Coining It is a gripping new podcast about a crypto Robin Hood — review

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James Parker was bedbound and living on benefits in a mouldy flat in Blackpool when he began dabbling in bitcoin. In 2017, he discovered a glitch on an Australian cryptocurrency trading site that allowed him to steal money. Rather than report the fault to the host site, he decided to exploit it. Soon he was making more money than he knew what to do with. And so Parker, who was in his fifties and had lived in dire poverty all his life, began giving it away.

Coining It is a fantastically gripping new podcast detailing one of the biggest cases of cryptocurrency fraud in Britain. Despite the eye-watering sums of money involved — the loss to the Australian crypto site was £24.5mn — this isn’t the tale of a sophisticated scammer preying on innocents; let’s face it, we’ve had enough of those. It’s about a lonely chancer who, down on his luck for decades, became an overnight millionaire and couldn’t wait to share the spoils. Parker, who died in 2021 before he could be prosecuted, is presented as a would-be Robin Hood, stealing from a company on the other side of the world in order to give to downtrodden types on his doorstep. If this were a movie — and surely there will be one soon — you might deem it farfetched. 

Lewis Goodall, former BBC journalist and co-presenter of the current affairs pod The News Agents, is our host who puts in the legwork as he talks to those who met or heard about Parker. Meandering along Blackpool’s promenade, he approaches locals to ask what they knew of him. “Talk of the town, wasn’t he?” says one man. Another heard stories of him walking into a pub and buying people cars. 

Parker, who moved out of his flat and into a smart hotel up the coast in Fleetwood, previously had few friends. Now suddenly he had loads of them, all joining him in a spending spree that took in cars, clothing, jewellery and even property; hearing these so-called “friends” trying to justify their actions years later is particularly delicious. Goodall also talks to investigating officers who had got wind of a man extravagantly splashing cash in local establishments and quite reasonably wondered why. They realised this was no longer a one-man operation as Parker had brought others, including a financial adviser, in on his crypto secret. Several ended up in jail.

Smartly produced and with a subtle ambient soundtrack, Coining It does a terrific job of submerging us in the sounds and atmosphere of Blackpool, a town that is at once grand, exuberant and catastrophically deprived, and where men have the shortest life expectancy in Britain. As Goodall puts it, it is “a place that doesn’t always make sense”. Most of all, this is a wild and wonderful study of a man who struck gold and, for a few short years, had the time of his life.