Dubious
Sandra and Tyler
1 Creator
1 Creator
Good guys are boring, villains are fascinating! From bizarre events, wars, assassinations and celebrity deaths to cyberattacks, swindlers and spy stories - we cover it all and more, sprinkling a bit of true crime flavor and funny commentary on top.
We bring a fresh take on suspicious events – past and current - and the people who caused them. Because history is stranger than fiction! New episodes come every Wednesday, and ad-free episodes are available to our patrons.
If you’re looking for gripping stories about devious people and questionable happenings, you’re in the right place!
Stay Dubious,
Sandra and Tyler
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Top 10 Dubious Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Dubious episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Dubious for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Dubious episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
05/05/22 • 47 min
How Vladimir Putin acquires his luxuries, and how they're hidden from the world.
Officially, Vladimir Putin is not a rich man. On paper, he owns the following: an 800 square foot apartment, a trailer, two cars and a modest salary of $140,000 a year. In reality, he is one of the richest men on Earth. If you like our content, become a patron to get our exclusive premium episodes, plus our public episodes ad-free.
After the intro, Sandra has a few things to say to Justice Samuel Alito regarding the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion about overturning Roe vs Wade. Then we move into Putin’s wealth: he also has yachts, mansions, gold toilets and expensive watches. 1
There's also the palace on the Black Sea coast that is still under construction, revealed to the world in drone footage by Alexei Navalny before his imprisonment. It features a hockey rink, a vineyard on the grounds of the adjacent property, its own border checkpoint, its own self-enforced no-fly zone, a casino, and of course a hookah bar with a stripper pole and an ancient Greek Orthodox church moved to the site brick by brick. FSB are the title holders. 2
Western billionaires use the same methods as oligarchs to hide their wealth from taxation. We discuss a couple of good examples, for instance the case of Suleiman Kerimov, who owned several Russian banks and also the country's largest gold mining company, Polyus Gold. Kerimov's wealth was hidden behind a Swiss accountant who even used his town's local tattoo artist to send wire transfers between shell companies, to the tune of about $700 million dollars. Most of Suleiman’s wealth came from his investment in Gazprom, a Russian gas company, to the tune of about $21 billion. 3
There's also the case of a few Harvard economics professors who tried to rip off the Russian banking system by taking over the clearing bank for the entire Russian economy with a $400,000 dollar loan from a dentist uncle in Idaho. It all ended in hurt feelings, fraud charges, and tears. But they did gain money in the end by investing in Gazprom. 4.
We also discuss some of Sandra's personal stories about Lada cars, Boris Berezovsky, loans for shares during Yeltsin's admin, and the scam auctions which set all of this in motion from her home country of Romania back when the Soviet party fell apart and Nancy Pelosi’s historic visit to Kyiv, meeting Volodymyr Zelensky.
Also included: Kursk, Ozero dachas, Yeltsin, Roman Abramovich, novichok, Scarface, gold toilets, Trump, KGB, Alina Kabayeva, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, Luiza Rozova, Sergei Roldugin, Boris Rotenberg, Svetlana Krivonogikh, Timchenko, Kolbin, Kovalchuk, Panama & Pandora Papers, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
1. Mike McIntire. Why Tracking Putin’s Wealth Is So Difficult. The New York Times. April 2022. ⇤
2. Inside 'Putin's Palace'. Radio Free Europe. January 2021. ⇤
3. James Oliver, Nassos Stylianou and Steve Swann. Hidden Wealth of One of Putin’s 'Inner Circle' Revealed. BBC. April 2022. ⇤
4. David McClintick. How Harvard Lost Russia. Institutional Investor. January 2006. ⇤
1 Listener
Introducing Dubious
Dubious
03/03/22 • 3 min
Good guys are boring, villains are fascinating!
From bizarre events, assassinations and celebrity deaths to cyberattacks, swindlers and spy stories - we cover it all and more, sprinkling a bit of true crime flavor and funny commentary on top.
