BBC & CBC
10 episodes listed below
Gold fever, corporate power, unanswered death.
The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam revisits Bre-X through interviews, field reporting, and the disputed final hours of Michael de Guzman. It follows the paper trail from Alberta stock chatter to Indonesian mining politics, asking how belief, money, and silence held the story together.
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The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam is a reported documentary series about Bre-X, the Canadian mining company whose Busang claim turned belief into money before the story collapsed. It starts with gold fever, but it does not stay there. The show follows how exploration optimism, stock-market pressure, Indonesian mining politics, and public rumor combined into a fraud story with unusually high stakes. Michael de Guzman is the figure the series keeps circling. He is described through vivid details, professional relationships, and conflicting accounts of his final hours. One version depends heavily on what Rudy Vega said. Another is questioned by people who find the helicopter story difficult to accept. The show does not rush those doubts. It places them beside the logistics: the flight, the letters, the jewelry, the jungle, the body, and the people waiting for answers at Busang. That measured structure gives the series its force. It can move from a UFO landing pad in St. Paul to internet chat boards, from Calgary office paranoia to private investigators, from Freeport's due diligence to negotiations involving Indonesian officials. Each detour is made to matter. The early web becomes a rumor machine. Press releases become fuel. Consultants and corporate intelligence become part of the contest for control. The reporting also watches how belief changes shape when wealth appears possible. People defend the claim, chase the deal, moderate the speculation, or try to test the rock. Then the facts begin to fail. The series is strongest when it lets contradiction sit in the open: a detailed memory that omits the decisive moment, a body found in dense rainforest, a man who may have known the scam was ending. Its tone is serious, restrained, and forensic. It suits listeners who want true crime without spectacle, financial scandal without jargon, and an unresolved story handled with patience.
Made for: For listeners interested in white-collar crime, mining politics, market mania, and documentary investigations that build through evidence rather than spectacle.
What sets it apart: The series connects a famous financial fraud to granular field reporting, witness memory, early internet speculation, and the disputed mechanics of one man's final flight.
It was the biggest gold discovery in history…until it wasn’t. In 1995, Canadian mining company Bre-X announced to the world it had found a significant amount of gold deep in the jungles of Indonesia. Stock prices soared as investors worldwide fought to stake their claim. But when Bre-X’s chief geologist mysteriously fell from a helicopter over the jungle, the story of the billion dollar discovery began to unravel. Nearly three decades later, no one has ever been held accountable. Now, host Suzanne Wilton takes listeners from the jungles of Indonesia to small town Alberta, Canada, to investigate what really...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A patient investigation of Bre-X that connects disputed evidence, financial belief and Michael de Guzman's unresolved final movements.
The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam turns the Bre-X story into a serialized investigation of belief, money and the people caught inside a mining fraud.
A suspiciously convenient helicopter fall turns your gold-rush post-mortem into an investor's cold shower.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A fraud story that keeps its focus on the paper trail and the gaps around a disappearance.
The episode stays with the odd last stretch of the Bre-X story, following Michael de Guzman through the LinkedIn invitation and the helicopter flight that never quite makes sense.
A disputed death deepens a gold scam already heavy with motive and contradiction.
Michael de Guzman’s final hours sit at the center of the episode, but the account still runs through Rudy Vega, the last person to see him alive.
A mining boom turns into a slow-burn story of suspicion, documents, and mounting pressure.
The episode opens with a familiarization trip to the mine site, where a Freeport geologist finds a camp that is squared away, busy, and convincing enough to read like a standard exploration operation at first glance.
A scam story where local lore, stock fever, and belief all start to look expensive.
The piece moves from St. Paul's UFO lore into the stranger machinery of belief around Bre-X, where rumor, investor appetite, and press-release certainty start feeding each other.
A mining boom story where geology, money, and belief all strain together.
The episode follows Michael de Guzman in East Kalimantan as he gets ready for a night out, then shifts to the next morning and the helicopter pad.
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.
Jake Halpern and the Snowball team track a con artist who defrauded a family.
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.
A LinkedIn invite cracks the file open again.
A tomb holds the part of Michael De Guzman's story that still will not sit still.
The site first looks orderly.
A UFO landing pad sets the mood.
A hotel mirror opens the story.