Episode 1: Something's Not Right
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A Dear Media original podcast. A warning. This episode includes mentions of sexual violence against children and of suicide. Listen with care. And a note before we get started. We're using AI to alter the voices of people who don't want to be identified and also to bring social media posts and online communications to life.

But while the voices are sometimes computer-generated, the words are 100% real. For example, the voice you're about to hear... I've been debating if I want to post this. ...has been generated by AI. If I even want anyone to know. In late January of 2022, a woman named Coco Berthman made an announcement to her more than 60,000 followers on Instagram. What?

To most of you, this will come surprisingly, especially my close friends. I only told a handful. She shared this post along with a black and white close-up of her face, with her blonde hair falling over her right eye and her left eye staring directly into the camera. Over the last few weeks, my blood work came back concerning. My white blood cells are elevated. She looked strong and defiant. There is no specific diagnosis yet. Cancer is in the room.

Immediately, Coco's internet community rallied around her. Money started pouring into a GoFundMe account. It was set up to help her pay for alternative treatments that she thought were her best shot at staying alive. And soon, she was back on Instagram with another post. What?

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you out there. I am getting messages from all over the world. Remember, when you hear Coco reading, that's actually the AI clone of her voice. India, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Panama, Chile, Germany, Israel, UK, Japan. The list goes on. I am truly overwhelmed with love.

And now? I found it. You're actually hearing Coco's real voice from Instagram. Well, I found something in my neck a few weeks ago that didn't sit right with me.

This time Coco went live, dressed in a green t-shirt, minimal makeup, cracked lips, limp hair. She looked nothing like the Coco that her followers were used to seeing. Coco pulls at a spot on her neck, right above her collarbone. And it's like a grape-sized ball that is just like sitting here.

And it's pretty painful. She says that her doctor took labs and found that her white blood cell count was, quote, through the roof. So she says they ordered a bone marrow biopsy and a test called a PET scan. And a day later, she got the results, a rare cancer called mantle cell lymphoma. And so from then it was a journey because they thought we were hoping to go into surgery to remove my spleen and the mass here in my neck.

Coco says her doctor suggested chemo, but she had done her own research and she said she'd found that chemo often doesn't work with this kind of cancer. I refuse to die. After everything, this is not the way I'm going out.

After Everything is a reference to Coco's story, the one that made her internet famous, the reason why she had so many followers in the first place. Coco was becoming a really big deal. She was an advocate for children who survived sex trafficking, and her brand was booming.

She had tens of thousands of views on her stories, where she was sharing these really intimate details about how she had been sold for sex by her own mother back in Germany. And now she had escaped and come to the U.S. to start a new life. Coco Berthman had lawyers, public relations people, business managers. I mean, a whole team. It was Team Coco. She was making moves within the movement that were very large and impressive.

She looked good. She spoke well. Honestly, Sarah, she was like the sweetest girl. She's charming. She's attractive. You know, you just, you naturally feel for her. In a way, she was like this perfect spokesperson for...

what a trafficking victim is supposed to look like. If you're asking, did that have something to do with selling the package of Coco Berthman? Absolutely, I think it did. The thing is, Coco had the power to really do a lot of good. She was bringing attention to this issue that is often overlooked or sensationalized. And she had this really magnetic way of doing it. It's kind of cliche to say this, but it's true. Coco could walk into a room and capture it.

And that's why I think people really rallied around her so quickly. Because Coco was live on Instagram, now telling her followers that she needed help to make it through a new fight. I really feel overwhelmed by all of you guys just showering me in love again. It's very humbling. I've always seen you pull through for other people, and I've never thought I'd be in this position. So I really thank you all for...

Being who you are, being so loving, so supportive. Literally from all over the world. Romania, hi! It's gonna be a very intense journey, but I'm not here to give up. Cancer, pick the wrong girl.

For some time now, Coco had been building up to this, telling her followers that her body was failing her. She was having these weird fainting spells, heart problems, even seizures. Coco believed in this idea that someone who had gone through a trauma as significant as sex trafficking might then have physical effects, like a series of unexplained illnesses. I honestly also believe that with the cancer that I have, that's my lymphatic system,

It's literally the detox system of my body. I truly believe it is connected to my trauma. All the unresolved emotions and the trauma that is coming through now.

