The twist is revealed - secret recordings Danny and Kaushal made in the courtroom which incriminate the judge who is heard making stunning pro-prosecution and anti-gay remarks. The revelation wins Danny and Kaushal new trials – and new trials for Miguel Bustamante and David Replogle too. Tyson finds himself faced with the possibility that the men he helped take down may go free. And to make matters worse, when Kim visits Craig McCarthy in jail – who confessed to helping Miguel stab Cliff and was one of the prosecution’s strongest witnesses – he denies that he had any part in the murder. If he recants on the record, what will that do to the case? But just before the trials begin there is one last surprise - bones are discovered in the desert. Parts of Cliff Lambert’s body. This should be the nail in the proverbial coffin, but with these guys, you really never know. As Julie and Kim look back on the story of the Dark Prince and his cabal of thieves it is remarkable how much these con artists were able to steal, how long their trail of victims is, and how little the criminal justice establishment cared about bringing them to justice before they turned murderous. Are Danny and Kaushal only outliers? Or are they symptoms of the times we live in: the era of the big con, of the willingness to only believe what we want to believe - and ignore the warning signs… until it's too late.
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1:01:00
Episode 11: The End is Just The Beginning
In the end, despite the courtroom dramatics, Kaushal, Danny, and their accomplices are all found guilty of Cliff Lambert’s murder. Kaushal and Danny - along with Miguel Bustamante and Danny and Kaushal’s regular comrade David Replogle - are all sentenced to life without parole. For Cliff’s friends, for the other victims of their cons, and for Tyson Wrensch, this verdict should finally provide the closure they’ve been after for years. Justice served, roll credits. But with these guys there is always a twist. Something hidden at trial comes to light, and suddenly the conviction is thrown into doubt. Danny and Kaushal have never been arrested for or even charged for anything other than the murder - if the conviction is overturned their pantheon of crimes will go entirely unpunished. Tyson Wrensch has spent years following Danny and Kaushal - tracking them, spending his time and money, in an attempt to bring them to justice. Will it all have been in vain?
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45:53
Episode 10: The Noose
Once Detective Min of the PSPD ties Miguel Bustamante to Kaushal Niroula and Danny Garcia, he’s able to begin connecting the dots. And there are a lot of dots. But what they don’t have is a body. And like they say, “no body, no crime.” With the clock ticking and a very real chance that Kaushal and Danny will disappear if they get wind of Bustamante’s arrest, detectives get the OK to make the arrests anyway. It’s not easy, but eventually they manage to track down and arrest everyone - 6 in total. The case goes to trial with Danny and Kaushal choosing to represent themselves. The trials are anything but routine - with courtroom antics, confessions of love, confrontations with the judge, and more as Kaushal and Danny do everything they can to avoid a conviction. And hanging over all of it, the inconvenient fact that Cliff Lambert’s body is still missing. Despite all the circumstantial evidence against them, will Danny, Kaushal, and their crew still go free?
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52:22
Episode 9: Stealing Property
Kim and Julie unravel the complex web of events that unfold in the months after Cliff’s murder - and the ordinary people who are key to bringing down these extraordinary conmen. In San Francisco, a notary public meets with someone claiming to be Cliff to notarize the sale of his home. As part of the sale, a thumbprint is inked in the notary’s book. A few days later, Kaushal asks realtor Mark Evans to sell Cliff’s house. But something about the situation feels off. When Mark discovers that Cliff has been reported missing, he calls Palm Springs PD. Meanwhile, in Palm Springs, Cliff’s neighbor calls 9-1-1 and reports three strangers loading all of Cliff’s possessions into a U-Haul truck. Within a few hours police arrest one of the movers - Miguel Bustamante. Miguel tells detectives that a man named Kaushal Niroula put him up to the robbery. Back in San Francisco, the notary public gets mugged, and the thief tries desperately to wrench the notary’s book from his grasp - even going so far as to drag him down the street. Somehow the notary clings to his journal, and then turns it over to the police. Inside is the thumbprint – the single piece of hard evidence linking Kaushal, Danny, and their gang of thieves to Cliff Lambert. But Detectives don’t realize that yet. And if they don’t make the connection soon, Kaushal and Danny might just evade justice again.
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38:41
Episode 8: Rincon Hill
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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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.
México