Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to another round of Drawing Board or Miro Board. Today, we talk brainstorms with UX designer Brian. Let's go. First question. You thought you'd see everyone's idea in the team brainstorm, but you've got a grand total of one. Drawing Board or Miro Board? Drawing Board. In Miro, the team can add ideas now or later. And with privacy mode, we can keep them anonymous until they're good to share. Correct.
And
He's wild. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash brainstorm now and get a free business plan trial to unlock even more brainstorming tools like private mode and voting. That's miro.com slash brainstorm now. You can't believe me. 450,000. Give me five. What is this? Chameleon. Chameleon. Season six, Gallery of Lies. A production of Campside Media. Oh. Devil on the ground. The Bench.
It's time for Mac and me to leave the island. Our next stop is Dusseldorf, where Helga grew up and still lives for half of the year. We've got meetings arranged with several people in and around the city, and we're hoping they can shed some much-needed light on Helga's life and crimes, to really bring him into focus. As I pack to leave Helga's borrowed home, I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the guy, but that at any moment, the handle could break.
At times he seems utterly transparent. A hustler constantly hustling everybody, myself included. Then there are the flashes of sincerity. For now, I'm feeling optimistic about the next leg of our trip. One of the people we're due to meet was the lead prosecutor in Helga's trial. Helga drives us to the airport in the rented Peugeot. Simone rides shotgun. Helga plays some of his favorite songs by his favorite musicians: Pink Floyd, Adele, Leonard Cohen.
He cranks the volume for the ringing guitar of "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond." On the other side of the car's window, the burnt toast of a volcanic rock flies past. The vast sky is impossibly blue. Soon, Helga will return to Germany, move into another loner home from April to October, before heading back to Lanzarote. This one on the former pig farm in Karst, where Culture Without Borders has rebuilt a dilapidated farmhouse into its HQ.
During our last hours on the island, Helga's been busy making sure we will visit Culture Without Borders and sending us contact info for people he thinks we should speak with to better understand him. He can't resist putting his thumb on the scale of our story. And, of course, Helga has plans. Deals he can't tell us about yet. Now we're arriving at the airport.
It's time to say goodbye. But I have a feeling this is far from the last time we'll speak with Helga. Thanks for everything. I hope to see you again, huh? You too. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, you too. Nice seeing you too. Bye. And then they're gone. Mac and I immediately start to process the Helga experience. He really doesn't live like a guy who's earning €1200 a month. And I wonder how many people come to town and like...
buy him fancy dinners at Selena. I mean, we are, we did. We are the suckers who did. But the food was good too. From Campside Media, in association with Sony Music Entertainment, this is Chameleon, Gallery of Lies. Episode 3, Trials. 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 right now. Hold it in. And our current faves. Luffy must have his dude. Yeah.
Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates. 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.
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.
into the depths of demand shut. 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 Camellia from Campside Media. After Berthold died, Helga's life went on just fine. By then, he'd set up a new fund with a prominent bank called Barenberg.
The plan was to raise 50 million euros from investors to buy some 200 paintings and sculptures, with the idea that everything would go up in value and everyone would get rich. To help with acquisitions, Helga hired a former museum director named Thomas Kellein. At the time, Helga felt that he'd gotten away with it.
The secrets and lies of his fraudulent invoices had died with Bertolt Albrecht, and it seemed that his widow, Babette, was none the wiser. A different kind of person might have ended the scheme there, satisfied with the millions they'd managed to steal. But as Mac and I learned while we stayed with him, Helga can't help being anything but himself. He wanted more. And at Barenburg, Helga had access to new clients. Emboldened, Helga tried his collages again.
This time with pharmaceutical mogul Christian Berenger, who was looking to build a collection. Now, however, things were different. Because now Helga wasn't the only person with access to the transaction records. Thomas Kelline could see them as well. Kelline and the bank, Berenberg, were partners in this larger art venture. Working with a financial institution meant that there were people Helga was accountable to. People he didn't know very well.
Helga believed he'd bought Kellein's silence by securing him a six-figure signing bonus. But in December of 2012, Kellein noticed that, quote, something wasn't right with the transactions Barenberg was facilitating for the pharmaceutical mogul. Helga had been charging premiums that Kellein, quote, couldn't support, he later testified. After noting three unusual transactions conducted between 2012 and early 2013, Kellein went to the bank and informed them of exactly what Helga was up to.
So I phoned one day Kellan and I said, "Kellan, why you made this stupid thing? Why you did not speak with me? You got the money. I split with you the money we took from Boehringer. You got 150,000, the other partner got 150,000, and my company got 150,000, and the rest was course."
He said, yeah, you know, I think it is good for you that you are not your life, full life crime, criminal. I said, OK, thank you very much. Today, Kalline is the top art consultant for the private Swiss bank Burgos. According to the bank's website, he looks after international collectors, analyzes trends on the art market and advises on strategic issues.
We sent several emails and made many calls to try and reach Kelline. We didn't receive any response. So, in the spring, after hearing he was going to be at the prestigious Freeze Art Fair in Manhattan, Mac and I tried to find him there. We wandered several floors of the coldly glamorous Midtown spot hosting this year's fair, but no one had heard of either Kelline or Burgos Bank.
Finally, we found our way to the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge on the mezzanine level, which was as easy as finding the seventh and a half floor in Being John Malkovich. That is not easy at all. We figured if anyone knew where to find Kenline, it would be in a wealth management lounge. A Deutsche Bank rep stopped us as we tried to enter the room.
Hi. Hello. What's it you're wanting to do? Okay, so we're looking for a very specific banker. Okay. His name is Thomas Kelline. He works for Burgos. But we were like, oh, there don't seem to be any other...
We figured wrong. Later that afternoon, Kelline replied to our last-ditch email to say he had been at Frieze one day earlier and to say good luck with our story.
After Kellein revealed Helga's fraud, Helga says he met with Barringer and returned the money he'd skimmed from the sale. A story in Art News seems to confirm that was more or less the case, reporting that the, quote, 1.8 million euro dispute between Barringer and Achenbach was later solved by Barenberg Art Consulting in an out-of-court settlement. As far as Helga knew, at that point, the matter was resolved. For a while, it seemed like none of Helga's shady maneuvering did anything to slow his career.
Near the end of 2013, he was hired to bring art to the seven-building complex in Brazil that was housing Germany's 2014 World Cup soccer team. He called on his friend Klaus Futtinger, an artist Helge had met as a young man at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, to design lamps for the bar area. The lamps depicted German soccer stars of the past. Futtinger ended up helping construct the bar himself. I did it with my brother. My brother was the IT man.
And we built it together, and some Indians were helping us. And I think we built about two months, the whole thing. So in this case, I built the bar, I choose the furniture, everything. Whatever Futinger did, it seemed to help the soccer team's mojo. That year, Germany crushed Brazil 7-1 in a semifinal match on their way to winning the World Cup title.
Helga, meanwhile, was not as lucky. While the Brazil project was coming together, bank executives familiar with Helga's Behringer deal were in touch with Babette Albrecht's lawyer, Dr. Andreas Urban.
Babette and her lawyer began digging through Bertholdt's records, paying special attention to the collaged invoices. Helga says his phone was tapped by the police. A case was being built against him. While Klaus was constructing the bar, Helga flew to Brazil to see how everything was progressing. And it was my checkup flight to see if everything is fine, because a few days later the championship started.
And so we were in a kind of celebration atmosphere there. It was a good time and very nice and everything. From there, Helges said he traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend a friend's 60th birthday party. He met Dorothy there, and the two of them flew first class overnight back to Dusseldorf, arriving on June 10, 2014, at 7.30 in the morning.
Stepping off the plane, Helga knew immediately that something was not right. There were two tall guys, very sympathetic, good-looking, very sporty, looking at me and saying, Are you Mr. Ahamba? I said, Yes, I'm Mr. Ahamba. Mr. Ahamba, would you come to the side? We have something for you. And I said, What do you have? Yeah, we have here...
I don't know the word in English, but we have a paper that means you are arrested. If Helga was surprised, Dorothy was blindsided. Until this moment, she had no idea her husband was a wanted man. And she was shocked, of course. She said, what happened? I said, yeah, something stupid. They think I took too much money from Bertolt. So you said that then? I said, they think. Yeah, that was written. I could read it, you know.
And I said, don't, I said, but Dorothy, don't be afraid because there's no Kremlin, Kremlin act because he got from me this security of bringing the paintings back. What Helga means here is that he was under the impression that any possible legal exposure would be mitigated by the fact that he had offered Berthold the 4% buyback clause.
So even as he was being arrested at the airport, Helga believed that everything would be straightened out soon enough. So I phoned this lawyer. From the airport? Yes. And I said, listen, we are sticking here and can you help me? And he said, yes, sure. We go to Essen. Helga and Dorothy drove with the two detectives to Essen.
Getting there wasn't easy. A massive storm was coming in. All trees were, not all, but a number of trees were on the streets and I was thinking, "Aha, that's my life." So it was exactly how I was feeling in this moment. Because of the storm, they couldn't use the highways. A trip that normally takes about 20 minutes lasted four and a half hours. In Essen, Helge was taken into a small room in the police headquarters.