For many of her followers, this news was pretty devastating. But for some, this cancer narrative, it had gone too far. People were whispering, you know, in the only way you can whisper on the internet, in private messages and in their DMs. And it was starting to become clear that no one, and I mean no one, knew the true story of Coco Berthman. ♪♪

I'm Sarah Ganim, and I'm an investigative reporter. In short, I really love a story like this. Messy and unfinished and in desperate need of some good old-fashioned detective work. Because sometimes, the more unbelievable a story, the more we're inclined to find it believable.

This is Believable, the Cocoa Birthman story. Episode one, something's not right. ♪♪

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rocketmoney.com slash believable. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. It's usually fun and lighthearted in the recording studio for Dear Media's flagship podcast. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. The podcast is...

Lauren Everts Bostic hosts the show alongside her husband, Michael.

Lauren and Michael have had celebrity guests like Michelle Pfeiffer, Scarlett Johansson, Chelsea Clinton, but also they have guests like, you know, we had someone that does vaginoplasty on the podcast. They've interviewed Caitlyn Jenner, Jessica Alba, Paula Abdul. We've talked to people in makeup and YouTube, all different kinds of walks of life. But in January of 2021, as they prepared to record episode number 325, they admit they weren't.

They were a little nervous. This is one of the darkest subjects that we've ever covered. It was such a heavy subject. We felt a different kind of responsibility than we typically feel when we're talking to some other kinds of guests. Lauren and Michael's producer went down to the lobby to greet the day's guest, Coco Berthman. He said hello, but he didn't shake her hand. He didn't want to appear too aggressively friendly.

And for that reason, the elevator ride was quiet. Small talk seemed awkward when someone is there to tell such a traumatic story. And then Coco walked into the studio. When I saw her, you know, it makes you want to cry because she's little, she's tiny, she looks like a little girl. She was very sweet. Very well-spoken. Very well-spoken. Very articulate. Pretty and vulnerable. And you sort of just want to give her a hug.

Lauren had found Coco on Instagram about six months earlier, in the summer of 2020. There was a video about her opening up about what she had been through. My name is Coco Berthman. This is one of Coco's YouTube videos. It's titled, Human Trafficking in Your Neighborhood. Statistically, I should not be speaking to you. Statistically, I should be a drug addict, a prostitute.

Statistically, I should be dead. I was shocked. I was like, someone needs to blow this story up. We need to talk about this. I have not chosen to be a victim of human trafficking, but I'm choosing every day to fight the biggest human rights challenge of the century. I reached out to her and I said,

Please come on the Skinny Confidential podcast and share your story. And so she did. So I'm actually a child trafficking survivor. Was trafficked for the first 15 years of my life by my own mother back in Germany. Escaped on November 2nd, 2009. When you say escaped, do you mean that you just... Ran away. Ran away? Mm-hmm. Like you just decided one day I'm running away? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a longer story. As she has many times before, Coco started to share in detail. Whatever you're born into, it's your normal. How from the outside, she may have appeared to have a normal childhood. Went to school and I went to dance classes and horseback riding and so forth. But no one knew that her mother was making money. I had bruises all over. By selling her young daughter to men who wanted to rape her. Nobody saw me. Nobody said something.

I've heard Coco describe her childhood this way. Most kids grow up scared of imaginary monsters under the bed, but her monsters were in her bed, and they were real.

When she tells this, it's a really compelling moment. Actually, all of her story is really quite powerful. Coco has this way of telling it that really just pulls you in. My older sister and I, we started watching Gilmore Girls when I think I was like six or seven. Hey, it's freezing. Oh, what do you need? Hot tea? Coffee? Lip gloss. I have vanilla chocolate strawberry and toasted marshmallow.

Anything in there not resembling a breakfast cereal? And I started craving that kind of relationship to my mother, and I didn't quite understand why I did not have that kind of relationship with my mom. And then we started watching Law & Special Victims Unit. I'm Detective Benson. This is my partner, Detective Stadler.

