charlatan

He was, Mr. Keefe writes, “a charlatan who had just declared bankruptcy.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026

As portrayed in “Death by Lightning,” Guiteau is a rotten-toothed, scheming, big-dreaming, delusional charlatan and possible sociopath.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2025

And that is alarming, because Kennedy is a charlatan who opposes evidence-based medicine and promotes discredited quackery.

From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2025

Passing sentence Judge Geoffery Baker QC described Saeed as a "charlatan", who had carried out a deception that had been "cunningly contrived, skilfully executed, and brazenly maintained over three decades".

From BBC ● Feb. 23, 2025

Every few centuries, some charlatan, some crawling, vicious soul, would try to get close to the Glimourie Tree—to steal it, to take it for their own.

From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell

But cults are generally led by charlatans, so that’s not surprising.

From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2026

Ms. Adelman describes how Lewis’s specimens fell into the hands of a series of botanists—some of them charlatans, drunkards, liars or thieves—who squandered his legacy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026

Some charlatans are involved in unscrupulous traditional so-called cures, and have been known to sell good luck charms that involve body parts.

From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2025

Over the centuries, it has endorsed only a small percentage of the thousands that have been claimed, in an effort to protect the faithful from charlatans, doctrinal errors or attempts to profit.

From New York Times ● May 17, 2024

And though it's clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that they are a pack of charlatans, they're lionized throughout the Empire not just as immortal, but as oracles and mind-readers.

From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir