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Plato once said, "'Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." And in Dateline's new two-hour special, The Prince, The Whiz Kid & The Millionaire, NBC will serve us enchantment with a life-threatening twist.
Josh Mankiewicz hosts this week's episode and goes over one of California's most odd and dark tales: the so-called "gay grifters" case that went from champagne dreams to a Palm Springs murder. The fake prince, the art dealer, the con artists, and a maze of deceit all scream Dateline drama!
According to the teaser, people will enter "a millionaire's home," meet a man who says, "I will pay you handsomely to come with me to Argentina," and see how a scam that relied on greed came to light in the digital age.
What happens on Dateline: The Prince, The Whiz Kid and The Millionaire?
The plot opens with Kaushal Niroula, a 26-year-old Nepali man who referred to himself as "Prince Little Stuff" and claimed that he came from royalty. Niroula was a world-class thief, but he was no prince! He faked records, duped organizations like New College in San Francisco with assurances of millions of dollars, and cheated a Hawaiian woman out of half a million dollars.
The most awful part, however, took place in 2008. That's when Niroula and a gang of spies, known as the "gay grifters," made friends with Clifford Lambert, a 74-year-old art dealer from Palm Springs. Lambert was a perfect pick because he was quirky, rich, and lonely. Lambert's art collection was shipped away, his Mercedes was stolen, and his mansion was vandalized. He was soon dead.
It was not until 2017 (almost ten years after the murder) that his body was found. The group planned to sell Lambert's house and drain his bank accounts because they thought he was worth $68 million.
An investigator told Dateline:
"They're going to kidnap him (...) Danny was supposed to get all this money. You know, just normal con stuff."
Is Dateline: The Prince, The Whiz Kid and The Millionaire based on a book?
Tyson Wrensch (who co-wrote the 2013 true crime book Until Someone Gets Hurt, along with Sherrie Lueder) makes a cameo in the Dateline special and is an essential figure, too.
Wrensch told the Bay Area Reporter:
"I couldn't be more excited that Dateline not only chose to do this story, but after five years of production roadblocks thrown at NBC News by these con men and the justice system itself, the (...) tale can finally be told."
And what a story it is!
There's greed, fraud, and the lure of money. If not for the blood on its pages, this story might have been a Hollywood satire, with the town cars arriving "like a Secret Service convoy" and an impostor prince making rounds at the bar.
Mankiewicz's narration and timing, along with Dateline storytelling, give the saga greater importance. Look out for never-before-seen video, exclusive interviews, and the digital forensic twist that reinvented investigations.
This was, as the trailer says:
"The first case where downloading text messages was ever used to solve a murder."
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The Prince, The Whiz Kid & The Millionaire will stream on Peacock and the NBC app the day after it airs on Friday, October 10, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT. Watch KNTV Channel 11 if you're in the Bay Area.
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