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How Conman Victor Lustig Sold The Eiffel Tower (Twice) · Ridiculous History

0:10
Speaker 1: Ye, Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. It feels so
0:27
Speaker 1: good to be back. We have a reunion of sorts.
0:31
Speaker 1: You may have heard recently that Noel and I and
0:35
Speaker 1: our good friend Matt Frederick were on the road with
0:38
Speaker 1: our stuff they don't want you to know tour. But
0:41
Speaker 1: we have finally returned, and we have not returned alone.
0:45
Speaker 1: We are joined once again with our fantastic super producer,
0:50
Speaker 1: Casey Pegrum, who came all the way back from France
0:54
Speaker 1: to hang out with us on this show. Kay see
1:00
Speaker 1: on the case, folks, and my trustee co host Noel
1:04
Speaker 1: is on the road this week for a different project,
1:08
Speaker 1: which I can't say too much about now other than
1:11
Speaker 1: all will be revealed in time. And in the meantime,
1:16
Speaker 1: we decided that it would be fantastic to have one
1:20
Speaker 1: of our favorite how Stuff Works celebrities come on the
1:24
Speaker 1: show this week. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome. Christopher
1:28
Speaker 1: hasiotis back to Ridiculous History. Ben, thanks so much for
1:32
Speaker 1: having me. I feel like I should just be sitting
1:34
Speaker 1: here saying I'm no, but I'm not. No, I'm not.
1:38
Speaker 1: I can grow my beard as much as I like,
1:40
Speaker 1: but I still can't match up to the man, but
1:42
Speaker 1: I'll do my best. He has he has spent a
1:45
Speaker 1: lot of time on that beard, Christopher. But you know what,
1:47
Speaker 1: just since this is an audio podcast, I just want
1:50
Speaker 1: to describe you a little bit, if that's okay while
1:53
Speaker 1: we're on here. I'm curious, okay, okay, So Christopher, you
1:56
Speaker 1: have a great beard. Thank you. And I think you've
1:58
Speaker 1: been uh you know, you've growing it out a little bit.
2:01
Speaker 1: I see, Uh, yeah, I mean I've had it for
2:03
Speaker 1: a while. It's it's been on my face for decades. Uh.
2:07
Speaker 1: If you want to start talking beards. The very first
2:09
Speaker 1: poem that I ever fully memorized was a poem about beards.
2:13
Speaker 1: Oh do tell she Silverstein. My beard grows to my toes.
2:18
Speaker 1: I never wears no clothes. I wraps my hair around
2:21
Speaker 1: my bear and down the road I goes all these smokes. Okay,
2:25
Speaker 1: I did not know. I did not know that we
2:27
Speaker 1: would be uh, we would be privileged to sit in
2:30
Speaker 1: on a little bit of a poetry recital. Tommy, you
2:33
Speaker 1: didn't You didn't bring your oration today. You're not ready
2:36
Speaker 1: to go. I have I have one that is completely
2:40
Speaker 1: unrelated to today's episode. Uh, and it's a little bit body.
2:46
Speaker 1: It is a poem by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway, of course,
2:51
Speaker 1: famous famous writer Old Man in the Sea, The Sun
2:54
Speaker 1: also rises, all these, all these works of prose. He
2:58
Speaker 1: has a collected book of poetry which is varied in
3:05
Speaker 1: terms of talent and in terms of quality. But he
3:09
Speaker 1: has one poem It's very short that I suspect he
3:12
Speaker 1: wrote after a drunken night in Paris or Spain, where
3:16
Speaker 1: he says, I know monks master bate at night, and
3:19
Speaker 1: pet cats screw and some girls bite, and yet what
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Speaker 1: can I do to set things right? That's the whole poll.
3:25
Speaker 1: It's a good poem to have in your back pocket.
3:28
Speaker 1: Came in handy here. But speaking of fantastic segways, we
3:34
Speaker 1: mentioned Paris just a second ago. Are you about to
3:38
Speaker 1: talk about a taking a segue tour of Paris? I
3:42
Speaker 1: think in a way we in a way, we we
3:45
Speaker 1: are a segue of the mind, Christopher, And I'm already
3:48
Speaker 1: embarrassed for you. We took we we talked a little
3:53
Speaker 1: bit off air about some interesting stories in the world
3:58
Speaker 1: of ridiculous history. And longtime listeners, you know that Christopher
4:02
Speaker 1: hasiotis aside from having previously appeared on our show to
4:06
Speaker 1: introduce us to some very strange covers of Louis Louis.
4:09
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis has been our longtime research associate and we're
4:14
Speaker 1: we're big fans of you, Christopher. You will also always
4:17
Speaker 1: have the coolest stories and off air. You came to
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Speaker 1: Casey and Nolan I with a pretty neat story about Paris,
4:27
Speaker 1: non segue related. Absolutely. I thought, you know, let's let's
4:33
Speaker 1: combine a lot of ridiculous histories interest. Let's let's take
4:37
Speaker 1: Casey's uh francophilia. Let's take your love of Um Khan men.
4:43
Speaker 1: You know, people who who have these elaborate scams like
4:47
Speaker 1: Gregor McGregor and uh and Noel who is not with
4:50
Speaker 1: us in flash but is in spirit here always uh.
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Speaker 1: He's he's got a love for the the man with
4:59
Speaker 1: with hutzpah with uh with um. You know that that
5:03
Speaker 1: go get him attitude, right? So I thought we should
5:06
Speaker 1: dive into this story about Paris, about the Eiffel Tower,
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Speaker 1: and about a specific con man who wraps all of
5:13
Speaker 1: these things up into one weird, crazy, unbelievable yet totally
5:18
Speaker 1: human and ridiculous story. Are you talking about Victor Lustig.
5:24
Speaker 1: I am Victor Listig born Robert V. Miller. Oh, there's
5:30
Speaker 1: already a plot twist, there is. Yeah, so, um, there's
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Speaker 1: this man, Robert V. Miller. And so we're we're going
5:36
Speaker 1: back to the turn of the most recent century, back
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Speaker 1: to the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. Victor Lustig is uh, well,
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Speaker 1: we'll we'll call him Count Victor Listig, Count Listig, because
5:45
Speaker 1: that's what he called himself. It's not the only thing
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Speaker 1: he called himself, though. This is a man who had
5:49
Speaker 1: twenty two different aliases. He was a criminal mastermind. He
5:54
Speaker 1: was a scam artist, he was a swindler, he was
5:57
Speaker 1: a grifter. He was born Robert V. Miller in a
6:00
Speaker 1: little town called Hostaan a Um and that is at
6:04
Speaker 1: the time of his birth eight that was in the
6:06
Speaker 1: country of Austro Hungary. Uh, now it's the Czech Republic.
6:11
Speaker 1: So the town is sort of near the border of
6:12
Speaker 1: the Czech Republic and Poland. And this was eighteen nineties
6:17
Speaker 1: when Robert V. Miller was born. So he is born
6:21
Speaker 1: I believe January fourth. His real name is Robert. I
6:25
Speaker 1: was not aware that he would accrue so many a
6:30
Speaker 1: k A s. But we know that from a young
6:34
Speaker 1: age he was both highly intelligent and a troublemaker. That's true.
6:40
Speaker 1: So Miller as he was known at the time, when
6:43
Speaker 1: he was nineteen years old, not too much is known
6:46
Speaker 1: about his life beforehand. But when he's in his late teens,
6:48
Speaker 1: he moves to Paris, he gets involved in gambling, he's
6:52
Speaker 1: kind of a roused about, gets involved in the CD
6:55
Speaker 1: Underbelly of the World, which you know is one of
6:57
Speaker 1: the charms of Paris, right, and so uh, he he
7:02
Speaker 1: gets scarred by a lover's boyfriend at the age of nineteen,
7:05
Speaker 1: gets cut across the face with a knife. He's sleeping
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Speaker 1: with someone, who's sleeping with someone, and this and that.
7:10
Speaker 1: So he's already got this sort of disreputable air about him.
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Speaker 1: Things are tough for for young Miller, right, So he
7:18
Speaker 1: decides he needs to make some money. And we're not
7:22
Speaker 1: getting to his big scam just yet, but I want
7:25
Speaker 1: to lay the groundwork for some of his his history
7:27
Speaker 1: of just taking advantage of people for his own benefits.
