The OC Savior: Ep. 1, A Fake Somebody
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all.

Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This email right here. "Hello, my name is Nicholas. I was scammed out of nearly $1,000 in Bitcoin." "Hi Jonathan, an aunt of mine passed away. Going through her financial records, it's become clear that she was scammed out of nearly $1 million." "I'm convinced that her caregiver was in on this." "I've been wanting the email. Just don't know where to begin. I'm out almost $30,000 after meeting a broke narcissist con artist who's done this to many people."

Since going public with my story of how I got conned by Mayor Smith. Dear Jonathan, I got conned by a lifelong family friend and his mother out of $300,000. Literally hundreds and hundreds of victims and almost victims. Jonathan, my name is Antoinette. I want to thank you for saving me from making a horrible mistake. Have been contacting me, sharing their insane stories of how they got conned.

So, a widow. She gets scammed out of $200,000 by a con artist who works in the mayor's office. Oh, wow. There's this Los Angeles Botox doctor. She gets scammed out of $160,000 in gold and precious metals. The con artist was pretending that her money was growing every month, and he'd Photoshop statements and mail them to her so she'd think her gold is appreciating, but...

There was no gold. Just Photoshop and a devious con artist. Jesus. And there's this French con artist. She moves to Beverly Hills and she scams $2 million out of people under the guise of starting a dog rescue. It's like that French voice just kind of lures you in, that accent, you know? Yes. The French are cunning. My buddy, Evan Goldstein, is fascinated by it all. And truth be told, so am I.

You know, after getting conned by Mayor Smith, I thought I was unique. I thought Mayor Smith, like, that's a one-in-a-lifetime kind of situation. But that's not true at all. Con artists are everywhere. Yeah, because you're the only one I personally know that has been conned. And most victims don't go public like I do, so most people don't know it's a

But Jesus, I've been getting hundreds and hundreds of emails from desperate victims asking for help with their con artists, you know, like inspired by what I did with Mare. Like they want that for their con artist. - Or maybe there's less shame going to you because you're just in the same boat. - Yeah, I'm another victim. - Yeah, you're another victim. - Yeah, that's a good point. - So what's one of the most interesting cases that you're looking into now? - There's this woman named Lizzie Mulder

She lives in Orange County. She scams her circle of friends out of $1.5 million, using every technique that Mare used on me, and then other techniques that I've never even heard of. It is truly, truly insane. So she's good. Oh, she gives Mare a run for her money. Really? Yeah. That's hard to do. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, the OC savior. Episode one, A Fake Somebody.

Yeah.

Orange County, California is a place you gotta see to believe. You've probably heard of Orange County, or the OC as it's known by locals. It's a unique part of the Golden State that boasts the wealth and grandeur of Beverly Hills, only bigger, much, much bigger. It's about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, and it encompasses more than two dozen municipalities, cities like Newport Beach, Anaheim,

Anaheim, where the original Disneyland is located. To all who come to this happy place, welcome. And the ever-posh Laguna Beach, where the average income is, I kid you not, $207,000 a year.

It's everything you think you want to be a part of. It's beautiful cars, beautiful homes, beautiful people. It started off as a suburban neighborhood of Los Angeles. Orange County started to grow and it became a tech hub, which brought a lot of money and it just got wealthier and wealthier by the day. There's everything you can imagine. Every single store is here. Every single restaurant is here. They really cater to people that are well off.

There's no theft. There's no, what do they call it? The people that steal your packages from your... Porch pirates. Porch pirates, yeah. There's none of that. It really is otherworldly here because I went to get coffee at the Coffee Bean before I got here. Uh-huh. And everyone, all the other customers said good morning to me. Not the people who work there. Yeah. Just other people waiting on, oh, good morning, good morning. Like...

Like, it took me by surprise. Like, why are you all being nice to me? In L.A., nobody talks to you unless they want something. Yeah, I never hear great things about L.A.

Even though Orange County is only about an hour's drive south of L.A., without traffic, it's a whole other universe out here. A truly spectacular place. Laguna Beach, which was a show on MTV. I think that's when people really started to notice. Kate Casey is host of the hit podcast, Reality Life with Kate Casey, and she's got a Ph.D. in everything O.C.

