November 6, 2018 • 60 mins
Born Robert Miller, the man who would later become known as Count Victor Lustig traveled across Europe and the US bilking hundreds of people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He had many, many scams, and posed as everything from an elite theatre producer to a stressed-out, down on his luck government official and more. Here's the thing: For most of his career, Victor was able to talk his way out of any arrests or convictions. Join Ben and special guest Christopher Hassiotis as they explore the Count's most ambitious, ridiculous scam -- selling the Eiffel tower (twice).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Ye, Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. It feels so
good to be back. We have a reunion of sorts.
(00:31):
You may have heard recently that Noel and I and
our good friend Matt Frederick were on the road with
our stuff they don't want you to know tour. But
we have finally returned, and we have not returned alone.
We are joined once again with our fantastic super producer,
Casey Pegrum, who came all the way back from France
(00:54):
to hang out with us on this show. Kay see
on the case, folks, and my trustee co host Noel
is on the road this week for a different project,
which I can't say too much about now other than
all will be revealed in time. And in the meantime,
(01:16):
we decided that it would be fantastic to have one
of our favorite how Stuff Works celebrities come on the
show this week. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome. Christopher
hasiotis back to Ridiculous History. Ben, thanks so much for
having me. I feel like I should just be sitting
here saying I'm no, but I'm not. No, I'm not.
(01:38):
I can grow my beard as much as I like,
but I still can't match up to the man, but
I'll do my best. He has he has spent a
lot of time on that beard, Christopher. But you know what,
just since this is an audio podcast, I just want
to describe you a little bit, if that's okay while
we're on here. I'm curious, okay, okay, So Christopher, you
have a great beard. Thank you. And I think you've
been uh you know, you've growing it out a little bit.
(02:01):
I see, Uh, yeah, I mean I've had it for
a while. It's it's been on my face for decades. Uh.
If you want to start talking beards. The very first
poem that I ever fully memorized was a poem about beards.
Oh do tell she Silverstein. My beard grows to my toes.
I never wears no clothes. I wraps my hair around
(02:21):
my bear and down the road I goes all these smokes. Okay,
I did not know. I did not know that we
would be uh, we would be privileged to sit in
on a little bit of a poetry recital. Tommy, you
didn't You didn't bring your oration today. You're not ready
to go. I have I have one that is completely
unrelated to today's episode. Uh, and it's a little bit body.
(02:46):
It is a poem by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway, of course,
famous famous writer Old Man in the Sea, The Sun
also rises, all these, all these works of prose. He
has a collected book of poetry which is varied in
terms of talent and in terms of quality. But he
(03:09):
has one poem It's very short that I suspect he
wrote after a drunken night in Paris or Spain, where
he says, I know monks master bate at night, and
pet cats screw and some girls bite, and yet what
can I do to set things right? That's the whole poll.
It's a good poem to have in your back pocket.
Came in handy here. But speaking of fantastic segways, we
(03:34):
mentioned Paris just a second ago. Are you about to
talk about a taking a segue tour of Paris? I
think in a way we in a way, we we
are a segue of the mind, Christopher, And I'm already
embarrassed for you. We took we we talked a little
bit off air about some interesting stories in the world
(03:58):
of ridiculous history. And longtime listeners, you know that Christopher
hasiotis aside from having previously appeared on our show to
introduce us to some very strange covers of Louis Louis.
Christopher Hasiotis has been our longtime research associate and we're
we're big fans of you, Christopher. You will also always
have the coolest stories and off air. You came to
(04:22):
Casey and Nolan I with a pretty neat story about Paris,
non segue related. Absolutely. I thought, you know, let's let's
combine a lot of ridiculous histories interest. Let's let's take
Casey's uh francophilia. Let's take your love of Um Khan men.
(04:43):
You know, people who who have these elaborate scams like
Gregor McGregor and uh and Noel who is not with
us in flash but is in spirit here always uh.
He's he's got a love for the the man with
with hutzpah with uh with um. You know that that
go get him attitude, right? So I thought we should
(05:06):
dive into this story about Paris, about the Eiffel Tower,
and about a specific con man who wraps all of
these things up into one weird, crazy, unbelievable yet totally
human and ridiculous story. Are you talking about Victor Lustig.
I am Victor Listig born Robert V. Miller. Oh, there's
(05:30):
already a plot twist, there is. Yeah, so, um, there's
this man, Robert V. Miller. And so we're we're going
back to the turn of the most recent century, back
to the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. Victor Lustig is uh, well,
we'll we'll call him Count Victor Listig, Count Listig, because
that's what he called himself. It's not the only thing
he called himself, though. This is a man who had
twenty two different aliases. He was a criminal mastermind. He
(05:54):
was a scam artist, he was a swindler, he was
a grifter. He was born Robert V. Miller in a
little town called Hostaan a Um and that is at
the time of his birth eight that was in the
country of Austro Hungary. Uh, now it's the Czech Republic.
So the town is sort of near the border of
the Czech Republic and Poland. And this was eighteen nineties
(06:17):
when Robert V. Miller was born. So he is born
I believe January fourth. His real name is Robert. I
was not aware that he would accrue so many a
k A s. But we know that from a young
age he was both highly intelligent and a troublemaker. That's true.
