In late 2021, Robert walked into a co-working building in Virginia.It was his first day of his new job.
And I get a little office that's smaller than like 10 by 10 square feet.
Robert is not his real name.We're calling him that for security reasons.He looked around and wondered what he was doing there.
I'm thinking like, wow, they have no idea how little I know about all this stuff.Let's see how long this lasts before they fire me.
Robert's new job was at a place called Hindenburg Research.It was a small financial company that had a big reputation.
You know, if you look up Hindenburg Research in the news or Wikipedia or whatever, I'm sure you'd see some pretty bad stuff.Like, oh, we hurt companies.We attack companies.
Robert prefers to think of it in a different way.
We're like pirates, but we only rob other pirates.
You see, Hindenburg investigates companies, but unlike traditional journalists, when the team finds evidence that a company is involved in fraud, they short shares of its stock.
Basically, they take a big bet that the share price will fall when their report comes out.It can be very lucrative, if it works.The losses can be even bigger. Either way, Robert wanted to be a part of it.
I was really attracted to the idea of like, hey, we can take down bad guys and make money.You know, that's, that's cool.
And pretty soon, Robert was working on his first lead.
One of the first ideas he presented was, hey, have you ever heard of Enochian Biosciences?And I was like, actually, I have.
Nate Anderson is the founder of Hindenburg Research and Robert's boss.He'd come across Enochian in a trade publication.He'd been struck by the company's bold claims about their scientific breakthroughs and about the man behind them, Dr. Serhat.
Dr. Serhat has the type of brilliance that has the capacity to see across discipline in science and connect things that others don't see.
Here was a company that claimed its young mid-30s doctor had found cures or major advancements for many of the world's most difficult diseases.
These are extremely complicated diseases that thousands of scientists have collectively spent their careers trying to make progress on.
We believe have the potential to cure and put into long-term remission HIV and many cancers.And that is extraordinary.
They touted him in promotional videos like this one.And they didn't have just anyone saying this.Mark Dybal is a distinguished doctor, Georgetown professor, and the former U.S.global AIDS coordinator under President George W. Bush.
There are these renowned scientists on the board of the company backing Serhat.You know, you can look up Mark Dibble.He worked, like, directly under Dr. Fauci.He's a big deal.He's a really big deal.
But Robert still had a hunch.There was just something off about Dr. Serhat.Hindenburg started digging.Who was this guy, really?Nate remembers that one of their early leads started with a photo.
On one of their websites, he posted a very detailed series of photographs about his Russian degree.
Serhat's eyes were bright blue and playful.His lips turned up into a confident half-smile.Behind him was a wall of framed diplomas showing his Russian medical training and PhD. Nate got in touch with the Russian universities listed on the diplomas.
He checked with the Russian National Degree Registry.He even checked with Russian Border Patrol.
And they found no record that he'd ever stepped foot in the country, let alone spent years studying medicine and getting advanced degrees.
Nate needed a moment to take it in.This man, Serhat Gumrucu, who was pioneering cures of HIV, AIDS, cancer, hepatitis B, and several groundbreaking cellular therapies, had faked his qualifications.He was not a doctor.
It became very clear that there was going to be more to this.
And if Serhat was lying about that, what else was he lying about?
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From Wondery, I'm Laura Beal, and this is Dr. Death, Bad Magic.This is Episode 2, The Golden Kid. Serhat told several different accounts of his life before he came to L.A., but his old friends in Turkey give a clearer picture.
Serhat Gumrucu was born in 1982 in the city of Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey.His family wasn't well off.His parents were both civil servants, but he was always a good student.
When he was a teenager, he won a place at a prestigious science school out of town. And that's where Ferit Unal first met him.On the first week of school, Serhat asked Ferit to be his roommate.Ferit's first impression was not good.
He thought Serhat seemed like a bit of a jerk, so he turned him down.But then the next day, Ferit's roommate left.He had to go back to Serhat and ask if they could be roommates after all.He said yes.
Ferit soon learned a thing or two about his new friend.He was easygoing and avoided conflict.He also tended to exaggerate.The way Ferit tells it, even small accomplishments became much bigger in Serhat's telling.
He says Serhat would talk about them as if he'd launched a rocket into the sky. Not that Serhat lacked things to boast about.He was impressive.He did well at school, especially in science.
Every Wednesday afternoon, Serhat would go over to the town's post office to look up scientific research at the only computer that had access to the internet. In his last year of high school, he won a national biology competition.
His name was listed in a prominent science magazine under the headline, The Golden Kids of 2000.Then, a month later, he took a grueling national exam and won a spot in one of the most selective medical schools in the country.