She's been living here for the past 19 years. Then there was the show The O.C., which was a scripted series. And then you had The Real Housewives of Orange County. I think that Sarah should take her bony little butt out of my fake and pretentious home. I'll buy you new cake. No, we don't want any cake from you. I am bored with this. And that show really kind of showcased what it would be like to live in suburban Orange County.

But what you see on TV isn't always what it's cracked up to be. I think normal people come here with good intentions, and it's very easy for people to get caught up. Living here is like being in the middle of smoke and mirrors. Everyone presents themselves as one way, and invariably you find out it's not the truth. You will have somebody who will drive a Maserati but live in an apartment.

And to normal people, you think, why would you do that? But it's because I think that normal people come here and they see excessive wealth and they think that in order to make it here socially and financially, you have to present yourself as somebody who has an enormous amount of money. And it sounds like everyone's running their own kind of scam in a weird way. It is to a degree because you never really know what their intentions are and what their true authentic self is.

The interesting thing about living here too is that people don't ask a lot of questions. So someone like myself from the East Coast, I ask a lot of questions. Where did you go to school? Where are you from? What do you do for a living? The questions here are much more surface. Where do you like to vacation? Do you go to the yacht club? So it's very easy for a con to make their way here because no one's really asking questions that would reveal the truth behind someone's persona.

Yeah, it sounds like Orange County is an ideal breeding ground for con artists. Absolutely. To those who know her in 2013, Lizzie Mulder is a super successful certified public accountant, a CPA. She came in and she said all the right things. She had the right look. Like, wow, we could never afford a CPA like that. She was a big part of helping me get organized. And when I started the wine business, it seemed like she was doing a good job.

She's a 30-something, articulate blonde, confident, well-connected, and extremely social, with a rugged firefighter husband, two adorable young daughters, and a gorgeous $2.5 million home overlooking the Pacific Ocean, an exclusive, no poor people allowed, Laguna Beach. How does she present herself to people? What were your impressions? Lizzie definitely wanted to be somebody that was seen. She was very charismatic, and she was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

She definitely wanted to be popular, to be liked. She wore really nice clothes, definitely had more of like a cowboy aesthetic to her. She liked riding horses and stuff. So she'd come in and you could tell that she lived in Laguna, so they have a different look to them. They're a little bit more laid back.

And your hair is like out of a movie. Well, thank you. Did you do that special for me? Because I'm gay.

But your hair, it's like red and shiny and it's wavy and flowy. It's like I'm on a movie set and you're ready for your close-up. I feel like hairdressers need to always look 100%. I guess so, right? Our clients are coming to us to have the best look. So if we're looking shabby, that's not going to work. Do women come to you and be like, I want your hair? Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the time. I can see that. Yeah. It's very Hollywood sparkly. And then I have to break their hearts and let them know that there's going to be several thousands of dollars to get you there.

And Geneva should know. She's a co-owner of the salon powered by Tony and Guy, a high-end Newport Beach establishment cutting and quaffing the hair of some of the most wealthy and glamorous people in the world. Fortune 500 CEOs, actors, models, and well-heeled CPAs like Lizzie.

How did Lizzie Mulder first enter your life? So Lizzie was a client of my business partner, Lauren. She and Lizzie went to school together, although Lauren didn't know her when they went to school. They reconnected in Positano, Italy at a wedding.

Positano is a tiny little cliffside town on southern Italy's Amalfi Coast. Pebbled beachfronts frame steep, narrow, cobblestone streets lined with old-world boutiques and cafes. The houses whimsically stack atop each other, precariously going up and down the mountainside, painted every single color of the rainbow. If you've seen that Matt Damon movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley,

I always thought it'd be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Then you know the scenery. It was filmed in Positano, Italy, because it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth and the perfect location for a wedding or an elaborate con. So Lauren went out there and, you know, it's a small wedding because it's international and not that many people are going to show up. And so there was a few people and one of those people was Lizzie.

And she was there with Jesse, her husband, and they had a great time. She approached Lauren and she was just over the top, you know, having a good time and bringing Lauren in and introducing her to the people. You know, she was really showy that way. So Lauren quickly became friends with her and then she became Lauren's client at the salon. She started doing Lizzie's husband Jesse's hair and the girl's hair.

So when you first saw her, she was a client in the salon of Lawrence. And Lauren had introduced me several times, as she does. You know, when we have longtime clients, we like to introduce ourselves. This is my business partner and my best friend, Lauren, in Geneva. So I had seen her several times in there, and Lauren was just trimming her hair. At this point in 2013, Geneva and Lauren are working as hairdressers for Tony and Guy.

