Have you ever been scammed?

In The Ringer’s first true crime podcast, host Justin Sayles tracks a mysterious figure who once wronged him. A man with a lot of aliases, a lot of failed businesses, and a trail of victims. Justin follows him through a sham media company, a series of ruined weddings, and beyond, trying to find answers.

The Wedding Scammer is a story in seven parts that tracks not just the con artist himself, but also the stories of his victims—the financial and emotional impact they felt, their struggles to get justice, and how they ultimately took matters into their own hands.

The first episode is out now, with episodes to follow each Tuesday. Below, Justin answers a few questions about how he stumbled into this bizarre journey and what it was like to tell this story.

Follow The Wedding Scammer on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Ringer doesn’t typically do true crime. Why did you want to tell this story?
I come to this story as honestly as one can: not just as a journalist, but also as one of this guy’s victims. Back in 2016, I was recruited alongside 40 other people for a job at a new media startup that promised to be “The Huffington Post, but better.” But I quickly realized that nothing was as it seemed—including the mysterious owner with the fantastical backstory who started the company. The whole experience only lasted about three weeks, but it remains one of the strangest things that ever happened to me—and something that left a lot of people hurting in the process, not only in terms of their bank accounts, but also psychologically.

I was never angry about what happened to me, but I was curious. And years later, that curiosity led to an obsession—and a lot of fascinating discoveries.

You mentioned a media company, but the name of the show is The Wedding Scammer. Can you explain?
I don’t want to spoil too much, but after our mystery man got out of the media empire business, he went into the wedding industry. And he left a trail of couples who say he did the unthinkable: ruined their weddings and kept the deposits. A handful even took him to court over it, but he never showed.

To us, the name The Wedding Scammer became the obvious choice. One, it’s got a ring to it. (No pun intended.) Two, some of the most emotional stories in this show come from his time in the wedding industry. Three, his ties to the wedding business are how I eventually tracked him down—living in another state, under another name—and how I confronted him wearing a wire on my chest.

I’m sorry, a wire? How does one even wear a wire? I thought that was for snitches and undercover cops.
We go into this in detail in the podcast, so I won’t spoil that either. But suffice to say I have it all figured out should you ever need to go full Donnie Brasco yourself.

I’m sure that will be helpful for the average listener. Before we leave, what else can people expect from The Wedding Scammer?
I spent seven years of my life thinking about my strange experience with this man, and the past two and a half reporting on everything else he’s done. I spoke to nearly 100 people in the course of making this show, and I’ve reviewed hundreds of pages’ worth of court files, labor complaints, leases, bad checks, and seemingly forged documents. You can expect a lot more of the stories related to all this—some funny ones, some heartbreaking ones, and some that helped me piece this puzzle together. You can also expect a lot more about the Wedding Scammer himself, as we jump around the country and try to find who he really is and what made him who he really is and why he chose this path. And lastly, you can expect some great music from our friend Justin Catoni at 13th Ward Social Club, who provided the perfect noir soundtrack for this amateur detective story.