Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

Eleni Polinski grew weed so wonderful that she had New York state officials courting her throughout the cannabis legalization process. Then she came home to a busted down door, and no weed to be found.Reporter Rosalind Adams joins Crime Story to talk her article "The 'Godmother' of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent," which she wrote for The City. She tells us about the time she spent with the Godmother, and how New York has been handling legalization. You can read her article here.  

Two years of anonymous texts, stalking, questions and harassment. And the person behind it all only introdcues more questions once they are revealed.Skye Borgman comes back to Crime Story to discuss her docuseries Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. You can watch Unknown Number on Netflix. 

Eligio Bishop, also known as NatureBoy, started out with a pretty simple purpose – dump the system he was currently in, one that systemically harmed him throughout his life, and trade it for a future off-grid in the tropics. Soon, others started joining and the group began livestreaming their idyllic lives throughout Latin America. But then, things got darker: NatureBoy ended up in prison.Rolling Stone writer David Peisner joins Crime Story to unpack the story of Eligio Bishop, and the world that got built around him. You can read his article "Inside Carbon Nation," here.

In 2023 Ontario resident Kenneth Law was arrested in his Mississauga home and later charged with first degree murder. He was accused of selling poison to people at risk of self-harm.More recently, prosecutors said that the murder charges would be dropped as Law would plead guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide. His trial had previously been scheduled to start in spring 2026.But who is Kenneth Law? And how did he get into the business of suicide? This week we're joined by Hunting The Suicide Salesman host Daemon Fairless to help us make sense of this story.

In the late 2000s, the host of northern Brazil’s most-watched TV shows was a hero. Wallace Souza gained infamy for his sensational program “Canal Livre,” not only because he was a former cop set on cleaning up the streets, but because his team was always the first to be on the scene to report on the horrific crimes supposedly plaguing the area. They’d arrive so early, in fact, that suspicions turned to Souza himself as the criminal mastermind orchestrating the crimes for viewership.Award-winning documentarian Daniel Bogado joins Crime Story to discuss his docuseries Killer Ratings for an in-depth and human look into the Souza case. You can watch Killer Ratings on Netflix. 

When the book, The Salt Path, came out in 2018, it quickly became a blockbuster hit. It’s the story of a woman named Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, who has been diagnosed with a terminal neurological disorder. According to the telling, their decision to walk the Salt Path, a 1000 km trek across the south west coast of England, leads to miraculous healing.Against all odds, the walk appeared to reverse symptoms of Moth’s terminal illness. The Salt Path was followed up by more books, and in 2024, a Hollywood movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.But ultimately, the bestselling memoir may be more fiction than fact. Chloe's investigation uncovered a past allegedly riddled with financial deceit, challenging the story of how Raynor and Moth lost their home, and casts doubt on the miraculous reversal of Moth's terminal illness. Her podcast, The Walkers: The Real Salt Path, dramatically unravels the full, unshared details of the couple's journey.This week on Crime Story, Chloe Hadjimatheou unravels the Salt Path.You can hear The Walkers: The Real Salt Path here.You can read Chloe's article here. 

Forged is a six-part series, from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia, host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world.In this first episode, rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things — like buying paintings. And what better painting for an iconic Canadian rocker to buy than one by Norval Morrisseau, one of the most iconic Indigenous artists in Canada? But when Kevin’s Morrisseau painting is featured in an exhibit, it gets taken down because the head curator says it’s “questionable.” Kevin tries to get some answers but every answer leads to more questions. Adrian Stimson traces Kevin’s dogged quest to find out the truth about his painting — and learns how this one painting is the key to cracking a whole underworld open. All episodes of Forged are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/ForgedxCS

Host of CBC Podcasts’ series FORGED (and artist himself) Adrian Stimson joins Crime Story to discuss the life and work of Norval Morrisseau, and the forgery ring that eventually spun out into an entire network of forged paintings, For years, fakes flooded galleries and auctions across Canada, raising painful questions about who profits from Indigenous art and who gets erased. Listen to FORGED here.

The Biggest Loser was a hit reality TV show that ran across 17 seasons – all with one goal in mind, to help fat people lose weight. But in reality, it was a cruel stop on many contestants’ journeys with their bodies and health, all broadcast for millions to see – and comment on. While the show didn't technically do anything illegal, the documentary reveals the show did have victims. Director Skye Borgman joins Crime Story to discuss her series Fit for TV. You can watch Fit for TV on Netflix.

For years, Mr. Deepfakes was the most popular site in the world for DeepFake porn. The site hosted tens of thousands of non-consensual and violent DeepFake videos. DeepFake porn uses AI to swap a person's face onto somebody else's body, and technology has made the results incredibly realistic.Now anyone can make a deep fake of anyone. The Mr. DeepFake site had half a million users, some paying hundreds of dollars to create custom videos.Tech journalist Sam Cole was the first person to report on DeepFake porn back in 2017. And in this season of Understood: DeepFake Porn Empire, she explores the popularity of non-consensual DeepFake porn, why our legal system has had to struggle to ban it and introduces us to the kingpin behind it all.You can listen to Sam's podcast here.  You can read Ida Herskind's investigation into Mr.Deepfakes here.You can read the CBC News investigation into Mr.Deepfakes by Eric Szeto, Jordan Pearson, Ivan Angelovski here.You can read the Tjekdet investigation here.And you can read the Bellingcat reporting here.