(06:40):
So Miller as he was known at the time, when
he was nineteen years old, not too much is known
about his life beforehand. But when he's in his late teens,
he moves to Paris, he gets involved in gambling, he's
kind of a roused about, gets involved in the CD
Underbelly of the World, which you know is one of
the charms of Paris, right, and so uh, he he
(07:02):
gets scarred by a lover's boyfriend at the age of nineteen,
gets cut across the face with a knife. He's sleeping
with someone, who's sleeping with someone, and this and that.
So he's already got this sort of disreputable air about him.
Things are tough for for young Miller, right, So he
decides he needs to make some money. And we're not
(07:22):
getting to his big scam just yet, but I want
to lay the groundwork for some of his his history
of just taking advantage of people for his own benefits.
So Robert Miller is looking to make a name for himself,
or maybe make twenty two names for himself, or keep
his name off the books altogether. But Basically, he's been
in in trouble with the authorities in a bunch of
different countries for scamming people, robberies, uh, swindles, the sort
(07:46):
of thing. So his first big attempt at a at
a big plot involves ocean liners. He hops on an
ocean liner that's going from the Atlantic ports in France
to New York and back. And so basically like he
rides back and forth, back and forth, back and forth
between France and New York, pretending to be a Broadway producer. Yeah,
(08:08):
and this this is when he's only uh, he's he's
still in his teens or twenties. So we're talking right around, uh,
the time, right before World War One. So he's on
board literally saying, I'm I'm a Broadway producer. I have
all this money, but I need more to put on
a great, big show. And that's when he first adopts
the name Victor Listig. Victor Listig gives him the sense
(08:29):
of grandeur so much so that he starts calling himself
Count Victor Listig. And he meets all these other well,
they're not other rich people, they're the rich people. He's
the person trying to get their money. He meets these
people on board the ship, says, I'm putting together a
Broadway show. It's gonna be the best, it's going to
be the most beautiful, it's going to be the most
fantastic Broadway show ever put on. But I need some investors,
(08:51):
So are you on board? Will you give me some money?
And basically he he just sells them this whole fantasy
and he gets all this money, and uh goes back
and forth and back and forth and scams people out
of out of money for a show that doesn't exist.
It's it reminds me a little bit of I don't
know if you know this film The Producers by mel
Brooks that's nineteen sixties sixties seven. I think about Gene
(09:15):
Wilder and Zero Mostel pretend to be producers of a
Broadway show to raise money. They basically figure out if
you put on a failure of a show, you'll make
more money if if the whole thing loses. I don't
know that mel Brooks was inspired by the story of
Victor Listig wouldn't be surprised. And we should also mention
one of the big questions about this early scam, how
(09:37):
did he manage to do this? Successfully multiple times without
getting caught. I advanced to you that his fluency multiple
languages helped because I'm sure that sometimes the people he
was conning were entirely French speakers, and then sometimes they
might have been entirely German speakers. Yeah, and Listig spoke
(09:57):
five languages at least that we know of. So the
ability to switch back and forth between languages with fluency,
it puts forth this idea of confidence, of power, of authority,
and uh, you know, if you can, if you can
take on a cute accent, maybe, uh, that can sometimes
inspire feelings of of warmth, depending on who you're talking to. So, yeah,
(10:21):
as he's going back and forth across the Atlantic, he's
talking to all these people, just scamming them left and
right in various languages. But this didn't go on forever, correct,
because you said you said you was active at this
time directly before World War One, Right, So the First
World War kind of interrupts a lot of this transatlantic rigamarole,
(10:43):
and he finds himself in trouble in the US and
comes back to France on a more permanent basis in
and that's when we arrive at the main topic of
our story today, and um, I think it's I think
it's a good one. It's weird. It's the sort of
thing you would think could never happen today because of
the prevalence of information, the willingness of people to believe,
(11:06):
the skepticism. But I don't know. I think what the
shows and and we're about to get to it. But
it shows that people are always willing to believe what
will benefit them. Yes, yes, I do want to do
one brief sidetrack while we're on the way to France.
Let's do it. Okay. So Lustig also had some American
(11:27):
adventures during Prohibition. He went to Missouri. That's right. Yeah,
he went to Missouri and he used another alias, Robert
duval I like it, and he used he used this
alias to try to run a ranch. So essentially, he
(11:47):
offered this bank twenty two thous dollars in liberty bonds
and convinced them to exchange an additional ten thousand dollars
of the bonds for cash. They said yes. The money's
placed in two identical envelopes and he uses some like
stage magic, some sleight of hand to switch the envelopes,
make off of the bonds and the cash. He gets
(12:08):
arrested in Kansas City, but he manages to talk his
way out of the indictment. And that's the thing I
find so so so crazy. I mean, it's the sort
of thing you think you would never be able to
talk to a bank and walk away with both the
notes and the cash and everything, and then talk a
way out of court. Yeah, it's crazy. How how endearing
do you have to be? It's like some sort of crazy,
(12:31):
huge version of the you know, the twenty dollar change game,
where you I won't go into the details, but you
can go up to a cashier and you start quick
talking and asking them to make change for one thing
after you have a legitimate transaction. Then you get some change,
and you change some ones for a ten, and then
you switch things around a little bit, and all of
a sudden, you've doubled your money and you also got
(12:51):
whatever you bought. And here in Atlanta, just decide. Note, folks,
we do refer to that as the hasciotas do we?