And I started realizing something is way too familiar. Mr. and Mrs. Morrow have been very good to me. Where are the Morrow's right now? At work. And dinner has to be ready before they get home. Is there anything else? So I created this imaginary world that I escaped every time an abuse would happen.

And in that world, it's kind of the cheesy part of my story, but in that world, Celine Dion became my mom. And every time something bad happened, I could tell her and I like she would sing me a lullaby or tuck me into bed. And that imaginary world kept me going and I could dissociate at any rape or abuse.

By age 12, Coco says she saw no other way out but to end her life. She says that she took a bunch of pills, but she woke up in a hospital bed. Before I was waking up in the hospital, my mother, as a master manipulator, talked to all the doctors and made it about her and her victim. Like, she's trying so much as a mother, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line is, when I woke up, the only thing that the doctor asked me at age 12, attempting suicide, why are you doing this to your mother? She's doing so much for you.

Coco told you guys a lot of very vivid details. What stuck out to you? What detail did you find yourself thinking about later? I can't even talk about it now. It's the mother putting someone through what she went through is like wild. She told us that her mother sort of like had this like planned schedule of who she was going to be raped by. Like it was jarring. I just...

I can't comprehend it. Yeah, it's rare that I've gotten choked up on our show, but it was so devastating to hear that someone could go through something like that. Coco told the Bosticks that at 14 years old, she found out that she was pregnant by one of her abusers.

And she says that her mother forced her to have what she calls an illegal abortion. And physically, I nearly didn't survive that abortion. And that was the moment that I decided that I got to go. Otherwise, I won't be able to survive this. So Coco decides to run away. She sees a chance to escape when her mom, who was born and raised in Poland, decides to go back for a visit.

But the window of opportunity is short. And as Coco tells it, her mom calls her just an hour after leaving and says she's turning around and coming home. And like my heart just sunk and I made peace that I'm just going to die here and that's going to be it. During, I don't know, during the night, I think it was like three or four in the morning, I woke up and I have never had that feeling before or ever since.

I don't know how to explain it. Some might call it God, others might call it the universe. I woke up and it felt like somebody was literally behind my back saying, you gotta go and you gotta go now. So Coco goes to her closet. She grabs a backpack and some underwear. While I'm talking, it's just like being there again. My heart beating so fast. Opened my door quietly, tipped on down the spiral staircase.

Went to my mother's wallet, took out 113 euros, one cigarette, first time and last time I've ever stolen. I quit smoking, don't smoke. Put in my air pot, put on Celine Dion's "Stay Constance" song, opened the front door, and I just ran. And I ran as fast as I could. I didn't feel my legs, only felt the color in my face and the music playing.

I remember when she was telling that story, I almost could visualize, almost like a movie scene, what she was describing. You know, her running down the street and her being in that... The song she listened to. Yeah, I can instantly take myself back to the conversation just based on the visuals she provided. Coco told Lauren and Michael that after she ran away from home, she arrived at a clinic on the other side of Germany. The clinic is meant to treat children like her who have been through a trauma.

I didn't talk for days and I was in really bad condition, malnourished, bruised, and they couldn't really figure out what's going on. But after a few days, she did start talking. I did not say anything about my mother. I only said that I was abused by my stepdad.

Like many victims, she says that at first, she could only muster up the nerve to tell a small piece of her story. And they questioned me for, I think, eight hours. Horrible experience. And all they did was...

Coco says she stayed at that facility for six months. And when she was released, she says she was able to convince the German courts to emancipate her, to give her legal status as an adult, even though she was still only 16. And this way, she didn't have to return home.

At this point, Coco is able to start what might look like a normal life for the first time. She goes to high school. She makes friends. She has a job. She moves into an apartment all by herself. And she starts seeing a therapist, a man she calls Sebastian. So a few weeks in, like we went out for lunch and I was able to walk his dog and we were just hanging out, having a good time. He checking up on me and like schoolwork.