Serhat's future was bright.He seemed well on track to be a doctor, a life beyond his modest origins. But one day at school, everything changed.According to his classmates, it was a Monday morning in a math class.
One of his friends was talking about something he'd seen on TV that weekend.As Serhat and the other kids watched, their classmate put his arms straight out in front of him and interlaced his fingers.
Suddenly, he twisted his hands around, and for one moment, it looked like his hands disconnected from his wrists and arms.It was one of David Copperfield's tricks.Even the math teacher was impressed.
But Serhat's reaction was something beyond even that.His schoolmate described it as a sort of hysteria in his eyes. When Serhat returned to school the following Monday, he brought some magic tricks of his own.
They were cheap novelties, but he proudly went room to room in his dorm, showing them off to anyone who would give him an audience.Soon after, Ferit remembers that Serhat quickly moved beyond the kinds of tricks that you could buy in a magic shop.
Serhat would ask Ferit to think of a number, then he'd try to read his mind.Sometimes he got it right, other times not so much.But Serhat kept practicing.
He says by the end of his first year at the boarding school, his roommate was moving curtains in the dorm just by staring at them.Ferit never could figure out how he did it.
For a while, it seemed like Serhat was balancing his two interests, magic and medicine.But soon, he would make a choice.
As the team at Hindenburg looked deeper into Serhat's past, one of their researchers was trawling through online archives in Turkey.That's when he found something intriguing.
It really was at dark o'clock.
The researcher, we're calling him Thomas for security reasons, was staring at his computer with tired eyes.
It was in the depths of the night.I probably got to the end of the internet and was just kind of working my way back.
He was just about to turn in when he found a mention of Serhat. It was at an event in Izmir in 1999.He scanned down the page and found the name of the organizer.
And that's like, forget it, let's go to bed.You know, how are we going to find a guy 20 years on from some festival in a provincial city?
The next morning he figured, what the hell, I'll give it a try.
So I just pick up the phone and boom, there he is.
A short while later, the organizer sent him a video, which Pindenburg paid for.A grainy transfer from an old DVD.A teenager in an ill-fitting gray suit stands next to a makeshift stage in front of a small audience.
It's the early 2000s in the coastal city of Izmir, Turkey. And this young man with shoulder-length blonde hair hanging over his eyes looks like a disheveled intellectual about to give a talk.
With a shy smirk on his face, he rolls up a piece of construction paper into the shape of a cone.A female assistant stands idly next to him, looking unsure about what she should be doing.The audience waits.
It seems like something's gone wrong, but then he reaches his hand inside the cone, rummages around for a moment, and pulls out a bright red flower. But when he hears the clapping, he decides to do the trick again.And again.
In fact, he repeats it a total of 15 times.Then he takes a bow, and the audience claps even harder.It's clear they were ready for it to be done.But the magician is not.Instead, he keeps going, pulling even more flowers out of the cone.
After a few more close-up magic tricks, he bows his head and exits the stage to a smattering of applause.Thomas couldn't believe what he was seeing.
And it's like, there it is.Serhat the magician.
The man who sent the video was named Aslan Tuncer.Aslan was a local magician who went by the stage name Dr. Tora, Prince of Magic.His signature trick was bending the stem of a wine glass.
As well as the video, he also had a story to tell about Serhat.He told Thomas he'd taken Serhat under his wing, taught him classic stage magic and mental illusion.He was smart, a quick learner.But there was one downside to his character.
You know, he says, but he wants to run too fast.He wants to move too fast.
And there was one area that he was particularly impatient to learn.
He says he wants to get into a realm of magic that I really wasn't prepared to talk to him about or even teach him my limited knowledge of that sphere, which was using magic to try and cure people.
Oslin said he'd attempted it once, but swore he'd never do it again.Serhat thought differently and wanted to study under another magician.
And so at that point, Dr. Torres said that he split with Serhat.His young mentee then kind of disappeared off his radar.
And the next he found out was that he was, in Dr. Tora's words, he was in Arab countries cheating rich Arabs because they had a lot of money, but they had no knowledge of magic.
As Thomas took a moment to process what he'd just heard, new questions were forming.
And so again, another whole sphere of Serhat starts to open up.We've got a guy here saying, I was his mentor.I set him off on this road in magic.And then he's a magician that's gone absolutely rogue.
It wouldn't be long before Serhat surfaced again.He was turning to a brand of magic that would draw all kinds of people to him, people who considered him a supernatural healer.
As he later told an interviewer, if someone can bend a spoon, imagine what we can do to a tumor.
