True crime where opportunity becomes predation.
The Opportunist follows crimes built from access: a judge’s influence, nursing-home ownership, a family’s money, a public persona, a basketball appearance. Its best stories move slowly from setting to consequence, showing how people use trust and institutions as cover.
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The Opportunist is a true-crime series about people who find an opening and press on it until someone else breaks. The crimes are not limited to boardrooms, but the show has a clear appetite for systems. A Kentucky judge is examined through the power he held over women entangled with courts and addiction. A New Jersey nursing-home case becomes a story about ownership structures, Medicaid oversight, resident neglect, and profit. A Utah fentanyl death is framed around money, family suspicion, and the strange public image of a children’s-book author. Ian Bick’s story links a youthful Ponzi scheme to performance, notoriety, and the afterlife of crime as content. A Baja beach killing turns on class, tourism, desperation, and the brutal distance between visitors and locals. Camp Scott begins with a pastoral sign and ends in the reality of a facility that was not what it first appeared to be. Jontay Porter’s episode reads a short basketball appearance as a clue in a larger case. Adva Lavi’s story connects reinvention, adult entertainment, money, and alleged theft. The format is measured. It likes a long runway. Episodes often begin with weather, geography, routine, or biography before the betrayal appears. Outside voices matter, but they are arranged around a narrator-led argument rather than loose conversation. The writing defines legal, financial, and institutional details without making them feel like homework. Its moral judgment is usually restrained. That restraint makes the ugliest facts feel more severe, not less. The show is best when it moves from one vivid detail outward to a larger pattern: a security camera, unanswered calls at a nursing home, a fitness watch, a mugshot, a campground, a wooden sign, a basketball appearance. It is not cozy crime. It is sober, evidence-driven storytelling about exploitation hiding inside respectability, ambition, and ordinary procedure.
Made for: For listeners who prefer patient, context-rich true crime over fast shock. It suits people drawn to fraud, institutional failure, legal power, and crimes that begin inside everyday respectability.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its habit of widening the frame: a single crime becomes a lesson in courts, care homes, family money, tourism, basketball, or public image. It treats motive as social architecture, not just personal darkness.
The Opportunist tells true stories of regular people who turn sinister by embracing opportunity. How does an everyday person turn into a thief, a scammer or a cult leader? Perhaps the most dangerous person is the one who appears the most normal. Perhaps there is a dark potential lurking inside all of us that is just waiting for the right opportunity to emerge. The Opportunist is an original podcast hosted by Sarah James McLaughlin.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Sarah James McLaughlin connects individual crimes to the money, status, and institutional leverage that helped them develop.
The Opportunist traces how fraud, coercion, and institutional power take shape around individual cases. Sarah James McLaughlin leads an anthology true-crime format that moves from alleged seafood fraud in Biloxi to AlphaCon's masculine business pitch, a Kentucky judge's abuse of…
A seafood menu, an alpha conference, a judge's chambers: opportunity keeps finding an accomplice.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A murder case that opens into a tighter, more unsettling study of power and silence.
The piece begins with Kevin Mullins' murder, but it settles into something larger: an abuse-of-power story built around a judge who could shape whether women kept their children, went to jail, or moved through drug court and child support court.
A nursing-home fraud story that keeps the human cost in view.
A nursing-home scandal becomes a quiet but forceful look at how accounting can hollow out care. It opens with a family member's panicked call in Hamilton, New Jersey, then follows the State Comptroller's findings on Hamilton Center and Deptford Center, drawing a clear line…
A grim true-crime account that ties motive, family suspicion, and financial pressure together.
This episode frames the case as a hard-edged mix of greed, image, and family fallout. It follows Corey Richins, a Utah-based house flipper and mother of three accused of poisoning her husband, and it is strongest when it brings together the 911 call, the family's suspicions, and…
A sober case study in how a Super Bowl-week death sits inside a longer criminal pattern.
This episode follows Adan Manzano's death in New Orleans during Super Bowl week and tracks the investigators' case around Danette Colbert, whose name is tied here to theft, fraud, and drugging allegations.
A Biloxi seafood story that widens into power, price, and local economics.
Mary Mahoney's Old French House is used to look at Biloxi itself: a local institution, a powerful family, and the business behind what ends up on the plate.
A strange conference story where the reporting itself does most of the work.