He and his lawyer met with a judge and a state prosecutor. The prosecutor laid out the case, claiming that Helga had stolen between 60 and 120 million euros from Bertolt Albrecht. That number included much of the art and some of the cars, Bentleys, Bugattis, Ferraris. I said, are you crazy? And you know that we offered Mrs. Albrecht to buy everything back.
And he said, "Yeah, you might have done it, but we are not sure if this all is correct and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." At this point, Helga's lawyers began negotiating with the judge about how much the state's claim should be and how Helga might be able to pay it back. While Helga didn't have a ton of cash on hand — he once told me that for every $1 million he made, he tended to spend another $3 million — he did have assets in the houses and cars and some 2,300 art pieces in his own collection.
As the night wore on, Helge couldn't keep his thoughts straight. Everything goes through your head in those moments. You have thousands of points. Of course, my children. Of course, Dorothee. Of course, the company, the people working for me. Everything came out. So it's a panic thought, you know, it's a very special thinking.
Finally, the judge determined that Helge would be a flight risk and ordered him kept in jail until the trial began. You have panic and you think it's not possible. You destroy everything now. And then you have also this hope that the lawyer is right. So it was a really mixture of emotions. And then
Helge was first put in a temporary cell. So there was a fucking dark, ugly hole of shit. It was nothing. It was dirty. And there was a toilet inside. Very, very ugly. And it was no light. You could not have daylight. And then after three hours, somebody came very rude and said, oh, come with me.
And there was another one, so they took me in the car, in a Volkswagen bus, covered, and they brought me to prison. He was in shock as he was processed into prison. And there was a kind of system where you come there, you have your clothes, take off your clothes, knackered, show us your penis, you have to show, you open your hood, you show,
They turn around, they look in your ass to see if you have drugs inside. So it's awful. And then they said, here's your clothes from the prison. I got prison clothes for a moment, dark blue, grey, and very big sizes. I forget it. So it was really terrible.
And then they brought me in a cell. Germany's most famous art dealer, the man who threw 400-person parties, who was the life of the party, who for decades lived for international galas and glamour, was now alone. Completely alone. Alone in a jail cell barely wide enough for a single bed and a small desk. No television, no radio. Alone with his thoughts. I was also thinking sometimes to kill myself.
because I was frightened of the future. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. 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 Robert F. Carpenter. 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
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. We're now, I think, going in the right direction. Looks like... You are over the speed limit. Shut up. Looks like 31 kilometers to go.
Now in Dusseldorf, Mac and I get into yet another rental car. This one is an extremely talkative electric vehicle made by a Chinese company we'd never heard of before called Build Your Dreams. For me, it was love at first acceleration. Mac named our SUV Birdie. I drove Birdie through Dusseldorf and onto the Autobahn, headed for Essen.
Today, the weather's good, so it takes us about 20 minutes. Dusseldorf is now a nice, clean, and bougie place with plenty of restaurants, bars, and galleries, including one owned by Helga's son, David Achenbach. Klaus Futtinger told us that after the war, the city was rebuilt into a kind of bohemian paradise. A lot of buildings were destroyed in the Second World War, so it was a good place to concentrate and
Think about the essentials. On some social hangouts like Ratingerhof or other interesting places, where also the musicians and the artists were out then. The art academy, where Helge met Klaus, Gerhard Richter, and many other artists who would go on to have brilliant careers, was an important place for the global art scene. The art world was quite small at those times. Let's say New York and Dusseldorf, Cologne and
But of course, Helga is a long way from those days now. His downfall began that morning when he arrived at the Dusseldorf airport and was arrested. And it accelerated on December 9th, 2014, when he entered the courtroom for the first time to face charges of fraud and embezzlement.
The journalist Tobias Timm attended the trial and described what Helga looked like that day in his book, Art and Crime. Timm wrote that he was pale, almost reserved. Helga had lost so much weight in prison that his fitted suit now sagged on him. He was joined by an unnamed co-defendant, a former insurance executive. They faced three judges and two jurors who sat at the front of the room.
The trial of one of Germany's biggest art stars had captivated the country. And on that first morning, the room was packed. The media swarmed. You couldn't avoid it because there was so much coverage of this court case in the media. You wouldn't believe it. That's Markus Eisenbeiss, the head of the Van Ham auction house you heard from in episode one. You know, we have something like the Financial Times, Germany. It's called the Handelsblatt.
And there was a six full page story just about Achenbach, about what he has done, about his story, about the court case. It was so present in the media. It was incredible. It was kind of like a
like a serious, like a crime series in itself, because on every day the trial happened, there was a new constellation, new witnesses, a new kind of picture of Helge's life and how he acted in the art market. For Tobias Thimm, the drama of the trial felt like great fiction, but it was all too real for Helge.
