Movies about scams and TV shows based on true stories

The best-known movies and TV shows about real scams are ***Catch Me If You Can* (2002), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), American Hustle (2013) and shows like The Dropout and Inventing Anna (both 2022)**. They're all based on true stories, but none of them is a documentary: Catch Me If You Can adapts a story that turned out to be largely false, and The Wolf of Wall Street tells the con man's own version. Here are eleven movies and shows about real scams, in order of release, with what's true and what they changed.

Which movies based on real scams should you watch?

1. The Great Impostor (1961)

Starring Tony Curtis and based on Robert Crichton's book about Ferdinand Waldo Demara, who passed himself off as a monk, a teacher, a lawyer and a surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Korean War. What it changes: it's a loose adaptation of his exploits that boils a life of dozens of false identities down to an adventure comedy. The real story was wild enough: without being a doctor, he treated wounded soldiers aboard a destroyer.

2. Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Directed by Fred Schepisi, with Will Smith, Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland, adapted by John Guare from his own 1990 play. It was inspired by David Hampton, who from 1983 posed as “David Poitier,” the supposed son of Sidney Poitier, to get free meals and talk at least a dozen well-off people into giving him shelter and money. What it changes: names, characters and the whole plot around a single wealthy Manhattan couple; Hampton becomes the fictional Paul. The real twist: after the play's success, Hampton filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming it had used his story.

3. Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Steven Spielberg, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale and Tom Hanks as the FBI agent chasing him. It adapts Abagnale's memoir: fake Pan Am pilot, doctor and lawyer before he turned 21. What it changes: the problem isn't the movie, it's its source. In 2020, Alan C. Logan published The Greatest Hoax on Earth, in which he argues, using prison records, that Abagnale was behind bars for much of the time he claimed to be conning his way around the world. Abagnale's most famous con was, most likely, his own story. Our Law of Deception No. 12 puts it this way: “The more famous the story, the fewer people check whether it is true.” We tell the full case in Frank Abagnale's true story.

4. The Informant! (2009)

Steven Soderbergh, with Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, the executive at agribusiness giant ADM who helped the FBI expose a price-fixing cartel in the 1990s. What it changes: the comic tone. The real story is even stranger: while he was cooperating with the FBI, Whitacre was embezzling millions of dollars from the company, lost his immunity and was sentenced to nine years in prison, more than the executives he had helped catch.

5. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, based on his memoir. What it changes: it tells the protagonist's version, with his excesses front and center and his victims almost out of frame. The reality: Stratton Oakmont was on Long Island, not on Wall Street, and it sold cheap stocks over the phone that it pumped up so it could sell at the top. In 2003 Belfort was sentenced to four years, served 22 months and was ordered to pay $110 million in restitution, of which, according to Biography, he has paid about $14 million. And one more twist: in 2018 its production company, Red Granite, paid $60 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that part of the movie's financing came from money diverted from 1MDB, the Malaysian state fund. A movie about one scam, financed, according to the DOJ, with the money from another. Read the Wolf of Wall Street true story.

6. American Hustle (2013)

David O. Russell, with Christian Bale and Amy Adams, inspired by Abscam, the FBI's undercover operation in the late 1970s in which a con man helped record politicians taking bribes from a fake sheikh. What it changes: almost everything, and it warns you: the movie opens with a title card that reads “Some of this actually happened.” The names are changed and the plot is dramatized; according to columnist Albert R. Hunt in Bloomberg, the movie is better than the real story.

7. Madoff (miniseries, 2016)

An ABC production about the Madoff case, with Richard Dreyfuss in the lead. What it changes: like any dramatization, it squeezes decades of fraud into a few hours and relies on reconstructed private scenes. If you want the facts, a documentary is a better bet.

8. The Wizard of Lies (2017)

An HBO movie with Robert De Niro as Bernard Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, based on the book by journalist Diana B. Henriques. What it changes: it focuses on Madoff's family and on the collapse after his confession more than on the mechanics of the fraud. The reality: Madoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years in prison. To understand how it worked, read what a Ponzi scheme is.

9. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Marielle Heller, with Melissa McCarthy as Lee Israel, a broke biographer who in the early 1990s forged and sold to collectors hundreds of letters from famous writers such as Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward. It's based on Israel's own memoir. What it changes: little that matters; it condenses characters and timelines. It's one of the most faithful adaptations on this list.

10. The Dropout (2022)

A miniseries with Amanda Seyfried as the founder of Theranos. What it changes: it dramatizes private conversations that nobody recorded and simplifies the supporting characters. The reality: in January 2022 a jury found Holmes guilty of defrauding investors but acquitted her of the charges of defrauding patients; she was sentenced to more than 11 years. If you want the documentary version, it's on our list of scam documentaries.

11. Inventing Anna (2022)

A Netflix series about Anna Sorokin, who posed as the German heiress Anna Delvey in New York, based on an article by journalist Jessica Pressler. What it changes: it mixes fact and invention, and says so from the first episode with a notice to viewers that parts of it are made up. The reality: in 2019 Sorokin was sentenced to 4 to 12 years for swindling more than $200,000. And a detail the series doesn't dwell on: Netflix paid her $320,000 for the rights to her story.

A note: what isn't fiction

The Tinder Swindler (2022), Fyre (2019) and Dirty Pop (2024) often show up on lists of “movies about scams,” but they're documentaries: we've gathered them, with what each one adds, in the best scam documentaries.

Why do movies change the true story?

For three reasons worth keeping in mind:

1. The source is the con man. Catch Me If You Can and The Wolf of Wall Street adapt memoirs by the people they portray. A con man is, by definition, an unreliable narrator.
2. Drama needs a hero. The con man's charisma sells tickets; the victims don't. That's why they almost never appear.
3. Time gets compressed. Years of deception fit into two hours, and what gets lost is usually the most useful part: the red flags that were in plain sight and nobody checked.

At MATERIUM we do the opposite: we tell each case with the sources in plain view and end every episode with the rule that helps you recognize the same trap today. If you want to start with cases that Hollywood has only half told, browse the episodes page or go through the biggest scams in history.