But soon, the entrepreneurial bug bites and they want to open their own franchise together. When we decided to be salon owners, we needed to start doing the due diligence of getting all the paperwork, finding a bookkeeper, finding a CPA, finding people that are just going to get us where we need to go the next step.

We approached one firm that was sent to us by another client and we showed up there and they were there one moment and the next time we showed up they weren't there. They were wanted by the IRS. They were doing some kind of weird fraud and they were gone. Oh my God. Yeah, and it was weird because they set up the appointment for us to show up and they weren't there. And I told my client that referred me, I said, did you know that so-and-so is wanted by the IRS? You need to check your business stuff with them because they could have stole some money from you. Yeah.

So at this point, it would seem the universe is protecting you from a fraudster. Thank goodness. Right? Right. Little do you know who's waiting in the wings. But at that point, you don't have a CPA. So you're looking. We're looking. And so Lauren calls her friend, Lizzie.

And says, you will never guess what happened. We set up this appointment with the CPA firm and we showed up and they're not there. And Lizzie's like, oh my gosh, that does happen all the time I hear about that. You know, I just don't know why they get this in their head that they need to steal people's money. She said that. Wow. So Lauren set up an appointment with her at her home office in Laguna. And she had this really great front office with ocean views. It was beautiful and beautiful.

She had this placard on the wall that said she went to Pepperdine. Oh, so she had like a degree on the wall. A degree. From Pepperdine. Yeah. With her name on it. Yep. Pepperdine University is a prestigious school that sits on 830 acres in ultra-exclusive Malibu, California. Pepperdine's neighbors include people like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barbra Streisand, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

A four-year degree from Pepperdine costs nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Their alumni include some of the most heavy-hitting movers and shakers in the business world. The head of the New York Stock Exchange went to Pepperdine, as did the CEO of United Airlines. So a framed degree from Pepperdine University says a lot about Lizzie Mulder. We looked at it. We were like, wow, that's really awesome, you know, that you went to Pepperdine. We know how prestigious that school is. Yeah, inexpensive. Yeah. Yeah.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out here the striking parallels between accounting whiz Lizzie Mulder, with her framed degree from Pepperdine University, and my con artist, Mare Smith, who if you recall from season one, frequently showed off her framed copy of the Irish Constitution signed by her great uncle, firmly establishing her as Irish royalty.

Professionally framed documents really do lend an air of legitimacy to whatever story is being told. Mayor Smith easily convinced people she was a wealthy Irish heiress. Lizzie Mulder? A successful Pepperdine graduate with the world on a string.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks ghouls and girls and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words. Yeah.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Laguna Beach CPA Lizzie Mulder loves to tell her prospective clients just how lucky they are to have her.

She always let you know how great she was, how much money she made, how she just was so busy. But what she kept on selling to us was, what you guys are a small business, I can handle you. I'll just do that on the side, you know. Right. As a favor to you. As a favor. Because you were friends. You know, don't worry about it. All you have to do is just let's trade in hair. She gets lots of hair treatments and things that are very expensive at our salon. So...

She said, let's just do like a barter system. So in exchange for you guys doing her hair, she was going to be your CPA and do the books for your new salon. Yeah. And that arrangement works out great at first. But as the weeks turn into months, Lizzie's involvement in the salon's finances becomes ubiquitous. What she would do would create this thing where we actually really needed her.

Every little business decision she took control of, anytime we would listen, we would talk to any of the vendors, anything, even the IRS or anything, she would be like, put me on the call. I want to talk to them. So she got so invested in every little part of our business that at one point I was even asking her, can I pay down the credit card because it's getting a little high? And I don't, I don't like that.

You know, I hate debt. So she'd be like, I already sent them a check. Just leave it alone. And I want to run it through QuickBooks. I don't want to have all these little things that you're doing. I want to do all of it. She always had a plausible reason that made sense. Yes, of course. And not long after Lizzie takes over the salon's books, a never-ending string of unfortunate events begins to punctuate the lives of Geneva and her business partner, Lauren. What was the payroll problem?

Payroll problem, we were going through ADP and there was a problem with our tax ID.

