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You can't believe me. 450,000. Give me five. Bidding. What is this? Chameleon. Chameleon. Season six, Gallery of Lies. A production of Campside Media. Oh. The devil on the ground. The Bench. Earlier this year, I went to a gallery opening on the far west side of Manhattan where I hoped to gain vital information for a story that had been evading me for months.
The show was at the prestigious David Zwirner Gallery, among the best-known galleries in the world. David's dad is Rudolf Zwirner, a German-born dealer who has done as much as anyone over the past 60 years to champion and sell contemporary art around the world.
The opening was in celebration of another important figure in German and contemporary art, and in the story that I've been chasing. Gerhard Richter is now 91 years old and one of the most famous and successful living artists. He's a man whose work was at the center of a scandal that rocked the cloistered secretive world of high-end contemporary art. To give you a sense of his influence, in 2015, an abstract Richter painting sold for $46.3 million at Sotheby's in London.
Perhaps you've seen his candle paintings. Simple, exquisitely constructed images of flickering flames. By the time I arrived at the gallery, around 7 p.m., a line stretched down most of a long block on 20th Street. The guy working the door was both thrilled and a little panicked.
Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen this in an opening since I've worked here and I've been here for three years, so it's quite a lot. Usually it's for this or that part of the crowds, but yeah, it's big. Inside, the place was packed. On the walls in the first room hung Richter's most recent paintings, which he'd made in 2017. A couple of large canvases featuring thick abstract lines of cranberry, eggplant, and a bright green that didn't resemble any fruit or vegetable at all.
They looked like a film of oil on the surface of a puddle, or the smeary lights of a city as seen through a rainy window. An interior room housed smaller watercolors, all titled with a single word: "Mood." In yet another room, drawings in ink and graphite and pencil. At the center of that room stood a 10-foot tall glass sculpture. I heard a passing admirer say the new piece was going for $2 million.
But, of course, none of the works had listed prices. That would be crass. I've always been fascinated by the art market, and recently that fascination has turned into a fixation. But it's not a piece I'm after. It's information about a case. The facts of which are easy enough to find. But the heart of it, where the true mystery lies, is as hidden from public view as that glass sculpture's $2 million asking price. Because to me,
Peering in from the outside, the art world looks pretty opaque. As I would soon learn, it's not much clearer for those on the inside. Everywhere I went, people told me that if I really wanted to understand a story set in this world and how the art market works, I'd need to find the dealer at the center of it all. The same dealer who had helped make Gerhard Richter famous in the first place, Helga Achenbach.
I was told that Helga inspires a wide range of emotions in the people he encounters. Some think he's a wildly innovative groundbreaker who pretty much invented the role of the art consultant in Germany. Others consider him a shady hustler who's only looking out for himself. The distance between those two feelings got me thinking that Helga might be the walking embodiment of that old saying about art itself, that it's all in the eye of the beholder. It all depends on who's doing the looking.
I was reminded of that at that Richter show in March, as a young couple inspected a drawing for clues to what it could mean. We're just observing this piece, trying to figure out what we feel about it and what we see. We're between space and machinery and an eye. Very diverse things. I see mostly space. I see a couple of planets, some stars. Yeah, I think it's amazing. Great work. What do you see?
What do I see? Great question. When I contacted Helga to see if he'd speak to me, I got an answer right away. Not only was Helga game to talk, he said, "Hey, why don't you just come visit me on Lanzarote?" Which is one of the Canary Islands. Of course I was going. How could I say no? I figured this would be the trip of a lifetime, but I had no idea just how wild things were about to get.
I'm Bijan Steven, and from Campside Media, in association with Sony Music Entertainment, this is Chameleon, Gallery of Lies. Episode 1, Openings. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views, and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree. We're covering all the classics. I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't. Hold it in. And our current faves. Luffy must have his due. Yeah.
Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates. Oof. I remember, what was that? Say what you're going to say and I'll circle back. You can listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida.
And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Ronald F. Carver III. In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. Arriving in Miami, I proceeded to do certain things that I considered to be necessary to the crime that I planned to commit. I was looking for a hitchhiker, potential victim. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant.
one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
To visit Helga Achenbach, one must first fly to Madrid. From there, one must catch a connecting flight to the Canary Island of Lanzarote, which is about 430 miles southeast of Morocco. One, in this case, is actually two. Me and my reporting partner, Mac Montandon. The trip took us about 15 total hours and one sleepless night. So we're a little groggy.
a little off balance, when we meet Helga at the Cesar Monrique Airport, named for a famous local artist. Hello. How's it going? Hi. B-shot. How's it going? Good to see you. Nice. So, come on, boys. So I see why they...