He's like, I feel really bad that you're 16, going to high school, working at night, going to school in the morning. Why don't you come move in with me? And you don't have to worry about rent and like the logistics. Coco took his offer, but it wasn't long before she started to feel that something was not right with Sebastian. One night I was taking a shower. He just walked in and I was shook. I was like, what are you doing? Just started brushing his teeth. And I was just like, hey, can you go out?

You might guess where this story is going. Things get really dark again. Coco says Sebastian became violent, that he'd lock her in the basement and rape her. And this abuse went on for two years. But by the end, she says that he trusted her enough to have some freedom to do things like go to the grocery store. End of November of 2013, instead of going to the grocery store, I went to the pharmacy, got a bunch of pills, and...

Bottle of wine. I went to the forest and I attempted suicide. Downed all the pills and all the wine. And it took about 30 minutes to have it all kick in. Horrible experience. And I won't go into too much graphic. Otherwise, it might be triggering for some.

Coco recounts how she lay there in the woods, still and unable to move. But a dog found her and its owner called for help and she woke up in the hospital a week later. The nurses who were taking care of her, they see her Celine Dion keychain and they buy her the new album to try to cheer her up. The very first song is called Love Me Back to Life and I listened to it. Something happened. Once I was finished, I remember just pressing that red nurse button over and over again and

And I said, I need to talk to the police and I need to talk to them now. She told police about Sebastian and what he had done to her. And she says that he was arrested for his crimes, but it still wasn't the outcome that she hoped for. He was charged not guilty for mental illness, which is a joke because he's a therapist. He knew what to say. But he was put away, at least, in a mental institution. And that was...

When my life actually finally began. By this point in the interview, Lauren and Michael, who were new parents themselves, were barely holding it together. It was so, you know, devastating to hear that someone could go through something like that. And so it was like, it was a harder conversation to get through. And I remember kind of like, you almost stumble a little bit in the questions and in the conversation.

First, thank you for sharing that story here. I mean, it's obviously an extremely impactful story for people to hear. I'm extremely sorry that you had to go through that. This is heavy stuff, especially like me, a father of a young daughter now, like I could never imagine like hearing that story. I want to kill somebody when I hear that. Why do you think it is that people don't address this topic and tackle it?

Many things. Now that I'm in forensic neurology, it's a mechanism of the brain to protect your psyche from such traumatizing things because there's such a thing called secondary trauma where you can be traumatized just by hearing somebody's story. But it's so uncomfortable that we just want to turn away. It's like, no, no, let's not talk about it.

When the interview ended, Lauren and Michael said they actually hesitated for a second. For the first time since starting their podcast, they really just were not sure if they should post this episode at all. Did we do a good job here? Did we put this in the right light? Did we ask the right questions? You know, is this sensitive enough? Is it also framed in a way where the audience is going to be able to digest it and not be triggered? Like all of those things kind of arose where normally like the thought of like podcasting

like posting it after is like, yeah, that one's going out. Like, you know, not nearly as much thought.

This is the story that made Coco Berthman so famous so fast. And every time she gave another interview or posted another YouTube video, reaction grew and so did Coco's celebrity. I just listened to your story on the Skinny Confidential podcast. I'm sharing your story everywhere. Keep going. Hashtag winning. Hashtag awesome. Hashtag beautiful. I pray you know Jesus.

This is Believable, the Coco Berthman story. Coco Berthman became a bit of a media sensation for a lot of different reasons. That's right.

That's Chris Hansen. He hosts an internet show called Takedown with Chris Hansen on the True Blue Network. But like me, you might remember him from something else. Rob, go ahead. Chris has him. How you doing? All right. Do you have a seat over in that chair, please? He says he's here to meet a girl, but he can't remember her name. And he's a little vague about her age. To catch a predator. People know to catch a predator because it's become such a part of pop culture. You know, because of social media, because of YouTube, because of all these other platforms.

younger people keep discovering it. In 2020, Chris Hansen had an interview show on his YouTube channel, and that's when he heard about Coco Berthman. There was this incredible story about this girl from Germany who happened to be very attractive, who had been trafficked in a most horrible way. And by this point, she had already been on the local news in Salt Lake City. She was about to do a TED Talk. I mean, she was everywhere.