Yours dubiously,
Sandra and Neal
1 Listener
04/20/23 • 35 min
Since we covered the SCOTUS, we also looked at the local judiciary around the U.S. Spoiler alert: not good. A judge from Arkansas named Mike Maggio posted himself from the bench to prison by revealing the details of a sealed adoption by Charlize Theron.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/DUBIOUS today to get 10% off your first month of therapy.
Mike Maggio even took bribes from a nursing home corporation to reduce negligence / wrongful death judgments against the company and pinned all of this stuff on himself by posting about it on a college football forum. Maggio’s flagrant abuse of the law was uncovered by Matt Campbell of Blue Hog Report, a great example of a blog for any would-be local issues journalist. 1
As it turns out, Maggio may be the norm rather than the exception. A study of judge misconduct nationwide found approximately 16-20% of them have had some sort of reprimand, but 90% remained in office after being punished. Of those nefarious judges, 2/3 were punished anonymously so that possible victims of those judges can't even pinpoint their names. 2
Sandra talks about her time volunteering for a Senate campaign for Beto O'Rourke in Texas and we close up by recommending that people pay a little more attention to their local offices and local issues. You can do a lot more with a few friends and neighbors in your hometown than the spectacle of a presidential election can do for you. All of this brought to mind the all-time great political speech from Jesse Jackson during the 1984 campaign. "Rocks, just layin' around..." 3
1. Matt Campbell. Who Have You Wronged, Mr. Maggio? Hog Nation Turns Its Angry Eyes To You. (Woo woo wooooo.). Blue Hog Report. March 2014. ⇤
2. Michael Berens and John Shiffman. Thousands of U.S. Judges Who Broke Laws or Oaths Remained on the Bench. Reuters. June 2020. ⇤
3. Jesse Jackson. Rocks Layin' Around Speech. Youtube. October 2020. ⇤
01/17/24 • -1 min
A 25 year old Alabama nursing student disappeared after calling 911 and claiming she was stopping to help a toddler in diapers who was walking alone on Interstate 459.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/DUBIOUS today to get 10% off your first month of therapy. If you like our content, please become a patron to get all our episodes ad-free.
Carlee Russel returned home two days later and claimed she had been kidnapped and had barely managed to escape. She said the toddler was used as bait. If you like our content, please become a patron to get all our episodes ad-free.
Carlee described how a man with “orange hair” emerged from the woods and picked her up and forced her into a vehicle. No, it wasn’t Donald Trump. 1
She said the man then put her into the trailer of a tractor and drove her to an unknown location where he forced her to undress and took photos of her. Carlee also mentioned that the man had a female accomplice who fed her cheese crackers. 2
Police soon realized her story didn’t add up. Carlee admitted she faked her own abduction. Her motives are unclear, but we suspect she was “inspired” by the kidnapping social media craze, a new “Satanic Panic” type of phenomenon which has been spreading like wildfire online, especially on Tik Tok. 3
This new trend, started by right-wing evangelicals, aims to terrify women, and convince them they can be abducted at any moment and sex trafficked. The scope is to distract from real social issues like overturning Roe v Wade, the gun violence epidemic, voting rights etc.
Statistically, a woman in the US is more likely to get hit by lightning than get kidnapped and sex trafficked.
1. Ariana Baio & Andrea Blanco Carlee Russell smiles in mug shot as she’s charged with false police report in kidnap hoax Independent, July 2023 ⇤
2. Tiffanie Drayton ‘We will not be dismayed’: What Carlee Russell’s lie means for other missing Black women Daily Dot, July 2023 ⇤
3. UNODC UNODC report on human trafficking exposes modern form of slavery UNODC, February 2009 ⇤
04/14/22 • 89 min
We discuss Russia's escalating attacks on civilians in Ukraine, and similar tactics used previously in Syria and Chechnya.
Putin has committed crimes against humanity before. With no real repercussions from the West. If you like our content, please subscribe to our premium episodes.