Now 71 years old, Helga remains physically formidable. He's about 6'2", with a wide face and bright blue eyes. The dark curls of his youth have aged into white wisps of hair he often traps under a black fedora that looks like what Pharrell would wear if Pharrell were Amish. While we're with him on the island, Helga wears only black. T-shirts, a zip-up hoodie when it's chilly, skinny jeans that sag in the back, two-year-old on-cloud running shoes, one of which sports a yawning hole in its side.
Perhaps Helga's most striking feature is his stomach. It's round and hard and doubles as a shelf for his crossed arms when he's in his thinking pose, which is much of the time. From the airport, Helga drives us 30 minutes away to the home where he lives between October and April. His current ride is not a Bentley or Mercedes or Ferrari, all cars he once owned, but a Peugeot SUV. Along the way, Helga gives us a tour. Yes, we have a very good wine here. You can taste it tonight.
And over there, that's the fire mountains. As our host describes the passing scene, I'm barely hearing him because I'm so focused on taking in my surroundings. The landscape we drive across is unlike anywhere I've ever been. And it gives me the sensation of being unmoored and not in complete control of the situation. Out the window to my left are those fire mountains Helga just mentioned. That's the site of a volcano that erupted for six years back in the 18th century.
It created vistas that feel prehistoric. Miles and miles of blackened lava rocks as tall as trees, stretching deep into the distance. Like fields of giant burnt toast. Far beyond the toast, rising sublimely against the horizon, mountains of amber and purple and green. And still farther, shimmering seas. Closer to the ocean, where the terrain is not as hot and rocky, patches of vegetation survive.
verdant bushes. From a distance, they look like fluffy green sheep. Taken together, it is magnificent and unsettling. It feels like the end of the world, like a perfect place to hide out and never be found. Helga pulls off a paved road and onto a narrow, bumpy dirt path.
One that seems more appropriate for goats than for cars. So our house is from here two kilometers. The road winds around and leads to a remote house high on a hill near a volcano. We are here. And there, in front of us, is Helga's place. The house is built from volcanic rocks hammered into bricks. It sits on smooth terracotta stone floors. The same stones form a wide front terrace.
From there, I get lost in a view that features all the island offers: the mind-boggling stretches of burnt toast, the green sheep, the purple mountains, and finally, the sea. Inside the house, a long open living room is surrounded by glass walls and doors that filter soft sunlight. In an adjacent smaller room, a circular skylight illuminates white walls. This is a de facto gallery. There are paintings by a Ukrainian artist, a Syrian artist, and sculptures by a Turkish immigrant.
Creative souls who have passed through this house as part of Helga's latest venture, Culture Without Borders, an organization meant to support and house artists from oppressed regions around the world. On one wall of the gallery room, a small crucifix has been mounted. Driftwood takes the place of Jesus. Our bedrooms are just off an open-air courtyard in the back of the house. There, a weeping fig tree grows taller than the roof shingles. The overall effect is one of calming, casual luxury. Beauty in every direction.
A little further down the hill, a converted garage serves as a studio for visiting artists. Okay, yeah. Let me pause here for a second. Because it's pretty weird that Mac and I are staying in the same house as the guy we're here to cover as journalists. And I swear this is the first time either of us has done anything like this. But Helga insisted we crash with him rather than stay in a hotel. And now that we've made the journey through the lava fields all the way to the end of a bumpy dirt road,
I'm beginning to see why. Mac and I are exhausted, but before we can throw our bags down in our rooms, we're surprised by other houseguests. Helga hadn't mentioned them when we'd made plans to meet. Hello. Hi. This is Margit and Walter. Hi, nice to see you. Margit and Walter, psychotherapists brimming with late middle-aged glamour, tanned and long-haired.
They've been married for more than 40 years and friends with Helga for the last few of them. Before Mac and I really know what's happening, the five of us are sitting at a round wicker table on the terrace. And Walter and Margaret are talking about their new friend, the man behind Culture Without Borders. We saw him on TV and he told about his association, Culture Without Borders.
And he was so authentic and he regretted his thought he made that we contacted him and told him that we were interested to meet him.