Meg Walter's reporting in Salt Lake City follows AlphaCon as a male-focused business conference marked by thin attendance, muddled speakers, and almost no useful advice, so the event feels shaky from the start.
A military man’s alleged double life gives this drug case its chill.
A Blackhawk pilot with the right military bearing and an alleged dark-web LSD side hustle anchors this episode, which starts on an August morning in Springfield, Virginia and then lands at the FBI door.
A careful look at legitimacy, money, and an anti-trafficking brand moving into institutional power.
The episode follows Tim Ballard from CPAC in Maryland to Argentina, where the anti-trafficking brand keeps turning up beside money, access, and institutional cover.
True stories of scams, aliases, frauds, and lives built on lies.
Payne Lindsey and Tenderfoot TV revisit the Atlanta Child Murders and the wider Monster franchise.
Host Jake Brennan traces the crimes and scandals behind musicians from Elvis to Taylor Swift.
Karina Longworth narrates the Manson murders as a story about Hollywood's collapsing 1960s dream.
iO Tillett Wright investigates her mother's boyfriend's unsolved 1982 East Village murder.
A wilderness hoax, a trusting BC town, and the brothers who fooled it.
A camera was already recording.
Hamilton looked quaint.
A Utah death did not stay private for long.
This episode explores the story of Ian Bick, a young man involved in a Ponzi scheme, drawing parallels to a Mr.
This episode recounts the mysterious murder case of Ari Gisell in Baja California, highlighting the stark contrasts between local residents and foreign tourists at a remote beach.
This episode explores the disturbing history of Camp Scott, a facility in LA County that resembled a summer camp but had a dark past involving sexual assault.
The episode begins with a Shopify ad, then sets up a story about NBA player Jontay Porter's suspicious behavior during a game, hinting at a deeper crime narrative.
The episode profiles Adva Lavi, a former adult entertainer who became a career criminal driven by greed.
An analysis of Mike Bickle's preemptive sermon addressing impending accusations of predatory misconduct within his church.
FBI agents raid a multi-million dollar mansion belonging to a religious cult leader, uncovering luxury cars, gold bars, and dozens of followers.
The episode introduces the show's premise and begins the story of Leigh Wainscott, whose boyfriend turns out to be a criminal.
Sheriff Stephen Tompkins interviews former sheriff Andrea Cabral about her transition from law enforcement to the cannabis industry and discusses federal cannabis legalization.
Danette Colbert is linked to the February 2025 death of Telemundo sports reporter Adan Manzano in New Orleans, where surveillance footage placed her entering his hotel room around 4:30 a.m.
This episode explores the controversy surrounding Dr.
This episode explores the rise and alleged fraud of Charlie Javice, founder of a financial aid startup, drawing parallels to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.
Biloxi knows the Mahoney name.
The episode promotes a related podcast about the Heaven's Gate cult, exploring how ordinary people become involved in extraordinary crimes.
A Friday in February 2022 started oddly.
The FBI came at dawn.
CPAC had the spectacle.
The episode details the FBI's largest raid in Minnesota history targeting a non-profit called Feeding Our Future for a massive fraud scheme.
The episode recounts how the bookkeeper of Eugene Weekly embezzled funds, betraying the trust of her tight-knit workplace.
A podcast exploring how ordinary people become criminals when given the right opportunity, with a teaser about a fugitive drug lord.
A CFO contemplates embezzling millions from a birth injury fund, exploring the moment of temptation and the psychology of ordinary criminals.
A man who faked his own death in a canoe accident turns himself in years later, claiming amnesia, but his story unravels as a fraud.
The producers and host of The Opportunist discuss the show's focus on ordinary people who turn to crime and tease an upcoming season.
A workplace poisoning case where an engineer secretly poisons a colleague's water bottle over months.
A respected California judge commits a violent domestic murder, shocking his affluent community.
A drug lord posing as a football player in Paraguay is exposed.
The episode details the sudden closure of Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ nonprofit, after its founder announces a sponsor withdrawal, hinting at financial misconduct.
A man disposes of a body in a dumpster, introducing a case of alleged murder.
Two nuns embezzle school funds to fuel a gambling addiction in Las Vegas.
The episode recounts the poisoning death of Chinese billionaire Lin Xi and the subsequent investigation revealing a revenge plot.
A man posing as a CIA operative pitches a fake counterintelligence operation to an Air Force general, leading to an FBI investigation.