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Speaker 1: So Robert Miller is looking to make a name for himself,
7:34
Speaker 1: or maybe make twenty two names for himself, or keep
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Speaker 1: his name off the books altogether. But Basically, he's been
7:39
Speaker 1: in in trouble with the authorities in a bunch of
7:42
Speaker 1: different countries for scamming people, robberies, uh, swindles, the sort
7:46
Speaker 1: of thing. So his first big attempt at a at
7:50
Speaker 1: a big plot involves ocean liners. He hops on an
7:55
Speaker 1: ocean liner that's going from the Atlantic ports in France
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Speaker 1: to New York and back. And so basically like he
8:00
Speaker 1: rides back and forth, back and forth, back and forth
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Speaker 1: between France and New York, pretending to be a Broadway producer. Yeah,
8:08
Speaker 1: and this this is when he's only uh, he's he's
8:10
Speaker 1: still in his teens or twenties. So we're talking right around, uh,
8:13
Speaker 1: the time, right before World War One. So he's on
8:17
Speaker 1: board literally saying, I'm I'm a Broadway producer. I have
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Speaker 1: all this money, but I need more to put on
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Speaker 1: a great, big show. And that's when he first adopts
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Speaker 1: the name Victor Listig. Victor Listig gives him the sense
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Speaker 1: of grandeur so much so that he starts calling himself
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Speaker 1: Count Victor Listig. And he meets all these other well,
8:36
Speaker 1: they're not other rich people, they're the rich people. He's
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Speaker 1: the person trying to get their money. He meets these
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Speaker 1: people on board the ship, says, I'm putting together a
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Speaker 1: Broadway show. It's gonna be the best, it's going to
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Speaker 1: be the most beautiful, it's going to be the most
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Speaker 1: fantastic Broadway show ever put on. But I need some investors,
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Speaker 1: So are you on board? Will you give me some money?
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Speaker 1: And basically he he just sells them this whole fantasy
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Speaker 1: and he gets all this money, and uh goes back
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Speaker 1: and forth and back and forth and scams people out
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Speaker 1: of out of money for a show that doesn't exist.
9:05
Speaker 1: It's it reminds me a little bit of I don't
9:07
Speaker 1: know if you know this film The Producers by mel
9:10
Speaker 1: Brooks that's nineteen sixties sixties seven. I think about Gene
9:15
Speaker 1: Wilder and Zero Mostel pretend to be producers of a
9:18
Speaker 1: Broadway show to raise money. They basically figure out if
9:21
Speaker 1: you put on a failure of a show, you'll make
9:23
Speaker 1: more money if if the whole thing loses. I don't
9:26
Speaker 1: know that mel Brooks was inspired by the story of
9:29
Speaker 1: Victor Listig wouldn't be surprised. And we should also mention
9:33
Speaker 1: one of the big questions about this early scam, how
9:37
Speaker 1: did he manage to do this? Successfully multiple times without
9:41
Speaker 1: getting caught. I advanced to you that his fluency multiple
9:46
Speaker 1: languages helped because I'm sure that sometimes the people he
9:50
Speaker 1: was conning were entirely French speakers, and then sometimes they
9:54
Speaker 1: might have been entirely German speakers. Yeah, and Listig spoke
9:57
Speaker 1: five languages at least that we know of. So the
10:00
Speaker 1: ability to switch back and forth between languages with fluency,
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Speaker 1: it puts forth this idea of confidence, of power, of authority,
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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, if you can, if you can
10:13
Speaker 1: take on a cute accent, maybe, uh, that can sometimes
10:17
Speaker 1: inspire feelings of of warmth, depending on who you're talking to. So, yeah,
10:21
Speaker 1: as he's going back and forth across the Atlantic, he's
10:23
Speaker 1: talking to all these people, just scamming them left and
10:26
Speaker 1: right in various languages. But this didn't go on forever, correct,
10:31
Speaker 1: because you said you said you was active at this
10:33
Speaker 1: time directly before World War One, Right, So the First
10:38
Speaker 1: World War kind of interrupts a lot of this transatlantic rigamarole,
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Speaker 1: and he finds himself in trouble in the US and
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Speaker 1: comes back to France on a more permanent basis in
10:51
Speaker 1: and that's when we arrive at the main topic of
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Speaker 1: our story today, and um, I think it's I think
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Speaker 1: it's a good one. It's weird. It's the sort of
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Speaker 1: thing you would think could never happen today because of
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Speaker 1: the prevalence of information, the willingness of people to believe,
11:06
Speaker 1: the skepticism. But I don't know. I think what the
11:09
Speaker 1: shows and and we're about to get to it. But
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Speaker 1: it shows that people are always willing to believe what
11:16
Speaker 1: will benefit them. Yes, yes, I do want to do
11:19
Speaker 1: one brief sidetrack while we're on the way to France.
11:23
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay. So Lustig also had some American
11:27
Speaker 1: adventures during Prohibition. He went to Missouri. That's right. Yeah,
11:33
Speaker 1: he went to Missouri and he used another alias, Robert
11:36
Speaker 1: duval I like it, and he used he used this
11:41
Speaker 1: alias to try to run a ranch. So essentially, he
11:47
Speaker 1: offered this bank twenty two thous dollars in liberty bonds
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Speaker 1: and convinced them to exchange an additional ten thousand dollars
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Speaker 1: of the bonds for cash. They said yes. The money's
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Speaker 1: placed in two identical envelopes and he uses some like
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Speaker 1: stage magic, some sleight of hand to switch the envelopes,
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Speaker 1: make off of the bonds and the cash. He gets
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Speaker 1: arrested in Kansas City, but he manages to talk his
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Speaker 1: way out of the indictment. And that's the thing I
12:16
Speaker 1: find so so so crazy. I mean, it's the sort
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Speaker 1: of thing you think you would never be able to
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Speaker 1: talk to a bank and walk away with both the
12:22
Speaker 1: notes and the cash and everything, and then talk a
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Speaker 1: way out of court. Yeah, it's crazy. How how endearing
12:28
Speaker 1: do you have to be? It's like some sort of crazy,
12:31
Speaker 1: huge version of the you know, the twenty dollar change game,
12:34
Speaker 1: where you I won't go into the details, but you
12:37
Speaker 1: can go up to a cashier and you start quick
12:39
Speaker 1: talking and asking them to make change for one thing
12:41
Speaker 1: after you have a legitimate transaction. Then you get some change,
12:45
Speaker 1: and you change some ones for a ten, and then
12:47
Speaker 1: you switch things around a little bit, and all of
12:49
Speaker 1: a sudden, you've doubled your money and you also got
12:51
Speaker 1: whatever you bought. And here in Atlanta, just decide. Note, folks,
12:55
Speaker 1: we do refer to that as the hasciotas do we?
12:58
Speaker 1: We do know. I'm sorry that you had about that
13:00
Speaker 1: on air, but that's that. The American Adventure is primarily
13:05
Speaker 1: important because it shows how well he was able to
13:10
Speaker 1: handle getting caught because almost anybody else would have gone
13:15
Speaker 1: to jail. That is bank robbery, and it is fraud.
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Speaker 1: But Victor has at this point accumulated quite a range
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Speaker 1: of skills, quite a range of aliases. And as you said, Christopher,
13:28
Speaker 1: in May, he goes back to Paris. He has had
13:32
Speaker 1: a close call in Kansas City. He thinks, you know,
13:35
Speaker 1: maybe things are getting a little too hot on this
13:37
Speaker 1: side of the Atlantic. So so what happens when he
13:41
Speaker 1: returns to France. Well, let me ask you, when when
13:43
Speaker 1: you think of Paris, what do you think of when
13:46
Speaker 1: I think of Paris? Well, this is this is a
13:49
Speaker 1: weird story. I don't know if I ever told you
13:50
Speaker 1: I was homeless in Paris for a week? Who wasn't?
13:54
Speaker 1: Who was it at? Yeah? I think of wonderful music.
13:59
Speaker 1: I think of street side cafes. I think of obviously,
14:04
Speaker 1: I think of you, Casey, and I think of the
14:07
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower. I think that's one of the number one
14:10
Speaker 1: things that people think of when they think of Paris. Yeah,
14:12
Speaker 1: who doesn't. And and uh, you are not, unlike Victor, realistic,
14:16
Speaker 1: at least in this one way, because he thought of
14:17
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower as well. You want to go back
14:20
Speaker 1: into a little bit of Eiffel Tower history for for
14:22
Speaker 1: people who may not be familiar with it. I think
14:24
Speaker 1: that's a great idea, man. Okay, so we all know
14:28
Speaker 1: what the Eiffel Tower looks like. It's a huge iron
14:31
Speaker 1: lattice tower. But how did it get there? Yeah? I
14:34
Speaker 1: mean so, basically, the Eiffel Tower was constructed over four
14:37
Speaker 1: or five year period in the late eighteen eighties, was
14:40
Speaker 1: put in place for the eighteen eighty nine World's Fair.
14:43
Speaker 1: It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant
14:44
Speaker 1: to just go up for twenty years, kind of act
14:47
Speaker 1: as this big attraction and then come down. But Parisians
14:51
Speaker 1: loved it so much, and other people coming to Paris
14:53
Speaker 1: loved it so much there was an argument made that
14:55
Speaker 1: it should stand as an icon for the city. It
14:57
Speaker 1: was also used as a really tower for telegraphs, so
15:00
Speaker 1: it kind of came in handy too. Okay. But that
15:03
Speaker 1: that sense of impermanence around the tower actually plays into
15:07
Speaker 1: why Victor Listig thought of the Eiffel Tower and how
15:10
Speaker 1: it became involved in his next scam. Oh that's right,
15:12
Speaker 1: because he was I believe when he arrived in France
15:16
Speaker 1: he was reading a newspaper about how the Eiffel Tower
15:19
Speaker 1: was in poor condition and it needed some repairs, and
15:24
Speaker 1: not everyone loved it. Some people in the city saw
15:27
Speaker 1: it as I think the quote I read was an
15:30
Speaker 1: expensive nuisance. Yeah, exactly. You can go either way, you know.
