As the saying goes, it takes a lot of intelligence to be a confident person. Being able to look someone in the eye, lie to them, and cheat them out of their time, money, and trust—that's not something everyone can do. And when a scammer can do this to multiple people for huge sums of money, based on the most blatant lies, well, that's something else entirely. And yet, people still do it. Sometimes these scams become so large and so uncontrollable that they're almost undeniable. Almost...
10. Frederic Bourdin pretended to be children
Frédéric Bourdin left a trail of con artists across Europe and the United States. At 31, he managed to convince school officials and students he was an abused 15-year-old orphan for a month while he attended classes and made friends. He traveled from country to country, most often posing as a teenage boy.
More mysterious than the scam itself is the fact that Bourdain didn't seem to be doing it for any reason. He was taking money from people; he wasn't preying on other kids around him. It was simply a scam for the sake of a scam. He's described himself as a manipulator and even has a tattoo on his arm that reads, "« The Chameleon of Nantes »", which is the name of the town where he grew up.
His scam in Spain, where he played an orphan, only ended when a school official accidentally saw the TV show о Bourdin and recognized his face.
Several years earlier, when he was 23, Bourdin successfully posed as someone's missing 16-year-old son, despite having mismatched eyes and a French accent. He lived with the missing boy's parents for several months before a DNA test forced on him by the FBI (who feared he was a spy) exposed his scam.
9. First International Bank of Grenada
No matter how much money you try to swindle from another person, you're still just a person taking money from other people, and that's always an uphill battle. Van Brink realized this, so he decided to pull off a bigger scam. And what's bigger than a person, but still capable of making money? A bank. So he created a bank.
In 1997, Brink obtained a license to open his own bank in Grenada. He convinced the government of the country where he had just received citizenship of his legitimacy by claiming he owned giant ruby With photographs and an estimated value of $20 million. To be clear, the ruby existed, but not his. Despite this, and with another $26 billion in asset guarantees, the bank was formed, and within a year they had transferred $14 billion in assets.
In truth, the bank managed to lure investors 170 million dollars . The bank, of course, claimed to have insurance, but it was issued by another shell company. Investors were promised high interest rates, but in reality, Brink and his partners were simply buying luxury goods and using the new investors' investments to pay fictitious interest to the existing investors until the scam collapsed.
Brink fled to Uganda, continually denying wrongdoing. He was eventually charged, but died of a heart attack while awaiting trial.
8. Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower twice.
A good con man must be able to gain people's trust. A great con man can gain their faith. That is, they can make you believe the impossible. For example, how Victor Lustig somehow convinced people that he not only owned the Eiffel Tower, but was willing to sell it to them. And he did it twice.
In 1925, the French government was complaining about the poor condition of the Eiffel Tower, and apparently an official made an offhand remark in a newspaper about selling it for scrap metal . Lustig read this and took action.
He made fake forms that listed him as a government official and invited local scrap metal dealers to meet him. He told the dealers that the tower, never intended for permanent residence, was being demolished, and whoever offered the highest price for 7,000 tons of scrap metal could take it all. He also assured his favorite dealer target that if they greased the wheels, the contract would be theirs.
With the bribe in hand, Lustig left the country and waited for news of the fraud being uncovered. This never happened, likely due to his victim's embarrassment, preventing them from coming forward. So Lustig did what any successful con artist would do: he returned to France and carried out the same scam a second time, with new victims.
When he escaped this time, his victim reported the crime, but Lustig was already in the United States.
7. Arthur Ferguson sold landmarks in England and America
It turns out that 1925 was a rich year for attractions, because while Victor Lustig was selling the Eiffel Tower in France, Scotsman Arthur Ferguson managed to sell Nelson's Column, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace to American tourists visiting London . He later moved to the United States and sold the White House to a Texas rancher and the Statue of Liberty to an Australian.
Naturally, you'll be surprised how anyone could believe these things were for sale, but Ferguson was very persuasive. In England, he explained that after the end of World War I, the government was desperately in need of new money. He realized that Americans weren't as familiar with the intricacies of how things worked, so they would be easier to spot. And they were.
He never sold attractions directly. Instead, he took deposits . A few thousand dollars here or there was all he needed, especially when he could repeat the scam over and over again, selling the same buildings to different people.
Most of the victims were too embarrassed to report it to the police, allowing Ferguson to continue his scam. Only when an Australian hoping to buy the Statue of Liberty took too long to receive the funds and became suspicious of Ferguson's impatience was he finally caught.
6. Mary Bateman's Prophetic Chicken
Harry Houdini famously pursued con artists who preyed on the faith and beliefs of certain victims, claiming they could communicate with the dead or the divine. Some of these con artists simply pretended to communicate from beyond the grave, but Mary Bateman took this to another level by offering what initially seemed like irrefutable proof. She had a hen that laid eggs containing messages from God. Not bad, huh?
