The Hipster Grifter | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller
· 2 h 09 min
Episode The Hipster Grifter | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller
Go to http://selectquote.com/mariana to save more than 50% on term life insurance.
Kari Ferrell became known as “The Hipster Grifter” after her cons went viral. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Kari joins me to talk about how her scams worked — from bad checks to stealing from friends and lying about being a cancer survivor — and how things escalated after she moved from Salt Lake City to New York City, where she landed a job at VICE.
We dig into what was driving her at the time, how easy it can be to manipulate trust, and what it’s like to become a public villain on the early internet. Kari walks us through the consequences, the fallout, and what accountability and rebuilding look like when your name becomes synonymous with a grift.
Subscribe for more conversations from the underworld.
ABOUT THE HIDDEN THIRD: From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode, Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all.
THE HIDDEN THIRD:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCiI8nJacn8gDiHxr6aQGA
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehiddenthirdpodcast
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-third/id1845989117
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3n1BBoj3BgVuEYaiZ6SotF
MARIANA:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mariana_vanzeller
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianavz
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Links in the notes 7
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCiI8nJacn8gDiHxr6aQGA
- https://www.instagram.com/thehiddenthirdpodcast
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-third/id1845989117
- https://open.spotify.com/show/3n1BBoj3BgVuEYaiZ6SotF
- https://www.tiktok.com/@mariana_vanzeller
- https://www.instagram.com/marianavz
- https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.