Cola Wars Pt. 1- Coked Out

It's the season 21 finale as we delve into another murder committed by the ultra wealthy. This week we talk about pathological liar Christian Gerhartsreiter, who killed a couple in the 80s but continued a reign of terror under many identities. His most famous was that of Clark Rockefeller, yes of those Rockefellers. A name under which he got married, had a child, swindled many, and finally got caught.

After wiring more than a million dollars to her husband, Anthony Strangis, Sarma Melngailis watches her once-thriving restaurant spiral into missed payroll, employee walkouts, and investor panic. While Anthony gambles away the money, the couple goes on the run, only to be caught in the most ironic way possible. We break down the manipulation, the unraveling, and how a celebrated vegan empire ended in handcuffs.

This week we embark on a two week journey through the life of potential investment banker turned raw vegan food restaurateur Sarma Melngailis, whose life became more difficult than her name is to pronounce. Learn about how she met a wolf in sheep's clothing through a popular online game, and how he slowly started to ruin her life.

This week we bring you the conclusion of our revisit to Michele Sindona. Find out how the ruins of bodies, and families were left behind as Michele's banking empire fell across multiple countries, and the lengths he would go to to try and avoid facing his just punishment.

Five years ago, with one mic and a dream we started this podcast. And we were a lot worse at putting a story to mic if you'd believe it, because we didn't write scripts. One of our favorite stories has been the mystery of Michele Sindona, confidant to the bank of the Vatican that worked in the shadows with both God's men and the mafia. Join us on a two part series as we revisit how one man took over Italian banking and eventually led to the murder of two people, and the exposure of a secret underground society.

It's part two of our Cola Wars double feature! This week we discuss the history of Coke's little bro Pepsi. We talk about the interesting reason it was first created and numerous scandals involving them over the last century from marketing mishaps to suspicious substances in their cans.

So it turns out that making sugar water can entitle you to some great power throughout the world. No one knows that better than Coca Cola, a Fortune 500 company that started by selling the stuff you can get under a bridge for $120/g nowadays, and saying it helped in the bedroom. Join us for this two part series where we talk about the largest cola makers in the world, how they rose to prominence and the many skeletons lurking in their ice chests.

We hope you all had a great Holiday Season! After a week off we come back with a story about Dina Wein Reiss, who went through a surprising amount of effort to scam companies into giving her truckloads of merchandise at cost which she then turned around and sold, stealing all of their profit margin. Find out how a fake store and actors on the payroll setup the scheme, and how one disgruntled employee took it all down.

Hey Everyone! Nina and Kishan are both travelling for the holidays so we are dropping this gift of an episode updating what has happened since we posted our episode on ten different stories. Hope you enjoy finding out whose been naughty and who turned nice, and we will see you in a couple of weeks!

This week we discuss the absolute food giant in Kraft Heinz. Starting as two lonely multinational food corporations, they decided they would be better together when they merged in 2015. Unfortunately the relationship turned out toxic as the new couple immediately started some lengthy accounting fraud that was uncovered in 2019 and now they are on the verge of divorce.