As Margaret talks, uncomfortable questions flood my brain. Who are these people and what are they really doing here? Hell, what am I really doing here? Why does Helga seem so intent on having his friends talk up culture without borders? While they don't strictly have a doctor-patient relationship with Helga, Margaret and Walter spend a lot of time investigating his psyche. I had also a psychologist. She was helping me a lot also, but...
We came together in a different way. And it's very clear and very honest, and this is what I really like. But it's beside everything, so it's getting a kind of friendship also. Mack and I would love for Walter and Margaret to give us more semi-professional Helge insights, but their two-week holiday is up and they're flying back to Germany. Helge drops them at the airport and, an hour later, he's back with yet another guest.
This time, it's Simone Veters, a 48-year-old who leads hiking and juice-fasting retreats for tourists on the nearby island of La Palma, another one of the Canaries. When not on the islands, Simone lives in a small cabin in the Slovenian countryside. She's been friends with Helga for nearly 20 years, though it's now a solid decade since they've seen each other. Curiously, Simone seems completely unfazed by the lack of face time with a friend she hasn't seen in 10 years.
I think it's like hundreds of sparkling stars coming to his mind every minute, every second. I think I rarely met a guy so creative like him. At the moment, the sparkling creativity that has come to Helga's mind involves dinner. He's made a reservation at his favorite Oceanside restaurant. As we watch the sun set into the water, surrounded by interesting people in this exotic location,
I can't help but be impressed. For just a moment, just a sliver of time, I almost forget what I'm after. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.
into the depths of dementia. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.
From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. The next day, Mac and I wake up to a breakfast spread on the outdoor wicker table. Helga and Simone have brought out yogurt, granola, bread, jam, pastries, coffee, and juice.
After eating, the morning sun is already strong, so we move the table into a shadier spot on the terrace to talk. And right away, Helge is open. Extremely open, considering we'd had exactly one call with him before arriving. I had a very cold childhood. My mother was sometimes, in a way, aggressive, and she was hitting me a lot sometimes.
So that was not very funny. And my father was a very silent man. And I got a very deep relation to him, but he was not always at home. So my sympathies were with my father, not with my mother. Helga's parents met as teenagers. His mother worked for Helga's grandparents, taking care of the house. Helga's grandfather had done quite well in the oil and coal industries.
Helga grew up in a rural area outside Dusseldorf. His mother was a business administrator for various companies. His father was an engineer for Germany's National Railway. Both parents were often away from the house, working, leaving Helga alone. If Helga were officially Walter and Margaret's patient, the therapists would have plenty of material to work with. Like the story where his mom cooked his pet rabbit for lunch. It was very tasty. Everything was nice. And I said to my mother, "What are we eating here?"
And she said, "Ah, yes, it's rabbits." So I said, "What?" I jumped out and ran to the rabbit cage, and there was one missing. When Helge was 14 years old, he says he experienced what might be the most important moment in his life. The day he learned that his dad, the parent he was closest with, was not actually his dad.
It was at a family gathering. Helge and his dad fought over something small and meaningless. Something forgettable. After the fight, a cousin pulled Helge aside and told him the devastating secret. When I got this information in this moment, the whole world crashed for me, of course. I was really completely shocked. I was trying, let's say, until the end of my mother's life to find out what happened.
He once got a tip about a possible match from another relative. Helga tracked down the man's identity, only to learn that he'd been dead for 20 years. More recently, Helga went on a therapeutic weekend retreat with a girlfriend. A Peruvian shaman gave him mescaline, which led to intense memories and pain.
Helga said he entered a trance and spoke with his mother and the man who raised him as his father. By the end of the weekend, Helga told us he was able to forgive his parents for keeping this secret from him. Around the time of the blow-up with his dad, Helga stumbled onto a career in art. The big epiphany arrived, as it sometimes does, by way of a Swedish nudie magazine called El Dorado. First time in my life I saw a naked woman.
A real naked woman. Beautiful. I was so amazed. Helge thought that if he was amazed, his friends would be too. He cut out about 20 photos and brought them to school. I called a few friends. I said, "Hans, I must show you something." So they came and said, "What is it?" I said, "It cost you 10 cents."
"What do you mean 10 cents?" I said, "Yeah, 10 cents." So he gave me 10 cents and said, "Now you can see." And he started looking and he was amazed. He said, "Oh, fantastic. Can I have one?" I said, "No." "Maybe yes, but you have to pay 50 cents." So in this moment, my first art business. And you know what it was? It was quite interesting to see
fascinating, beautiful images can be for the people. This formative experience stuck with Helga. A few years later, he honed his selling skills on a camping trip with a friend in the south of France. He heard some voices outside his tent murmuring in French. Helga poked his head out. Four guys there had African masks and sculptures. Helga haggled. He also speaks French and a bit of Spanish and bought a few pieces with his remaining cash.
