History Podcast / Swindled

* CanadaEh: Subverted in "The Well". The 2000 Walkerton ''e. coli'' outbreak exposes major flaws in Ontario's regulatory system, and at least one victim of the outbreak expresses disappointment that such a deadly debacle could happen in Canada.

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers:
** Noted in the Jimmy Sabatino episode when the Concerned Citizen describes some "FBI reports" describing Sabatino's accomplishments that were likely forged by Sabatino himself:
--->'''Concerned Citizen:''' The reports detailed how [Sabatino] had [[BlatantLies launched the careers]] of Music/PuffDaddy, [[Music/TheNotoriousBig Biggie Smalls]], Method Man from the Music/WuTangClan and ''Creator/MarkWahlberg?'' ''[soundtrack cuts out]'' [[FlatWhat What?]] Okay, one of these things is not like the others, but I digress [[note]]To make it ''slightly'' less ridiculous, Wahlberg started his career as a rapper (The short lived, early 1990's Hip Hop act, ''Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch''. Mark is also the brother of Donnie Wahlberg of Music/NewKidsOnTheBlock). Played straight in that "Marky Mark" is a long-forgotten thing even Creator/MarkWahlberg is [[OldShame ashamed]] of.[[/note]].
** In the same episode, we have the results of Jimmy Sabatino's [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor request]] to serve the rest of his sentence in solitary confinement:
--->'''Concerned Citizen:''' The Supermax Federal Penitentiary in Colorado is home to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski; the Boston Marathon bomber; Terry Nichols, a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing... and now Jimmy Sabatino, a guy who likes to rip off hotels.

Five seasons of the podcast have been released since January 2018, with a sixth set to premiere in March 2022.

** Possibly [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the notorious case of R. Budd Dwyer, Pennsylvania's 30th State Treasurer, who was accused of taking a bribe from a California company in exchange for a contract. The theory argued in his episode was that Dwyer was set up by the real guilty parties, and railroaded by a prosecutor with ties to [[AntagonisticGovernor Pennsylvania's governor]], who held a petty grudge against Dwyer.

** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the notorious case of R. Budd Dwyer, Pennsylvania's 30th State Treasurer, who was accused of taking a bribe from a California company in exchange for a contract. The reality was that Dwyer was set up by the real guilty parties, and railroaded by a prosecutor with ties to [[AntagonisticGovernor Pennsylvania's governor]], who held a petty grudge against Dwyer.

* YourNormalIsOurTaboo: The Citizen notes that Music/MilliVanilli's practice of [[FaceOfTheBand using front men to perform to music done by the actual artists]] was a common practice in their native Europe, but what got them in trouble in U.S. civil court was the packaging on their album's American release exclusively attributing the music to Morvan and Pilatus.

* MegaCorp: The amount of control United Fruit/Chiquita has yielded over Central America in general, and Guatemala in particular, is truly staggering. Not only did the company monopolize transportation and telecommunications in Guatemala, and not only could it threaten the government of Guatemala, but it had enough pull in Washington to successfully lobby for a CIA-backed coup against Guatemala's duly elected leader when he moved to redistribute the company's land. This is the kind of stuff that would make [[Film/RoboCop Omni Consumer Products]] take notes.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Jimmy Sabatino wished for his latest prison sentence to be served in solitary confinement as he believes this is the only way to [[ChronicVillainy stop him from scamming]]. He ended up being sent to ADX Florence, an infamous supermax that houses the most dangerous terrorists and criminals on Earth.

* NamesTheSame:
** InUniverse in "The Pope". Both the introductory segment and the main story concern Kentucky politicians named Dan Johnson (a Democrat and a Republican respectively) who disgraced themselves with sexual misconduct.
** Dan Marino, the chief financial officer and co-conspirator of fraudster Samuel Israel, shares his name with the famous [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeagueQuarterbacks Miami Dolphins quarterback]]. The Citizen proceeds to pepper his narration with [[TakeThat Take Thats]] targeting the football player while discussing the criminal.

