Laci Mosley

She’s baaack! We last chatted with comedian and actress Laci Mosley (she/her) about the iCarly reboot (and her starstruck moment with Beyoncé). But, she’s been super busy adding author to her already impressive resume since then. Based on her popular podcast Scam Goddess, her debut book Scam Goddess: Lessons from a Life of Cons, Gifts, and Schemes drops tomorrow, and girlies, it’s good. “I’ve been doing the podcast for a little over five years, and my publisher actually reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in writing a book,” she says. “I’ve never written a book before, so this is kind of my scam. I immediately said yes knowing I had no idea what I was doing. But the book ended up being something very fun and at times cathartic for me.”

Here, we talk about the pod, how not to get scammed (obvi), and her fave scam of all time.

Although we’ll miss your character on iCarly, we’re excited to see Scam Goddess flourish. What’s been happening over on the pod?
My podcast covers the inner world of fraud and deceit. As a comedian, I think scammers are so funny. They make up their own rules, and sometimes even have costumes, accents, etc. Scammers tend to be people who when a door is locked, smash a window to get inside. There’s something that has always fascinated me about making your own reality especially because a lot of what I do for a living as an actor is completely made up.

Scams have been a huge part of the zeitgeist recently and they only continue to grow, which is something I find interesting about scams because these people are innovators. They’re always finding opportunities to grift. For instance, if you look at COVID, scammers started popping up in parking lots with tents they got from Home Depot, swabbing people with Q-tips and charging them $200 saying it was a COVID test. That’s a scam that never existed before. As people grow more frustrated with lower wages and higher inflation, I think everyone’s fascination with scammers has gone up because we’re all getting scammed. Whether it be by the systems in place by our government, or by the discrimination we face because of the bodies we live in, we’re all starting to realize that everything is slightly a grift. Even though I find scammers generally funny, I don’t believe in exploiting people who are in need. On my podcast, we crack jokes at the scammers’ expense, but we don’t punch down on people who are victimized or exploited by them.

Your first book is almost here! What can readers expect?
It’s about my favorite true crime scams as well as my life and the scams that I’ve accidentally ended up in—such as the many drug fronts I worked for that I didn’t know were drug fronts. And then sometimes even when I found out, I kept working there because mobsters are sometimes the best bosses! So, learn how I scam and maybe you’ll learn how to scam yourself.

Got any tips for us on how not to get scammed?
My first tip is to always question what people want from you. Some people genuinely want to be in your life to be a friend as you probably want to be to them, or maybe you’re working on something that’s mutually beneficial. But if you have no idea why people are doing something, there’s a chance it might be a scam. Everyone has a motive in everything they do, just make sure their motive is good. My second tip is that the easiest way to spot a liar is someone who answers a question with way too many details. For instance, if you ask someone why they were late and they say, “There was a lot of traffic!” I would believe that. But if they say something like, “Well, my alarm clock didn’t go off, and did you know gas is actually $5.76 a gallon right now? I stopped to get gas and there was a butterfly that landed on my finger…” the longer it goes on and the more details, the more I’m convinced you’re lying. And the last one is, if you can’t pinpoint exactly where someone is employed, there’s a good chance their job is a crime.

We have to know: What’s your fave scam of all time?
It’s really hard to choose between my children! Ok, I’ll choose a favorite [laughing]. I can’t call it the favorite because I can’t choose a top favorite. But I have to go back to the OG Bernie Madoff. He got his whole family involved, and it was a family affair. I also love that when the SEC came to raid his office, he literally cooked the books, printed out new books, put them in the freezer so that they would cool down from the printer, and then had his employees toss them around the office to make them look old. Very unserious behavior.

Anything else exciting happening?
The Scam Goddess family is continuing to grow, and I’m currently in production with ABC Studios as the host of an upcoming Scam Goddess TV show! I can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on with the world.