Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire.

We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney.

And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction.

We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.

The Buddha said, believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Ignore that advice, and you might find that you're clouding your vision, that instead of seeing what's really in front of you, you're filtering

everything so that it fits in with your beliefs. An unwavering and unquestioned belief in anything,

a philosophy, an institution, or a person, can lend us strength sometimes, but it can also make us

vulnerable. And there are plenty of people out there just waiting to exploit that vulnerability.

This story is about two of them, each with a very different MO, and the havoc they wreaked in the

lives of the people around them. This is Swindles and Sacraments, a story of deception and belief.

So, campers, for this one, we're in Munich, Germany.

It's the spring of 2009, and everybody has been riveted to the case of Helg Scarby, a Swiss investment banker and Gigolo, and Suzanne Clotten,

the richest woman in the country. A couple of years earlier, Scarby and Clotten had had a

brief little affair, and when Clotten tried to break it off, Scarby tried to blackmail her

with a sex tape he'd recorded without her knowledge or consent. He must have thought she'd give in without much

backchat. After all, he'd done this before with other rich women. All told, he'd stolen or coerced about

$12 million out of the women he'd seduced and blackmailed. But Suzanne Clatton wasn't about to let him

get away with this. She ratted him out. And now, Munich was hosting the

trial of the decade. Not only was this a sensational story on the surface, a look at the covert

sex lives of the wealthy and the shadowy world of the gigalows, but it had deeper layers that nobody had

seen coming. Bizarre, movie of the week type stuff about a secret of cult in a quaint Italian village and a filthy rich cult leader who claimed he had God-given magic powers. But we'll get to that part later. First, let's get some background on our dapper blackmailer. Helg Scarby is an unlikely guy to play the starring role in this story. He gives off a

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