The Shark Tank Charlatan

Scamfluencers

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.1 • 7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nate Holzapfel is a natural salesman. When he goes on the television show “Shark Tank” in 2012, he wows investors with his line of ratchet-style belts, which he claims are “like a giant zip tie for your pants.” His company takes off, but Nate still isn’t satisfied – he wants to live even larger. That’s when he decides to take on a much darker business venture: defrauding the most powerless people he can find.

This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence and assault. If you or someone you know is a survivor of sexual assualt and would like to speak with an advocate who is trained to help, the U.S. National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-HOPE.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Prime members, you can listen to scam influencers early and ad free on Amazon Music.
0:04.8	Download the app today.
0:06.0	Heads up.
0:08.0	This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence, assault, and abuse.
0:12.5	Please listen with care.
0:14.1	Satchi, you've spent enough time in hotels and for me that's when I get super into
0:25.6	Shark Tank Marathons. I need to know how into Shark Tank are you?
0:29.2	I mean I'm not into it, but as you know, two of the sharks routinely on Shark Tank are
0:37.2	Canadians.
0:38.8	And so all Canadians are like automatically subscribed to a layer of Shark Tank that we do not want.
0:46.0	Well, today's scam is about a guy who got kind of big on Shark Tank, only for him that was just the beginning of his very evil scamming.
0:56.4	It's October 4th, 2021, and Deanne Janssen is in her car in a parking lot near Provo, Utah.
1:06.8	Deanne is a social worker in her 50s.
1:09.1	She's tan with short gray hair, and she has plans to meet her boyfriend for lunch nearby at their favorite
1:14.6	date spot, Carl's Jr. His name is Nate Holzefell and he's an entrepreneur in his early 40s.
1:20.9	He has a round face, shaggy brown hair, and a graying goatee.
1:25.3	They matched on Tinder just a few weeks ago, but it's been a whirlwind romance.
1:29.8	Nada's come on really strong to the point where Dan finds it kind of off-putting,
1:34.8	and she doesn't like the fact that he's really into guns and maintains a conservative onion-style
1:39.7	website. It publishes headlines like Black Liquorish less popular due to systemic racism.
1:45.0	Oh and Deanna's noticed Nate has an unsettling habit of praising Hitler.
1:51.0	I would also be unsettled by that in any context.
	...

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