This is exactly right.

The courtroom isn't just about justice. It's about power and money and some truly bizarre loopholes.

I'm Michael Foote. And I'm Melissa Malbranche, and we've got a brand new show called Brief Recess, Illegal Podcast.

Every week, we talk about wild tales from court, trials gone wrong, and cases and rulings that shape our world.

Today we're going to be talking about stolen antiquities, all the weird things Melissa found at in a state sale, the crazy conversations I had with the bouncer and J.K. Rowling. We make the complicated clear and the serious, surprisingly fun. From the exactly right network, new episodes of Brief Recess drop every Thursday. Watch Brief Recess on YouTube. Listen to Brief Recess on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

There are just lots of ways this kind of thing is attractive and sort of comes on people's like wants the needs.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right.

And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and

reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad,

and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

This week on Wicked Words, the popular former president of Ghana was once accused of hiding gold

from the West African country's government, but it turns out that he was targeted by an

audacious con artist who pulled off

one of the 20th century's longest running and most spectacular frauds. Author Yipo tells me

the story in her book, Anansi's Gold. So let's start with Ghana's position. So what's the difference economically between Ghana's position as a colony of Britain and Ghana's position in independence and maybe just kind of in this time span where this stuff really starts to happen? Does this independence lift up the lower classes?

I was a colony. Ghana was basically being stripped apart.

And so any infrastructure that was was basically designed around getting resources

...