Introducing Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story 02:48

A Dear Media original podcast. Her name is Coco, which I think is just the cutest name, first of all. Is it a nickname? No, it's not. For a while, it seemed like Coco Berthman was everywhere. I'm here with an incredible woman, an incredible survivor and advocate, Coco Berthman. And with every interview, Coco's influence grew. ♪

There was this incredible story about this girl from Germany who had been trafficked in a most horrible way. But she had escaped. And now she was speaking out in hopes of saving other children from having to go through what she went through. Coco presented a unique opportunity to be kind of a face for victimhood. She looked good. She spoke well. She had a following and people loved her. Did you feel that she could potentially do a lot of good?

for a brief second. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, there's a lot in Coco Berthman's story that just seems, well, it seems too terrible to be true. Witnessed a murder, a forced abortion, a baby taken from her at 13. Just horrific, horrific things. You're taught to just, you know, not question stuff like that. But this got to a point where it was just absurd. She

She's making a mockery out of some real things. She said, well, my parents were very wealthy. We had a private helicopter. It was like, wow, I've never heard anything that fantastic. Who makes things up like this? But in early 2022, Coco took it a step too far. She announced to her followers on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with stage four mantle cell lymphoma. What's another thing you're going to get sympathy for?

Now you have this terrible cancer. Pretty quickly, people started questioning everything that Coco Berthman had ever said. Is she even from fucking Germany? Is her name even fucking Coco? Like, we don't even know that.

But something unexpected happened when we started investigating Coco. Sure, we were definitely able to prove that a lot of the things that Coco says are lies. We kinda knew that we were gonna find that. But the thing about Coco's story that surprised us? We found there are parts that might actually be true.

How shocked were you today? Oh my God. Didn't I send a text to you that said, oh shit? You did, and I wrote back huge at the exact same moment, in all caps. I'm Sarah Gannon, and this is Believable, the Coco Berthman story. Coming July 13th from Dear Media. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.