** Hooker Chemical Company initially claims to have no record of toxic chemicals being dumped at the Love Canal site, despite the company having worked in a clause in a contract they negotiated with the city of Niagara Falls specifically to avoid legal liability over adverse chemical exposure.[[note]]This is a slightly unfair depiction of what Hooker actually did, however. In truth, the company actually resisted attempts by city authorities to purchase the site in order to build a school and wanted to impose conditions if they did in order to reduce the risk of contamination. They were forced to cave when seizure of the property under eminent domain was threatened, and eventually sold the land for $1 with a deed that warned against the risk of the materials stored there and attempted to limit the company's liability.[[/note]]

** Hooker Chemical Company initially claims to have no record of toxic chemicals being dumped at the Love Canal site, despite the company having worked in a clause in a contract they negotiated with the city of Niagara Falls specifically to avoid legal liability over adverse chemical exposure.

* PoisonousFriend:
** Deputy Frankie Bybee seemingly befriended depressed retiree Marcia Sohl, taking her to the hospital during a health emergency and taking her out with his family. This was all a ruse to win Marcia's trust before Bybee began pressuring her to give up her financial information. [[ElderAbuse Things went downhill for Marcia from there.]]
** Samantha Azzopardi, an Australian serial scammer, befriended an American backpacker named Emily Baumberger and persuaded her that she was a kidnapped Swedish princess who was on the run. Samantha dragged Emily into her fantasy, which ended with Emily landing in jail and being deported from Australia.

** Samantha Azzopardi has spent her early career as a scam artist, going into her twenties, pretending to be victimized teenaged girls. By age 22, when she appeared in Dublin pretending to be an Eastern European human trafficking victim, Azzopardi had already amassed forty aliases around the globe. After being deported back to her native Australia, Azzopardi [[PoisonousFriend befriended and gaslit]] another girl into believing Azzopardi was a kidnapped Swedish princess on the run from assassins.

''The TVTropes page for'' Swindled ''is researched, produced, and hosted by me, A Concerned Troper, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformr, a.k.a. [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife Life Ruiner Extraordinaire]].''

** Firearms manufacturer Remington Arms repeatedly deflected blame for the poor trigger design of the Model 700 by insisting that their unintentional discharges were merely the result of RecklessGunUse rather than any defects in the product.

** Another Patreon-bonus episode, "The Sweepstakes", is about a promotional contest Pepsi held in the Philippines. While they are only debatably ''heroic'', the contest was a success and entirely legitmitate...but then Pepsi accidentally announced the wrong winning number one evening. A wrong number that eighty thousand people had. ''Whoops.''

* CreatorKiller: In universe. The massive scandal surrounding the accident at the Verrückt water slide causes Schlitterbahn's Kansas City water park to close permanently.[[note]]What the Citizen doesn't mention is that the scandal killed Schlitterbahn itself as well, as the company was forced to buy itself out to competing amusement park company Cedar Fair; Schlitterbahn today is merely a placeholder brand for Cedar Fair's water parks.[[/note]] And while Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry escaped legal repercussions for his actions leading up to the disaster, it's probably safe to assume that both the scandal and his subsequent prison sentence for spousal abuse mean he won't be welcome back in theme park circles anytime soon.

* FromBadToWorse: Lebanon had already been blighted by decades of political corruption and financial crises. But after the 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut which devastated the capital city, the country has been forced to default on its debt, its currency has been significantly devalued, half of its population had been plunged into poverty, its political system has been in shambles, its cities have turned into warzones, and in general looks like it's on the verge of total collapse.