About 100 euros. His friend thought he was nuts. What about gas money? But Helge had an idea. On the drive back to Germany, he stopped his convertible VW Beetle near a lake in Geneva. He opened the roof, made a sign, and put out the pieces. He told us the sale went well. And then we had to disappear because the police was coming. Because we did it illegally.
But we were very proud and we were looking and said, "Hey, a lot of money!" So it was really a good deal and it was also this magic of having something like an art piece. Also not knowing what it means for me. I was 18, just 18. Three years later I opened my first gallery.
Helga opened that gallery while attending the University of Dusseldorf. There, he studied social pedagogy, thinking he would make a career as a social worker. As part of the program, Helga did a one-year internship at a juvenile detention center in Siegberg. In the first of his two memoirs, Helga wrote about that time. Quote, "'This year shaped my life. I heard the stories of young men who came from extremely difficult circumstances whose parental home was hell. I wanted to help them become integrated in society.'"
In school, Helge led the student parliament and cultivated his socialist leanings. I had some really brutal fights with the right wing in front of some demonstration. But it was nice to fight in those days. You know, that was this type of kind of that Germany had to get rid of this old Nazis in the justice system.
When not taking on Nazis, Helge explored galleries and hung around the art academy where he first met Gerhard Richter and other rising art stars. The German art market back then, like much of the rest of the world, was not at all what it is today with its splashy Sotheby's auctions and routine seven-figure sales. This art market was completely different from today. It was not popular to buy art.
Only very, very few specialists, collectors, very interesting people were collecting art and art was really cheap. Imagine a painting from Gerhard Richter would cost 5,000 Mark, two and a half thousand dollars. Even a painting from Andy Warhol would cost 10,000 dollars, which is maybe today 5 million or 10 million.
So that was the difference. People loved art, liked art, and there was no speculation at all. Helge, on the other hand, was more than ready to speculate. He went into business with an architect friend, Horst Kimmerich, buying art and then selling it to businesses for their new developments.
They scored their first big deal through Horst's connections and made 400,000 Deutschmarks, 200 each, or about 10 times the average salary of a German worker back then. I bought a Mercedes 280 station car, you know, like a T, you know. And I bought a telephone, auto telephone.
A mobile phone. In 1975? Yes. It cost $36,000. You know why? It was amazing. The phone contraption, the size of a large sushi platter, would prove invaluable. While his architect friend used his Rolodex to drum up new business, Helge took to the streets. He drove all over Germany in that Benz wagon. It was his office on wheels. From Dusseldorf...
He was looking for cranes, for new construction sites. He'd get the numbers of the builders, call them up, sell them art to give the new space life. Ten phone calls.
Tree jobs. For 800,000 each. Sometimes a million or two. It's our first full day on the island, and we've been talking with Helga for five straight hours. He's showing no signs of slowing down, and we might have kept on talking through the night, if not for his afternoon gym appointment. He likes to ride the stationary bike. After Helga drives off, he's gone but not forgotten. His perfume lingers in the air.
Terre d'Hermes. It's a citrusy musk, and a 2.5-ounce bottle can be had for €119 in the duty-free store at the Lanzarote airport. With an hour to kill, Mac and I take the opportunity to walk with Simone along the dirt path to the ocean, hoping to better understand Helga through her eyes. Yes, I think Helga is able to survive anything because...
Because in his mind, he is so free and so inspired. And I think you can survive if you have fantasy. And if you have a creative mind, you will see beauty in everything, you know. And can create beauty, can create new beginnings. And he's really able to do this. It's shorts weather in March. We pass long expanses of hard, spiky lava rocks. Eventually, we make it to the water.
The sun is setting in a swirl of brilliant colors. Waves crash violently into jutting volcanic cliffs. It's one of the most beautiful and haunting places I have ever seen. It's easy to get swept away. And maybe that's what's nagging at me. From the soft black sand under our feet, which just adds to the exoplanetary vibe this island has, to how peculiar it is that all these quasi-strangers just pop by to a remote island house for a visit, it doesn't feel real.
If this whole world exists in the eye of the beholder, there is something beneath the surface of this perfect vista that makes me feel like I need to keep my guard up. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Through the 1980s and early 90s, the German art world felt the ripple effects of a now global market. Helga says that Japanese collectors especially introduced the idea of speculative buying.
