. This time we travel to India where Harshad Mehta is the king of the world in the early 90's, and he is trading at ridiculous volumes and has a stranglehold on the market. But his methods are not just unconventional, they're illegal. Listen to discover how it all unfolded.

This week we discuss Bill Mastro, who helped build the multi-million dollar industry of sports memorabilia trading with his auction site Mastro Auctions. However, he also helped to build the massive corruption that lurked behind these sites by cheating the buyers and hawking fake merchandise before eventually striking out.

This week we give you vignettes of healthcare fraud that was uncovered in a sweeping shift by the DOJ to root out these kinds of scams earlier this year. Join as as we discuss unnecessary skin grafts, improper billing codes and so many more things that I swear are more interesting than they sound.

This week we dive into the backstory of one of the lesser talked about US presidents Warren G Harding. We talk about his humble beginnings in journalism, his rise to the presidency, and the scandals that left his legacy tarnished including what was widely considered the worst US political corruption scandal... that is until Richard Nixon set the bar even higher.

This week we discuss the madam at the center of a prostitution ring that serviced the most powerful men of Washington D.C. Learn Jean Palfrey's story about how she built an escort service that prided itself on fulfilling fantasies, and how she was maybe unfairly targeted when the ivory tower dwellers her service catered to got jumpy.