Jake Halpern and the Snowball team track a con artist who defrauded a family.
Deep Cover is measured true-crime journalism about scams that begin inside ordinary relationships. Its recent Snowball run tracks how Leslie Mnookian’s stories, documents, aliases, and charm pulled a family into years of confusion.
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Deep Cover, produced by Pushkin Industries and hosted by journalist Jake Halpern, is a narrative true-crime show centered on confidence fraud, deception, and people who lead double lives. Most episodes follow a single serialized investigation rather than a rotating weekly-interview format, though the feed also includes direct interview episodes and occasional live events. Its most recent extended arc, 'Snowball,' is produced with the Unravel podcast team at Australia's ABC and hosted by journalist Ollie Wards, who investigates Leslie Mnookian, a woman he says defrauded his family of their savings and home through a fabricated trust fund and forged bank statements. That series tracks Wards and his brother Simon through years of document-gathering before an eventual car-park confrontation with Mnookian in California. A separate season, reported with journalist Jess McHugh, examines Sarah Kavanaugh, a social worker convicted of impersonating a wounded Marine to defraud veterans, including participants at a Montana veterans' retreat. Recurring guest Maria Konnikova, a psychologist and author of 'The Confidence Game,' appears to explain the mechanics con artists use to exploit trust rather than simply commit fraud. Episodes frequently center victims describing financial loss, shame, and the aftermath of being deceived by someone close to them, alongside the reporters' own investigative process, including staged confrontations and confidential source-building. The show periodically revisits earlier subjects in follow-up interviews or live tapings, such as a WBUR event that reunited voices from prior seasons. Listeners drawn to long-form investigative journalism, fraud psychology, and family-driven true-crime narratives make up the core audience.
Made for: Listeners who want long-form investigative true crime centered on con artists and financial fraud rather than violent crime.
What sets it apart: Within true crime, Deep Cover narrows to confidence fraud specifically, often reported by family members of the victims investigating their own case.
Deep Cover is a show about people who lead double lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern reveals webs of deception and dark underworlds, through interviews with federal agents and convicted criminals. Deep Cover Presents: Snowball. A special limited series from the Unravel Podcast team at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Ollie Wards' family lost everything after their brush with a charming Californian con woman. As he embarks on a quest to find out how she did it, why she did it, and where she is now, he opens the door on a mystery that spans decades and across continents. Binge episodes o...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Deep Cover connects the mechanics of fraud to the shame, fractured trust, and altered sense of reality left behind.
Deep Cover follows deception through the damage it does to trust and a person's sense of reality. Jake Halpern's live discussion of "The Truth About Sarah" concentrates on the unease of discovering that an intimate friendship was built on falsehoods.
A Californian car-park confrontation arrives, and your trust issues promptly request legal counsel.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A live Deep Cover revisit about how intimate scams damage trust long after the lie comes apart.
Deep Cover's live revisit of "The Truth About Sarah" keeps its attention on the wreckage a scam leaves behind. Jake Halpern and Jess talk through trust as something ordinary and almost invisible: the belief that goods will arrive, institutions will hold, and friends are who they…
A measured Snowball afterword on love fraud, shame, and why the most effective lies borrow from the truth.
Deep Cover ends its Snowball run with Jake Halpern questioning Ollie Wards about making the series, reporting on his own family, and what stayed unresolved after the recording stopped.
A wary post-confrontation chapter that turns Leslie's story toward control, invention, and the unanswered role of her family.
The Morning After stays in the unsettled space after Leslie is found in a California car park. The charge is intimate before it turns analytical: a cheap motel room, Simon beside the host, thin bedsheets, and the awkward admission that sympathy can still creep in for someone the…
A stakeout turns into a tense, emotional exchange where Leslie Mnookian offers limited regret, disputed blame, and no clean reckoning.
Episode 6 finally brings Snowball within reach of Leslie Mnookian. Ollie and his brother Simon are sitting in a ridiculous American muscle car, keyed up after months of digging, waiting to see whether the investigation will turn into a face to face encounter.
A strange family mystery opens with a rushed marriage, tearful parents, and Greg's first sense that Leslie's past may not add up.
Deep Cover hands its feed to Ollie Wards and ABC Australia's Unravel team for a family mystery that begins in awkward, intimate places: a fast courthouse wedding in Santa Ana, conservative parents, separate beds after the vows, and Greg trying to understand why Leslie's parents…
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
Patrick Radden Keefe investigates whether the CIA secretly wrote a Scorpions hit.
A city-by-city true-crime documentary, from Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick scandal to mob confessions.
A murder rumor in rural Alabama unravels into a clockmaker's suicide and estate feud.
Documentary seasons on power, corruption, conflict, and Canadian public life.
Trust is the live wire here.
Jake Halpern sits down with Ollie Wards after the Snowball presentation.
In Deep Cover's Snowball - Episode 7: The Morning After, Ollie Wards follows up on Leslie after finding her in a Californian car park and receiving her refusal to revisit events from more than a decade earlier.
The stakeout starts like game day.
A journalist investigates a con woman who defrauded a family, exploring her double life and methods.
A man investigates a charming con woman who defrauded his family, uncovering bizarre details including a book deal.
A man recounts how his family was swindled by a charming American con woman who claimed to be fleeing danger in Hawaii.
This episode introduces a series about a con woman who destroys a family, with a teaser about extreme experiences and a warning about coarse language.
Jake hands the feed to Ollie Wards and the Unravel team at ABC Australia.
A preview of the Snowball series about a family's financial ruin by a con woman, investigating her crimes across decades.
Jake Halpern and producer Amy discuss President Trump's commutation of George Santos' sentence, updating their previous series on the former congressman's crimes.
Host Jake Halpern announces a live event and introduces the show's theme of people leading double lives, featuring a special series about a con woman.
This episode features an interview with a woman who supported people, part of a series about a con woman who ruined a family.
This episode features outtakes from the season 'The Truth About Sarah,' including a story about a country ballad Sarah helped create in Nashville.
A podcast about people leading double lives, featuring interviews with federal agents and convicted criminals, with a special series on a con woman who defrauded a family.
A preview of Deep Cover, a true crime show about people leading double lives, with a teaser for the Snowball series about a con woman.
A fugitive con woman named Esther Reed is pursued by multiple agencies after being on the run for over a year.
This episode follows the story of a con woman named Esther Reed who fled New York City after being discovered, as told by journalist Jake Halpern.
This episode investigates a woman who assumed the identity of a missing person, Brooke Henson, and the subsequent unraveling of her double life.
This episode investigates a mysterious woman who may be impersonating a missing Columbia University student, leading to questions about her identity and involvement in the disappearance.
A woman recounts how she ran away from home and made a series of horrible decisions, leading to a life of crime and deception.
Jake Halpern introduces a special episode about a murder case connected to past corruption exposed by Bob Cooley in Chicago.
This episode continues the story of Ronnie Carrasquillo, who received a 200-600 year sentence and may be resentenced due to a constitutional clause, with testimony about his positive impact in prison.
This episode continues the story of Bob Cooley, a Chicago lawyer who became a mob informant, leading to charges against powerful figures.