The Lawfare Podcast: Why We Fall for Charlatans, with Quico Toro
Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Tyler McBrien (Lawfare Institute)
Guest: Quico Toro (Washington Post columnist, Anthropocene Institute)
Topic: Why societies are susceptible to charlatans, drawn from Toro’s new book with Moisés Naím, How Grifters, Swindlers and Hucksters Bamboozle the Media, the Markets and the Masses.
Episode Overview
Tyler McBrien interviews Quico Toro about the persistence and psychology of charlatans throughout history, how modern technology amplifies their reach, and the vulnerabilities that make anyone susceptible. Drawing on their new book, the conversation weaves in historical, contemporary, and psychological perspectives, illustrating how and why even the shrewdest individuals can be taken in by skilled manipulators.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. What Makes a Charlatan?
[01:04–03:35]
- Charlatans are defined by their ability to place themselves between you and your dreams, convincing you that fulfilling your desires is impossible without them.
- Quote: “What defines the charlatan… They interpose themselves between you and your dreams, right? And they convince you that if you want your dream to become true, you need them.” —Quico Toro [01:04]
- Victims are not limited to the gullible; “potential victims are all of us.” Charlatans, not their marks, are the outliers.
- Quote: “If you're a normal person, you're a potential victim. It's the charlatans that are different. It's the charlatans that are weird.” —Quico Toro [01:32]
2. Historical Perspective: The Case of Mamuniya
[02:18–05:12]
- Story of Mamuniya, a 16th-century Venetian charlatan, illustrates historical continuity: exploiting powerful tribes’ fantasies—in this case, Venice regaining lost glory by turning base metal to gold.
- Charlatans don’t persuade through evidence, but by connecting to dreams and identities.
- The psychological and societal context (Venetians' denial of lost empire) set the stage for Mamuniya’s success.
3. The Psychology of Being Fooled: Cognitive Biases
[05:12–08:51]
- Confirmation bias is the key cognitive vulnerability charlatans exploit.
- Quote: “We go into every interaction about things… looking for reasons to keep believing what we already believe.” —Quico Toro [05:49]
- These biases operate subconsciously and instantly. Effortful “slow thinking” is the only partial defense—hard and uncommon.
- Social isolation is a major risk factor; charlatans increasingly organize followers into insular communities, creating cult-like environments.
- Quote: “The people who get taken in are socially isolated. So social isolation definitely seems to be a risk factor…” —Quico Toro [07:33]
4. Technology as a Catalyst: The Digital Era’s ‘Springtime for Charlatans’
[08:51–10:53]
- Historically, charlatans focused either on “get rich quick” or “get well quick” scams due to limited communication. Modern algorithms enable micro-targeting at scale.
- Quote: “This is what the digital economy offers is precisely the possibility to target a very narrow audience. And so with that capability, you see this kind of springtime for charlatans…” —Quico Toro [09:26]
Case Study: Mehmed Aydin and Turkey’s Farm Bank
[11:04–14:16]
- Aydin created ‘Farm Bank,’ a fake ‘real-farm’ version of Farmville, playing on Turkish nostalgia and cultural roots. The scam tapped urbanites’ longing for rural authenticity and paid early “investors”—until collapsing as a Ponzi scheme.
- Disappeared with $80 million, was extradited, and sentenced to 45,000 years in prison.
- Quote: “He told people that if they gave him money, he would invest it in Turkish agriculture… It became a kind of mania in Turkey… The entire thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.” —Quico Toro [11:04]
Ponzi Schemes, Law, and Victim Dynamics
[13:48–15:15]
- Ponzi schemes often unravel because too many are left “holding the bag” at once; sometimes, however, especially with cult-like organizations, followers defend the charlatan even as their lives are ruined.
Case Study: Edir Macedo—The Prosperity Gospel and Political Power
[15:29–16:53]
- Macedo’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God preys on the world’s poorest, extracting money through aggressive religious manipulation. Far from being prosecuted, he accrued massive wealth and political influence.
- Quote: “he's a billionaire. He has a bank. He has a broadcast network. He has a political party that controls dozens of seats… He cannot be investigated. He travels in a diplomatic passport.” —Quico Toro [15:29]
5. When Charlatans Seize State Power: The Trump University Example
[21:00–23:34]
- Trump University cited as a pre-political example: it targeted people with dreams of real estate riches, leveraging Trump’s reputation to aggressively extract money for worthless courses.
- Quote: “Out of all the people who at some point paid Donald Trump, Donald Trump's organization between a few thousand and tens of thousands of dollars… it's never been possible to identify a single case of somebody launching a successful investment career…” —Quico Toro [21:48]
- Political power compounds the risks—creating practical immunity and widespread legitimacy for charlatans.
