A new investigative podcast by Sue-Lin Wong, who several years ago was behind a compelling series we featured in this newsletter on the life story of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
This new series, also made by The Economist, starts with a deep dive into a bank in rural Kansas that was drained of its capital and subsequently collapsed because of actions by its own CEO, who had secretly transferred millions of dollars to a cryptocurrency over successive weeks. It ended up becoming clear that he had been the victim of a scam, linked to an underground economy bigger than the world’s entire illicit drug trade. Wong looks at how people who typically don’t fall for such scams ended up doing so, and how the funds are used for human trafficking and money laundering.
“Online scams are scarier, stranger and bigger than they've ever been,” Wong says. “The days of emails filled with typos offering an obviously fake get-rich-quick scheme are gone.” The first three episodes are available to listen to now, with further episodes available to Economist subscribers.