ADP is the company Lizzie hires to run the salon's payroll. So they had a wrong name and they couldn't create an actual direct deposit because the wrong name and the tax ID were not syncing up. And the direct deposit was going to be done. But every two weeks, it never happened. She would even send us emails saying, see, they said that it was set up.

And we would get all these emails from ADP. So every two weeks, the salon's employees are supposed to get their paychecks direct deposited into their bank accounts. But it never actually happens. Never, ever.

And the employees are pissed. You know, she'd come in at 2 o'clock. They're off at 2 o'clock. They're all waiting in the break room for their check. And here we are just all frantic, creating a whole bunch of distrust. It was so chaotic every two weeks. It gave me so much anxiety to even go into work because here our wonderful staff started getting upset because why was it so chaotic? Why couldn't direct deposit go in? And all we were able to rely was what Lizzie was telling us.

For the ones that were really mad, she would have one-on-one conversations with them about what was going on. Like take them into her confidence? Yes. There was some heated conversations, but she always acted like she knew more. She would be schooling them on business. Yeah.

and still trying to, you know, put the flames out a little bit. Right, 'cause she went to Pepperdine. Yeah. She knows more about this stuff than they do. Right. They're just hairdressers. And Lizzie, ironically, becomes sort of a hero to all these hairdressers, because every time the direct deposits don't show up, Lizzie does, and sits down and manually cuts checks to every single employee and gets them paid.

In their eyes, she's a problem solver, a savior. But soon, other strange problems start popping up in the salon that leave everyone in the dark, literally.

So you're in the salon. The electricity goes out. What happened? Did you not pay your electric bill? That's what all your clients were saying. Did you not pay the electric bill? Somebody didn't pay their electric bill. Meanwhile, you're probably dying inside because how embarrassing. You own the salon and there's no power. Well, that's the thing is that there is actually this weird fraudulent scam from people pretending to be Edison or any kind of electric company, but specifically Edison.

And even if you go on their website, they say, beware people walking in pretending to be Edison. We're not going to shut off your power. This, you know, this and that. So there's a scam. Yeah, a scam. Where people dressed up like the power company people. Yes. They show up at your place of business and what? They demand money? Yes, yes.

They say, give us money or we're going to shut your power off. Yeah, and it's so silly that sometimes they say, well, we'll take gift cards. You owe $750 and we'll take it in gift cards. Yeah. Where, to Cheesecake Factory? Yeah. Where would you like it? Amazon?

So that had happened a few times anyway. I mean, it happens. It had happened twice. It happened in your salon. Oh, I didn't know that. Twice before, within even like a couple years. Like people show up in uniforms. And they hand over this brochure that they got from somebody's front porch that is an official Edison brochure. Wow. And it has a description of not paying payments and things.

So this is a normal scam. Right. I'm on my way into work. The electricity goes off. My staff calls me saying the electricity is off. And I'm like, what? So I start looking on my phone for Edison's number and I get an 800 number start calling in. So I answered it. And it was very muffled. It sounded really strange. And they said, is this Mrs. Mendoza? And I said, yep.

This is Edison calling. We heard that you got your electricity shut off. We wouldn't do that. We wouldn't come and just shut your electricity off. We would send a notice that your bill was due, but you're actually on auto pay, so there's no reason why that would happen. This is a fraudulent action. So we're going to send somebody...

down there within an hour to turn you back on. I said, no, we need it to be turned on now, like now. And they said, okay, well, we do see that there is some past bill and we just need that to be paid. And I said, just turn the electricity on. I have a whole salon full of clients in there.

So they said, we understand that. We'll get somebody within the hour. So we hang up. I called Lauren immediately. I said, Lauren, this is weird. This person called me out of the blue telling me that this is a fraudulent activity. They didn't shut it off. So then Lizzie calls me. She said, I just talked to Edison. Did they call you too? And I said, yeah. She said, yeah. Well, I'm just going to pay the bill that's due. But you are on auto pay. So I don't know why that didn't go through. We're just going to do that and the power will come back on.

So that all got handled. The power came back on. I walked in. I'm so embarrassed. My head kind of low. I'm like, don't want to look at anybody, especially not the clients, you know? Yeah. I go in my office and some of my managers come and talk to me and they said, was it the same kind of thing how those people come in and they just scam us? And I said, I think so. I think that's what it was because I got a call from Edison saying they didn't do it.

