Fortune Seller A TV Scam is a biographical documentary series on Netflix. It is directed by Nicola Prosatore and the screenplay for the series is written by Alessandro Garramone. There are 4 episodes in total with a runtime of about 45-52 minutes respectively.

The official synopsis of the series reads, “Savvy saleswomen or devious scammers? Wanna Marchi and Stefania Nobile became the undisputed queens of Italian TV shopping — until they went too far.” It is a crime docu-series, filled with pop culture references, that explores the known and unknown elements of Wanna Marchi and a historical moment in the history of Italian TV.

Wanna Marchi is an Italian television personality who was very popular in the eighties and nineties, so much so that she was nicknamed ‘queen of teleshopping’. Capable of earning billions of lire, with products without any value, from slimming products to amulets for protection against evil, to lucky numbers. she was subsequently convicted several times for serious illegal acts connected to her business.

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She was born in a family of farmers, and was married at the young age of 18 to Raimondo Nobile, with whom she had two children – Maurizio and Stefania. Her married life was no better and turbulent, that she had to start working as a beautician, to support her family and children. She created enough clientele and was able to put up her own beauty shop.

Between the end of the seventies and the early eighties, Wanna Marchi got the key to the noisy teleshopping and thanks also to her peculiar, loud and flashy communicative style, her slimming products based on micronized dandelion and algae extracts, soon had a certain success. With every successful show, she got the confidence to sell anything, even things that didn’t exist.

At first, all she did was sell the products targeted at the sensitive insecurities of people like body fat, skin, hair issues etc. Whether they were actually effective or not, her persuasive hosting got people convinced to buy a lot, with products starting from 100,000 lire at minimum. She would be making millions of lire in a day.

However, her success also made her a target of organised crime, which ended up with her shop in Ozzano burning down, causing billions of loss. Consequently, in 1990 Marchi was arrested and then sentenced to 1 year and 11 months in prison for complicity in the fraudulent bankruptcy of her company, through which she sold cosmetic products.

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But with some help, Marchi rebuilds her empire with more better planning and ideas. She returns to sell on television with her daughter Stefania, on various local private broadcasters. But this time was different, she didn’t just sell cosmetic products but also plays with the superstitions and introduces the mythological Master of life Do Nascimento.

The spiritual guru named Mario Pacheo do Nascimento, was actually a butler from Brazil, whom Marchi transformed into a psychic, who would give you lottery numbers to special amulets. Together the mother, daughter and the psychic would rake in all the money they could from tangible & intangible things. Apart from getting orders from their teleshopping show, they had a proper plan to sell products through calling.

The phone operators at her new company Ascié, would call the customers and follow up with them every few days. If you bought a slimming cream, then they would enquire about your height, weight and check up on your progress. And also, recommend more products to help in the process.

Likewise, if your personalised lottery numbers didn’t work, they would say, it’s because of negative or evil vibes and make you buy salts that didn’t dissolve in water or amulets for protection. It’s like the bank operators, who keep calling you to get a credit card. Their target group was usually women above the age of 45 or retirees.

And one of many such phonecalls to an elderly woman, got them caught up in a bigger scamming case. The phone operators had called the lady to tell her some lottery numbers that would make her a millionaire, but her children caught the wind of the scam and wrote to Striscia La Notizia, an investigative program on TV.

The show hosts made the lady continue to transact with Marchi’s company and recorded everything, from how they would sell sham products for exorbitant amounts of money and basically threaten to pay. One of the phonecalls was directly answered by Stefania Nobile, where she emotionally blackmailed and talked very rudely, when the lady refused to buy any further products.

Everything was broadcasted on TV and it further developed into a full-blown investigation by the government authorities. Eventually, in 2002 both Marchi & Stefania were sentenced to 10 years in prison and asked to pay their victims, the amount they exorted. Marchi served her sentence of 9 years and 6 months for fraudulent bankruptcy, aggravated scams and conspiracy, and was released on good behaviour.

Currently, as seen in the Netflix docuseries, she is back in front of the cameras to do the thing she has always done best – sell herself. Last year she hosted a 100-hour live show on TV and her daughter also runs an online website with her own name, where they sell their various products from perfumes to T-shirts and courses.

Fortune Seller A TV Scam is currently streaming on Netflix.

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