Chameleon

A promising high school basketball star seemed to appear out of nowhere—a talented homeless kid trying to rebuild his life after Hurricane Harvey. But Rashun Richardson was no ordinary freshman. In fact… He wasn’t even a teenager.

In the late 1990s, a group of art students from Leeds, England, announce a week in Spain as their latest “conceptual artwork” — and Britain’s tabloids lose their collective mind. But as the headlines pile up, it becomes clear the “holiday” is only the surface story. And the Art is aimed straight at the culture machine that’s reporting it.

His friends, family and a string of partners all believed a version of the same thing. That Randy was a former marine who now flew commercial airliners. But as the people around him started to look more closely, their ideas about who this charming man was began to wobble. And if Randy has been taking such great liberties with the truth then what else isn’t true?

A network of animal shelters in Uganda started posting heartbreaking videos of starving, mutilated dogs on social media, begging for donations from animal lovers. But as a group of women around the world began comparing notes, they uncovered something much darker: a sprawling scam operation where animals were being tortured for clicks, sympathy and cash. And they started fighting back.

In 2009, Vincent Richardson walked into a Chicago police station and reported for duty. No one noticed he wasn’t actually a cop. No one noticed he was 14 years old. This is the story of the teenager who fooled the system time after time. Was it a prank? A cry for help? Or something else entirely?