Fred Brito on Dateline NBC: The Ultimate Con Artist

Dateline NBC found Fred Brito's exploits so compelling that they devoted an hour of prime time network television to him.

Josh Mankiewicz interviews Fred Brito and people he's conned over the years. The report covers as far back as 1974, when Brito was charged with molesting a young boy, his convictions for embezzlement and auto theft, and up to the present.

Brito tells Mankiewicz essentially the same thing that he told the LA Times two years prior - that his days of lying are over. Brito says, "Fred Brito, conman, is no longer. The old Fred didn’t get me anywhere."

Mankiewicz closes the hour by noting that months after his interview, Brito was hired and fired from the New Mexico performing arts academy.

Fred Brito story to air Tuesday night on Dateline NBC

Proof that everything Fred Brito says isn’t a lie: the one hour Dateline NBC episode about him that he’s been hyping for over a year is scheduled to air this Tuesday, April 24th, at 8pm. From the official site:

Josh Mankiewicz takes viewers inside the mind of someone who’s not just a con man, but also a world-class imposter who has reportedly tricked a state senator, The Red Cross, celebrities, a prestigious medical school and even the Catholic Church.

It will be interesting to see what angle they take, but based on inside tips and a quote from Mankiewicz published last month, I don’t think Brito will be portrayed as heroic:

One of the confounding things about Fred’s story is he has told so many lies to so many people over so many years that even he can’t remember what is true or not.

Fred Brito, now living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was working in a high paying fund raising position at UCLA in 2005 when he was arrested, and fired, when his employers learned he was hired using an alias and made no mention he was on parole. A couple months later, Brito was again fired from another well paid job doing fundraising with the American Red Cross in Pasadena, where again he was using a false name. Surprisingly, he was able to work there for a month after the LA Times ran a front page expose about him.

The Brito “saga” is indeed fascinating, as the above is merely the tip of the iceberg. I have a timeline of Brito’s exploits on a previous post, with follow up entries here, where I discovered he was leaving comments accusing me of getting him drunk, trying to have sex with him, and stealing his watch… here, where I break the news that he was effectively fired again in New Mexico, from another fundraising gig (albeit a low paying, part time one), for being hired under another assumed name… and here, where the local Las Cruces newspaper finally catches up with what I’ve been reporting here.

On Fred Brito’s current blog “How To Catch a Con”, he boasts of being the “World Renowned Master of the Con” and “The Benevolent Con”, and offers to give seminars to teach people how to proactively keep from hiring guys like him, and provides a list of his accomplishments in decepting employers from the National Kidney Foundation to A Place Called Home (a charity assisting “at-risk” youths).

Article originally posted at L.A. Metblogs.