We do know. I'm sorry that you had about that
on air, but that's that. The American Adventure is primarily
important because it shows how well he was able to
handle getting caught because almost anybody else would have gone
(13:15):
to jail. That is bank robbery, and it is fraud.
But Victor has at this point accumulated quite a range
of skills, quite a range of aliases. And as you said, Christopher,
in May, he goes back to Paris. He has had
a close call in Kansas City. He thinks, you know,
(13:35):
maybe things are getting a little too hot on this
side of the Atlantic. So so what happens when he
returns to France. Well, let me ask you, when when
you think of Paris, what do you think of when
I think of Paris? Well, this is this is a
weird story. I don't know if I ever told you
I was homeless in Paris for a week? Who wasn't?
Who was it at? Yeah? I think of wonderful music.
(13:59):
I think of street side cafes. I think of obviously,
I think of you, Casey, and I think of the
Eiffel Tower. I think that's one of the number one
things that people think of when they think of Paris. Yeah,
who doesn't. And and uh, you are not, unlike Victor, realistic,
at least in this one way, because he thought of
the Eiffel Tower as well. You want to go back
(14:20):
into a little bit of Eiffel Tower history for for
people who may not be familiar with it. I think
that's a great idea, man. Okay, so we all know
what the Eiffel Tower looks like. It's a huge iron
lattice tower. But how did it get there? Yeah? I
mean so, basically, the Eiffel Tower was constructed over four
or five year period in the late eighteen eighties, was
(14:40):
put in place for the eighteen eighty nine World's Fair.
It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant
to just go up for twenty years, kind of act
as this big attraction and then come down. But Parisians
loved it so much, and other people coming to Paris
loved it so much there was an argument made that
it should stand as an icon for the city. It
was also used as a really tower for telegraphs, so
it kind of came in handy too. Okay. But that
(15:03):
that sense of impermanence around the tower actually plays into
why Victor Listig thought of the Eiffel Tower and how
it became involved in his next scam. Oh that's right,
because he was I believe when he arrived in France
he was reading a newspaper about how the Eiffel Tower
was in poor condition and it needed some repairs, and
(15:24):
not everyone loved it. Some people in the city saw
it as I think the quote I read was an
expensive nuisance. Yeah, exactly. You can go either way, you know.
I mean. The thing about the Eiffel Tower is it
completely dominates the landscape. It stands out from all the
architecture in Paris. It's almost eighties stories tall, the or
the equivalent of eighty stories. It's like three twenty something meters.
(15:46):
It's almost a thousand feet tall, if not higher. And
most of the buildings around there are you know, three
four stories tall at the max um not not iron work.
So some people say it's an I saw. Some people
say it's magnificent either way. By when he returns to
Paris with I should add I uh looked up the
(16:08):
exact number. He already had forty arrests under his belt
by this time, so he was thirty five years old,
so more than one arrest for a year of his life.
And that's like two or three arrests for every year
of his adult life. That that is a baffling statistic.
Thank you for for putting it so succinctly. I guess
(16:29):
he wasn't that great then if he was continually getting arrested.
But I have a proposition for you, Christopher. I propose
that we call in one of our favorite segments to
learn a little bit about France. Let's do it all, right, Hey, Casey,
hey Ben, how's it going doing doing pretty well? As
(16:51):
we said at the top, you have returned from your
double life France, and we wanted to ask you a
little bit about how French people see the Eiffel Tower today.
That's an interesting topic, you know, it is. It is
very touristy. It is very much like even even me
having been there I think eight times in as many
(17:12):
years um. This past trip where I was there for
two weeks, I did not go visit the Eiffel Tower.
I didn't hang out on the Shampa Mars. I didn't,
you know, go to the Trocadero. I didn't really have
much uh involvement with the Eiffel Tower in general, other
than I could see it from the balcony of my airbnb.
So you know, as you guys were mentioning, the height
(17:34):
of the buildings in Paris is something that is kind
of strictly regulated, and it does ensure that the architecture
remains fairly uniform, that certain buildings like the Eiffel Tower,
or like the Tour Mont parnass or like the Arct
de Triomph, etcetera, remain visible through large parts of the city,
(17:55):
and it's kind of you know, you're you're always catching
glimpses of the Eiffel Tower throughout your day, which is
really really nice, and Casey correct me if I'm wrong,
But that's that's partially due to preference and tradition, but
also the just the simple geography and makeup of the
land in Paris itself. Like you've got these big sort
of modern looking business towers over in La de France.
(18:16):
But yes, everything else, you know, the French have not
had this tradition of tearing down old buildings. And it's
located on somewhat wet ground near the same river, so
you can't build sixties story skyscrapers. Yeah, which you know
is a is a very happy accident, I think, because
Paris does have a very consistent architectural style, although it
(18:37):
has been transformed quite a bit within the last maybe
couple hundred years. UM Houseman in the nineteenth century, demolished
a lot of the old Paris and created a lot
of the grand boulevards that we know today, which were
useful for instance, uh, moving large numbers of troops in
and out of the city, that kind of thing. But
(18:58):
he had he had a very very strict requirement in
terms of keeping the style very consistent, keeping things very
close to the curb, always having shops on the ground
floor and then living space in the floors above that.
That gives the city a very coherent, cohesive feel, as
well as buildings not terminating in a sharp corner but
(19:21):
instead kind of in a flat, outward facing corner. That
essentially keeps the buildings again feeling more open and inviting
and just keeping the street life very virant and alive.
