12 gripping shows and movies about scams to stream now

6. FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED (2019)  In 2017, tech bro Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule announced an ultra-exclusive music event, Fyre Festival, to be held on a private

island in the Bahamas, and they got a slew of celebrities and models to promote it. What followed was a flop of epic proportions: The “luxury yurts” they promoted were actually

disaster-relief tents left over from a hurricane, workers didn’t get paid, food was sparse and terrible (including a sad cheese sandwich that went viral), bands canceled and concertgoers

were left stranded. McFarland had defrauded investors out of $27.4 million, and the festival was such a schadenfreude-inspiring mess that it yielded two documentaries, this one for Netflix

and Hulu’s_ Fyre Fraud._ WATCH IT: on Netflix [embedded content] 7. I CARE A LOT (2020) Rosamund Pike, 44, picked up a best actress Golden Globe for her role as the con artist Marla Grayson

in this satirical thriller about elder abuse. Marla’s scheme involves becoming a court-appointed guardian for vulnerable elderly folks, placing them in assisted living facilities, having

them sedated and then selling off their assets. Dianne Wiest, 75, plays her victim, Jennifer Peterson, who turns out to be tougher than she looks. Be warned that, while many critics

applauded the film’s wicked amorality, it left many audience members feeling outraged: To wit, it has only a 34 percent audience score on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Owen

Gleiberman wrote in _Variety_ that director J Blakeson and Pike created “a femme so fatale that she seems to have left a century’s worth of movie nice girls in the dust.” WATCH IT: on

Netflix [embedded content] 8. OPERATION VARSITY BLUES: THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SCANDAL (2021) Chances are you’ll remember the recent college admissions scandal, which saw wealthy parents —

including celebrities like Felicity Huffman, 61, and Lori Loughlin, 59 — trying to bribe and defraud the right people to get their kids into America’s top universities. If you need a

refresher, Netflix’s juicy documentary took a unique approach, which included reenactments of the FBI-wiretapped conversations between mastermind William “Rick” Singer and his

co-conspirators. Matthew Modine, 64, earned praise for channeling the slimy Singer, a basketball coach–turned–college counselor who helped parents bribe test proctors and members of

university athletics departments to boost teens’ bona fides.  WATCH IT: on Netflix [embedded content] 9. CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (2018) Melissa McCarthy, 53, has a penchant for playing

lovable, good-natured characters, but she went decidedly darker in this biopic about literary forger Lee Israel — and she was rewarded with her second Oscar nomination in the process. A

moderately successful celebrity biographer, Israel is a bit of a curmudgeon who has fallen on hard times when she hatches a plan to make some money: She’ll forge and sell handwritten letters

from historical figures like Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward. Along the way, she recruits an old acquaintance named Jack (Richard E. Grant, 66) as her confidant and partner in crime. WATCH

IT: on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube [embedded content] 10. HUSTLERS (2019) Based on a viral 2015 New York magazine article, this true-crime comedy follows a team of New York City

strippers who target the rich men that frequent their club by drugging them and maxing out their credit cards. Jennifer Lopez, 54, earned some of her best acting reviews in decades for her

role as the criminal mastermind Ramona Vega, and she went on to be nominated for a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. But the entire ensemble is firing on

all cylinders, with standouts including Constance Wu, Keke Palmer, and A-list musicians Lizzo and Cardi B. WATCH IT: on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Hulu, YouTube [embedded content] 11. ART AND

CRAFT (2014) Before he was caught, prolific art forger Mark Landis convinced over 45 museums that his copies of works by René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt and more were originals.

But rather than try to get rich by selling them, he had done the unthinkable: He’d simply given away his creations to museums for free! In this cat-and-mouse documentary, the jig is up when

Landis lands on the radar of Oklahoma City Museum of Art registrar Matthew Leininger, who tries to expose his artistic deceptions. Documentary subjects don’t come much more compelling than

Landis, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 17 and has said that his forgeries have been a way to manage his mental illness. WATCH IT: on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Pluto TV, 

YouTube [embedded content] 12. QUEENPINS (2021) Kristen Bell, 43, stars in this underrated crime caper that’s based on a true case of what’s been dubbed “pink collar crime.” Connie Kaminski

(Bell) is a former gold-medal-winning Olympic racewalker who’s bored living out in suburbia and decides to defraud corporations out of millions of dollars with a coupon scheme: She and her

best pal figure out a way to nab free coupons by writing complaint letters about products and then selling them to other consumers who will be able to benefit from the discounts. Their

seemingly victimless crime soon puts them on a collision course with a supermarket chain loss-prevention office (_Richard Jewell_ star Paul Walter Hauser, 37) and a U.S. postal inspector

(Vince Vaughn, 53). WATCH IT: on Tubi