Dateline: The Prince, The Whiz Kid, & The Millionaire - Who was Clifford Lambert and what happened to him? 

Dateline is set to drop an episode titled The Prince, The Whiz Kid & The Millionaire on October 10, 2025.

The spotlight is on the 2008 murder of Clifford Lambert, who was a Palm Springs art dealer with a life that looked glamorous from the outside. He fell prey to a group of con artists with the nickname “gay grifters”.

The leader, Kaushal Niroula, pretended he was a prince and wove an intricate web of lies alongside his crew. They fed Clifford Lambert stories about some big, fake inheritance. Everything spiraled into something way darker than a financial fraud. Lambert trusted them, or maybe just wanted to believe the dream they were selling, and it ended up costing him everything.

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Dateline: Who was Clifford Lambert, and what happened to him?

Clifford Lambert was a 74-year-old retired art dealer from Palm Springs. While he looked like a socialite from the outside, underneath all that glitz was vulnerability, especially when it came to searching for some genuine company.

It all started innocently with Lambert poking around on online dating sites, maybe hoping for romance. That is where he came in contact with Daniel Garcia, who shows up at Lambert’s place, right away offering a “business investment” scheme.

Clifford Lambert didn’t fall for these tricks, saw through Garcia’s act, and booted him out. But Garcia managed to obtain Lambert’s personal info anyway, including credit card numbers. That is when things shifted to full-on financial exploitation.

Patch cited an appellate ruling narrative from 2016, quoting:

“The victim, a homosexual ... had two luxury cars (including a Rolls Royce) ... wore designer clothing and had personal photographs in his home of celebrities such as Patty Guggenheim, Lucille Ball and the Gabor sisters.”

They added:

“The victim was an orphan and had divorced his partner, Travis, in 2006. He was lonely and (went) looking for a romantic relationship. He used dating websites and preferred men in their 20s.”

But Garcia was just the opening act. Next in the scene came Kaushal Niroula. This guy was a self-proclaimed attorney-slash-Nepalese prince. He spun a tale about a huge inheritance, and this time, Clifford Lambert believed in the story enough to keep meeting up. Niroula kept the con alive, arranging mysterious meetings, always dangling the golden carrot just out of reach.

Fast forward to December 4, 2008. Niroula set up a meeting and brought in McCarthy and Bustamante, who broke into Lambert’s place. However, they did not kill him that day. But the next day, Niroula set up a meeting again, and this time, McCarthy and Bustamante went through with it. Lambert was stabbed to death in his own kitchen, with Niroula just watching everything unfold.

They wrapped Clifford Lambert in a rug, loaded him into his own Mercedes-Benz, and sent his body all the way up to Daly City, near San Francisco. There, they buried him in a shallow grave in the mountains north of L.A.

These men wanted Lambert’s cash, his home, and his art collection. They forged power of attorney documents with the help of David Replogle, who is a convicted lawyer. They took over $185,000 from Lambert’s accounts and tried to sell off his fancy collection.

Patch quoted Deputy District Attorney Robert Hightower as saying:

“Daniel Garcia was afflicted with a feverish need for money. Cliff Lambert had it. Garcia wanted it. So he devised a plan from rejection and greed. But he couldn't do it alone. To execute that plan, he enlisted a fellow con man to help him murder and defraud Cliff Lambert.”

Soon after, people started to notice Clifford Lambert was gone. A friend reported him missing after a couple of days, but for years, nobody really knew what happened. His disappearance turned into a mystery around Palm Springs. Then, Lambert’s jawbone was discovered in 2016, his skull in 2017, both near the burial site. The cops jumped back in, piecing together the puzzle.

As for the grifters, Daniel Garcia, Kaushal Niroula, Miguel Bustamante, David Replogle, Craig McCarthy, Russell Manning, every one of them was tried in court. Garcia was sentenced to life without parole after a retrial. Niroula was killed in a lockup in 2022. Bustamante and Replogle got life sentences. McCarthy pleaded guilty to felony charges, and Manning is dead.

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The Dateline episode will show how everything unfolded and bring forth rare interviews, detailed police investigations, digital forensic evidence, and more. Like other Dateline episodes, we might also get to see reenactments and never-before-seen material.

The episode will air at 9 PM Eastern / 8 PM Central on NBC. It will also be available for streaming on Peacock and the NBC app the day after its premiere.