I have a question for you, casey okay, what do
you have an alias when you're in France? No, um
other than kase you know that that would be it's
(19:43):
just kind of the frenchified monsieur monsieur case All right,
Well that has been cause on the case east wildly
d Q Yeah, perfect, perfect. So this gives us a
(20:04):
sense of just how iconic the building is today and
back in Lustig's time, right right, and we're talking, you know,
ish um, we're back in the seventh Arondissement. And again
this this structure was meant to last about twenty years,
so it was built in eighteen eighty nine. The plan
(20:26):
was initially let's take it down around nine or so,
oh no nine. Yeah, so it's already almost doubled its
lifetime and it's getting expensive. The city is complaining, saying
we don't have the money for the upkeep. It's just
really a pain in the French. But this, this is
(20:46):
where Lustig sees an opportunity and he says, you know what,
I bet that I could just forge some credentials and
appoint myself to a position in the local government. Yeah. Well,
he actually hires a forger. I mean, this is It's
the thing about Listig is he always thought out his
(21:09):
scams to the nth degree. This wasn't just some sort
of fly by night operation. And he hires a forger.
He comes up with these credentials and he presents himself
as a the deputy director general of this or that.
I think it's something like the Postal Service, the Ministry
of Post and Telegraphs exactly. So He takes advantage of
(21:31):
the news that the city is unhappy with the structure.
The Eiffel Tower itself weighs more than ten thousand tons.
He approaches scrap metal dealers in Paris, the five most prestigious,
the five with the biggest operation, and he says, Mr
scrap metal dealer, my name is Victor Listig. I'm the
(21:51):
Deputy director General. We want to sell you the Eiffel Tower.
We want to scrap the Eiffel Tower. We want to
set you seven thousand tons of it. However, let's meet
at this hotel in secret, because we can't let work
get out about this. So Listig in fights five different
representatives of scrap metal dealerships to this hotel and asks
(22:15):
them to bid to fight amongst themselves to offer the
most money for seven thousand tons of metal, claiming that
the Eiffel Tower is going to be scrapped, and how
how did it work out well for whom? Ben for
whom it worked out really well for Victor Listig. So
he's got these five guys in the hotel. He says,
all right, guys, you've got to keep this deal quiet
(22:37):
because the government doesn't want word to get out so
I want you to think about it, see what you
can do with a seven thousand tons of scrap metal,
and come back to me with an offer. But before
the meeting was over, he had identified who he wanted
to award the bid to his mark. Exactly. It was
a guy named Andre Poissan, and Listig identified Poissan as
(22:59):
kind of an up and summer. He was one of
the least successful of the group, and he had low
self esteem. Exactly. Yeah, So list I thought this guy
is gonna be really desperate to secure this bid. He
thought Poissant would really want to make a name for
himself with this deal and secure his place in the
business world because he felt intimidated by all these other
(23:19):
scrap metal dealers who are relatively well established. There's this
is where we see some of the art of the
con or the craft of psychological manipulation come into play.
Because I believe what happens is after that meeting with
the five people, where he's buttering them up, and he
where he identifies Andrea's his mark. He meets with Andre
(23:39):
the next day and Andrea says, you know, I slept
on it. I'm having a couple of doubts. I don't
know if this is the best thing, because this is
a huge project, this is a lot of money, and
Lustig gives him a very compelling empathy, building absolutely fake
story about you know, hey, just between you and me, Like,
(24:01):
I get it. You're an up and comer. I'm a
government employee. I don't get paid that much. Times are
tough all around, and I really you know, Andrea, you
get it. You and I are kind of similar. So
how about this, I will guarantee you the contract just
between us. Forget about those other four guys. If you
can give me just a little, you know, give me
(24:21):
a big give me a little bit of something on
the side, grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Yeah. So Listing
is genius in adding layer upon layer of this scam.
He builds confidence not just by putting forth this story,
but by roping Andrea poissan In on that that they're
in this together, you know. So, and it goes through,
(24:42):
It goes through. So not only does Andrea Possan give
Listig the money for for the Eiffel Tower, he also
bribes him to do it right. Yes, so he's he's
paying the bribe plus the deal the price that they
agree on and what happened his next So then Listick says,
(25:02):
I've got all this money and I'm splitting town. He
goes back to Austria and uh, he just hangs out.
He takes up with someone someone else. The details on
this or a little sketchy. I couldn't really find out
um in my research who it was, but reports said
that he swindled someone else to let him stay with them.
And while he's hanging out in Austria with all this money,
(25:23):
he keeps his eye on the French newspapers just to
see if he's been discovered, because he's betting on the
fact that that Andre would be so ashamed that he
wouldn't report the theft, right right, And we do know
a little bit of what happens to the unfortunate Andrea here.