So, you know, they're a little sketched out. And I thought, what the heck? So, of course, nobody came for medicine. Not all day, not all night. So I was just so irked and so weirded out that I told Lauren, I'm like, I don't think that was real. For some reason, it sounded like muffling. It sounded from a different country.

And it just didn't seem legit. What accent did the voice you talked to have? An American accent? It wasn't really an accent. I couldn't really hear it. It was so faint that I could not actually hear. Man or woman? A woman. It was a woman. But not a voice you've heard? No. No. Telling you that it's not the power company that shut your power off. It's a scam of some sort. Yes. And did the power come back on? The power came back on. And Lizzie said she paid it and that we would just owe her. So...

That's what that happened. And so she said, you are on auto pay. Well, we were so delinquent with that bill that

that they cut us off of even doing auto pay. So I had to go to the store down the road from my house to pay our bill every month. And even that felt sketchy to me. I was already so frazzled with all of this. The fact that I would go and pay the electric bill at a liquor store. Why is this even a thing? Yeah, you're a Newport Beach salon owner. Yeah, and I have to go to a liquor store to pay our electric bill because we're a delinquent.

After your entire world is flipped upside down,

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...schools and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words. Yeah.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As the months pass, Geneva and Lauren are chasing their tails, running a salon, dealing with 40 employees, and working in a salon as hairdressers themselves. It's not long before the salon's finances begin to eclipse every other issue they're having.

And pretty soon, CPA Lizzie Mulder finds herself in Geneva's crosshairs. There was a lot of questions I would always have that were never being answered, and she would disappear for two or three days. Come Monday, she wouldn't answer. We were all in a group text, and I would say, Lizzie, what about this, this, and this? Did you pay this bill? Did you talk to the IRS? Did you talk to Cox Cable? They said they haven't been paid for three months.

Oh, I already talked to them. I'll get back to you. It was always like I was chasing after her, and it was just so disheveled that it really made me frustrated because I try to be very organized when it comes to, especially bill pay. Lizzie is the salon's CPA for two years, from 2014 to 2016.

And in that time, the salon inexplicably hemorrhages money. I mean, they have a lot of clients, and they have a lot of repeat clients, and the salon is bringing in a lot of cash. But somehow, they're spending more than they're taking in, and it just doesn't make any sense. ♪

but it's about to what was the the straw that broke the camel's back well there was a point a true breaking point where there was this ten thousand dollar check that she said she had this blank check that lauren had already signed in her bag and it was for some bill and at the time she because we had run out of money

She was in negotiations with different banks, and at the time it was farmers, she said, to get a line of credit. That was the only way we were going to be able to stay afloat because we had run out of all the money. And of course, she said it was our franchise fees, it was the payroll taxes were too high. All these things were the reason why we had no more money in our account.

So she was negotiating a line of credit for us, and she hit me up one night, and she said, hey, I have this check. I've been talking to this guy from Farmers, and he said you need to pay down this credit card immediately.

And so I'm going to pay it down with the $10,000 and I'm going to cash that, you know, for that. And she's like, I just talked to you about this stuff because I know that, that Lauren doesn't get it all the time. And I know that you're always, you know, looking at that. And I was, again, she was playing, she started playing us against each other. She's trying to separate you. She could see that, you know, I was irritated with her and,

that she wouldn't even answer me. The way that Lauren would get her to have a conversation with us is she would open it up with, how are the kids doing? How is Jesse doing? So eventually Lizzie would answer and then we could circle back to business. So anyway, so she wrote this $10,000 check. I saw it come out of the account. And the thing is, she knew I was always looking. That's why she did that. So this $10,000 check came out of the account. The credit card didn't go down.

So she was supposed to use that $10,000 to pay down the credit card. Yes, to get us this letter of credit. And it never happened. So three or four days later, she disappeared. We didn't talk to her. She's on some trip. So we hit her up where I said, Lizzie, where's this $10,000 for the check? She says, I paid it down. It should hit on Friday. So Friday comes, it doesn't hit. She disappears Friday through Monday. Monday, I said, Lizzie, it still hasn't cleared. So I go into the bank.

And I asked them, I saw this $10,000 come out, where was it taken out? And they said, oh, it was handled in Laguna Beach. And I said, does it show that it's going to our credit account? We're sitting in the bank and we get a call at the same time. And we are talking to Lizzie, telling her, we're trying to find this $10,000, you know, because it's missing. At this point...

