We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. In the meantime, we’re taking you back to a time when arcades were sacred – and Donkey Kong was king.

Billy Mitchell became the king of arcade games when he achieved a perfect Pac Man score, and held the highest score in Donkey Kong. But in the early 2000s, a documentary about an upstart trying to be the best at Donkey Kong leads fans to examine how Billy actually achieved those high scores. Nearly two decades later, the jury is still out on whether Billy was ever truly the King of Kong.

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We’ll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. In the meantime, here’s one of our favorites: an unlikely scam baked up in a small Texas town.

Sandy Jenkins moves to the gossipy, small town of Corsicana, Texas to work in its world-famous fruitcake factory. Desperate to keep up with his cliquey neighbors, Sandy starts cutting himself checks to pay for jewelry, cars, a second home and private jet trips. But this half-baked scheme starts to crumble when a new employee takes a closer look at how Sandy cooks the books.

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Listen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now.

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We’ll be back soon with brand new episodes. In the meantime, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at Lawless Planet, hosted by Zach Goldbaum. Lawless Planet is a podcast about the scams, crimes, and cover-ups fueling the climate crisis, and the battle between those trying to save the planet…and those cashing in on its destruction.

Today’s episode tells the story of the biggest biofuel scam in U.S. history. An unlikely duo – a polygamist cult leader and an Armenian mobster – spotted massive loopholes in America’s clean-energy tax credits and exploited them for over one billion dollars. They thought they’d pulled off the perfect con…until the FBI and EPA caught up, aided by a young woman who escaped the cult just in time.

Special thanks to: Jeff Manuel, author of Ethanol: a Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels.

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Listen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.