This changing landscape allowed him to secure contracts and commissions worth many millions of Deutschmarks. By the end of the 90s, he'd landed on a new idea, to partner with wealthy acquaintances to buy up the entire collections of emerging artists, including his old friend Jörg Immendorff, known for creating delightful bronze monkey sculptures. Helge and his partners then exhibited these works in museums, which drove up their value.
In exchange, Helge would leave behind a painting here, a sculpture there, for the museum's permanent collections. Normally I say, "NARP fund, forget it. Never invest in the NARP fund. You can invest in everything but not in the NARP fund." That's the owner of the German auction house Van Ham, who we spoke with after our visit to Helge. His name is Markus Eisenbeiss, a name you should definitely remember.
if you compare an art fund to a stock fund, you have so much cost for handling, you know,
Those are physical objects you have to carry, so you have to earn, you make, prices have to rise at least, let's say, 40 to 50 percent to come to break even. Marcus told us that Helga's genius was in finding the right people to be part of his fund. Rich people who were not fluent in the ways of the art world, but attracted to the flicker of glamour.
They didn't mind throwing in a million euros in exchange for the attendant's sexiness of a well-choreographed opening. And in the end, it was a win-win-win situation for everybody because the artist was lucky because he sold a bunch of paintings. This group of investors sponsored...
a nice opening, it was on a catalog. As all those investors were not so familiar with art, with the art business, they really enjoyed this vernissage, you know, all this nice atmosphere, being the celebrated sponsor for the show. And so he, Achbach gave them an experience, you know, an experience and a fantastic way to dive into this art world.
He gave them an experience. This is how Helga approached everything. How he had conquered the art world, how he got what he wanted by seduction, how he met his wives. By the time he launched the art fund, he'd been married and divorced twice, had a son with his first wife, four more kids with his second. He wasn't exactly looking to get married again.
But then, in the winter of 1990, a young art historian applied for a job at Helga's company. And when I saw her, she was very beautiful, very beautiful and very nice. And we, I fell in love directly. Six months later, Helga and Dorothy were officially a couple. And they married two years after his second divorce was finalized.
Their courtship was not without complications. What with him being her boss and all. She said to me, Oh, Helge, Mr. Achenbach, you are my boss. I never should have any relation with a person in my company. This is what I learned from my father. I said, OK, except I would marry you. She said, OK, this marriage we have to discuss. All the while, Helge's phone never stopped ringing.
After much back and forth, he says the filmmaker Claude Berry bought a Jean Fauteuil painting and sculpture from him. And he said, "Mr. Achenbach, you are a fool. You are crazy. You're much too much. $2.5 million is the price, but $4 million,
You are killing me. He told me he sold Jacques Wertheimer, then the head of Chanel, an Yves Klein painting. Helge said he acquired the piece from a bankrupt trust. And he was a very little man and he was more or less looking like a monkey. And the great thing was he had no tooth. He had only little brown spots.
In 2001, Helga was ready to really start giving people an experience. He created a man-made beach club on the banks of the Rhine. Monkey's Island was soon a place to be seen among Dusseldorf's young and chic, and it could be hard to get a table with a view of one of Immendorf's bronze monkey sculptures that gave the place its name.
A few years later, Helga continued the theme with regionally different cuisines at flashy restaurants in four corners of the city, including the Italian-leaning Monkeys South and the Asian fusion of Monkeys East. Helga has said that Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Naomi Campbell were among the bold-faced names who visited his restaurants. Ultimately, Helga says, these efforts collectively lost about 10.5 million euros. But that wasn't the point. Partying, while networking...
That was the point. But these restaurants were supposed to be a stage for him. They were a stage where he could be the big impresario. That's Tobias Thiem, a Berlin-based journalist and co-author of the book Art and Crime, the fight against looters, forgers, and fraudsters in the high-stakes art world. He would be the guy who
who could bring together all these people from, you know, business and politics and soccer. And they were famous and they could see each other there. And in the middle was Helge Achenbach, um,
being the boss and being the one who does the network between all these people. It was my celebration place. When I did a party there, let's say New Year party, we had 400 guests from all over Germany. There's a version of Helga's story that's all glamorous 400-person parties, sparkling art openings, and visits from Demi Moore.