During the Chechen wars, the West was not as outraged as now, because the victims were predominantly Muslim and world leaders at the time still believed Putin was fighting a war “against terror”. It was proved by journalists like Anna Politkovskaya and former FSB officer turned dissident Alexander Litvinenko that was in fact Putin who planned the now infamous Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 as a pretext to start a war with Chechnya. For a more detailed account, listen to our Putin’s Rise to Power – Part 2 premium episode. 1, 2
We discuss verified reports of executions, sexual assault, torture, shelling of children hospitals, maternities, and blocks of flats, as well as other horrors emerging from Bucha, Borodyanka, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Lviv, Irpin and Odessa. The number of civilian casualties just in Mariupol alone is estimated to exceed 20,000. They are rounding up Ukrainian civilians into camps and many people are “disappeared”. They have even killed dogs and their puppies. As Russia regroups to prepare for the Donbas battle, they are giving a new meaning to “scorched earth”. We go through a brief history of war crimes, and we will analyze the current situation, the West’s reaction and what’s coming next: General Alexander Dvornikov aka the Butcher of Syria and the Battle of Donbas. 3
Lviv University is the alma mater of the two lawyers who came up with the legal concepts of prosecutions at Nuremberg for genocide and crimes against humanity. Raphael Lemkin introduced the term ‘genocide’ in international law and Hersch Lauterpacht coined ‘crimes against humanity’ into international law.
Putin is winning in Russia. He’s losing internationally but he’s winning at home, his popularity ratings inside Russia are 83%. On April 11, Putin arrested Vladimir Kara-Murza. The FSB has poisoned kara-Murza twice already. He’s now in prison just Alexei Navalny, not likely to be released soon. A 13 km long Russian convoy is approaching Donbas.
On the international scene Russia has been kicked out of the UN Human rights Council but not from the Security Council. The US is sending $750 M in military aid to Ukraine. Ukraine also has Bayraktar drones from Turkey. Finland and Sweden move closer to NATO membership. 4
1. Patrice Taddonio, What an ‘Unhinged’ Meeting Reveals About Vladimir Putin’s War on Ukraine, PBS, March 2022. ⇤
2. Greg Myre, Russia's Wars in Chechnya Offer a Grim Warning of What Could Be in Ukraine, NPR, March 2022. ⇤
3. Pjotr Sauer, Hundreds of Ukrainians Forcibly Deported to Russia, Say Mariupol Women, The Guardian, April 2022. ⇤
4. Ben Arris, Editor in Chief, BNE Intellinews. ⇤
08/25/22 • 41 min
Known by his millions of followers as the Billionaire Gucci Master, Ramon Abbas started his rags to riches fraudster career in Nigeria, evolving from phishing emails to defrauding international banks and corporations of $350 M.
There are influencers, there are scammers, there are scamfluencers and then there is the godfluencer: Hushpuppi. We're discussing the rise of Ramon from the internet cafes of Lagos, Nigeria to the penthouse suites of the Palazzo Versace in Dubai... and predictably eventually to a US prison. If you like our content, please become a patron to get our two premium episodes every month, as well as our public episodes ad-free.
Hushpuppi and his co-conspirators in various email phishing scams: Samson Oyekunle, Vincent Chibuzo, and Abdul-Rahman Juma, Ghaleb Alaumary, and Nigeria's "super cop" Abba Kyari, perpetrated email frauds throughout the world, from middle-man banks in Mexico to compromised accounts in an investment bank in Malta, and even to the French equivalent of the US Securities Exchange Commission, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, and English Premiere League football clubs. 1, 2, 3
Team Hush wasn't one of those small time Nigerian Prince email scam crews. They were talented social engineers capable of talking their "magas", Nigerian slang for "gullible marks" out of hundreds of thousands of dollars per transaction. Rather than rely on cold-emailing millions of people they would insert themselves into corporate and government email networks, and then observe their day to day transactions to custom-design scams that would fly under an accounting auditor's radar.