After loose date skips town, Andre, who is out a
(25:45):
significant sum of money, goes to the government officials to
follow up on the deal, at which point they say,
what who are you talking about? You know, maybe they
were empathetic and said, I'm very sorry this happened to you,
but can you imagine that just the utter shame and
embarrassment there, That's that's what Victor. Would he played this
(26:06):
guy like a cello? You know? Yeah? And that's when
I like the shame is such a powerful, powerful emotion
when you're trying to get someone else to do what
you want. Yes, And so I've heard, I've heard, I
don't know from Oh you're a dangerous man. What's your
real name? After you know, during this episode, I am
now suspecting everybody of having a different alias, at least
(26:29):
one or two. Right, I have a couple. I have
a couple. I had to retire. One had to retire,
Chris from Boston because one day in Atlanta, someone who
knew me as Chris from Boston found me and luckily
I was with some good friends of mine who helped
me out and backed me up when I went back
to the table at the restaurant we're at and it
(26:50):
was like, guys, look, there might be someone here who
thinks my name is Chris. So let's just go along
with that, and if you do, the next round of
drinks is on me. So so if you're listening to this,
I hope you're having I hope you're having a great time.
Chris from Boston never did any shady criminal acts, though
(27:12):
Christ from Boston is not a con man, It's just
not in his character. But Lustig is an inveterate con
then an irredeemable con artist, and he clearly doesn't feel
too broken up about causing such a financial disaster. No, no,
not at all. He doesn't feel broken up. He feels emboldened.
(27:32):
In fact, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower for
scrap metal goes back to France, goes right back to
Paris and sells it a second time. Right, yeah, this
is crazy. The same thing. He goes and does it again. Uh,
I will say this time not quite so successfully, right,
(27:53):
because he he was correct in his gamble, in his
original assumption that the story would not be widely reported,
and if the news had made it to the papers,
we can say that he would not have attempted this
a second time. I don't think so. I mean, the
guy is clever, he's he may have been arrested forty times,
but he's also gotten away at least that many, right,
(28:17):
So he he doesn't even wait that long, you know,
He just I guess, waits until he runs out of cash, yeah,
and just needs some more and says, well, let me
go sell the Eiffel Tower again. Uh. But he so
he goes back to Paris. He gets five more guys together,
pitches them the idea says, I, you want to buy this.
See this big hunk a junk over here. Uh you
(28:37):
want to you want to buy it because you need
the scrap metal. Uh. This time, however, there's someone who's
suspicious of of the deal, and they go to the
police right away and um, and Victor Lestig does not succeed,
but he does succeed in in skipping town once again. Yes,
and this time he goes to the United States. He
(28:58):
goes back. I guess the heat from Kansas City is dissipated. Well,
the U s is a big place, right, you know,
there's a lot of places you can go. The myth
of the American West and other parts of America is
that you can reinvent yourself, especially in this pre internet,
pre telephone day. You can just present yourself as someone new.
You can present yourself as someone successful, as a count,
(29:20):
as a as a salesman of mystery boxes. Ah, yes,
Romanian box, Romanian boxes, yeah, after them. You know, relative success.
The first time around of the sale of the Eiffel
Tower and the lack of success. The second time list,
it goes to the US and he finds himself in Texas.
(29:41):
He sells something called a Romanian box. Are you m
a in I A N? I sure am sorry? So yeah?
So so what is the Romanian box? I am so
glad you asked Christopher. Essentially is a money box. That's
(30:02):
how he would present it. The Count, because he's Count
lu Stick again, would whine and dine and befriend Americans.
And then when people would say, hey, you know, you're
an interesting guy. What what is it that you do, Count?
What what's your line of work? What's your line of business?
And essentially, in a polite way, they were trying to ask,
(30:23):
how are you so wealthy? And then with the utmost secrecy,
with a just between us and the lamp post kind
of confidence, the Count would pull out this box. It's
literal box, and it's a money box that looks fantastic.
It's built out of mahogany. It's about the size of
(30:43):
a steamer trunk. And he would say, let me show
you how this works. And the Mark would hand him
a bill, usually asked for a hundred dollar bill, and
then he would put the bill into the machine, wait
a few hours is for quote unquote chemical processing. And
then when the people came back they went and get dinner,
(31:05):
lunch or something. Two bills would be there to bills,
and so Lustig would say that this box pays for itself.
What it really is is a fake contraption. Yeah, there's
there's no way you can have a It's basically a counterfeit,
counterfeiting machine. Right, So he's telling people, I have this
(31:28):
thing that can make fake money for you, that can
duplicate your dollar, double your money in six hours or less.
And it doesn't even work. It's a scam of a scam.
It's a scale double scam. Yeah, which you know a
lot of cons work that way because they prey on um, ambition,
greed insecurity, you know what I mean. Well, and that's
the sort of thing. So even if he were caught,
(31:50):
even if someone confronted him and said, hey man, this
money box you sold me doesn't work as as you
as you said it would, they're not going to go
to the police because then it would be admitting two
attempting to counterfeit. Yeah. And here's here's the thing. This
is the beautiful part of this Lou Stick's friends will
see this and they'll say, oh man, they're convinced, you know,
(32:13):
because he's been so reluctant and secretive about it. They say,
will you sell this to me? You name your price, anything,
And the count is very reluctant. It's been in my
family for a while. It's I don't know. I mean,
I like you, but this is a big decision for me.
And then after cajoling and raising the price sky high,
(32:36):
Lustig would eventually agree to sell it, sometimes for up
to thirty thousand dollars. You can read a pretty good
description of some of these adventures in various articles in
the Smithsonian who They seem to have a fascination with
loose Stick. But after he sold it, here's the thing,
he didn't skip down right away. They did some more
(32:56):
demonstrations so you can show them how it worked. There
are still is hidden in the machine, obviously. Yeah, well,
there are a variety of bills hidden in the machine.
And so Lustig again, it's it's his mastery of manipulation.