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Are you in trouble with the law?Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail?Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing war crimes, look no further than Paul Berggren.
You name it, Paul can do it.Need to launder some money?Broker a deal with a drug cartel? take out a witness?From Wondering, the makers of Dr. Death and Over My Dead Body, comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules.
Isn't it funny how witnesses disappear or how evidence doesn't show up or somebody doesn't testify correctly?
In order to win at all costs.
If Paul asked you to do something, it wasn't a request.It was an order.
I'm your host, Brandon Jase Jenkins.Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.You can listen to Criminal Attorney early and at free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.
I'm Tristan Redmond, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts.
But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom.
When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman.
So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 AMBES and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024.
Ghost Story is now the first-ever Apple Podcast Series Essential.Each month, Apple Podcast editors spotlight one series that has captivated listeners with masterful storytelling, creative excellence, and a unique creative voice and vision.
To recognize Ghost Story being chosen as the first Series Essential, Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself.
By 2003, Ferit Unal had known Serhat for six years.He had been there at the beginning when Serhat was performing cheap magic tricks in their dorm.And now, Ferit was sitting in the front row of a large theater watching his old friend perform.
And this time, he was blown away.He says, his tricks were far beyond what he did in high school.He even made objects fly.Off stage, Ferhat noticed that Serhat's social circle was changing.
One day, Serhat called Ferhat and invited him to the opening night of a bar. When they got there, Ferret was baffled.The bar owner welcomed Serhat like he was a king.Waiters were circling around them, bringing them food.Drinks were flowing.
A lot of wealthy people came into the bar that night, and Serhat seemed to know them all.Ferret asked Serhat, dude, how do you know all these people?Serhat mumbled something and brushed it off.
But Ferhat just watched in wonder at everyone flocking to him.So many people were trying to talk to him that he didn't stop moving all night.By the mid-2000s, Serhat moved to Turkey's largest city, Istanbul.
This was also the time he later said that he was completing his medical qualifications in Russia. In fact, he'd never finished medical school in Turkey.Years later, in 2011, his university registration finally expired without his graduation.
Instead of training as a doctor, Serhat spent his time running workshops with names like Mind and Body Control and School of Alchemy.He seemed to be building a completely different identity as a New Age guru.
Ali Seyit Gultekin let Serhat use his rooms at his business for events.Gultekin says he was really handsome.He had a devilish charm about him.Educated, rich women of Istanbul packed his classrooms.
Serhat would teach them to do things they never believed they could do.He would teach people how to walk on fire and glass.Everyone was captivated by him. By 2006, Serhat's views were becoming more out there.
Like the time he spoke with a reporter for a Turkish magazine and told them, a person's entire life consists of the thoughts in his mind.He claimed that with the right training, your mind could alter your reality.
One day in primary school, my mother and I were walking down the stairs. On one of the balconies, there is a clay pot with a beautifully blooming cactus in it.I said to my mother, look at the cactus.The plant pot exploded.
By 2011, he was teaching classes in a wealthy part of Istanbul.Serhat preached his own quiet gospel.And it all worked for his followers.They swore by his powers.
One woman reportedly said that Serhat had removed years of pain from her shoulder with his, quote, healing touch. She remembered, the sensation was indescribable.There was a little tingling, a little feeling of warmth.
But most of all, I was aware of a higher intelligence, something guiding the energy.Serhat had made it.
His old friends from school heard he'd become fabulously wealthy and lived in a lavish apartment overlooking the Bosphorus, on one of Istanbul's finest blocks. and he was still moving up in the world.
He bragged to people about hanging out with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.One friend claimed that Morgan Freeman's wife was among his followers.
There are photographs from around that time of Serhat at the opera in Istanbul, and there alongside him is Morgan Freeman.But during this time, there are also tantalizing hints of what else Serhat was up to.
One time, he told a friend he'd been in Africa where he'd warned a leader about an imminent coup attempt.Another time, he seemed to be posing as a descendant of the Turkish royal family to claim a tract of land bordering Egypt.
And still another time, he was in Peru where he claimed he'd discovered new deposits of gold. Bit by bit, a picture of Serhat was coming into focus for the team at Hindenburg.
It was clear that Serhat had fashioned himself as a mystic, one seemingly interested in pursuing various money-making opportunities.And it was clear too that the path Serhat had chosen was tinged with danger.
Even as his fame and reputation grew, he began to collect enemies. One day, Thomas got a message from one of his colleagues in Turkey.
— He sends us a picture of a screen that he's just pulled up the file, or just a very brief file on Serhat, in some policeman's office in Istanbul.