In 1806, Mary claimed that one of her chickens laid an egg , on the shell of which the inscription "Christ is Coming" was clearly visible. Despite the typo, it was astonishing. Especially for a woman whose claim to fame up to that point was a series of poorly planned robberies, each time being caught.
Word soon spread, and people flocked to her farm, paying a penny apiece to see the miracle chicken and her eggs. She also offered people official seals to guarantee their passage to the right side of Rapture, which apparently were simply pieces of paper with "JC" written on them.
The suspicious visitor soon realized the fraud when he exposed Bateman's use of simple chemicals and a somewhat terrifying determination to perform her miracles. She took eggs and wrote her message on them. vinegar, which weakened the shell enough for the letters to be visible. She then stuffed the eggs back into the hen, causing her to lay them a second time in front of witnesses. A stranger simply hid near her barn early one morning and watched her do it.
5. Joseph Pruszynowski was called the Hasidic Robin Hood
Is there such a thing as a good con man? If so, Joseph Pruszynowski certainly qualifies. He committed various frauds over the course of 20 years, despite being a Hasidic rabbi, which most would assume would prohibit him from such crimes.
Over the years, Pruszynowski carried out numerous scams that brought him millions of dollars . He managed to wait until the statute of limitations expired on many, but others were still following him when he was finally arrested in 1998. This is partly why he was able to evade capture for so long—long enough to be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.« . — There was the help he received. You see, he didn't keep the stolen money for himself; he distributed it among Orthodox Jewish communities, and they defended him for it. Everyone says he stole about $190 million.
4. Anthony Gignac posed as a Saudi prince
Saudi princes still make the news, and it's common knowledge that they're quite wealthy. So it's understandable why Anthony Gignac wanted to pretend to be one. It was a scam to trick people into thinking he was already rich, giving him access and opportunities.
Despite being arrested nearly a dozen times for scams in which he pretended to be a member of the royal family, within a few years he had grown his scam to a total of $8 million. Inexplicably, all of this was recorded on Instagram , where he boasted about private jets, expensive jewelry, works of art, and much more. He even made fake diplomatic license plates for his Ferrari.
The scam involved using this false identity to obtain investment money, which he, of course, spent on himself. His scheme failed during an attempt to defraud some Miami hotel owners when they saw him eating pork, something a Muslim prince would not do, and hired an investigator to investigate him.
3. John Keely's fake engine
For years, people have been searching for new, better sources of energy. John Ernst Worrell Keely's scam promised just that. In 1872, he claimed to have created a powerful machine that used physics of sympathetic vibrations , whatever that means, and essentially generated energy out of nothing. Within a year, he had raised $10,000.
Named Etheric Power Machine , Keely constantly put off explaining these machines because, of course, they were fake. But he still built thousands of them and staged fake demonstrations that people couldn't scrutinize too closely. The machines snapped ropes, bent rods, and did all sorts of random, powerful things. By 1880, he had 3,000 investors, but none of them had an engine.
After his death, people raided his laboratory and dismantled the machines, where it was discovered that any effects they produced were produced by compressed air.
2. David Stein painted fakes on the same day
If you want to create art, you have to be a damn good artist, so much so that it seems you should be able to succeed based on your talent. But life is sometimes unfair, and talent often goes unnoticed. David Stein surely felt this when he decided to create three fake Chagall paintings and then sell them to an art dealer.
Stein's scam involved posing as a representative of a place like Sotheby's and telling people that new art was about to go on sale. Pieces by contemporary masters who were at the peak of their popularity in the 1960s and '70s. Stein could get you a painting that would likely sell for millions, maybe $800,000.
In fact, Stein sold the painting and then immediately went home and painted it himself. He was so good that, apparently, Picasso himself confirmed the authenticity of Stein's forgery. But it was Marc Chagall who proved his downfall.
Stein arranged to sell three Chagalls to an art dealer. He woke up at 6 a.m. on the day they were due, and By 11 o'clock all three were painted . He framed them, made fake certificates of authenticity, and sold them for $10,500. Then the real Marc Chagall happened to walk into the gallery, saw them, and Stein's scam was over.
1. Eduardo de Valfierno may have organized the theft of the Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, becoming one of the greatest art heists in history. It took a full day for anyone to realize what had happened. The news spread around the world, and at one point, police even made an arrest. Pablo Picasso as a suspect. In fact, a painter named Vincenzo Peruggia stole it and was caught two years later trying to sell it in Italy. But the story may not end there, and perhaps one of the most astonishing art scams ever was taking place at the same time.
At the time of the Mona Lisa's disappearance, a man named Eduardo de Valfierno claims to have painted it six fakes , each of which he sold to gullible millionaires. They would only believe they were buying the real Mona Lisa if the real Mona Lisa went missing, so de Valfierno orchestrated the theft and made tens of millions in the process. His victims would never be able to come forward, lest they be exposed as both gullible fools and potential criminals.
Is the story true? There's little evidence, but isn't that the case with a good scam?