15:33
Speaker 1: I mean. The thing about the Eiffel Tower is it
15:35
Speaker 1: completely dominates the landscape. It stands out from all the
15:39
Speaker 1: architecture in Paris. It's almost eighties stories tall, the or
15:42
Speaker 1: the equivalent of eighty stories. It's like three twenty something meters.
15:46
Speaker 1: It's almost a thousand feet tall, if not higher. And
15:50
Speaker 1: most of the buildings around there are you know, three
15:53
Speaker 1: four stories tall at the max um not not iron work.
15:58
Speaker 1: So some people say it's an I saw. Some people
16:00
Speaker 1: say it's magnificent either way. By when he returns to
16:05
Speaker 1: Paris with I should add I uh looked up the
16:08
Speaker 1: exact number. He already had forty arrests under his belt
16:11
Speaker 1: by this time, so he was thirty five years old,
16:16
Speaker 1: so more than one arrest for a year of his life.
16:19
Speaker 1: And that's like two or three arrests for every year
16:21
Speaker 1: of his adult life. That that is a baffling statistic.
16:25
Speaker 1: Thank you for for putting it so succinctly. I guess
16:29
Speaker 1: he wasn't that great then if he was continually getting arrested.
16:33
Speaker 1: But I have a proposition for you, Christopher. I propose
16:38
Speaker 1: that we call in one of our favorite segments to
16:42
Speaker 1: learn a little bit about France. Let's do it all, right, Hey, Casey,
16:49
Speaker 1: hey Ben, how's it going doing doing pretty well? As
16:51
Speaker 1: we said at the top, you have returned from your
16:55
Speaker 1: double life France, and we wanted to ask you a
16:59
Speaker 1: little bit about how French people see the Eiffel Tower today.
17:04
Speaker 1: That's an interesting topic, you know, it is. It is
17:06
Speaker 1: very touristy. It is very much like even even me
17:10
Speaker 1: having been there I think eight times in as many
17:12
Speaker 1: years um. This past trip where I was there for
17:16
Speaker 1: two weeks, I did not go visit the Eiffel Tower.
17:18
Speaker 1: I didn't hang out on the Shampa Mars. I didn't,
17:22
Speaker 1: you know, go to the Trocadero. I didn't really have
17:25
Speaker 1: much uh involvement with the Eiffel Tower in general, other
17:28
Speaker 1: than I could see it from the balcony of my airbnb.
17:31
Speaker 1: So you know, as you guys were mentioning, the height
17:34
Speaker 1: of the buildings in Paris is something that is kind
17:37
Speaker 1: of strictly regulated, and it does ensure that the architecture
17:41
Speaker 1: remains fairly uniform, that certain buildings like the Eiffel Tower,
17:47
Speaker 1: or like the Tour Mont parnass or like the Arct
17:50
Speaker 1: de Triomph, etcetera, remain visible through large parts of the city,
17:55
Speaker 1: and it's kind of you know, you're you're always catching
17:58
Speaker 1: glimpses of the Eiffel Tower throughout your day, which is
18:01
Speaker 1: really really nice, and Casey correct me if I'm wrong,
18:03
Speaker 1: But that's that's partially due to preference and tradition, but
18:06
Speaker 1: also the just the simple geography and makeup of the
18:11
Speaker 1: land in Paris itself. Like you've got these big sort
18:13
Speaker 1: of modern looking business towers over in La de France.
18:16
Speaker 1: But yes, everything else, you know, the French have not
18:19
Speaker 1: had this tradition of tearing down old buildings. And it's
18:22
Speaker 1: located on somewhat wet ground near the same river, so
18:26
Speaker 1: you can't build sixties story skyscrapers. Yeah, which you know
18:31
Speaker 1: is a is a very happy accident, I think, because
18:33
Speaker 1: Paris does have a very consistent architectural style, although it
18:37
Speaker 1: has been transformed quite a bit within the last maybe
18:41
Speaker 1: couple hundred years. UM Houseman in the nineteenth century, demolished
18:46
Speaker 1: a lot of the old Paris and created a lot
18:48
Speaker 1: of the grand boulevards that we know today, which were
18:52
Speaker 1: useful for instance, uh, moving large numbers of troops in
18:56
Speaker 1: and out of the city, that kind of thing. But
18:58
Speaker 1: he had he had a very very strict requirement in
19:01
Speaker 1: terms of keeping the style very consistent, keeping things very
19:06
Speaker 1: close to the curb, always having shops on the ground
19:09
Speaker 1: floor and then living space in the floors above that.
19:13
Speaker 1: That gives the city a very coherent, cohesive feel, as
19:17
Speaker 1: well as buildings not terminating in a sharp corner but
19:21
Speaker 1: instead kind of in a flat, outward facing corner. That
19:25
Speaker 1: essentially keeps the buildings again feeling more open and inviting
19:29
Speaker 1: and just keeping the street life very virant and alive.
19:31
Speaker 1: I have a question for you, casey okay, what do
19:36
Speaker 1: you have an alias when you're in France? No, um
19:40
Speaker 1: other than kase you know that that would be it's
19:43
Speaker 1: just kind of the frenchified monsieur monsieur case All right,
19:48
Speaker 1: Well that has been cause on the case east wildly
19:54
Speaker 1: d Q Yeah, perfect, perfect. So this gives us a
20:04
Speaker 1: sense of just how iconic the building is today and
20:11
Speaker 1: back in Lustig's time, right right, and we're talking, you know,
20:16
Speaker 1: ish um, we're back in the seventh Arondissement. And again
20:21
Speaker 1: this this structure was meant to last about twenty years,
20:24
Speaker 1: so it was built in eighteen eighty nine. The plan
20:26
Speaker 1: was initially let's take it down around nine or so,
20:30
Speaker 1: oh no nine. Yeah, so it's already almost doubled its
20:35
Speaker 1: lifetime and it's getting expensive. The city is complaining, saying
20:39
Speaker 1: we don't have the money for the upkeep. It's just
20:42
Speaker 1: really a pain in the French. But this, this is
20:46
Speaker 1: where Lustig sees an opportunity and he says, you know what,
20:54
Speaker 1: I bet that I could just forge some credentials and
20:58
Speaker 1: appoint myself to a position in the local government. Yeah. Well,
21:03
Speaker 1: he actually hires a forger. I mean, this is It's
21:06
Speaker 1: the thing about Listig is he always thought out his
21:09
Speaker 1: scams to the nth degree. This wasn't just some sort
21:12
Speaker 1: of fly by night operation. And he hires a forger.
21:16
Speaker 1: He comes up with these credentials and he presents himself
21:19
Speaker 1: as a the deputy director general of this or that.
21:23
Speaker 1: I think it's something like the Postal Service, the Ministry
21:26
Speaker 1: of Post and Telegraphs exactly. So He takes advantage of
21:31
Speaker 1: the news that the city is unhappy with the structure.
21:35
Speaker 1: The Eiffel Tower itself weighs more than ten thousand tons.
21:39
Speaker 1: He approaches scrap metal dealers in Paris, the five most prestigious,
21:44
Speaker 1: the five with the biggest operation, and he says, Mr
21:48
Speaker 1: scrap metal dealer, my name is Victor Listig. I'm the
21:51
Speaker 1: Deputy director General. We want to sell you the Eiffel Tower.
21:57
Speaker 1: We want to scrap the Eiffel Tower. We want to
21:59
Speaker 1: set you seven thousand tons of it. However, let's meet
22:03
Speaker 1: at this hotel in secret, because we can't let work
22:07
Speaker 1: get out about this. So Listig in fights five different
22:11
Speaker 1: representatives of scrap metal dealerships to this hotel and asks
22:15
Speaker 1: them to bid to fight amongst themselves to offer the
22:20
Speaker 1: most money for seven thousand tons of metal, claiming that
22:24
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower is going to be scrapped, and how
22:26
Speaker 1: how did it work out well for whom? Ben for
22:29
Speaker 1: whom it worked out really well for Victor Listig. So
22:33
Speaker 1: he's got these five guys in the hotel. He says,
22:35
Speaker 1: all right, guys, you've got to keep this deal quiet
22:37
Speaker 1: because the government doesn't want word to get out so
22:40
Speaker 1: I want you to think about it, see what you
22:44
Speaker 1: can do with a seven thousand tons of scrap metal,
22:46
Speaker 1: and come back to me with an offer. But before
22:48
Speaker 1: the meeting was over, he had identified who he wanted
22:51
Speaker 1: to award the bid to his mark. Exactly. It was
22:54
Speaker 1: a guy named Andre Poissan, and Listig identified Poissan as
22:59
Speaker 1: kind of an up and summer. He was one of
23:00
Speaker 1: the least successful of the group, and he had low
23:03
Speaker 1: self esteem. Exactly. Yeah, So list I thought this guy
23:07
Speaker 1: is gonna be really desperate to secure this bid. He
23:10
Speaker 1: thought Poissant would really want to make a name for
23:14
Speaker 1: himself with this deal and secure his place in the
23:16
Speaker 1: business world because he felt intimidated by all these other
23:19
Speaker 1: scrap metal dealers who are relatively well established. There's this
23:23
Speaker 1: is where we see some of the art of the
23:26
Speaker 1: con or the craft of psychological manipulation come into play.