And the truth is that Helga was once so successful at finding and selling Picassos and Warhols and Richters that he owned seven homes and 30 classic cars. One of the cars was a Bentley that had belonged to the legendary German artist Joseph Beuys. Some years, Helga earned as much as 40 million euros. He opened a NetJet account so he could fly private more easily.
Helga became so famous in certain parts of the world that when Dusseldorf's professional soccer club Fortuna faced financial ruin, the mayor called and convinced him to take over as president of the team. And his reputation in the art world was impeccable enough for the super-famous pop artist Jeff Koons to ask him to help produce his first puppy. You know, the 43-foot-tall West Highland Terrier plastered with fresh marigolds and begonias.
Helga also arranged for Keith Haring to decorate the offices of a top advertising agency with a massive mural. He once dined with Warhol, chatting all night with Pablo Picasso's daughter, Paloma. But there is also another darker story to tell here. Because that foreboding feeling I wasn't able to shake became more acute during my time on the island. I was living through a vintage Helga Achenbach experience. And this time, the big impresario was creating the perfect vibes just for us.
When I set out to better understand how Gerhard Richter became a star, to learn about the machine behind the curtain that keeps the art world churning, I pretty quickly also learned that it's hard to get ahead in this world without making a few questionable moves. Sometimes more than a few. Sometimes way more than questionable. In Helga's case, the moves he made to get ahead eventually landed him behind bars.
And post-prison, those moves turned his life upside down. For instance, this gorgeous house in the Canary Islands? It's not Helga's. It belongs to one of Germany's most famous authors, who lets him stay there for free half of the year.
And that Peugeot he drives around Lanzarote? It's not for him to keep a low profile or to handle rugged terrain. It's rented from an island company he's talked into giving him a deal. He needs the discount. These days, the former millionaire gets by on a court-mandated €1,200 per month. I learned one thing after my prison. It is try to be radical honest, even if it hurts. Radical honest.
It's an expression Helga latched onto in conversations with his prison priest about how to forge a new life, and one he returns to again and again. What makes all of this even crazier to me is that, for decades, Helga couldn't miss. Even when he expanded into those restaurants and bars, which would end up losing him many millions of euros along the way, he used the hotspots to reel in new clients. And one of those new clients Helga found especially intriguing.
especially worthy of cultivating, of creating experiences for. And he was sitting in my restaurant and he was eating Wiener Schnitzel and he was taking a bottle of white wine. So he was feeling very pleased with me. And I was feeling the same in the beginning. Within a few years, that man sitting alone in the restaurant would change Helga's life completely. Coming up on this season of Chameleon...
We're going deep into the life of the most famous criminal you've never heard of. So he started to fake these invoices. And with this stupid deal, I ruined everything.
A man who made one very wrong move and lost everything. Throughout the prosecution, I
Did he learn from his mistakes?
And he often told me he is a pirate captain finding a new shore. But I didn't want to be on this pirate ship. I have a very family feeling with the Elgish. Yes. Like a guru sometimes. It can be like this. Like a guru.
Guru, yeah. Or will he never change? And I don't like to bullshit around. Believe me, I am not interested to bullshit around. He always can trust me, but I'm not sure if I trust him. I try to trust him. All that and more on Chameleon Gallery of Lies. Unlock all episodes of Chameleon Gallery of Lies ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel.
Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Chameleon Show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts.
Gallery of Lies is hosted by me, Bijan Steven. It's reported by me, Henry Lavoie, and Mac Montandon, and produced by me and Henry Lavoie. Mac Montandon is our executive producer. This episode was written by Mac Montandon. Our story editors are Emily Martinez and Matt Scher. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Garrett Tiedemann.
Recording by Iwin Lai-Tramuen. Our theme song is Wonder Bar by Dina Summer, Kalipo, and Local Suicide. Our fact-checking is by Mary Mathis. Translating and interpreting by Bino Mushtagi. Archival research by Vanessa Christophers-Trinks. And additional field production by Jonas Voj. A special thanks to Emma Simonoff, Valentina Delicia, and our operations team. Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriotis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scherer. If you enjoyed Chameleon, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Mike Tirico here with some of the 2024 Team USA athletes. What's your message for the team of tomorrow? To young athletes, never forget why you started doing it in the first place. You have to pursue something that you're passionate about. Win, lose, or draw, I'm always going to be the one having a smile on my face. Finding joy in why you do it keeps you doing it.
Be authentic, be you, and have fun. Joy is powering Team USA during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Comcast is proud to be bringing that inspiration home for the team of tomorrow.