An investigative true crime podcast about real people who lie for a living. Con artists, scammers, and the victims caught in their web.
Hosted by Javier Leiva, co-host of The Ponzi Playbook.
PRETEND launched in June 2017 with one question: how do people get away with it?
Not violent crime. The kind where someone smiles at you, earns your trust, and walks away with your money, your identity, or your sense of reality. Eight years and 300 episodes later, that question still drives every story.
Each episode is reported, fact-checked, and legally reviewed. The cases have ranged from infamous fraudster Frank Abagnale to a nursing home empire that imploded under its own greed, a hedge fund that drained millions from retirees, a presidential pardon system being brokered like a commodity, and an investigative series called “The Stalker” that led directly to the arrest of two people who had faked their own stalking.
PRETEND has held steady at the top of the true crime charts across multiple countries. The reporting has been adapted for Netflix's Don't Pick Up the Phone and Discovery+'s Citizen P.I., and covered by The New York Times and the BBC.
Javier Leiva is no stranger to the dark corners of the human psyche. With PRETEND, Criminal Conduct, and The Ponzi Playbook, he has built a reputation as one of true crime's most immersive storytellers.
Drawing on two decades of TV and marketing experience, Leiva knows how to pull listeners into stories of crime and deception that feel uncomfortably real. He has peeled back the layers on Frank Abagnale, shared his own encounter with a cult, and produced “The Stalker,” the investigative series that led to two arrests.
His work sits at the intersection of journalism and narrative. He researches, reports, writes, records, and edits every episode himself. The reporting has landed in The New York Times and the BBC, and been adapted for Netflix and Discovery+.
He holds four Midsouth Emmys for his work in commercial broadcasting. He is based in Raleigh, NC.
Javier co-hosts The Ponzi Playbook with Neal McTighe, where he brings the same curiosity and skepticism to financial fraud. The two shows have crossed over more than once — The Red Collar Killer and The White Collar Support Group both ran on this feed.