23:30
Speaker 1: Because I believe what happens is after that meeting with
23:33
Speaker 1: the five people, where he's buttering them up, and he
23:35
Speaker 1: where he identifies Andrea's his mark. He meets with Andre
23:39
Speaker 1: the next day and Andrea says, you know, I slept
23:44
Speaker 1: on it. I'm having a couple of doubts. I don't
23:46
Speaker 1: know if this is the best thing, because this is
23:49
Speaker 1: a huge project, this is a lot of money, and
23:51
Speaker 1: Lustig gives him a very compelling empathy, building absolutely fake
23:57
Speaker 1: story about you know, hey, just between you and me, Like,
24:01
Speaker 1: I get it. You're an up and comer. I'm a
24:03
Speaker 1: government employee. I don't get paid that much. Times are
24:07
Speaker 1: tough all around, and I really you know, Andrea, you
24:10
Speaker 1: get it. You and I are kind of similar. So
24:13
Speaker 1: how about this, I will guarantee you the contract just
24:17
Speaker 1: between us. Forget about those other four guys. If you
24:19
Speaker 1: can give me just a little, you know, give me
24:21
Speaker 1: a big give me a little bit of something on
24:23
Speaker 1: the side, grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Yeah. So Listing
24:28
Speaker 1: is genius in adding layer upon layer of this scam.
24:31
Speaker 1: He builds confidence not just by putting forth this story,
24:35
Speaker 1: but by roping Andrea poissan In on that that they're
24:39
Speaker 1: in this together, you know. So, and it goes through,
24:42
Speaker 1: It goes through. So not only does Andrea Possan give
24:44
Speaker 1: Listig the money for for the Eiffel Tower, he also
24:49
Speaker 1: bribes him to do it right. Yes, so he's he's
24:53
Speaker 1: paying the bribe plus the deal the price that they
24:57
Speaker 1: agree on and what happened his next So then Listick says,
25:02
Speaker 1: I've got all this money and I'm splitting town. He
25:05
Speaker 1: goes back to Austria and uh, he just hangs out.
25:08
Speaker 1: He takes up with someone someone else. The details on
25:11
Speaker 1: this or a little sketchy. I couldn't really find out
25:14
Speaker 1: um in my research who it was, but reports said
25:17
Speaker 1: that he swindled someone else to let him stay with them.
25:20
Speaker 1: And while he's hanging out in Austria with all this money,
25:23
Speaker 1: he keeps his eye on the French newspapers just to
25:25
Speaker 1: see if he's been discovered, because he's betting on the
25:28
Speaker 1: fact that that Andre would be so ashamed that he
25:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't report the theft, right right, And we do know
25:36
Speaker 1: a little bit of what happens to the unfortunate Andrea here.
25:41
Speaker 1: After loose date skips town, Andre, who is out a
25:45
Speaker 1: significant sum of money, goes to the government officials to
25:49
Speaker 1: follow up on the deal, at which point they say,
25:52
Speaker 1: what who are you talking about? You know, maybe they
25:56
Speaker 1: were empathetic and said, I'm very sorry this happened to you,
25:59
Speaker 1: but can you imagine that just the utter shame and
26:03
Speaker 1: embarrassment there, That's that's what Victor. Would he played this
26:06
Speaker 1: guy like a cello? You know? Yeah? And that's when
26:08
Speaker 1: I like the shame is such a powerful, powerful emotion
26:11
Speaker 1: when you're trying to get someone else to do what
26:14
Speaker 1: you want. Yes, And so I've heard, I've heard, I
26:17
Speaker 1: don't know from Oh you're a dangerous man. What's your
26:21
Speaker 1: real name? After you know, during this episode, I am
26:24
Speaker 1: now suspecting everybody of having a different alias, at least
26:29
Speaker 1: one or two. Right, I have a couple. I have
26:31
Speaker 1: a couple. I had to retire. One had to retire,
26:33
Speaker 1: Chris from Boston because one day in Atlanta, someone who
26:39
Speaker 1: knew me as Chris from Boston found me and luckily
26:42
Speaker 1: I was with some good friends of mine who helped
26:46
Speaker 1: me out and backed me up when I went back
26:48
Speaker 1: to the table at the restaurant we're at and it
26:50
Speaker 1: was like, guys, look, there might be someone here who
26:53
Speaker 1: thinks my name is Chris. So let's just go along
26:56
Speaker 1: with that, and if you do, the next round of
26:59
Speaker 1: drinks is on me. So so if you're listening to this,
27:03
Speaker 1: I hope you're having I hope you're having a great time.
27:07
Speaker 1: Chris from Boston never did any shady criminal acts, though
27:12
Speaker 1: Christ from Boston is not a con man, It's just
27:15
Speaker 1: not in his character. But Lustig is an inveterate con
27:19
Speaker 1: then an irredeemable con artist, and he clearly doesn't feel
27:25
Speaker 1: too broken up about causing such a financial disaster. No, no,
27:29
Speaker 1: not at all. He doesn't feel broken up. He feels emboldened.
27:32
Speaker 1: In fact, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower for
27:35
Speaker 1: scrap metal goes back to France, goes right back to
27:39
Speaker 1: Paris and sells it a second time. Right, yeah, this
27:44
Speaker 1: is crazy. The same thing. He goes and does it again. Uh,
27:49
Speaker 1: I will say this time not quite so successfully, right,
27:53
Speaker 1: because he he was correct in his gamble, in his
27:58
Speaker 1: original assumption that the story would not be widely reported,
28:03
Speaker 1: and if the news had made it to the papers,
28:05
Speaker 1: we can say that he would not have attempted this
28:08
Speaker 1: a second time. I don't think so. I mean, the
28:10
Speaker 1: guy is clever, he's he may have been arrested forty times,
28:13
Speaker 1: but he's also gotten away at least that many, right,
28:17
Speaker 1: So he he doesn't even wait that long, you know,
28:20
Speaker 1: He just I guess, waits until he runs out of cash, yeah,
28:24
Speaker 1: and just needs some more and says, well, let me
28:26
Speaker 1: go sell the Eiffel Tower again. Uh. But he so
28:28
Speaker 1: he goes back to Paris. He gets five more guys together,
28:31
Speaker 1: pitches them the idea says, I, you want to buy this.
28:34
Speaker 1: See this big hunk a junk over here. Uh you
28:37
Speaker 1: want to you want to buy it because you need
28:38
Speaker 1: the scrap metal. Uh. This time, however, there's someone who's
28:42
Speaker 1: suspicious of of the deal, and they go to the
28:45
Speaker 1: police right away and um, and Victor Lestig does not succeed,
28:51
Speaker 1: but he does succeed in in skipping town once again. Yes,
28:54
Speaker 1: and this time he goes to the United States. He
28:58
Speaker 1: goes back. I guess the heat from Kansas City is dissipated. Well,
29:02
Speaker 1: the U s is a big place, right, you know,
29:04
Speaker 1: there's a lot of places you can go. The myth
29:08
Speaker 1: of the American West and other parts of America is
29:10
Speaker 1: that you can reinvent yourself, especially in this pre internet,
29:13
Speaker 1: pre telephone day. You can just present yourself as someone new.
29:17
Speaker 1: You can present yourself as someone successful, as a count,
29:20
Speaker 1: as a as a salesman of mystery boxes. Ah, yes,
29:27
Speaker 1: Romanian box, Romanian boxes, yeah, after them. You know, relative success.
29:33
Speaker 1: The first time around of the sale of the Eiffel
29:35
Speaker 1: Tower and the lack of success. The second time list,
29:38
Speaker 1: it goes to the US and he finds himself in Texas.
29:41
Speaker 1: He sells something called a Romanian box. Are you m
29:45
Speaker 1: a in I A N? I sure am sorry? So yeah?
29:54
Speaker 1: So so what is the Romanian box? I am so
29:57
Speaker 1: glad you asked Christopher. Essentially is a money box. That's
30:02
Speaker 1: how he would present it. The Count, because he's Count
30:05
Speaker 1: lu Stick again, would whine and dine and befriend Americans.
30:11
Speaker 1: And then when people would say, hey, you know, you're
30:14
Speaker 1: an interesting guy. What what is it that you do, Count?
30:17
Speaker 1: What what's your line of work? What's your line of business?
30:20
Speaker 1: And essentially, in a polite way, they were trying to ask,
30:23
Speaker 1: how are you so wealthy? And then with the utmost secrecy,
30:28
Speaker 1: with a just between us and the lamp post kind
30:32
Speaker 1: of confidence, the Count would pull out this box. It's
30:36
Speaker 1: literal box, and it's a money box that looks fantastic.