There were different kinds of money hidden in the machine,
and he would use his power of persuasion to convince
the person giving him the money to give him the
right kind of money that he could then slip out
(33:17):
a duplicate of. But the last time that Lusti sells
the Romanian mystery box, Uh, it's not even called a
mystery I'm just calling it a mystery box, the Romanian box.
It's in Texas, and his purchaser is a sheriff, right,
and the sheriff does not take being built. No, he's
out thousands of dollars. So in the past Lustig had
(33:39):
scammed people, left town and was generally kind of off
Scott Free, Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Chicago. But this sheriff follows
Lustig across the country. He tracks him down finally in
I Believe in Chicago, and again this is it's about
to be listed gets away with it one more time
(34:00):
because the sheriff confronts Listick. He says, Man, you rip
me off. This thing is a hoax. It does not
make money. I need my tens of thousands of dollars
back or I don't know what I'm gonna do, to
which Lustig replies, Oh, that's so terrible that that happened.
Are you sure you were working the box correctly? Oh? Man,
(34:22):
and it works. He he convinces the sheriff, that the
sheriff was the one not operating the contraption properly. He
even as a show of good faith, gives him some
of the money back to say, hey, look, I'm promised,
I'm not scamming you. Here, take a take a portion
of the money back as good faith. Go back to Texas.
(34:43):
Take the box with you, figure out how to work
it on your own. You must be the one making
a mistake. And he continues because look, in addition to
oys getting away with things, Lustig never learns his lesson,
and he starts messing with some very dangerous characters. Sometime
before this is a speculative story, an alleged story, we
(35:07):
don't we don't have a lot of primary sources on this.
But sometime before the story is that he even attempted
to pull a scam on al Capone in Chicago. Did
you hear about that? I did? And it's it's uh.
So he had been in Chicago for a while, he
had kind of built up his name. He was getting
into the deep counterfeiting business, so not just this sort
of confidence scam, but legitimate counterfeiting of cash. And so
(35:31):
he's kind of operating in the same circles as Capone.
He knows of Capone, Compone doesn't quite know of him.
But Listig wants to gain his confidence. Right, So the
story is this Lustig convinced, and he's still the count loose.
Do you think he's talking with an accent? Of course
he has to, man, it would be such a missed opportunity.
(35:52):
If you are going to put a fake aristocratic title
in front of your name, then you must have an accent. Yeah,
that's true, because that's if he wants. If he wants
to appear to be um, a wealthy, mysterious European of
noble blood, then he has to conform to the American
stereotype of that, which requires an accent. I think probably
(36:15):
if you put on that that accent, then you you
give yourself the benefit of pretending there are things you
don't understand. You know that that you don't quite understand
the intricacies of American English. So maybe if someone thinks
you insulted them, you could just say, I don't know,
I'm s yes, i I'm not understand. He's how you'll
say a scam exactly. Look, we are choosing to imagine
(36:41):
that he has an accent, and uh, I would like
to I'd like to hear everyone's guess as to what
sort of accent he had. I thought yours was really good. Christopher. Also,
you have traveled the world and heard many accents, so
I will defer to your speculation here. Anyway, point being lustick,
goes to Cappone. The Count goes to Capone and convinces
(37:02):
him that if al Capone gives him fifty thou dollars,
he will double the money for Capone in sixty days
with his newest adventures, newest discovery. And he knew that
Capone was a very, very dangerous man, so once he
got the money, he just let it sit in a bank.
He didn't touch it. He let us sit in a
(37:24):
bank for fifty nine days. On the fifty ninth day,
he comes back to out Cappone himself and says, look,
Mr Capone, the deal fell through. I'm very sorry, but
I feel so bad about this because I made you
a sincere promise, and I feel so bad about this
that I will repay the money and lost. And that's
(37:44):
not the only thing. He says to capon Right again,
this is it's about gaining confidence, it's about bringing people
over to your side. So not only is he involving
Capone from the get go in this complicity in the
scam that he was planning to do. The thing is
there was never a scam planned, right, Listig just wanted
to get Capone on his side. So he says, hey,
(38:05):
give me fifty grand, which fifty grands a lot of
money today. Back then way more money. Yes, we have
our handy dandy inflation calculator. Around that period of time,
fifty thousand dollars in today's money would be equal to
around nine hundred and forty thousand dollars. That's amazing. Can
(38:29):
you imagine going to someone and saying, hey, if you
could just let me borrow a million dollars too much?
Just two months? Just two months, I will give you.
I'll let me double your money. And UH and Capone.
I don't know why if it was this guy's UH
is wherewithal? But but he said yeah, but Listig did
nothing with it, and he he planned to do nothing
with it. So he went back. He said, I'm really
(38:50):
sorry it didn't work out, but here's your money back,
all of it, because I I lost everything. I will
pay you back out of my own pocket. Yeah, I
I don't have I've lost my clothes, I've lost my house.
But I'm an honest guy. Yeah, and this works like
a charm. According to the story, Capone is so impressed,
(39:11):
and he's like, hey, this guy's gotta he's got some integrity,
you know what I mean, like a you know, he's
got a little bit of spine, he's got a lot
of gold. Tell you what you don't you don't have
to pay me back all the money. You seem like
an honest fellow. And because Capone is so built, he
only accepts a certain amount. He doesn't accept the full
(39:31):
fifty grand back. Right, It's like he The reports vary,
but we know that Capone left him with some extrac
at least five thousand dollars, So that that's the whole scame.
