Con-artist podcast Filthy Ritual tells jaw-dropping tales — review

In 2014, a woman named Juliette D’Souza was jailed for conning well-to-do Londoners in Hampstead out of their savings, leaving several in financial ruin. In Filthy Ritual, we hear how she gained the confidence of her victims, who included an actor, an opera singer and an osteopath, by telling them — and stay with me here — that she was a shaman who had a special connection to a source of power deep in the Amazon rainforest. This, she claimed, allowed her to, among other things, ward off demons and cure cancer. But this would only happen if her clients stuffed a pile of cash, or a “sacrifice”, in an envelope which would subsequently be sent to Suriname, where it would be nailed to a magic tree.

If the first wave of true-crime podcasts, most of which concerned murders, appealed to a ghoulish prurience in the listener, the current vogue for shows about fraudsters taps into something more smug: the conviction that we could never be duped like these poor fools. But Filthy Ritual pulls off the feat of leaving the listener stunned at people’s gullibility while feeling sympathy for those who were conned. Each of D’Souza’s victims was vulnerable in some way. She got to them while their marriages were collapsing, or they were struggling to get pregnant, or burnt out, and worked on each of them over several years. One woman was in the early stages of dementia, making her perfect game.

The series is hosted by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire, the duo behind the hit true-crime pod RedHanded. While they bring the same sardonic humour and rapport from that series, this feels more rigorous, as they conduct lengthy interviews with the major players.

Central to the story is Keith Bender, an osteopath described as “like a young Richard E Grant”, who met D’Souza when she came to him with a bad back. They became friends and she counselled him through his marital problems. Then she told him she was a shaman and that he had cancer, and he didn’t doubt her. As he reveals, in his slightly goofy tones, how he put his name on the rental agreement for four Hampstead flats for D’Souza, I found myself yelping: “Keith! Come on! What is wrong with you, man?” But Bender was a goner, fully on board with the supernatural spirits whose power could only be harnessed with banknotes.

There are further twists in the tale including a civilian sleuth seemingly modelled on Miss Marple, and a pet capuchin monkey. Were Filthy Ritual a work of fiction, you would likely think it too far-fetched. As it is, through Bala and Maguire’s clever storytelling, it is a wonderfully addictive series that delves into themes of class, wealth and coercion and, despite the larky tone, is also underpinned by tragedy. It is, by some distance, the best podcast I’ve heard this year.