30:41
Speaker 1: It's built out of mahogany. It's about the size of
30:43
Speaker 1: a steamer trunk. And he would say, let me show
30:47
Speaker 1: you how this works. And the Mark would hand him
30:52
Speaker 1: a bill, usually asked for a hundred dollar bill, and
30:55
Speaker 1: then he would put the bill into the machine, wait
30:59
Speaker 1: a few hours is for quote unquote chemical processing. And
31:02
Speaker 1: then when the people came back they went and get dinner,
31:05
Speaker 1: lunch or something. Two bills would be there to bills,
31:09
Speaker 1: and so Lustig would say that this box pays for itself.
31:15
Speaker 1: What it really is is a fake contraption. Yeah, there's
31:20
Speaker 1: there's no way you can have a It's basically a counterfeit,
31:24
Speaker 1: counterfeiting machine. Right, So he's telling people, I have this
31:28
Speaker 1: thing that can make fake money for you, that can
31:30
Speaker 1: duplicate your dollar, double your money in six hours or less.
31:35
Speaker 1: And it doesn't even work. It's a scam of a scam.
31:37
Speaker 1: It's a scale double scam. Yeah, which you know a
31:39
Speaker 1: lot of cons work that way because they prey on um, ambition,
31:45
Speaker 1: greed insecurity, you know what I mean. Well, and that's
31:47
Speaker 1: the sort of thing. So even if he were caught,
31:50
Speaker 1: even if someone confronted him and said, hey man, this
31:53
Speaker 1: money box you sold me doesn't work as as you
31:57
Speaker 1: as you said it would, they're not going to go
31:58
Speaker 1: to the police because then it would be admitting two
32:02
Speaker 1: attempting to counterfeit. Yeah. And here's here's the thing. This
32:06
Speaker 1: is the beautiful part of this Lou Stick's friends will
32:09
Speaker 1: see this and they'll say, oh man, they're convinced, you know,
32:13
Speaker 1: because he's been so reluctant and secretive about it. They say,
32:16
Speaker 1: will you sell this to me? You name your price, anything,
32:21
Speaker 1: And the count is very reluctant. It's been in my
32:24
Speaker 1: family for a while. It's I don't know. I mean,
32:28
Speaker 1: I like you, but this is a big decision for me.
32:31
Speaker 1: And then after cajoling and raising the price sky high,
32:36
Speaker 1: Lustig would eventually agree to sell it, sometimes for up
32:40
Speaker 1: to thirty thousand dollars. You can read a pretty good
32:43
Speaker 1: description of some of these adventures in various articles in
32:46
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian who They seem to have a fascination with
32:50
Speaker 1: loose Stick. But after he sold it, here's the thing,
32:53
Speaker 1: he didn't skip down right away. They did some more
32:56
Speaker 1: demonstrations so you can show them how it worked. There
32:59
Speaker 1: are still is hidden in the machine, obviously. Yeah, well,
33:02
Speaker 1: there are a variety of bills hidden in the machine.
33:03
Speaker 1: And so Lustig again, it's it's his mastery of manipulation.
33:07
Speaker 1: There were different kinds of money hidden in the machine,
33:09
Speaker 1: and he would use his power of persuasion to convince
33:12
Speaker 1: the person giving him the money to give him the
33:15
Speaker 1: right kind of money that he could then slip out
33:17
Speaker 1: a duplicate of. But the last time that Lusti sells
33:20
Speaker 1: the Romanian mystery box, Uh, it's not even called a
33:23
Speaker 1: mystery I'm just calling it a mystery box, the Romanian box.
33:27
Speaker 1: It's in Texas, and his purchaser is a sheriff, right,
33:31
Speaker 1: and the sheriff does not take being built. No, he's
33:36
Speaker 1: out thousands of dollars. So in the past Lustig had
33:39
Speaker 1: scammed people, left town and was generally kind of off
33:43
Speaker 1: Scott Free, Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Chicago. But this sheriff follows
33:49
Speaker 1: Lustig across the country. He tracks him down finally in
33:53
Speaker 1: I Believe in Chicago, and again this is it's about
33:57
Speaker 1: to be listed gets away with it one more time
34:00
Speaker 1: because the sheriff confronts Listick. He says, Man, you rip
34:03
Speaker 1: me off. This thing is a hoax. It does not
34:07
Speaker 1: make money. I need my tens of thousands of dollars
34:10
Speaker 1: back or I don't know what I'm gonna do, to
34:12
Speaker 1: which Lustig replies, Oh, that's so terrible that that happened.
34:18
Speaker 1: Are you sure you were working the box correctly? Oh? Man,
34:22
Speaker 1: and it works. He he convinces the sheriff, that the
34:26
Speaker 1: sheriff was the one not operating the contraption properly. He
34:31
Speaker 1: even as a show of good faith, gives him some
34:35
Speaker 1: of the money back to say, hey, look, I'm promised,
34:38
Speaker 1: I'm not scamming you. Here, take a take a portion
34:40
Speaker 1: of the money back as good faith. Go back to Texas.
34:43
Speaker 1: Take the box with you, figure out how to work
34:46
Speaker 1: it on your own. You must be the one making
34:48
Speaker 1: a mistake. And he continues because look, in addition to
34:54
Speaker 1: oys getting away with things, Lustig never learns his lesson,
34:58
Speaker 1: and he starts messing with some very dangerous characters. Sometime
35:02
Speaker 1: before this is a speculative story, an alleged story, we
35:07
Speaker 1: don't we don't have a lot of primary sources on this.
35:09
Speaker 1: But sometime before the story is that he even attempted
35:14
Speaker 1: to pull a scam on al Capone in Chicago. Did
35:17
Speaker 1: you hear about that? I did? And it's it's uh.
35:19
Speaker 1: So he had been in Chicago for a while, he
35:20
Speaker 1: had kind of built up his name. He was getting
35:22
Speaker 1: into the deep counterfeiting business, so not just this sort
35:26
Speaker 1: of confidence scam, but legitimate counterfeiting of cash. And so
35:31
Speaker 1: he's kind of operating in the same circles as Capone.
35:35
Speaker 1: He knows of Capone, Compone doesn't quite know of him.
35:38
Speaker 1: But Listig wants to gain his confidence. Right, So the
35:42
Speaker 1: story is this Lustig convinced, and he's still the count loose.
35:47
Speaker 1: Do you think he's talking with an accent? Of course
35:49
Speaker 1: he has to, man, it would be such a missed opportunity.
35:52
Speaker 1: If you are going to put a fake aristocratic title
35:57
Speaker 1: in front of your name, then you must have an accent. Yeah,
36:01
Speaker 1: that's true, because that's if he wants. If he wants
36:04
Speaker 1: to appear to be um, a wealthy, mysterious European of
36:08
Speaker 1: noble blood, then he has to conform to the American
36:12
Speaker 1: stereotype of that, which requires an accent. I think probably
36:15
Speaker 1: if you put on that that accent, then you you
36:17
Speaker 1: give yourself the benefit of pretending there are things you
36:21
Speaker 1: don't understand. You know that that you don't quite understand
36:23
Speaker 1: the intricacies of American English. So maybe if someone thinks
36:27
Speaker 1: you insulted them, you could just say, I don't know,
36:30
Speaker 1: I'm s yes, i I'm not understand. He's how you'll
36:34
Speaker 1: say a scam exactly. Look, we are choosing to imagine
36:41
Speaker 1: that he has an accent, and uh, I would like
36:43
Speaker 1: to I'd like to hear everyone's guess as to what
36:46
Speaker 1: sort of accent he had. I thought yours was really good. Christopher. Also,
36:51
Speaker 1: you have traveled the world and heard many accents, so
36:54
Speaker 1: I will defer to your speculation here. Anyway, point being lustick,
36:59
Speaker 1: goes to Cappone. The Count goes to Capone and convinces
37:02
Speaker 1: him that if al Capone gives him fifty thou dollars,
37:08
Speaker 1: he will double the money for Capone in sixty days
37:12
Speaker 1: with his newest adventures, newest discovery. And he knew that
37:16
Speaker 1: Capone was a very, very dangerous man, so once he
37:20
Speaker 1: got the money, he just let it sit in a bank.
