Top Ten Scams of all Time
Madoff briefly attended Brooklyn Law School, but founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and remained working for his own company. Career. Madoff was chairman of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC from its startup in 1960 until his arrest on December 11, 2008.
Charles Ponzi, (born Carlo Pietro ... By this time, Ponzi had a charming cheerful personality and spoke French, ... it was a scam that sold swampland in Columbia ...
Victor Lustig was a highly skilled con artist from Austria-Hungary, who undertook a criminal career that involved conducting scams across Europe and the United States during the early 20th century. He is widely regarded as one of the most notorious con artists of his time, and is infamous for being "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice", and for conducting the "Rumanian Box" scam.
The 10 Greatest Scams Of All Time on Chaostrophic – The 10 Greatest Scams Of All Time We’re living in a golden age of scamming right now. The Internet has allowed hucksters, con men and grifters to reach out and touch suckers from Toledo to Tokyo and drain their money lickety-split.
1. The Brooklyn Bridge Scam. The Scammer: George C. Parker The Victim: Wealthy New York tourists In the early 1900s, George C. Parker "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge and other famous New York structures as often as twice a week. If you’ve heard the old line, “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for sale,” you know where it comes from.
Frank Abagnale talks scams and cons to avoid that were made popular in the film Catch Me If You Can and his personal life.
Retired Glasgow-born actor Arthur Furguson was a terrific salesperson. However, like many other such people, he was unaware of his talent until one inspiring day when the perfect opportunity presented itself to him. His moment happened in Trafalgar Square, one bright and sunny morning in 1923.
ORLANDO — A federal judge sent Lou Pearlman off to prison for 25 years Wednesday, then offered him what he called the "keys'' to his jail cell. For every $1-million Pearlman recovers for the investors he scammed, he'll get a month trimmed off his sentence.
From 1986 to 2001, Slatkin raised approximately $593 million from about 800 wealthy investors. Using the funds from later investors, he paid one group of early investors $279M on their original $128M investment, citing investment success without actually making most of the claimed investments.
Cornfeld's decline. A group of 300 IOS employees complained to the Swiss authorities that Cornfeld and his co-founders pocketed part of the proceeds of a share issue raised among employees in 1969. Consequently, he was charged with fraud in 1973 by the Swiss authorities. When Cornfeld visited Geneva, Swiss authorities arrested him.
Power-mad conman Robert Hendy-Freegard forced the many victims who fell prey to his devious charm to endure squalid lives of degradation and suffering, according to the judge due to sentence him for two counts of kidnap, 10 of theft and eight of deception.
Having said that, they must consider themselves lucky; it had taken victims of earlier scams such as the cooperative scandal much longer to get — or even realistically expect — reimbursement. It was in 2007 that Sibtain Shah alias Double Shah was charged with defrauding a large number of people by promising to double their investment in quick time.
Nevin Karey Shapiro is a convicted felon who is currently imprisoned for orchestrating a $930 million Ponzi scheme. According to interviews, he engaged in rampant violations of NCAA rules over eight years as a booster for University of Miami athletes. Shapiro allegedly provided football players cash, goods, prostitutes, assorted favors, and purchased a yacht on which sex parties with prostitutes were held.
Hampton would hang around the Columbia University campus, getting unsuspecting people to house him, give him money or otherwise help him. Hampton even once reportedly showed up at the home of actress Melanie Griffith, where he stayed up talking until 4 a.m. with actor Gary Sinise.
After a few minor scams involving forgery and petty theft, Rocancourt hit the big time when, under the Russian alias, he managed to forge the deeds for a building in the centre of Paris, and sell it for $1.4 million.
Michael Abramson / Time Life Pictures / Getty. A Princeton sophomore in 1991, Alexi Indris-Santana had all the makings of a big man on campus. His tales of growing up as a self-taught ranch hand in Utah and sleeping under the stars with his horse, Good Enough, won over admissions officials.
Eduardo de Valfierno, who posed as a marqués (marquis), was an Argentine con man who allegedly masterminded the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.
The Ballad of Soapy Smith (1983) is a play by Michael Weller featuring Denis Arndt as Soapy. "The Ballad of Soapy Smith" (1965) is a song by Al Oster, Northland Music Company (Call of Alaska, FR-1009).
Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil may have been the greatest American swindler of all time. The Yellow Kid operated in the gold age of the American con, from the late 19th century up to WWII, and became a legend in his own time, immortalized in such books as The Big Con (the sociological study of con artists that was the basis for the movie The Sting).
When TV huckster Kevin Trudeau stood in a ... As a result of the size of the fraud and Trudeau’s two ... He said his time at the Metropolitan ...
Now Weinberg is the main character in a new film based on Abscam, American Hustle, directed by David O Russell and starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. And it all began with socks.