So he meets Coco for lunch while she's visiting New York City. And it was during the pandemic and we had lunch outside at a restaurant. She seemed very pleasant and she told me her story and we wrapped up lunch and she went off with her people to a bunch more meetings and we left it at that. And then it was United Nations Human Trafficking Awareness Month. And I thought, well, you know, this is a good opportunity to give a very important, worthy subject some attention. And so I invited her to come on and tell her story.

Was the story she told you at lunch the same story she told you on camera? Essentially, as far as I can remember, it was, you know, maybe more detailed than what she told me at lunch. And the details that Coco told Chris Hansen are truly terrible. At 12 years old, you watched your sister be murdered. I cannot imagine the pain, the trauma of that event. Yeah, that was a really horrific experience.

She was stabbed to death by people my mother is connected to. Made for a very compelling hour of TV, of YouTube in this case. Chris Hansen recognized that it's hard to find survivors like Coco who are willing to share their story publicly. Do you remember what kind of response you got when you had her on? It was a positive response, and I'm sure...

It generated some more media appearances, and I'm sure it gave her a little bit more credibility, which she attained every time she appeared somewhere. Her star was rising fast, and now Coco was about to make her biggest appearance yet. ♪♪

You're listening to Smart Talks with the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. I'm your host, Elizabeth Smart. If you were alive in the early 2000s like me, then I'm sure that you remember the name Elizabeth Smart. Because for a while, news coverage of her story was nonstop. Oh.

Elizabeth Smart found alive today around 2 o'clock this afternoon in Sandy City. She was abducted from her Utah home when she was just 14 years old. Her nine-year-old sister, Mary Catherine, shared a bedroom and witnessed the abduction. I turned to him and I was like, if you are going to rape and kill me, could you do it here? Because it was important to me that my parents know what had happened. I've got to show you this, Kara. This is the headline of the Salt Lake Tribune today. No matter what it took...

I was going to survive. I was going to survive. Elizabeth Smart now uses her story to help people like her, to bring awareness and education to taboo topics. And so when Elizabeth invited Coco to her podcast, I'm here with an incredible woman, an incredible survivor and advocate, Coco Berthman. It was a really big deal. Thanks so much. I'm super excited. You were one of my inspirations to come forward, so...

So I'm Coco, born and raised in Germany. Throughout the interview, Coco kept coming back to this idea that Elizabeth Smart had been her inspiration. I read your story and I thought you were just incredible for speaking up and just going through all of this and everything.

doing all the work and I say, I want to be like Elizabeth Smart. Elizabeth and Coco had on paper a lot of the same experiences. They were both rescued after their captors allowed them to go out in public. They both had the kind of story that is very statistically rare. And they both turned their trauma into advocacy.

So they bonded. And at the end of the interview, Elizabeth was effusive. Coco, I have so loved talking to you. Honestly, I feel like I could talk to you for hours. I love this. We're definitely going to have you back. I want to say thank you again for everyone tuning in. Make sure to subscribe and catch us next time. Thank you.

As near as we can tell, that was Coco Berthman's last major podcast appearance. Eight months later, she went on Instagram to announce her cancer diagnosis, pulling at that spot on her neck where she said there was a golf ball-sized lump. Welcome to my cancer journey.

I don't know. I feel bad for asking, but if you feel called to help in any financial way, my friend started a GoFundMe. There's a link. Most of the alternative treatments are obviously not covered by insurance, but I'll be okay. It'll be okay. And if by now your instincts are telling you that something's not right, yeah. Yeah.

something's not right. New at four, a Utah human rights advocate is being accused of lying about having cancer. There was no doctor, no bone biopsy or PET scan. That place where her neck meets her collarbone, there's no lump there. Not one that I can see anyway. She was arrested on suspicion of communications fraud, which is a second degree felony.

Authorities allege that Coco had taken about $10,000 from that GoFundMe that was meant to pay for her alternative cancer treatments, and she spent it at places like the Apple Store, Nordstrom, Chick-fil-A. And this is when question marks really started flying.