37:22
Speaker 1: He didn't touch it. He let us sit in a
37:24
Speaker 1: bank for fifty nine days. On the fifty ninth day,
37:28
Speaker 1: he comes back to out Cappone himself and says, look,
37:31
Speaker 1: Mr Capone, the deal fell through. I'm very sorry, but
37:36
Speaker 1: I feel so bad about this because I made you
37:39
Speaker 1: a sincere promise, and I feel so bad about this
37:41
Speaker 1: that I will repay the money and lost. And that's
37:44
Speaker 1: not the only thing. He says to capon Right again,
37:46
Speaker 1: this is it's about gaining confidence, it's about bringing people
37:49
Speaker 1: over to your side. So not only is he involving
37:53
Speaker 1: Capone from the get go in this complicity in the
37:56
Speaker 1: scam that he was planning to do. The thing is
38:00
Speaker 1: there was never a scam planned, right, Listig just wanted
38:03
Speaker 1: to get Capone on his side. So he says, hey,
38:05
Speaker 1: give me fifty grand, which fifty grands a lot of
38:07
Speaker 1: money today. Back then way more money. Yes, we have
38:11
Speaker 1: our handy dandy inflation calculator. Around that period of time,
38:20
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars in today's money would be equal to
38:24
Speaker 1: around nine hundred and forty thousand dollars. That's amazing. Can
38:29
Speaker 1: you imagine going to someone and saying, hey, if you
38:32
Speaker 1: could just let me borrow a million dollars too much?
38:35
Speaker 1: Just two months? Just two months, I will give you.
38:37
Speaker 1: I'll let me double your money. And UH and Capone.
38:41
Speaker 1: I don't know why if it was this guy's UH
38:43
Speaker 1: is wherewithal? But but he said yeah, but Listig did
38:46
Speaker 1: nothing with it, and he he planned to do nothing
38:48
Speaker 1: with it. So he went back. He said, I'm really
38:50
Speaker 1: sorry it didn't work out, but here's your money back,
38:53
Speaker 1: all of it, because I I lost everything. I will
38:56
Speaker 1: pay you back out of my own pocket. Yeah, I
38:59
Speaker 1: I don't have I've lost my clothes, I've lost my house.
39:02
Speaker 1: But I'm an honest guy. Yeah, and this works like
39:06
Speaker 1: a charm. According to the story, Capone is so impressed,
39:11
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, this guy's gotta he's got some integrity,
39:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like a you know, he's
39:16
Speaker 1: got a little bit of spine, he's got a lot
39:18
Speaker 1: of gold. Tell you what you don't you don't have
39:20
Speaker 1: to pay me back all the money. You seem like
39:22
Speaker 1: an honest fellow. And because Capone is so built, he
39:27
Speaker 1: only accepts a certain amount. He doesn't accept the full
39:31
Speaker 1: fifty grand back. Right, It's like he The reports vary,
39:35
Speaker 1: but we know that Capone left him with some extrac
39:38
Speaker 1: at least five thousand dollars, So that that's the whole scame.
39:42
Speaker 1: So Listing borrowed almost in today's money, a million dollars
39:46
Speaker 1: from al Capone, did nothing with it, gave it back
39:49
Speaker 1: to pretend to be honest, gained his confidence, gained his trust,
39:54
Speaker 1: gained a reputation as a good guy in al Capone's eyes,
39:57
Speaker 1: and then also got almost a hundred thousand dollars just
40:00
Speaker 1: just for hey, you know which is it's brilliant, it's effective.
40:03
Speaker 1: But I think this sort of success leads to loose
40:08
Speaker 1: Stig's ultimate downfall. You know, I think some criminals have
40:18
Speaker 1: the idea that they'll get to a certain point and
40:20
Speaker 1: then they're they're out, you know, they quit the life,
40:23
Speaker 1: one last con. Yeah, for Lostig, the con was the life.
40:27
Speaker 1: There was no end to this, and so he was
40:29
Speaker 1: actually pursued at this point. You know, he's deep in
40:32
Speaker 1: the counterfeiting game. Like we mentioned earlier, he's being pursued
40:35
Speaker 1: by a Secret Service agent, Peter Rubino. And this is
40:39
Speaker 1: back when the secrets you know. Today, I think a
40:41
Speaker 1: lot of people think of a Secret Service in its
40:43
Speaker 1: most prominent role in the public eye now is protecting
40:46
Speaker 1: the life of the President of the United States and all,
40:49
Speaker 1: you know, the the people around that office. But its
40:54
Speaker 1: origins are in fighting counterfeiting. Yeah, absolutely, its origins are
40:58
Speaker 1: fighting counterfeiting. In the him is that Loostig was just
41:02
Speaker 1: becoming too prominent. He teamed up with a Nebraska chemist,
41:07
Speaker 1: a guy named Tom Shaw, and they created like a
41:11
Speaker 1: soup to nuts counterfeiting operation plates, paper ink everything. Yeah,
41:17
Speaker 1: they were. They were so good that the Secret Service
41:20
Speaker 1: identified them as the best counterfeiters in the country that
41:23
Speaker 1: they called these bills that they were turning out the
41:25
Speaker 1: Shawl Stig notes. Yeah, yeah, and this Loo Stig money
41:29
Speaker 1: was showing up everywhere from New Orleans to Chicago. And
41:34
Speaker 1: there's a question about whether the Secret Service would have
41:38
Speaker 1: actually caught him because he was aware it was like
41:42
Speaker 1: in today's money, it's it was like one point four
41:45
Speaker 1: million dollars fake cash in the country. So it was
41:50
Speaker 1: altering to a degree the economy. Yeah, there was a
41:53
Speaker 1: fear that it would imbalance world world faith in the
41:57
Speaker 1: American dollar because there was so much fake U S
42:00
Speaker 1: money out there right right, And he would have this
42:04
Speaker 1: is our Scooby Doo moment. He would have gotten away
42:07
Speaker 1: with it too, if it wasn't for his girlfriend. Well, yeah,
42:10
Speaker 1: it goes back, right, like that's that's how this thing started.
42:12
Speaker 1: So he got he got cut across the face when
42:15
Speaker 1: he was a teenager because he was having a romance
42:18
Speaker 1: with someone else's romance. And you know, now we're now
42:22
Speaker 1: we're in the thirties and the same thing happened again, right,
42:24
Speaker 1: because he was having an affair with his friend's mistress.
42:29
Speaker 1: Is that right, I believe so? Right, So he so
42:32
Speaker 1: he had a lady friend who was not an official
42:35
Speaker 1: wife or anything like that, and then his friend, who
42:39
Speaker 1: was married, had a romantic entanglement on the side that
42:43
Speaker 1: Lustig was then involved with that woman, and then the
42:46
Speaker 1: woman he was seeing got mad and called the cops. Yeah,
42:50
Speaker 1: it turned him in, And so with her assistance, the
42:53
Speaker 1: Secret Service is able to catch Lustig in in a
42:58
Speaker 1: pretty anti clament actic way. I think he's just walking
43:02
Speaker 1: down Broadway on the Upper West Side in New York
43:05
Speaker 1: and the Secret Service comes up and apprehends him, and
43:08
Speaker 1: even they can't help but admire him a little bit.
43:11
Speaker 1: One Secret Service agent is observing the fact that Lustig
43:15
Speaker 1: is cool as a cucumber. He's dressed very nicely, dressed
43:18
Speaker 1: to the nines, he has a suitcase of very nice clothes,
43:21
Speaker 1: and the Secret Service guy has to kind of just
43:23
Speaker 1: reluctantly shake his head and go, you're the smoothest con
43:27
Speaker 1: man that ever lived, to which Lustig was probably like
43:30
Speaker 1: a uh self deprecating shrug and a thank you, because
43:35
Speaker 1: that's how he talked to people. Oh, do you want
43:37
Speaker 1: to do his commandments? Yeah, well, I thought this would
43:39
Speaker 1: be the perfect time before we get to to Lustig's
43:42
Speaker 1: final fate you know, because you did bring this up.
43:44
Speaker 1: Um okay, spoiler alert. Lustig goes to prison at some
43:48
Speaker 1: point in his life, right right, But while in prison
43:51
Speaker 1: for his most ultimate stint, he decides to write the
43:56
Speaker 1: ten rules of a of a good con Right. There's
43:58
Speaker 1: ten commandments and um, yeah, and they refer to just
44:02
Speaker 1: what you said that he was the coolest cucumber out there.
44:06
Speaker 1: You want to go through them? Yeah, let's do it.
44:07
Speaker 1: So the set of instructions known as the Ten Commandments
44:13
Speaker 1: for conment and and for those of you out there listening,
44:15
Speaker 1: these are not legal advice. Yes, this is not legal
44:19
Speaker 1: advice from Casey Christopher Nolan myself. These are observations. But
44:25
Speaker 1: you know, I think they're pretty good. Why don't we
44:27
Speaker 1: just why don't we round robin and will alternate? How
44:29
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah? And let me if you let me
44:31
Speaker 1: know if you agree with these. Yeah. Yeah, First, be
44:35
Speaker 1: a patient listener. It is this not fast talking that
44:39
Speaker 1: gets the con man his cups. You know, if if
44:42
Speaker 1: you listen, you let the other person open up to you.
44:44
Speaker 1: There's that innate sense of connection between two people and uh,
44:49
Speaker 1: and that you immediately formed this bond and All you
44:51
Speaker 1: have to do is listen, be compassionate, nod your head,
44:54
Speaker 1: look him in the eye. I think it works. Number
44:58
Speaker 1: two never look bored. Would she is huge And this
45:01
Speaker 1: is this is from the time before everybody had a
45:05
Speaker 1: smartphone sitting around. You know. The idea is to be
45:11
Speaker 1: actively engaged with people. That means the eye contact. That
45:15
Speaker 1: probably means a little bit of mirroring their physicality, right,
45:19
Speaker 1: and you would be you'd be surprised how much it works.