So Listing borrowed almost in today's money, a million dollars
from al Capone, did nothing with it, gave it back
to pretend to be honest, gained his confidence, gained his trust,
(39:54):
gained a reputation as a good guy in al Capone's eyes,
and then also got almost a hundred thousand dollars just
just for hey, you know which is it's brilliant, it's effective.
But I think this sort of success leads to loose
Stig's ultimate downfall. You know, I think some criminals have
(40:18):
the idea that they'll get to a certain point and
then they're they're out, you know, they quit the life,
one last con. Yeah, for Lostig, the con was the life.
There was no end to this, and so he was
actually pursued at this point. You know, he's deep in
the counterfeiting game. Like we mentioned earlier, he's being pursued
by a Secret Service agent, Peter Rubino. And this is
(40:39):
back when the secrets you know. Today, I think a
lot of people think of a Secret Service in its
most prominent role in the public eye now is protecting
the life of the President of the United States and all,
you know, the the people around that office. But its
origins are in fighting counterfeiting. Yeah, absolutely, its origins are
fighting counterfeiting. In the him is that Loostig was just
(41:02):
becoming too prominent. He teamed up with a Nebraska chemist,
a guy named Tom Shaw, and they created like a
soup to nuts counterfeiting operation plates, paper ink everything. Yeah,
they were. They were so good that the Secret Service
identified them as the best counterfeiters in the country that
(41:23):
they called these bills that they were turning out the
Shawl Stig notes. Yeah, yeah, and this Loo Stig money
was showing up everywhere from New Orleans to Chicago. And
there's a question about whether the Secret Service would have
actually caught him because he was aware it was like
in today's money, it's it was like one point four
(41:45):
million dollars fake cash in the country. So it was
altering to a degree the economy. Yeah, there was a
fear that it would imbalance world world faith in the
American dollar because there was so much fake U S
money out there right right, And he would have this
is our Scooby Doo moment. He would have gotten away
(42:07):
with it too, if it wasn't for his girlfriend. Well, yeah,
it goes back, right, like that's that's how this thing started.
So he got he got cut across the face when
he was a teenager because he was having a romance
with someone else's romance. And you know, now we're now
we're in the thirties and the same thing happened again, right,
because he was having an affair with his friend's mistress.
(42:29):
Is that right, I believe so? Right, So he so
he had a lady friend who was not an official
wife or anything like that, and then his friend, who
was married, had a romantic entanglement on the side that
Lustig was then involved with that woman, and then the
woman he was seeing got mad and called the cops. Yeah,
(42:50):
it turned him in, And so with her assistance, the
Secret Service is able to catch Lustig in in a
pretty anti clament actic way. I think he's just walking
down Broadway on the Upper West Side in New York
and the Secret Service comes up and apprehends him, and
even they can't help but admire him a little bit.
(43:11):
One Secret Service agent is observing the fact that Lustig
is cool as a cucumber. He's dressed very nicely, dressed
to the nines, he has a suitcase of very nice clothes,
and the Secret Service guy has to kind of just
reluctantly shake his head and go, you're the smoothest con
man that ever lived, to which Lustig was probably like
a uh self deprecating shrug and a thank you, because
(43:35):
that's how he talked to people. Oh, do you want
to do his commandments? Yeah, well, I thought this would
be the perfect time before we get to to Lustig's
final fate you know, because you did bring this up.
Um okay, spoiler alert. Lustig goes to prison at some
point in his life, right right, But while in prison
for his most ultimate stint, he decides to write the
(43:56):
ten rules of a of a good con Right. There's
ten commandments and um, yeah, and they refer to just
what you said that he was the coolest cucumber out there.
You want to go through them? Yeah, let's do it.
So the set of instructions known as the Ten Commandments
for conment and and for those of you out there listening,
these are not legal advice. Yes, this is not legal
(44:19):
advice from Casey Christopher Nolan myself. These are observations. But
you know, I think they're pretty good. Why don't we
just why don't we round robin and will alternate? How
about that? Yeah? And let me if you let me
know if you agree with these. Yeah. Yeah, First, be
a patient listener. It is this not fast talking that
(44:39):
gets the con man his cups. You know, if if
you listen, you let the other person open up to you.
There's that innate sense of connection between two people and uh,
and that you immediately formed this bond and All you
have to do is listen, be compassionate, nod your head,
look him in the eye. I think it works. Number
two never look bored. Would she is huge And this
(45:01):
is this is from the time before everybody had a
smartphone sitting around. You know. The idea is to be
actively engaged with people. That means the eye contact. That
probably means a little bit of mirroring their physicality, right,
and you would be you'd be surprised how much it works.
(45:22):
I agree with that one. The third one is the
third one is wait for the other person to reveal
any political opinions and then agree with them. It's great.