So let's fast forward. I was in that courtroom on a cold January day in Salt Lake City as Coco Berthman went before a judge and spoke publicly for the first time since all of this went down. Yes, Your Honor. Guilty?

Coco admitted to taking money out of that GoFundMe account. But authorities have refused to comment on what many people see as a larger question.

Was anything that Coco Berthman said actually true? Not just the cancer, but the child sex trafficking, the mother who sold her, the sister who was murdered in front of her eyes. It's a question that veteran Utah investigative reporter Lynn Packer started asking six months before Coco's arrest. Hey Lynn, it's Sarah Gannon.

How are you doing? Good. I called Lynn from my car sitting outside the courthouse. We got to know each other pretty well over the course of this reporting. Were you watching the court hearing just now? No, I wasn't. But how did it go? She made a plea in abeyance to class A misdemeanor and is going to, over the next 12 months, pay back the $9,000 in change and restitution fees

and expect to see the charges dropped. Lynn was not the least bit surprised to hear how this all played out. It became clear at some point that, one, they never took the fraud charges seriously, that they just basically wanted to get rid of it. When they only charged one fraud of all that could have been charged, and the case that could have been made, it was clear that they were just...

Why? Why is it a politically unpopular case?

Lynn went on to say that Coco was propped up by a lot of movers and shakers in Utah, people who wanted to be seen with her, to be photographed with her, to have her at their events. So you're saying anybody who believed her story is embarrassed by her lies and therefore they just want this to kind of go away. Yeah.

So police aren't going to dig in and figure out which parts of this crazy story are true. And politicians won't either. The Utah press has moved on. I was the only reporter sitting in that courtroom, and I flew in from New York. Lynn's right. Some people in Utah just want this to go away. And quite frankly, not everybody is okay with that. We were like, oh my God. I mean, this is, this is...

A huge allegation against her. That's Lauren Bostic again. And here's Michael. What made the hair on the back of my neck stand up is it, and I want to say this delicately, whether the sex trafficking stuff happened or not, it almost looked like she was then leveraging that into a very monetizable career. And I think that's what gave me the pit in my stomach.

I thought if we were going to address this in a real significant way, we would have to bring on people who can handle this in a professional matter, tell every side of the story, dive very deep, interview everybody. And if at the end of the day we find nothing great, but if we do find something like I feel there is a responsibility because if we as a platform contributed to someone taking advantage of real victims and real people on something that wasn't true, like that record to me needs to be set straight.

So that's what we did. We set out to really dig in, to dive deep, interview everybody. And if I'm being totally honest with you, I really thought that we would probably find that Coco Berthman's entire story was a lie. ♪

He wouldn't mind if you could indulge me and just tell me what Coco said about Celine and the tour. And I said, there's something very odd about this girl. And I don't believe her. And I don't believe her story. I didn't know how much of it was lie and how much was truth. Is she even from fucking Germany? Is her name even fucking Coco? We don't even know that. But the parts of this investigation that really surprised us were the parts that just might be true.

Okay, so I've arrived at the Frankfurt train station. You know, I've spent so many hours looking for that guy, and he just doesn't show up. Good news. I just talked to Silke Modell. No. Yes. Really? Really. She said enough. Way enough. That's on this season of Believable, the Coco Berthman story. Find it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Believable, the Cocoa Birthman story is a Dear Media original series. It's reported and written by me, Sarah Ganim, and our showrunner, Karen Given. Additional reporting was done by journalists Kirsteen Silm in Los Angeles and Katarina Felke in Berlin.

The managing producer is Rosalie Atkinson on behalf of Dear Media. Technical production is by Amanda Vandekar. Original music was composed by Pete Redman. Mixing and mastering, editing and sound design is done by Karen Given. Story editing is by Nadia Hamdan. Fact-checking by Haley Milliken. A special thanks to Aseel Kibbe.

Consulting producers are Simpatico Media and Infinity Rising. Executive producers are Jocelyn Falk and Paige Port for Dear Media. And finally, we know this podcast hits on a lot of difficult topics. If you or someone you know is struggling, see our show notes for a list of resources.