--->'''Concerned Citizen:''' The immediate and long-term effects of the massive Ixtoc oil spill will never be fully understood. Of course, studies conducted in the area have since found that the Ixtoc spill acutely affected the species and ecosystems in the Bay of Campeche. In parts, you can tell just by looking at it. Some species have rebounded, others shriveled up and died forever. But maybe one day those that we lost will become crude oil too, for which to be eventually sucked from the earth to be refined and molded, so to ultimately revisit us in the form of a plastic drinking straw, only to be used and abused and discarded into the ocean, where it will float to its final resting place lodged inside the throat of an endangered sea turtle. Maybe one day that sea turtle will become crude oil too, while the straw continues on its way drifting through the ocean, a spiritual journey with its friends to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch great garbage patch]] in the Pacific. It's the natural cycle of life. Everything repeats, and nothing is ever learned.

** Several characters in "The Madam" episode are goverment figures who are trying to criminalize or enforce laws against prostitution. They are then found to have been seeing prostitutes.

** Jeff Henry, former co-owner of Schlitterbahn, gives off this impression throughout "The Verrückt". He does to outrageous lengths in his quest to break the record for building the world's tallest water slide; in fact, breaking the record is almost all he ever talks about in relation to the bloody thing. A lot of the trouble in the ride's construction (and lack of safety) is caused by Henry's obsession with appearing in a Travel Channel special to promote the project. And then there are some of his bizarre statements promoting the ride, at one point calling its experience "erotic" and "sexy".

* AdultFear:
** Love Canal. You move into an idyllic neighborhood only to find out it's been built on top of a toxic landfill that is disfiguring or killing your kids, and neither the city nor the company responsible for the contamination are willing to lift a finger to help you.
** Everything featured in "The Body Snatcher": imagine discovering that the ashes of your deceased loved one were really just burned garbage and that their body was actually unceremoniously dumped in a forest. Alternatively, imagine discovering that your loved one's body had been stripped for parts without your consent thanks to the funeral home you chose taking bribes and that the body in the casket is being held together with PVC pipe instead of bones. And then imagine going in for routine knee surgery and getting implanted with diseased and/or rotting tissue taken from a body and catching all sorts of diseases as a result.
** The case of Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto. Imagine being tricked by scammers into smuggling drugs into a foreign country, and then being imprisoned in that foreign country for years with the likely prospect of eventually being executed, all because you were looking for love online.
** '''Ryan White.''' Your child contracts AIDS because of a screw-up made by the manufacturer of his hemophilia medication, and everybody you know in town -- from the school to the neighbors to random people on the street -- assume he is gay and blackball him from the community. And it eventually gets so bad that ''someone decides to fire a gun into your house.''
** Having a child who dies or becomes permanently disabled after falling victim to a foodborne illness, either because you decided to visit the local fair ("The Well") or ate the wrong peanut-based food product ("The Outbreak").
** Having your kid be injured on a theme park ride is bad enough. Having them die in much worse. Have them be ''decapitated'' in full view of other spectators in beyond the imagination of most people.

* BraggingRightsReward: Jeff Henry built the Verrückt water slide for the sole purpose of laying claim to building the tallest water slide in the world, which earn him a role in a Travel Channel special and a Guinness world record. Too bad he didn't put nearly as much effort into making the ride ''safe''.

** Jeff Henry and John Schooley of the Schlitterbahn water park chain went to outrageous lengths to secure the BraggingRightsReward for the tallest water slide in the world, going so far as to ignore safety issues with the ride and covering up accidents caused by it. It took a ten-year-old parkgoer ''getting his head cut off'' for their malfeasance to be exposed.

* DomesticAbuse: Mark D'Amico to his girlfriend/co-conspirator Kate [=McClure=].

* VillainousBreakdown: After the Carroll Canyon disaster, mine owner Robert E. Murray begins holding a series of unhinged press conferences, ranting about political vendettas and insisting that the mine's collapse was caused by an earthquake, as criticism mounts over his company's practices and handling of the recovery effort.

* AmusementParkOfDoom: The Washington County Fair in Greenwich, New York, which became the epicenter of a deadly ''e. coli'' outbreak in 1999.