He remembers seeing many familiar faces in the crowd. Family, friends, critics, art critics, number. It was full. Every day was full. Some of Helga's former friends and associates would testify against him, including the artist Tony Craig and the man Helga had hired just before his arrest, the man who had blown the whistle, Thomas Kellein.
Almost immediately, the stress of the trial got to Helga. So every day you go there and you have this audience and they are nosy and watch you and so terrible. My lawyer said, "Don't say anything. They want to give you 10 years. They would love to give you 10 years." In Essen, Mac and I meet our interpreter Minou outside the boxy, putty-colored building where the state prosecutor has her office.
After some confusion at the security desk, we're let in, greeted by the head of PR. The PR woman leads us to a well-lit library lined with shelves thick with leather-bound books. The prosecutor who brought the case against Helga is waiting for us. Valeria Sontag was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lived there until she was 15.
She studied law at a university near Essen and has worked as an Essen state prosecutor since 2010. In almost every way possible, Sontag, which is how she introduced herself, just a single name, is the exact opposite of Helga Achenbach. She's as thin as a long-distance runner, wears her hair pulled neatly into a ponytail, and only laughs when absolutely necessary.
Based on her answers to our questions, Sontag, unlike Helga, is definitely into the whole brevity thing. Like when I ask her, while making small talk, what she does for fun. I like to read and I like to travel. Sontag is no more expansive when it comes to discussing Helga's trial. I...
For Sonntag, this was not a complicated case, even though it was also her first high-profile case. I first heard of him when he was sued by Ms. Albrecht.
And at the beginning, the case seemed completely normal. The only unusual thing was the amount of money that was involved. She treated Helga as she would anyone else in her courtroom. When I got the case assigned, I wasn't aware how famous Mr. Achenbach was in his industry. Throughout the prosecution, I just...
Helga's forged invoices — his collages — were the primary pieces of evidence in the case. And then there was something that happened on the second day of the trial.
Mr. Achenbach confessed. I can't say for sure how much of that was also his way of getting as little damage as possible, how much of it was methodical. I think the evidence was very clear cut and there was no way of denying so that in the end the confession was necessary.
We asked Sontag about the key to Helga's defense: the claim of the buyback clause, the 4% guarantee for Berthold. There was no proof of these buyback clauses, and there was no evidence that he could actually economically afford that at all. It wasn't really meant seriously. It was more to protect himself. And we asked who gave the most damning testimony. The most important witness statement was surely Mrs. Albrecht.
Before saying goodbye to Valeria Sontag, there was one last thing I was curious about. Do you buy art? I do like art indeed, and I do have some art pieces at home, but I buy them because I like them and not because they have a high value. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. After a four-month trial, Helga was found guilty on 18 charges of fraud.
He was sentenced to six years in jail and ordered to pay Babette Albrecht 19.4 million euros. Helga cried in the courtroom and told the judges he felt ashamed of what he had done. He was bitter and bewildered. He felt as if the punishment far outweighed the crime. It was a stupid game. It was a fucking game. It was a terrible game. I hate it. Helga was let out of court and brought to a prison in Essen.
Two days later, he received a visitor in his cell. I'm Michael Luker and I'm the pastor in the jail where Helga Aschenbach has been. Father Luker remembers that when he first met Helga, he was worried. In the beginning, he was shocked. He said, "I didn't do anything and I don't know why I'm here."
Yes, we discussed a lot and I said it's better for you if you feel your own guilty. Because if you sit in the jail and you're always struggling and saying, "Oh, why I'm here?"
It's not good for you because then you are always fighting against yourself, against the others. The two men got along well, and Helge took to chatting with the priest in his office at the end of every week. We talk a lot about his life and his lifestyle, about the philosophy of life. If you listen
live in the upper class and you are always somebody and everybody is praying to you. It's not good for your own personality. And we talk a lot about this. And I said to him, what type of person have you been before the selling of art?
And it was very interesting because he was a social worker in a jail also. Father Luca is referring to Helga's year working in the juvenile detention center in Siegberg. The priest wanted Helga to remember that before he met Gerhard Richter, before he did deals with IBM and Jeff Koons and Keith Haring and Berthold Albrecht, before all of the cars and the homes and the private planes, Helga had simply wanted to help people live better lives.
Father Luca's advice to Helga when they spoke often boiled down to just that. Be more like the guy you used to be and less like the person you've become. I said, maybe you go a little bit back to this personality. Out of these weekly conversations, Helga began thinking of what he might do after he was released from prison. How he could start over, somewhere far from the art world. Culture without borders started already in the present.