— The screenshot showed he'd been detained by police.It didn't give many details beyond that, just basic information like his name, birthdate, and place of birth. It also stated his educational level.No medical degrees or PhDs.
He was listed as a high school graduate.There was also no mention of why Serhat had been detained.
Did it go to trial?Didn't it go to trial?Was it a serious offense or was it just some kind of small misdemeanor that had been pulled up on?And it sets us kind of spinning as well as to how are we going to get to this information?
When Thomas got the court documents, he found a story with very different versions.It started with a patient named Elsevier Bunyatov.He had been diagnosed with a tumor on his bladder, and doctors in Turkey operated on him several times.
Still, even after the first tumor was removed, more cancerous growths were found. Elsevier turned to a friend named Metin Akyus, who knew Serhat through a mutual friend.
Metin says that Serhat claimed to be an oncologist and a shareholder in an Istanbul hospital, both of which were not true.Serhat gave them hope.
He explained that he could make his own stem cell treatment to fight the cancer using medicines not available in Turkey. He was paid $75,000 for the treatment.Although Metin would later say that Serhat was paid another $200,000 in cash.
The patient didn't get better.In fact, he had to be admitted to a hospital in Ankara.And then Metin said he found out Serhat's treatment contained mistletoe and a so-called vitamin B17 that had no proven effects.
Metin accused Serhat of aggravated fraud, impersonating a doctor and charging huge amounts of money for useless drugs.By the way, we should say that Metin did not respond for comment.
When the police talked to Serhat, he denied that he was impersonating a doctor.Serhat said he was qualified, but he explained that he wasn't registered in Turkey and had told Metin that he would, quote, help as a friend.
And Serhat said there was a whole other side to the story.When the patient went into the hospital, Serhat had been asked to fly to Ankara to see him.
According to Serhat's statement, Metin and another man met him at the airport and took him to the hospital, where an oncologist started shouting at him. Then he was taken outside and shoved into a car.
Serhat clocked a gun sticking out of Metin's waistband as they drove.They held Serhat in Metin's office where they said he would be staying until he paid them back. Metin demanded $275,000, the amount he said he was owed.
Serhat said he would need some time.Metin wasn't buying it.If he was a doctor who supposedly had patients all over the world, he could afford to pay them back.The men began punching Serhat in the face and in the stomach.
Metin even pointed a gun at Serhat's head and said, should I shoot you right here? After a while, Metin left the office, telling his nephew to keep an eye on the doctor.Serhat was shaking, but managed to type out an instant message on his phone.
Moments later, Serhat's brother got a message which read, what I feared just happened.I am very serious.I am held captive in Ankara. As soon as his brother got the message, he called police.
And later that day, they rescued Serhat and brought him to the local precinct.He told his story to the police, the shouting, the abduction, the beating up and the gun.But strangely, he didn't want to press charges.He left.
But the patient's friends thought differently.While Serhat was at one police station, they went to a different one and filed a complaint.Six months later, a Turkish court issued an indictment against Serhat for aggravated fraud.
But he never showed up.No one could find him.
This was a kind of a breakthrough moment for us to be able to get those court documents.
Whatever really happened that night, for Thomas, it was clear that Serhat had charged huge sums of money for a questionable treatment.And now there was proof that he was wanted by the Turkish police.
We suddenly realized that we're dealing with basically an international fugitive.Serhat Gumrucu had spent the last 10 years on the lam from Turkish justice.
But there was still so much more that they didn't yet know.And one thing in particular that even Serhat's old friend Ferit found hard to believe when he heard it.Murder?I still cannot believe it.That's next time on Doctor Death, Bad Magic.
From Wondery, this is episode two of five of Dr. Death, Bad Magic.I'm your host, Laura Beale.This series is written by Benjamin Gray.Producer is Nika Singh.Senior producer is Russell Finch. Story editor is Allison Weintraub.
Senior editor is Rachel B. Doyle.Fact-checking by Jacqueline Colletti.Additional reporting by Gulsan Harman.Production assistance by Mariah Dennis and Emily Locke.Sound design and mixing by Kyle Randall.Senior managing producer is Lata Pandya.
Coordinating producer is Heather Beloga.Produced by StoryForce.Music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freesound Sync. Special thanks to Nate Anderson and the staff at Hindenburg Research for use of their reporting.
Executive Producers are Bly Pagan-Faust and Corey Shepard Stern for StoryForce.Our Executive Producers are George Lavender, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neuro-linguistic programming.Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands.
Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were.
I'm Sachi Cole.And I'm Sarah Hagee.
And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.
We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades.
Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.