45:22
Speaker 1: I agree with that one. The third one is the
45:24
Speaker 1: third one is wait for the other person to reveal
45:28
Speaker 1: any political opinions and then agree with them. It's great.
45:32
Speaker 1: I like it, which is which is kind of a
45:34
Speaker 1: spycraft thing too. Yeah, it's the sort of politics. It's
45:39
Speaker 1: gone back and forth. And this episode is appearing in
45:42
Speaker 1: your your subscription feed on election day here in the
45:45
Speaker 1: United States for the midterm elections. So maybe you've recognized
45:50
Speaker 1: this in your personal life. If you go out and
45:51
Speaker 1: you talk to someone, if you find that politically you
45:54
Speaker 1: guys kind of jibe. There's that again, it's an immediate connection,
45:58
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And then he has a another observation about
46:03
Speaker 1: how to react to people's opinions, let the other person
46:07
Speaker 1: reveal religious views, then have the same views. I feel
46:12
Speaker 1: like I've done this on dates. Well, I mean this
46:14
Speaker 1: is what like, it's it's your yes ending an improv right,
46:17
Speaker 1: you're just building off the other person. You build a
46:19
Speaker 1: story together, and then you're in that existence together. And
46:23
Speaker 1: here's this one I think is a little bit more
46:26
Speaker 1: of a gambit. This next one it is hint at
46:29
Speaker 1: sex talk speaking of dates, but don't follow it up
46:32
Speaker 1: unless the other person shows a strong interest. Yeah. Again,
46:36
Speaker 1: I think it's the sort of thing where you can
46:38
Speaker 1: talk around an issue and you take your cues from
46:41
Speaker 1: the other person. So you bring up you know, you
46:44
Speaker 1: could say, oh, yeah, last weekend, I was in Cleveland,
46:46
Speaker 1: and let me tell you the girls there are something else.
46:50
Speaker 1: And then if the other person seems intrigued, you know,
46:53
Speaker 1: kind of what wavelength they're on, If they seem a
46:56
Speaker 1: little like, uh, that's not really the kind of thing
46:58
Speaker 1: I talk about, then you might follow up with and
47:01
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't go out with them, because boy,
47:04
Speaker 1: that is not my scene. You know. Yeah, yeah, you're
47:08
Speaker 1: you're building that rapport. I just feel like that takes
47:10
Speaker 1: another level of skill to find the right hint, because
47:16
Speaker 1: all of these are about attempting to create rapport, and
47:20
Speaker 1: we should say, I mean this is where the twenties,
47:22
Speaker 1: the thirties pretty much he's only dealing with man. So
47:25
Speaker 1: this is this is there's that kind of like boys
47:28
Speaker 1: room locker room talk, uh, sort of sort of atmosphere,
47:33
Speaker 1: And how are you going to build confidence with other
47:35
Speaker 1: people who you want to scam? In the next five
47:38
Speaker 1: commandments are things that lu Stick believes you should never do.
47:42
Speaker 1: Correct number six, Never discuss illness unless some special concern
47:46
Speaker 1: is shown. So what do you what do you think
47:48
Speaker 1: that means? I think I think it's probably a time
47:52
Speaker 1: when private lives are a little more private. I also
47:54
Speaker 1: think there's a sense that, um, you know, illnesses it
47:59
Speaker 1: was a much more mysteriou thing eight years ago, could
48:02
Speaker 1: show weakness perhaps. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too, because
48:05
Speaker 1: at this time, you know, disabilities were still largely vilified,
48:09
Speaker 1: and an illness could make you undesirable, it might be contagious,
48:14
Speaker 1: as you said, it might make you weak. Uh. He
48:16
Speaker 1: also said, to your point about private lives, never pry
48:20
Speaker 1: into a person's personal circumstances. Parentheses, They'll tell you all eventually. Yeah. Again,
48:26
Speaker 1: it's it's letting your mark open up to you, right,
48:29
Speaker 1: following the lead um and after that again number eight,
48:33
Speaker 1: never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious. This
48:38
Speaker 1: is crucial most of the time. If you see someone
48:42
Speaker 1: who has great influence or power or importance, they're not
48:46
Speaker 1: going around spouting their accolades. They don't have to. If
48:49
Speaker 1: that's the difference between you know, old money and new money, right, yes,
48:54
Speaker 1: that's what people say, right. Old money will be much
48:58
Speaker 1: more subtle, right, and new money is like what else
49:01
Speaker 1: can we put gold on? So this this one, I
49:06
Speaker 1: think never boasting. I think this remains incredibly important today,
49:11
Speaker 1: not just in cons He has another one, never be untidy.
49:17
Speaker 1: Yeah good, Yeah, that makes sense. You know you you
49:19
Speaker 1: want to be respectable, you want to gain people's trust. Look,
49:22
Speaker 1: look nice. Finally, I'm gonna give listeners a chance to
49:25
Speaker 1: think about what you think the last the last commandment
49:29
Speaker 1: might be what you should do, what you shouldn't do?
49:32
Speaker 1: Are you thinking? Are you thinking, casey? Can we get
49:34
Speaker 1: a little bit of thinking music? And number ten is
49:52
Speaker 1: never get drunk. Never get drunk. That's it, never get drunk.
49:56
Speaker 1: And it makes sense because you will not be in
49:59
Speaker 1: full control of your faculties. You need to be a
50:01
Speaker 1: hundred percent engaged with the people you are trying to swindle. Yeah.
50:05
Speaker 1: I would probably guess though, that there's a subset to
50:08
Speaker 1: that rule. Maybe it's in one of the impendices or something.
50:11
Speaker 1: But never get drunk, but try to get the other
50:13
Speaker 1: person drunk. Maybe right, you apply them with a couple
50:16
Speaker 1: of Vodkas and drink water on your own, I don't know,
50:20
Speaker 1: or have a have a cocktail that is always just
50:23
Speaker 1: like halfway empty half people. Yeah, and I think those
50:28
Speaker 1: are those are pretty good and it's surprising how simplistic
50:31
Speaker 1: they are. I would argue that a lot of these
50:34
Speaker 1: rules aren't just applicable to trying to scam people. They're
50:39
Speaker 1: pretty good in most things in life, some of them.
50:41
Speaker 1: Some of them, well, I think be a patient listener,
50:45
Speaker 1: be engaged, and avoiding being messy and drunk. I think
50:51
Speaker 1: those four at least are just great advice. Well, I mean,
50:54
Speaker 1: so these are all great things to uh, you know,
50:56
Speaker 1: if you want to comport yourself as an empathetic, normal
51:00
Speaker 1: human being and if your goal is to make connections
51:02
Speaker 1: with other people, they're great. If your goal is to
51:04
Speaker 1: take advantage of people, get their money and do whatever
51:07
Speaker 1: you want with it. I guess they're also great too,
51:09
Speaker 1: and just blindly agreeing with someone's opinions about things that
51:12
Speaker 1: are very important to them. I totally agree with you, No,
51:17
Speaker 1: I do. No, I agree with you on everything. Then
51:21
Speaker 1: I agree with you on everything, Christopher. But despite our
51:26
Speaker 1: I guess reluctant admiration of Lustig's techniques, not everybody agreed
51:32
Speaker 1: with his methods, and law enforcement continued to hunt him. Now,
51:36
Speaker 1: after he was arrested by the Secret Service, he did
51:41
Speaker 1: manage to escape prison for a moment. I think not
51:44
Speaker 1: through some clever scheme. I think he just literally used
51:48
Speaker 1: bed sheets. Right. Well, so here's the thing. Yeah, so
51:51
Speaker 1: Lustig was arrested, he was all set to go to trial.
51:56
Speaker 1: The day before his trial, he faked an illness and
52:00
Speaker 1: so I think he got a few extra liberties he
52:02
Speaker 1: might not otherwise have. He was put in a less
52:04
Speaker 1: secure location, and I loved it it. I don't want
52:08
Speaker 1: to be the person who admires the criminal, you know.
52:10
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the guy who lifts up
52:13
Speaker 1: the person who's taking the money of everyone else. But
52:15
Speaker 1: this is pretty amazing. You gotta say. Listing the night
52:19
Speaker 1: before his trial, he takes a bedsheet, he ties it
52:22
Speaker 1: around the window. He breaks through the bars somehow he
52:24
Speaker 1: gets out. As he's hanging from the side of the prison,
52:28
Speaker 1: you know, and that the prison is in the city.