When I was in deep, deep shit, deep, deep trouble, I saw a nice little movie about this punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow, where they were dancing in the church and Putin put them in jail.
Helge's idea would be deferred for years while he did his time.
But soon, he fell into a rhythm that, against all odds, felt good to him. Along with 11 other men, he joined Father Luca's choir. He was a good singer, yes, of course, because he has a good body for singing. There's coming a lot of voice out of this.
Very big body. Helga's bass blended with the choir's other voices. Those of murderers and thieves and Thomas Middelhoff, a former Bertelsmann executive in for embezzlement and tax evasion. Middelhoff sang baritone. Father Luca told us that Helga had a few favorite songs. There's one song from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's a German pastor who were killed by the Nazis.
And it's a very famous song in German. It's called "von guten Mächten, wunderbar geboren". It's about that also if you are in prison, if you have a lot of trouble, God is with you always and you can feel it. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter out of the prison to his wife.
This letter is now the song. And there's also a song of Peter Maffay. It's a German singer and it's called Über sieben Brücken. Father Lukas sent us a recording of the prison choir singing this song. Über sieben Brücken
The translation is you have to go over seven bridges in your life and go through a lot of big troubles. And then at the end, yes, you can feel like a child and you are remembering the love of the child. Helge and Father Luca also spoke a lot about Helge's childhood.
growing up with a cold and distant mom, and a dad who was not his biological father. I think this is also one of the big points of Helge. He's searching love. Okay? Everybody's searching love. It's the main theme. The main theme of the Bible, the main theme for me as a pastor, the main theme of the people I'm working with, and also a very
very, very big theme of Helge. He's searching out, always looking, how can I get a little bit more out? In part because of his weekly conversations with Father Luca, Helge says he was able to start to think differently about his life. I think honestly, very deep honest, I was completely in peace with myself, even in the prison, because I knew I had done a
A few months into his prison term, Helge joined an art program.
It was the first time he'd painted since he was a young man. He painted alongside other prisoners who were impressed by the amount of money Helga had taken from the Albrechts. They called him gangster. They liked me. He took the money from the rich. Some, of course, were thinking, can I have a million from you? The art program was, and still is, run by a local artist named Anna Berlet. She admired the way Helga united her group of convicts. He was...
warm-hearted and he was able to ignite a warm light
And this radiates to all the others of the group. He wanted to do big canvas. And then I asked if I can bring some big canvas. And after a while, everybody wanted to paint on the big canvas. But this is in this institution of a prison, it's not easy to handle because what can we do with the big canvas?
the prisoners aren't allowed to take the canvas to their cell. Eventually, Anna convinced Helge to work on smaller canvases and to take his time with each painting. I motivated him to stay to task and to go deeper into themes. And he was able to stay for one canvas three months, four months, five months. So we started over and over again. And after all, I realized that this is
Not at all his habit. He is a person of great ideas, which all comes out of him by his intuition. I was always doing landscape to bring my own soul in shape, because I call this painting "The Spirit of Freedom".
So in this mind, I was free. Two years later, Helge was transferred to another prison early on good behavior. For two more years, he would be in something Germans call open prison, meaning he could work and live outside the prison during the day and only had to return there to sleep.
he now had the time and space to begin his work on Culture Without Borders. So he gathered a handful of friends who remained loyal to him and convinced them to invest in the idea. The British architect David Chipperfield, another old friend, agreed to help renovate the rundown farmhouse in Karst. And Anna Burlett agreed to help conceive of what this new organization should do, exactly. Everything seemed to be coming together.
But because this is a story about Helga Achenbach, his new life gets complicated fast. I worked there, but he wanted that I join the group and live there with them. And this I didn't want at all.
No, yes, I left the group, but I'm still in the association, but not in the inner circle of the association. And I don't like to bullshit around. Believe me, I am not interested to bullshit around. I tell you the truth, you can believe me.
On the next episode of Chameleon. In Germany, for example, we have people who make bigger mistakes than this. The court said six years for this. I said, yeah, absolutely crazy. Helge begins to rebuild his life. Are his actions hurtful? And I don't think so. But his new start brings old problems. I have a very family feeling with Helge. You know, like a guru, sometimes it can be like this.
Like a guru. Guru, yeah. I think it's also to do something with jealousy from her. And those closest to Helga question his motives. Do you trust Helga? He always can trust me, but I'm not sure if I trust him. But I try to trust him. That's next time on Chameleon Gallery of Lies.
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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 Iwen Lai-Tremuen.
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 Voigt. 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.