PRETEND
by Creative Babble, LLC
Latest episode
The Hypnotist, Part 1 (Revisited)
The Hypnotist, Part 1 (Revisited)
About this podcast
PRETEND is an investigative true crime podcast about real people who lie for a living — con artists, scammers, and the victims caught in their web.
Hosted by journalist Javier Leiva, PRETEND exposes the human psychology behind deception and fraud. Each episode follows a real case of manipulation — from financial scams and Ponzi schemes to digital hoaxes and emotional cons
PRETEND explains how and why deception works without shaming victims, combining ethical journalism with cinematic storytelling.
Featured in lists of the best podcasts about con artists and scams, PRETEND investigates crimes of persuasion, trust, and betrayal. New episodes drop regularly with stories that reveal how manipulation shapes modern life, both online and off.
PRETEND is produced by Creative Babble, LLC.
© 2026 Creative Babble LLC
[CLAIM:B6BT3XC4]
Episodes
The newest 50 of 331 episodes
- The Hypnotist, Part 1 (Revisited) · 52 minWhen I was eight months old, I pulled a rice cooker full of boiling water and oil off the kitchen counter, and it spilled down the left side of my body. I still have the…
- The Babalawo - Secrets of Santeria Revisited · 48 minGrowing up Catholic in Miami, I heard all kinds of stories about Santeria. People talked about dead chickens on doorsteps, curses, and spirits taking over people’s bodies. Even…
- The Stalker: Fit to Stand Trial? Part 24 · 27 min · Season 12 Episode 24According to police, Shelbey Fernandez ran a stalking campaign for years. She used burner numbers, fake accounts and fake 911 calls. She asked Google how detectives trace a…
- The Prophet: A Word of Faith Fellowship Minister Back in Court, 13 Years Later · 40 min · Season 3 Episode 12A 19-year-old says members of his church held him down, choked him, and beat him for two hours, trying to cast out what they called his “homosexual demons.” That was in 2013…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 10 · 56 min · Season 27 Episode 10When Gypsy Rose Blanchard was a little girl, the thing that comforted her most was her mother's touch. In the final episode of The Gypsy Rose Obsession, I ask Gypsy when that…
- Nobody Should Believe Me: The Case of Dr. John Cox · 44 min · Season 27This week I'm handing the feed over to Andrea Dunlop and her show, Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea has spent years covering medical child abuse, and she came to the subject…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 9 · 37 min · Season 27 Episode 9When Gypsy Rose Blanchard announced she was pregnant, the internet opened an investigation. The woman who spent her childhood trapped inside her mother's medical lies was now…
- BONUS: How Doctors Diagnose Medical Child Abuse · 35 min · Season 27How does a doctor actually decide that a parent is making their child sick? Dr. John Melville is a child abuse pediatrician, president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, and one of…
- BONUS: Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Partner Ken Urker Has Died · 15 min · Season 27Ken Urker, Gypsy Rose Blanchard's partner and the father of their daughter, Aurora, died on October 1, 2026, his 34th birthday. The sheriff is still investigating, and no…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 8 · 40 min · Season 27 Episode 8Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening. For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 7 · 43 min · Season 27 Episode 7"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else." That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6 · 41 min · Season 27 Episode 6There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5 · 43 min · Season 27 Episode 5According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4 · 40 min · Season 27 Episode 4According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were…
- The Stalker: Shelbey Fernandez Speaks, Part 23 · 25 min · Season 12 Episode 26It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 3 · 37 min · Season 27 Episode 3Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 2 · 42 min · Season 27 Episode 2Her critics say Gypsy Rose Blanchard can't keep her story straight. So I sat down with her for almost three hours and asked about all of it. The pills through the feeding tube…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 1 · 36 min · Season 27 Episode 1Gypsy Rose Blanchard is the most beloved convicted murderer in America. Half the country sees a victim. The other half thinks she conned everyone, including her mother. I spent…
- The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Official Trailer · 3 min · Season 27Gypsy Rose Blanchard is America's most beloved convicted murderer. The media told us she spent 23 years in a wheelchair, with a feeding tube, a breathing machine, and a…
- The Stalker: Police Say They Found Who Was Sending the Messages, Part 22 · 42 min · Season 12 Episode 25For almost five years, the Fernandez family told me their doctor's husband was terrorizing them. Threatening messages, unpaid pizza deliveries, police at the door for crimes that…
- He Turned His Own Father In. Then Built a Career Catching Con Artists. · 32 min · Season 26 Episode 10William Ruzich's father stole his identity while he was deployed in Afghanistan. He came home from war at 21 to find bills, liens, and creditors in his own name. He turned his…
- How Edward Smog Scammed a Retired Nurse Out of $150K · 37 min · Season 26 Episode 9My friend Joe sells real estate. He called me about one of his clients, a retired nurse who was selling her house, because something about her story wasn't sitting right with…
- Chain of Command: An Inside Man Speaks · 28 min · Season 26 Episode 8Darnell Emanuel spent years inside Rony Denis's inner circle at the House of Prayer Christian Church. His name is on documents. His credit was used to buy houses he never lived…
- The Greatest Footballer Who Never Played Revisited · 33 min · Season 26We've covered a lot of PRETENDers on this show. But the guy in this one might take the prize. Carlos Henrique Raposo, better known as Kaiser, fooled the entire professional…
