The Flea Market Permit That Brought a Town's Kingpin Down

True Crime: Killer Secrets · Jul 27, 2026 · 23m

The Flea Market Permit That Brought a Town's Kingpin Down

A waterlogged vendor permit booklet with the name Howard Pell turned up in a drainage ditch in early December 2011 and led to the unmasking of a four-year fraud that funneled municipal vendor fees into a shell account. Hundreds of stall fees were recorded as paid for thirty-eight phantom vendors, one permit was issued in the name of a man who had been dead eleven months, and the scheme ultimately linked to a local businessman - but how did a soggy booklet and a dog-walk change everything?

In this episode, we follow the sequence of…