Lee Israel: Scammer She Wrote | 153

Scamfluencers

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.1 • 7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After her latest biography flopped, Lee Israel was hard up for money to buy booze and cat food. So, she used her research skills to access celebrity letters in prominent archives, stealing them and adding juicy tidbits to hike up their value. The librarians are clueless, and the collectors she sells to are flipping her letters for big bucks. But Lee discovers that the feds are not as charmed by her con artist bon mots.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Scampflincers, listeners. If you're as hooked on these jaw-dropping schemes as we are,
0:04.7	you'll love Wondry Plus. Think of it as you're all access past the world of scams.
0:09.4	Add free episodes, early access, and exclusive deep dives that uncover even more shocking details.
0:15.5	Don't just listen. Emmerse yourself in the chaos with Wondry Plus.
0:24.3	Sarah, how you ever had the impulse to buy an old letter by a famous and dead writer?
0:29.9	I feel like I'm more of a movie memorabilia girl. I'll look at a prop auction when I'm bored.
0:36.6	Interesting.
0:43.1	I feel like I would pay maybe any amount of money to have an old letter from the guy who wrote peanuts.
0:44.3	But only if it was like inexplicably erotic, you know?
0:48.6	What?
0:49.4	What are you talking about, you freak?
0:53.2	Wouldn't you want to own that letter?
0:54.7	No, he's a man pure of heart.
0:56.1	We're not talking about a freak like Jim Davis.
0:57.8	But that's why you'd want to own that letter.
0:59.5	If Jim Davis wrote something horny, you'd be like, yeah, of course Jim Davis wrote a horny thing.
1:04.3	Yeah, that's true.
1:04.9	That's true.
1:05.3	It's nothing.
1:06.2	Okay, I could see where you're coming from a little bit. Well, I have a good one for you today, Sarah.
1:11.2	It's all about the New York literati of way back when
1:14.5	and how far another writer will go to have her genius recognized.
	...

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