- Javier Stops by the Hot Mess Happy Hour Podcast 🍸 · 26 min · Season 26This week, Javier stops by the Hot Mess Happy Hour Podcast and it didn't disappoint. It was a hot mess! About Hot Mess Happy Hour: Are you always running late? Do you leave…
- Chain of Command part 7 · 44 min · Season 26 Episode 7Federal prosecutors say the man known as Rony Denis isn't Rony Denis at all. The arrest finally came in the fall of 2025. Three years after the FBI raids. But the church is…
- Chain of Command part 6 · 33 min · Season 26 Episode 6In Part 6, the FBI comes knocking. Rony Denis and his top associates allegedly defrauded the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and military veterans out of more than $23.5…
- Chain of Command part 5 · 30 min · Season 26 Episode 5Rony Denis wasn't just the spiritual leader at the House of Prayer Christian Church... He was their god. In Part 5, former members start connecting the dots on how Rony Denis…
- The Lottery Curse with Murder: True Crime Stories · 5 minI teamed up with Carter Roy for a special guest collaboration on Murder: True Crime Stories and this one is something else. For the full episode, follow Murder: True Crime…
- Chain of Command part 4 · 43 min · Season 26 Episode 4Note: This episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and psychological manipulation. It started with a revolt. Thirty ministers walked out of NTCC mid-service and…
- Chain of Command part 3 · 34 min · Season 26 Episode 3In part three of Chain of Command, we hear from those who grew up in the New Testament Christian Churches of America. From Victor Johanson, a former Army soldier who confirms on…
- Chain of Command part 2 · 32 min · Season 26 Episode 2Part one was about control. Part two is about the money. Behind the soul-winning and the sermons and the bylaws, the New Testament Christian Churches of America runs a very…
- Chain of Command part 1 · 39 min · Season 26 Episode 1In 1996, Sarah DeJonghe was a 20-year-old Navy Seabee stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Two guys in uniform approached her on base and invited her to church. She said no. They came…
- Operation Cockblock Revisited · 55 min · Season 25 Episode 16A Colorado businessman with a criminal record, no credit, and a gift for charm somehow convinced dozens of women to finance his cars, his home, and his lifestyle. When they…
- The Greatest Podcast Episodes Ever Made (Bonus) · 46 min · Season 25 Episode 15Somebody went through hundreds of Reddit comments asking what the greatest podcast episode of all time is, then actually listened to all of them. That somebody is Ivy, the…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 6: The MAGA Granny · 48 min · Season 25 Episode 14On January 6th, 2021, Pam Hemphill followed the Proud Boys to the Capitol, got trampled by the mob, was carried out by a police officer named Joe, and recorded every minute of…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 5 · 29 min · Season 25 Episode 13My cousin spent 23 years in an Illinois prison for a crime she says she didn't know she was committing. She was 33 when a judge handed down a 60-year sentence. She would have…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 4 · 26 min · Season 25 Episode 12Content Warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of nursing home neglect, including accounts of residents found in unsanitary conditions. Listener discretion is…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 3 · 36 min · Season 25 Episode 11You know that little bottle of 5-Hour Energy sitting on the counter of almost every gas station in America? Someone was faking it. Millions of bottles, mixed by hand in a filthy…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 2 · 41 min · Season 25 Episode 10Twelve days. That’s how long David Gentile spent in federal prison for a $1.8 billion fraud that wiped out the retirement savings of 17,000 people. On Thanksgiving 2025…
- I Beg Your Pardon part 1 · 39 min · Season 25 Episode 9Jerry Bush was a plumber from Virginia with fourteen employees, a wife battling cancer, and a business his father built from nothing. When a big construction job left him waiting…
- Who's Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey Revisited · 43 min · Season 25 Episode 8CONTENT WARNING: Graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. Who’s Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey — Revisited A lot of people ask: where should I start if I just discovered…
- Update on “The Hand That Held Me” · 1 min · Season 25I want to share a quick update about the "Hand That Held Me" series. Due to some recent developments, I’ve made the decision to postpone the release. I know many of you were…
- The Pests part 3 & 4 Revisited · 1 h 21 min · Season 25 Episode 7We conclude one of the most disturbing series ever covered on this podcast. Here are parts 3 and 4 of the Pests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
- The Pests part 1 & 2 Revisited · 1 h 3 min · Season 25 Episode 6This week, we're revisiting one of the most terrifying series ever produced for PRETEND. It's about a gang-stalking internet group known as The Pests. Content Advisory: This…
- State of Corruption: The School That Didn't Exist · 40 min · Season 25 Episode 5Look, I'm not anti-private school. You want your kid to learn in an environment that matches your beliefs? Cool. To each their own. But should your neighbors be paying for it?…
- Introducing Everything They Missed · 35 min · Season 25Hey guys, it's Javier here with a new recommendation! I've come across a true crime podcast that I just had to share with you all. It's called 'Everything They Missed' and it's…
- How to Spot a Fake ICE Agent · 33 min · Season 25 Episode 4Criminals have been impersonating ICE agents, using fake badges to rape, rob, kidnap, and terrorize communities across America. These imposters have conducted workplace raids…
- Listener Reaction: Didn't See It Coming Part 3 · 17 min · Season 25Patreon supporter Kenito Wills joins Javier to break down the finale of the "Didn't See It Coming" series. They talk through Susanne Wilson calling off the reading at the last…
- Didn't See It Coming (Part 3) · 43 min · Season 25 Episode 3The sting is set. The bait is in place. Six skeptics are logged into a Zoom call, pretending to be grieving siblings. They've paid $1,400 for a private reading with a medium…