WIth the ill-gotten money Hushpuppi lived large: a penthouse in Dubai, helicopter rides around the Greek Isles, private jet rides to his destinations, and multi-hundred thousand dollar watches and cars. He was even a guest of the Louis Vuitton PR department at Fashion Week in Paris, and "customer of the year" in the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Versace store. 4
When he was finally arrested by Dubai police (who also documented their swat raid on Hushpuppi's penthouse for social media in a highly over-produced video), dozens of phones and laptos were seized along with 7 million dollars in cars and 40 million dollars in cash. 5
And old habits die hard, most recently a new charge has been added to Hushpuppi's rap sheet in the US. The FBI has charged him with obtaining $430,000 dollars in fraudulent COVID relief loans granted to victims of identity theft, after which Hushpuppi would sell the debit cards containing the loan funds that were sent out by the US Government.
Episode #DubiMeter = 11
1. Evan Ratliff. The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master. Bloomberg. June 2021. ⇤
2. Evan Ratliff and William Clowes. How Instagram’s ‘Billionaire Gucci Master’ Sank Nigeria’s Super Cop. Bloomberg. February 2022. ⇤
3. Ivan Martin. How BOV hackers got away with €13 million. Times of Malta. February 2019. ⇤
4. Segun Adewole. How Hushpuppi bought Richard Mille wristwatch worn on Instagram. Punch. July 2021. ⇤
5. Dubai Media Office Twitter account. Hushpuppi arrest video. Twitter. June 2020. ⇤
10/04/23 • -1 min
In 2018, Lady Gaga’s producer RedOne introduced MMA fighter and former convict Abu Azaitar to the royal entourage of Morocco. Since then, king Mohammed VI has disappeared from public life and the three Azaitar brothers became all-powerful.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/DUBIOUS today to get 10% off your first month of therapy.
In this episode we discuss King Mohammed’s childhood and relationship with his father Hassan II, his marriage to Princess Lalla Salma the computer engineer, and his fascination with the cage fighters. If you like our content, please become a patron to get all our episodes ad-free.
Abu, Ottman and Omar Azaitar are three German brothers who grew to be very influential in Rabat, Morocco’s capital. It is rumored that King Mohammed VI is entirely under their “spell”. Their parents were born in Morocco. The brothers have a background in mixed martial arts, fought and won in the UFC, and they were good fighters: two of the brothers have been dubbed as “the brutal twins.” 1
Abu Azaitar has an impressive rap sheet: his German criminal record lists: “Theft, extortion, fraud, physical violence, criminal conspiracy, robberies and recidivism, computer fraud, driving without a license, bodily harm causing permanent disability, assault and battery, drug trafficking, forgery and resistance to law enforcement.” He once doused a man in gasoline and stole his Ferrari. While at a Christmas market, he also punched an ex-girlfriend and punctured her eardrum.
Since 2018, the Azaitars have monopolized the king at a moment in history when after the 2001 Arab spring, the pandemic and the Panama Papers scandal, Moroccan society is boiling and the makhzien (government and security apparatus) led by Hammouchi are not happy with the MMA fighters’ influence over their king.
1. Nicolas Pelham The mystery of Morocco’s missing king The Economist, April 2023 ⇤
05/25/23 • 43 min
Trump’s first wife was found at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious and unresponsive in her Manhattan home on July 14, 2022. She was cremated and laid to rest at Donald Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club in a “pauper’s grave”, not far from the 1st hole.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/DUBIOUS today to get 10% off your first month of therapy.
Mother of Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric, Ivana Trump was 73 years old. An employee found her and called 911 at 1:40 pm. The autopsy was conducted in less than 24 hours and her death was ruled “an accident”, the official cause of death being “blunt force trauma to her torso”. If you like our content, please become a patron to get our episodes ad-free.
She deserves to be remembered not only as Trump’s first wife. She was a New York socialite, model and author but she was also an athlete who made the Czech skiing Olympics team. Ivana Trump was her own person: a mother, an author, fashion designer and New York socialite.