6. Choosing the Case Studies
[23:34–26:45]
- The book covers a broad spectrum to illustrate that everyone can be susceptible: “With charlatans there's this weird dynamic where you can have 100 charlatans and 99% of them are pitching ideas based on dreams that you don't share… The 100th pitch talks to you… everybody is vulnerable.” —Quico Toro [23:45]
- Even the Gates Foundation fell for a charlatan, demonstrating that intelligence is no safeguard.
7. Cultural Fascination: Why We’re Drawn to Charlatans
[26:45–28:20]
- Charlatans fascinate because they are “not psychologically normal.” Their antisocial, manipulative character distances them from ordinary people, making them objects of both horror and admiration.
- Quote: “The victims or the potential victims are all of us. If you're a normal person, you're a potential victim. It's the charlatans that are different. It's the charlatans that are, that are weird. And of course we want to gawk at them because they get away with amazing stuff.” —Quico Toro [26:45]
8. Defending Ourselves and Society
[28:20–31:30]
- Charlatans exploit not just gullibility, but our capacity for dreaming and hope, making this “exploit” a byproduct of something fundamentally human.
- Quote: “A world without charlatans would actually be a very sad world because it would be a world where you can't exploit people's dreams because nobody believes in anything.” —Quico Toro [29:01]
- Practical advice:
- Maintain diverse, non-screen-based social networks—people who challenge you and aren’t like you.
- Cultivate the rare skill of examining your own strongest beliefs as if you were an outsider—a cognitively demanding but protective practice.
- Quote: “Whatever your dreams are … you have to love them, but you also have to have the capacity to look at them from the outside as somebody who is not like you would look at it.” —Quico Toro [31:00]
9. Why Write This Book — And Why Now?
[31:30–33:23]
-
Toro and his coauthor began the project as a “WhatsApp gossip” exchange about absorbing charlatan stories, then realized the proliferation of highly niche charlatans signals a more “charlatan-genic” environment today—a structural, not anecdotal, trend.
- Quote: “We are living in an increasingly charlatan-genic society.” —Quico Toro [33:14]
10. False Positives: Who Isn’t a Charlatan?
[33:35–34:35]
-
Not everyone ‘peddling dreams’ is a charlatan. The example of Chani Nicholas, an astrologer: After careful investigation, they found no harm done—demonstrating the importance of distinguishing between harmless optimism and harmful manipulation.
- Quote: “After a bunch of research, we're like, she's not a charlatan.” —Quico Toro [33:50]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “They interpose themselves between you and your dreams… and they convince you that if you want your dream to become true, you need them.”
—Quico Toro [01:04] - “Confirmation bias … is very fundamental to the way the human operating system works … some ill intentioned people can see that and think of it as a vulnerability.”
—Quico Toro [05:49] - “Social isolation definitely seems to be a risk factor for victimization from a charlatan.”
—Quico Toro [07:33] - “It became a kind of mania in Turkey… The entire thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.”
—Quico Toro [11:04] (on Farm Bank) - “He’s a billionaire… He has a broadcast network. He has a political party that controls dozens of seats in Brazil’s congress … He cannot be investigated. He travels in a diplomatic passport.”
—Quico Toro [15:29] (on Edir Macedo) - “You can have 100 charlatans and 99% of them are pitching ideas based on dreams that you don’t share… the 100th pitch… everybody is vulnerable.”
—Quico Toro [23:45] - “A world without charlatans would actually be a very sad world because it would be a world where you can’t exploit people’s dreams because nobody believes in anything.”
—Quico Toro [29:01] - “We are living in an increasingly charlatan-genic society.”
—Quico Toro [33:14]
Timestamps for Important Segments
- [01:04] What charlatans do and how they operate
- [03:35] Historical framing: charlatans are timeless
- [05:49] Confirmation bias and why it matters
- [07:33] Social isolation and cult dynamics
- [09:26] Technology, micro-targeting, and new “springtime” for charlatans
- [11:04] Turkey’s Farm Bank—modern, niche charlatanry example
- [13:48] Legal consequences: extradition and sentencing
- [15:29] Cult dynamics: Edir Macedo, prosperity gospel, and political power
- [21:48] Trump University as paradigmatic U.S. charlatan example
- [23:45] Why everyone’s at risk—‘the 100th pitch’
- [26:45] Our fascination with con artists and their psychological differences
- [29:01] Defensive strategies and humanity’s irremovable vulnerability
- [31:30] Why Toro and Naím wrote the book now
- [33:50] Who isn’t a charlatan? The case of Chani Nicholas
Final Reflections
- Charlatanism is inseparable from human hope and dreaming—“defending” against it without losing our humanity is a constant balancing act.
- Increased social fragmentation, isolation, and algorithmic micro-targeting make modern society more vulnerable than ever.
- The best defense: nurture diverse real-world relationships and cultivate honest, sometimes painful, self-scrutiny of our deepest beliefs.
Summary prepared based on the original language and tone of the speakers. For more information or to listen to the episode, visit www.lawfareblog.com.