The BBC’s newest True Crime podcast will focus on ‘bizarre’ crimes rather than the ‘brutal’, Rima Ahmed exclusively tells Mirror as she prepares to dive into the most ‘outrageous’ crimes
Teenage hackers posing as celebrities, a farmer turned murderous over milk, plastic surgeons with a vendetta – some true crimes are just too outrageous to believe.
Whether it’s digging up a grisly cold case murder or tracing the terrifying movements of a serial killer, the nation can’t get enough of true crime. But they are not always brutal and gruesome – some true crimes are just plain bizarre, capturing the imagination.
Radio broadcaster and podcast host Rima Ahmed has been delving into a world of outrageous heists, daring fraudsters and wild blackmail plots, uncovering the colourful and brazen criminals behind them.
In her hit BBC Sounds podcast, Strange But True Crime, back with a new series on June 10, Rima will look at more crazy cases, speaking to reporters who investigated at the time and gaining new insights.
She says: “Like so many others, I’m so interested in true crime and I’ve absorbed quite a lot of it over the years. But it was quite dark, often just a lot of women being murdered.
“I got to the point where I’d stopped watching and listening because I thought this isn’t very good for me. Working for BBC Local, I know that there are some absolutely wild and weird stories out there, and people talk to me all the time about some crazy thing that’s happened.
“The special thing about this podcast is that we focus on crimes that are bizarre rather than brutal. We are looking at bonkers crime stories and trying very hard not to judge these people, but to unpick why on earth they did it and do a bit of what I call ‘sensible speculating’. It’s a crazy world out there, with strange goings on – but you really couldn’t make this up.”
The upcoming series will feature a reclusive teenager who helped scam millions of people by hacking into the social media accounts of the world’s most famous people, including Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Barack Obama.
The series also investigates the outrageous case of a handsome art dealer in London, with links to the stars of Made In Chelsea, who committed the biggest art fraud in US history.
One episode also looks at a deadly feud between two rival plastic surgeons, in which one plots to burn the other’s house down, while another looks at a daring care home fraud plot.
Rima, 34, who hosts the BBC Radio Leeds breakfast show, as well as programmes on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio 4, says: “One of my favourite stories was about a criminal mastermind, James ‘Jimmy’ Sheen, who stole a world-famous solid gold toilet from Blenheim Palace, an art installation worth £4.8 million.
“What do you do with a golden toilet that you’ve stolen? In the end he melted it down, which is wild. In the new series, we look at a farmer who claimed he was protesting on behalf of milk farmers and the prices they were paid for their milk. He contaminated baby food with lethal metal shards to extort a supermarket out of £1.4 million.”
Nigel Wright, from Lincolnshire, was sentenced to 14 years in 2020 after two mothers reported they were moments away from feeding their infants when they spotted the shards.
The podcast, BBC Local’s most popular title with millions of listens, will also cover the 2020 ‘Twitter hack’ case, which saw attackers gain access to internal Twitter tools and take over high-profile accounts, including those of Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Bill Gates, to post a Bitcoin scam.
Rima says: “One of the attackers was a teenager who was so addicted to being online that his mum had to get a neighbour in to wash his clothes and feed him, because he never ever left his bedroom.
“He ended up falling into a crowd of digital agitators and becoming part of one of the biggest ever social media hacks, scamming hundreds of people out of their money – all from his bedroom with his mum none the wiser.
“We also look at this case of beef between two plastic surgeons. It takes quite an extreme turn when one swaps his scalpel for a can of petrol and tries burning the other surgeon’s house down while he is inside. We look at the psychology of what made him do that.”
Other episodes will cover the case of two care home bosses, each jailed for three years after faking an elderly resident’s will and attempting to claim her £175,000 estate.
Husband and wife Graham and Lyn Walker, in their 70s, and the manager Jamiel Slaney-Summers, who was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison, used coloured pens and different styles of handwriting to forge a will for unwell 85-year-old Rita Barnsley.
Rima laughs: “How did they think they were going to get away with that? It’s like bubble writing, no elderly person writes like that. We also look into the case of American Inigo Philbrick, a good looking art dealer who became a rich socialite. He was spending £4,000 on bottles of wine, living the high life.
“But he was a serial swindler and created one of the largest art frauds in history, forging documents to con art collectors and investors. He’s still in prison and claiming he doesn’t know where a missing £65 million is. He’s expressing regret, but not remorse. Some criminals are so brazen.”
Rima adds: “I do sometimes go to bed at night and think of these people, some of whom are in prison. Sometimes I can empathise, that sense of desperation or loneliness, but then sometimes, I think how could you do that? How could you try to harm someone in that way?
“What I hope people take from the podcast is that the strangest stories are probably taking place down the bottom of your street. Also, you don’t need to listen to stories about murders and be really scared to get stuck into a good crime story.”
Series 3 of the Strange But True Crime podcast launches on Wednesday 10 June on BBC Sounds with new episodes every week
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