In the first half we focus on Ivana’s life before she met Donald Trump, as there are some tragic aspects like the death of the man she loved, George Staidl, a playwright and lyricist who died in a car crash, and her fourth husband, Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi who passed away at 49 with melanoma (a type of skin cancer). 1
Ivana Maria Zelnickova was an educated woman with a master’s degree in Physical Education and she was a fighter: she fled from communism in her native country (then Czechoslovakia, part of the USSR) and built a new life for herself, starting off in Canada and then immigrating here, to the United States.
In the second half we discuss the details of her death and the timing. Ivana passed away on July 14. Donald Trump and his three adult children were going be deposed the next day, separately, as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation into the Trump Organization. The depositions were postponed.
We also discuss her golf course burial in an austere grave and the attempt by Donal Trump to designate the area as a cemetery to get a tax break. A cemetery in New Jersey avoids property, income, and sales tax, the holy tax trinity. 2, 3
Donald Trump is also selling an “eternal membership” for the Bedminster National Golf Club: people play to play and when they pass, they can be buried close to Ivana if they pay extra. 4
Ivana also loved dogs. Funeral guests and others, in lieu of flowers, were asked to donate to Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Florida and to “help save the lives of dogs that are in desperate need.” The charity was picked by her ex-husband and children, and this seems to be another of Trump’s schemes where the money is not really going where they say it’s going.
Ivana’s own dog, Tiger, is now living with her assistant.
Episode #DubiMeter = 9
1. Kanishka Singh and Daniel Trotta. Ivana Trump, First Wife of Donald Trump Who Helped Build his Empire, Dies at 73. Reuters. July 2022. ⇤
2. Hamish Mitchell Twitter account. Tweet: Pics of Ivana Trump's Grave. Twitter. July 2022. ⇤
3. Edward Helmore. Will Ivana Help Donald Trump with Tax Breaks from Beyond the Grave?. The Guardian. July 2022. ⇤
4. Sinéad Baker and Tom Porter. Trump's PAC Asked Fans to Donate Money While Announcing His Ex-wife Ivana's Death. Business Insider. July 2022. ⇤
05/18/23 • 39 min
Are zombies real? A Harvard biology PhD named Wade Davis went to Haiti to investigate the stories of voodoo priests turning people into “zombies” with a poison, and it turned out that the poison was tetrodotoxin - and it’s real.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/DUBIOUS today to get 10% off your first month of therapy.
Voodoo priests in Haiti make a poison concocted of human remains, snakes, frogs, sea worms, and most importantly... the venom of a puffer fish. The puffer fish venom is sort of the inverse of an anesthetic. Instead of dulling the pain, it dulls your ability to react to it. A person poisoned by the zombie powder is aware and conscious, but unable to move. Their metabolic rate slows to a crawl and they show signs of death, such as bluing of the extremities and lack of response to stimulus. And then when they're presumed dead and buried, the voodoo priest digs them up and tells them when they regain their freedom of movement that he has captured their soul, and they must serve him. This is a form of capital punishment in Haiti; a throwback to the colonial days when the only escape from bondage was death. But what if you can't die? What if you are resurrected and put back into bondage? This is the threat of the zombie poison: a fate worse than death, and it happened to the subject of Wade Davis' study. Clairvius Narcisse was pronounced dead and buried after he was poisoned by the zombie powder for the accused crime of stealing property from his brother after his parents died. The voodoo priest who poisoned him dug him up and sent him to work as a slave on a sugar plantation. If you like our content, please become a patron, you'll get all of our episodes ad-free. 1, 2
Not to be outdone, if you want to risk death from the zombie poison you can also get it by eating a puffer fish in Japan. In mild doses you get high and a little tingly, in extreme cases of eating too much puffer fish in Japan you might wind up like the man who was stuck in the morgue for 7 days, with everyone thinking he was dead. He woke up before being disemboweled and embalmed, thankfully... 3
All of this is still with us because of the late, great Wes Craven's movie about Wade Davis's trip to Haiti to study the zombie powder, called The Serpent and the Rainbow, it's one of the better 1980s horror genre films, check it out if you haven't seen it! The film and book also inspired the Godsmack song "Voodoo" over a decade later. 4, 5, 6
1. Gino Del Guerico. The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead. Harvard Magazine. October 2017. ⇤
2. Lakshmi Gandhi. Zoinks! Tracing The History Of 'Zombie' From Haiti To The CDC. NPR. December 2013. ⇤
3. Patrick D. Hahn. Dead Man Walking. Biology Online. September 2007. ⇤
4. Wade Davis. The Serpent and the Rainbow. Touchstone Publishers. 1997. ⇤
5. Wes Craven, director. The Serpent and the Rainbow. Universal Pictures. 1988. ⇤
6. Sully Erna, writer. Godsmack - Voodoo. Universal Music. 1999. ⇤
12/15/22 • 39 min
A Yoga school in Buenos Aires full of classical musicians has operated for over 30 years as a hidden international sex cult.