52:30
Speaker 1: There are some passers by who look up at him,
52:33
Speaker 1: and he takes out a rag from his pocket and
52:38
Speaker 1: he pretends to be washing the windows. That's I mean,
52:43
Speaker 1: that's so not only does he have this great planning,
52:45
Speaker 1: but he's got great improvisational skills too. It would be
52:48
Speaker 1: great to do improv with this guy. Yeah, and uh,
52:51
Speaker 1: so he pretends to be washing windows so people don't
52:53
Speaker 1: report him. He leaps down from his bed sheet, lands
52:57
Speaker 1: in front of some onlookers and passers by by hours,
53:00
Speaker 1: and then runs away into the night. Yes, and gets
53:05
Speaker 1: away for one month. He is captured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
53:10
Speaker 1: He's not able to talk his way out of these
53:12
Speaker 1: these charges. He eventually pleads guilty to some of the
53:15
Speaker 1: many things he is being hounded for. Yeah, and he
53:19
Speaker 1: he ends up all the way on the other side
53:20
Speaker 1: of the country. He's in uh in Alcatraz. That's where
53:24
Speaker 1: his final days are. Well, no, not his final days
53:27
Speaker 1: so he ends up in Alcatraz. He's there for a
53:29
Speaker 1: stretch of time, like twenty years, I think, yeah, And
53:31
Speaker 1: then he's transferred to another prison. I believe it was
53:34
Speaker 1: in Missouri. I could be wrong about that, and uh,
53:37
Speaker 1: and that's where he dies. He just dies of illness. Again.
53:41
Speaker 1: It's the sort of anti climactic end for an exciting
53:45
Speaker 1: life full of adventure and scam. But I mean, but
53:49
Speaker 1: that's that's how life is, right. It doesn't always tie
53:51
Speaker 1: up neatly in a bow. It's not a three act play.
53:54
Speaker 1: You know, you you die in prison. On his death certificate,
53:58
Speaker 1: do you know what it said his career was, I do?
54:00
Speaker 1: I do? It listed his occupation as apprentice salesman. So
54:07
Speaker 1: he yeah, he passes away of natural causes of pneumonia
54:11
Speaker 1: on March nine seven. As you said, Christopher in Springfield, Missouri.
54:17
Speaker 1: One of the most infamous apprentice salesman that ever apprenticed.
54:21
Speaker 1: And the thing is, though you know he he was
54:24
Speaker 1: so infamous, but his name was in the paper, like
54:26
Speaker 1: people knew this guy. But you can have this acclaimed
54:29
Speaker 1: life of infamy, of crime. And after he died, word
54:33
Speaker 1: didn't even get out for two more years because he
54:35
Speaker 1: was so forgotten. You know. I think his brother was
54:37
Speaker 1: quoted in the New York Times as confirming his death,
54:40
Speaker 1: But that wasn't until and that brother went by the
54:44
Speaker 1: name Emil Lustig. And let us remember that the guy's
54:49
Speaker 1: real name is Robert Miller. A lot of mysteries, a
54:52
Speaker 1: lot of mysteries, A lot of mysteries here, Christopher, and
54:54
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, you know, here in ridiculous history,
54:58
Speaker 1: we love the story of good con good heist, but
55:03
Speaker 1: we do want to be clear that we're not we're
55:05
Speaker 1: not endorsing this. Please don't start counterfeiting enough money to
55:10
Speaker 1: imbalance the global economy. And despite that, you know, this
55:15
Speaker 1: guy is clearly not a good person by any stretch, right,
55:19
Speaker 1: and perhaps is psychologically compelled to engage in these shenanigans.
55:25
Speaker 1: But even even with all that, even with all the
55:28
Speaker 1: horrible things he's done, I have this reluctant and sincere
55:33
Speaker 1: admiration for the guy's abilities. Well, I think no one
55:38
Speaker 1: you have admired people's cones right there there where, well
55:41
Speaker 1: wherewithal um. But I gotta say it's and and that's
55:45
Speaker 1: the thing, you know, I don't like to uh to
55:47
Speaker 1: gender something like this when you're talking about, but it
55:51
Speaker 1: it does tend to be men who who pull these scams. Um,
55:55
Speaker 1: But I would say in the future, you know, there
55:57
Speaker 1: are a lot of really cool females, m artists who
56:00
Speaker 1: could make for some interesting topics, some fake princesses. That's true. Oh,
56:05
Speaker 1: that's true. You're right, Christopher. And also I would advance
56:08
Speaker 1: if we're if we're having this discussion about cons and gender,
56:12
Speaker 1: I would advance that it is completely possible that we
56:15
Speaker 1: only know about more men because they are less skilled
56:17
Speaker 1: and more likely to be caught. Oh yeah, so there's
56:21
Speaker 1: there's this possibly that Well, in fact, it's it's because
56:24
Speaker 1: of one man. There's one man in specific who who
56:27
Speaker 1: gives this whole genre of criminal the name. So you know,
56:31
Speaker 1: do you do you know why it's called a con?
56:34
Speaker 1: Why is it called a colin Christopher, it's a condor
56:37
Speaker 1: short for confidence, And it goes back to this one
56:39
Speaker 1: guy in eighteen forty nine in New York City. William
56:43
Speaker 1: Thompson was his name, and he had a scam where
56:46
Speaker 1: he would butter people up with with golden words, with
56:50
Speaker 1: sweet speech, and he was able to build up other
56:54
Speaker 1: people's belief in himself so much that he said, I
56:57
Speaker 1: want you to, as a show of confidence in me,
57:01
Speaker 1: loan me your golden watch because you believe in me
57:04
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, because you believe in me so much,
57:08
Speaker 1: loan me your golden watch. I'll go away for I'll
57:11
Speaker 1: do whatever, and then i'll come back. You'll have your
57:13
Speaker 1: watch back. And this man stole hundreds of watches this way,
57:18
Speaker 1: so much so that he became known as the confidence Man.
57:22
Speaker 1: He was written about in in newspapers, in the Times,
57:26
Speaker 1: but he became its kind of like folk here, right,
57:28
Speaker 1: And that's I think that's the thing that captures people's imagination,
57:30
Speaker 1: especially here in the US, when there's what's perceived as
57:33
Speaker 1: a victimless crime. There's no bodily harm. People just use
57:37
Speaker 1: their use their wiles to steal money. So the confidence
57:42
Speaker 1: Man ends up in prison and he would give interviews
57:45
Speaker 1: to newspapers as the confidence Man, This William William Thompson,
57:49
Speaker 1: the confidence Man. And then that became a term for
57:52
Speaker 1: this scammer, for the grifter, the con man. That is
57:56
Speaker 1: that is such a wonderful story. I had not heard that. Also,
57:59
Speaker 1: that sounds like a terrible idea for a scam, but
58:02
Speaker 1: I guess it was a different time. I mean, there's yeah,
58:04
Speaker 1: sweet talking in the mid nineteenth century, it will get
58:08
Speaker 1: you far. I'm pictorate a trans atlantic voice as a
58:11
Speaker 1: mark of confidence. Give me all gold and watch i'ld rite.
58:14
Speaker 1: And presently I'm gonna decline to do this. No more access,
58:18
Speaker 1: no more access, Okay, all right, but I hope that
58:22
Speaker 1: you do not decline to join us again in the future.
58:25
Speaker 1: Christopher Hassi yotis wherein you and I and Casey and
58:30
Speaker 1: Nolan's spirit will be exploring a very very strange story
58:35
Speaker 1: about the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, if it's cool with you,
58:38
Speaker 1: and if it's cool with the ghost of Noel on
58:41
Speaker 1: the Cross Continental Divide, I'm gonna stick around this week.
58:45
Speaker 1: Is that cool? I for one would love it if
58:47
Speaker 1: you do. It's always a delight to have you on
58:49
Speaker 1: the show. And uh no big spoilers, but Noel may
58:53
Speaker 1: also make an appearance because he is, like me, a
58:56
Speaker 1: big Christopher Hassi yotis fan and like you too, Casey. Right, absolutely,
59:02
Speaker 1: and we hope that you have enjoyed this episode about
59:05
Speaker 1: one of the most legendary con artists who ever lived.
59:09
Speaker 1: What is your favorite story of a heist or a
59:12
Speaker 1: con Let us know You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
59:16
Speaker 1: and we'd especially love to invite you to our Facebook
59:19
Speaker 1: community page, Ridiculous Historians, where you can hang out with
59:23
Speaker 1: your fellow listeners and see some I don't know, some
59:27
Speaker 1: top notch historical jokes honestly, yeah, jokes a plenty, wise cracking, sarcasm.
59:36
Speaker 1: What else is on their clever thoughts Thoughts wordplay means
59:43
Speaker 1: you're on there. I don't know if it's a good thing,
59:46
Speaker 1: but do do check it out. As always, we want
59:50
Speaker 1: to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram. We'd like to
59:54
Speaker 1: thank my trustee co host Noel Brown. We'd like to
59:57
Speaker 1: thank Alex Williams, who composed our opening track, and Christopher
1:00:02
Speaker 1: will usually thank you on this show, but now I
1:00:04
Speaker 1: can say it tuned directly. Thanks for coming, all of
1:00:07
Speaker 1: you listening at home, at work, in the car, wherever
1:00:09
Speaker 1: you are. You can't see it, but but Ben and
1:00:11
Speaker 1: I are shaking hands quite vigorously right now. Hey, nice
1:00:14
Speaker 1: watch