Kaushal Niroula and Danny Garcia - two gay con artists who committed crimes from San Francisco to Hawaii to Mexico, each one more unbelievable than the last. Th...
Kaushal and Danny have just gotten away with murder. Literally. They move swiftly to put Cliff’s affairs in their control, using a notary public to notarize the “sale” of Cliff’s home to Kaushal and roping in a former unwitting accomplice in the art fraud to impersonate Cliff and withdraw money from his accounts. Now, they turn their attention to their biggest score yet - the theft of multiple high-end condos in the Bay Area. To do it, Kaushal reels in a mark he’d been working for weeks - a tennis coach with no idea what he’s truly involved in. The tennis coach does Kaushal “a favor” - one that will eventually land him in prison with a 13-year sentence. Julie and Kim piece together how Kaushal and Danny - posing as serious buyers, with the tennis coach as the front man - “buy” several units from an unsuspecting Rincon Hill resident and owner, Shirley Hwang, who has no idea her properties are being sold out from under her. Through a crew of straw-buyers, corrupt attorneys, and careless mortgage lenders they acquire the units and take out $2.2M dollars of home equity loans against them. Another massive score. But what Kaushal and Danny don’t know is that Palm Springs PD have started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. The same steps taken to help secure the prize from Cliff’s murder are about to become their undoing.
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43:51
Episode 7: Unraveling the Murder
Kim and Julie arrive back near where we started our story - with a missing person, but no body and no leads. As they try to unravel how the murder was discovered, their first surprise comes from Dennis, Danny’s cousin and an accomplice in former cons. According to him, there wasn’t originally supposed to be a murder at all. That realization leads them to question why that plan changed. We also meet Mark Evans, a wealthy realtor in NorCal and something of a mentor to Kaushal. When Kaushal asks Mark to sell Cliff’s house, he unwittingly starts the chain of events that will lead to his and Danny’s downfall. But they don’t know that yet. So what do you do after you’ve committed the biggest crime of your career? Try and top it of course. Plus, Kim receives a letter from one of the men later convicted of Cliff’s murder - Craig McCarthy, declaring “I’m ready to talk.” Looks like Kim’s headed to prison.
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44:47
Episode 6: Cliff Lambert
Kim and Julie have tracked Kaushal and Danny from visa scams to jewel theft to art fraud. Now, finally, they begin to see how it all leads to murder. Since pulling off their lucrative art con, Danny and Kaushal’s friendship has mended though they don’t seem to be working together. But Danny, it seems, has been working Cliff - a beloved but lonely man looking for love. After connecting online, Cliff invites Danny to Palm Springs for a weekend. There was no love connection, but their friendship blossomed. Cliff was more than willing to fund Danny’s lifestyle in exchange for his attention. And Danny was there to help Cliff through a series of strange break-ins and odd experiences at home. Things were not where he’d left them, other items were missing completely. But eventually, Danny and Cliff have a falling out over money. As Julie and Kim dig into the details, they realize this may have been the fork where a plan to merely con Cliff turned deadly. Following his fight with Danny, Cliff told friends he felt like someone was watching him. He was right. Days later, Cliff vanished.
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44:10
Episode 5: Priceless Paintings and Family Jewels
After returning from Hawaii, Kaushal is riding high and living large. He and Danny continue to mix with the upper echelons of the Castro’s gay scene which is how Kaushal becomes friends with Stephen Valentino, a bon vivant radio personality, host, and opera singer. Eventually, Stephen lets Kaushal move in with him and his ailing mother. Stephen doesn’t know it, but this choice will land him a front row seat to Kaushal and Danny’s next big score - a high level art scheme worth millions. But the success of this con also exposes cracks in Danny and Kaushal’s partnership. When Danny turns on him, Kaushal finds himself in need of more money - fast. Soon Stephen will discover he was never Kaushal’s friend at all - and just how far Kaushal is willing to go to cover his tracks.
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50:13
Episode 4: Aloha Keiko
How did Kaushal go from nearly broke to Armani suits, private limos, and a suite at the Four Seasons where the staff referred to him as “your Highness”? A prison interview from Danny gives Kim and Julie a clue - maybe the answer is in Hawaii. It’s there that Kaushal befriends Keiko, a Japanese businesswoman and mother of two on vacation. Like all of Kaushal and Danny’s victims, Keiko is smart and competent. And yet, before long, Kaushal will con Keiko - not once, but twice - to the tune of half a million dollars. Nearly her entire life savings. Investigating how he did it reveals an international visa scam, an elaborate - and fake - kidnapping plot, and possibly willing participation from someone inside the Bank of Hawaii. And it sets the stage for Kaushal and Danny to go from thick as thieves to partners in crime.
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Acerca de True Crime News Presents: American Hustlers
Kaushal Niroula and Danny Garcia - two gay con artists who committed crimes from San Francisco to Hawaii to Mexico, each one more unbelievable than the last. They were tracked for years by Tyson Wrensch, a citizen detective who vowed to bring them to justice after they emptied his bank accounts. Kaushal and Danny masqueraded as real estate moguls, art dealers, bankers and even royalty – taking advantage of corruption and weaknesses in the American business structure – the banking system, academia, immigration laws, the private fine-art market, and more. They even conned each other. They were never pursued by law enforcement for their crimes until they committed the one crime they couldn’t con their way out of: murder.
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