We're talking about the recent raid by the Argentine Federal Police's Human Trafficking unit of a sex cult that has operated internationally from Buenos Aires for the past 3 decades... at least. If you like our content please become a patron to get our episodes ad-free.
In late August the Argentine Federal Police raided a yoga school filled with cash, gold, property titles, cars, and oddly... sex toys. It turns out that this was the second time the school had been accused of running a human trafficking organization. In the 1990s the school was charged with similar crimes but the case never went to trial, presumably because of the wealthy participants involved. The organization's director Juan Percowicz is arrested and awaiting trial, along with pianist Susana Mendelievich, and renowned oboe performer Mariano Kraus. Opera soprano Verónica Iacono is currently an international fugitive, also facing charges related to the cult. The late violinist Rubén González was the director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he opened the Buenos Aires Yoga School's Chicago location back in the 1990s, as well. 1
This time, there are wiretaps detailing the cult's activities and those wiretaps contain multiple mentions of the world's most famous living opera singer: Placido Domingo. This isn't the first time Domingo has been involved in sex scandals. While paying for sex in Argentina is legal and he faces no criminal charges related to the sex cult in Buenos Aires, he was fired from his management roles in the Kennedy Center Opera Company and the LA Opera Company over complaints that he had sexually harassed female performers. 2
As it turns out Placido was a customer of the young girls which the cult provided to wealthy clients, but prostitution wasn't their main business. The larger share of their profits came from a scientology-type cult which promised people spiritual healing for everything from drug addiction to chronic pain. The young sex workers were just a way to lure in cult members who were then coerced into changing their wills to gift their property to the cult upon their deaths. 3
A man named Pablo Salum has extensive information on the cult going back to the time when his parents joined it in the 1990s when he was a teenage boy. Pablo has started an advocacy organization called "Libre Mentes" or, "Free Minds" in English, which advocates for laws to combat coercive religious cults in Latin America. 4
Episode #Dubimeter: 9.5
1. Phil Greenfield. ASO Concert Strikes Strange Chord. Baltimore Sun. November 1995. ⇤
2. Anastasia Tsioulcas. LA Opera Finds 'Inappropriate Conduct' Claims Against Plácido Domingo Credible. NPR. March 2020. ⇤
3. Frederico Molina. Sex, drugs and promises of happiness: The Buenos Aires Yoga School’s money-making machine. El Pais. August 2022. ⇤
4. Pablo Salum. Here I begin the THREAD where it will be clear to you with documentation, how the human rights organizations were complicit, helped and protected the #Secta who has my family!. Ley Antisectas Twitter account. March 2018. ⇤
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FAQ
How many episodes does Dubious have?
Dubious currently has 95 episodes available.
What topics does Dubious cover?
The podcast is about True Crime, History and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on Dubious?
The episode title 'Introducing Dubious' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Dubious?
The average episode length on Dubious is 49 minutes.
How often are episodes of Dubious released?
Episodes of Dubious are typically released every 6 days, 23 hours.
When was the first episode of Dubious?
The first episode of Dubious was released on Mar 3, 2022.
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