Lauren's still like, I wonder where they lost it. That's so weird. And I'm like, well, that's freaking weird. Yeah, it's strange. So we get a call, goes to one of the tellers that we're talking to, one of the bank tellers. And they say, oh, yeah, they're in here right now.

They said, we're creditors. We work for U.S. Bank and we're handling the credit card thing. And yes, we did see it hit the account. It's going to clear in a couple of days. So the lady we were talking to, she said, send that call over to me. I want to talk to them. The phone line drops. So I was like looking at Lauren like, are you serious? Really? So let me understand. Another bank supposedly called the bank you were at. The credit card company. The credit card company.

somehow knew you were there. Yeah, and they were calling because they saw that we were looking into it. Ah, okay. Yeah. So it was just super fishy. But still, Geneva and Lauren accept that explanation and move on. Days later, though, a bomb drops, and nothing will ever be the same ever again.

We went on a business trip. We were going to Scottsdale. And we were about to leave to come back home after the business trip, and we get a call from Jesse Mulder, which is Lizzie's husband. And he said, Lauren, are you sitting down? And Lauren, because she's like the kindest person in the world, she starts kind of hyperventilating. She's like, oh, my God, is Lizzie okay? Why would you be calling me? And Jesse said, just sit down and listen to me.

And I'm just sitting there on the bed like, what? You know, at this point, anything goes. This woman has come up with so many reasons of something. And so Jesse tells Lauren that he was getting suspicious of some of the activities that she was doing. So he started rummaging through her stuff. And he found all of these accounts that said income tax payments.

He said, I want you guys to go through your accounts. It looks like she's been stealing money from you, and she's been doing it for about a year and a half. So please look through all this stuff. I'm going to take everything I found to the Laguna Beach Police Department. Apparently there's a detective there that's been looking into her, and I want to make sure that he gets all this information.

And Jesse was crying himself on the phone. He was crying and he said, I don't know what I'm going to do. We have these two little girls and I'm just, I'm afraid. And I'm sad for them because their mother has done this. And she's done it to several businesses that I'm finding. Wow. Coming up this season on Queen of the Con, the OC savior. They say in my line of work, you shouldn't take things personal, but I made it personal. Just the arrogance of Lizzie Mulder.

It made it easier for me to go after her because I just didn't like her. She created a website, a 1-800 number. She created two personalities, a Xiong something and a guy named Brent Harrison. And I'm thinking I'm talking to a guy overseas that wants to invest into my winery. And really, I'm talking to that woman in Orange County that is just scamming me the whole time.

And it sounded like a man. It did. It sounded just like a man. Lizzie actually used a service that was a phone service where you could change your voice. Well, there's so much more about Lizzie that goes into the level of diabolical, sociopathic behavior.

Oh, it's $3,500 to go up and do the IRS audit in LA with her and one of her assistants. And there never was an audit. There never was an audit. Complete fabrication. Wow. I'm walking out of the station and in walks Jesse Mulder.

I need to talk to a detective. And he says, I'm a firefighter. And I think my wife is scamming her clients out of money. She got me for like $285,000 altogether. $285,000? Yeah. She took $18,000 out of my business. She took a little over $20,000 out of my parents. How much money did your boss end up losing? Millions.

Every single day is a struggle to keep our business open. We almost lost our own homes. We are facing bankruptcy because of her. She crippled us. She crippled us badly. Elizabeth Mulder is a predator. I lost my 20-year marriage. The number of people she has hurt, the amount of times she has done it, and the callous and cruel manner in which she abused the trust of at least 16 victims and probably more.

I think if she's not already scamming people, I think she's concocting her next scam. I agree. Queen of the Con, The O.C. Savior is a production of AYR Media and iHeart Media, hosted by me, Jonathan Walton. Executive Producers, Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions, and Aliza Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Jonathan Walton. Consulting Producer, Evan Goldstein.

Senior Associate Producer, Eric Newman. Sound Design by Baked ZD Media. Mixed and mastered by Cameron Tagge. Sound Editing, Audio and Studio Engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal Counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive Producer for iHeart Media, Maya Howard.

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This ad is sponsored by Facet. Facet Wealth Incorporated is an SEC-registered investment advisor. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities, nor is it investment, legal, or tax advice. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy.

So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey y'all, Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.