I like it, which is which is kind of a
spycraft thing too. Yeah, it's the sort of politics. It's
gone back and forth. And this episode is appearing in
(45:42):
your your subscription feed on election day here in the
United States for the midterm elections. So maybe you've recognized
this in your personal life. If you go out and
you talk to someone, if you find that politically you
guys kind of jibe. There's that again, it's an immediate connection,
exactly exactly. And then he has a another observation about
(46:03):
how to react to people's opinions, let the other person
reveal religious views, then have the same views. I feel
like I've done this on dates. Well, I mean this
is what like, it's it's your yes ending an improv right,
you're just building off the other person. You build a
story together, and then you're in that existence together. And
(46:23):
here's this one I think is a little bit more
of a gambit. This next one it is hint at
sex talk speaking of dates, but don't follow it up
unless the other person shows a strong interest. Yeah. Again,
I think it's the sort of thing where you can
talk around an issue and you take your cues from
the other person. So you bring up you know, you
(46:44):
could say, oh, yeah, last weekend, I was in Cleveland,
and let me tell you the girls there are something else.
And then if the other person seems intrigued, you know,
kind of what wavelength they're on, If they seem a
little like, uh, that's not really the kind of thing
I talk about, then you might follow up with and
I'm glad I didn't go out with them, because boy,
(47:04):
that is not my scene. You know. Yeah, yeah, you're
you're building that rapport. I just feel like that takes
another level of skill to find the right hint, because
all of these are about attempting to create rapport, and
we should say, I mean this is where the twenties,
the thirties pretty much he's only dealing with man. So
(47:25):
this is this is there's that kind of like boys
room locker room talk, uh, sort of sort of atmosphere,
And how are you going to build confidence with other
people who you want to scam? In the next five
commandments are things that lu Stick believes you should never do.
Correct number six, Never discuss illness unless some special concern
(47:46):
is shown. So what do you what do you think
that means? I think I think it's probably a time
when private lives are a little more private. I also
think there's a sense that, um, you know, illnesses it
was a much more mysteriou thing eight years ago, could
show weakness perhaps. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too, because
at this time, you know, disabilities were still largely vilified,
(48:09):
and an illness could make you undesirable, it might be contagious,
as you said, it might make you weak. Uh. He
also said, to your point about private lives, never pry
into a person's personal circumstances. Parentheses, They'll tell you all eventually. Yeah. Again,
it's it's letting your mark open up to you, right,
following the lead um and after that again number eight,
(48:33):
never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious. This
is crucial most of the time. If you see someone
who has great influence or power or importance, they're not
going around spouting their accolades. They don't have to. If
that's the difference between you know, old money and new money, right, yes,
(48:54):
that's what people say, right. Old money will be much
more subtle, right, and new money is like what else
can we put gold on? So this this one, I
think never boasting. I think this remains incredibly important today,
not just in cons He has another one, never be untidy.
(49:17):
Yeah good, Yeah, that makes sense. You know you you
want to be respectable, you want to gain people's trust. Look,
look nice. Finally, I'm gonna give listeners a chance to
think about what you think the last the last commandment
might be what you should do, what you shouldn't do?
Are you thinking? Are you thinking, casey? Can we get
a little bit of thinking music? And number ten is
(49:52):
never get drunk. Never get drunk. That's it, never get drunk.
And it makes sense because you will not be in
full control of your faculties. You need to be a
hundred percent engaged with the people you are trying to swindle. Yeah.
I would probably guess though, that there's a subset to
that rule. Maybe it's in one of the impendices or something.
But never get drunk, but try to get the other
(50:13):
person drunk. Maybe right, you apply them with a couple
of Vodkas and drink water on your own, I don't know,
or have a have a cocktail that is always just
like halfway empty half people. Yeah, and I think those
are those are pretty good and it's surprising how simplistic
they are. I would argue that a lot of these
(50:34):
rules aren't just applicable to trying to scam people. They're
pretty good in most things in life, some of them.
Some of them, well, I think be a patient listener,
be engaged, and avoiding being messy and drunk. I think
those four at least are just great advice. Well, I mean,
so these are all great things to uh, you know,
(50:56):
if you want to comport yourself as an empathetic, normal
human being and if your goal is to make connections
with other people, they're great. If your goal is to
take advantage of people, get their money and do whatever
you want with it. I guess they're also great too,
and just blindly agreeing with someone's opinions about things that
are very important to them. I totally agree with you, No,
(51:17):
I do. No, I agree with you on everything. Then
I agree with you on everything, Christopher. But despite our
I guess reluctant admiration of Lustig's techniques, not everybody agreed
with his methods, and law enforcement continued to hunt him. Now,
after he was arrested by the Secret Service, he did
(51:41):
manage to escape prison for a moment. I think not
through some clever scheme. I think he just literally used
bed sheets. Right. Well, so here's the thing. Yeah, so
Lustig was arrested, he was all set to go to trial.
The day before his trial, he faked an illness and
so I think he got a few extra liberties he
(52:02):
might not otherwise have. He was put in a less
secure location, and I loved it it. I don't want
to be the person who admires the criminal, you know.
I don't want to be the guy who lifts up
the person who's taking the money of everyone else. But
this is pretty amazing. You gotta say. Listing the night
before his trial, he takes a bedsheet, he ties it
around the window. He breaks through the bars somehow he
(52:24):
gets out. As he's hanging from the side of the prison,
you know, and that the prison is in the city.
There are some passers by who look up at him,
and he takes out a rag from his pocket and
he pretends to be washing the windows. That's I mean,
that's so not only does he have this great planning,
(52:45):
but he's got great improvisational skills too. It would be
great to do improv with this guy. Yeah, and uh,
so he pretends to be washing windows so people don't
report him. He leaps down from his bed sheet, lands
in front of some onlookers and passers by by hours,
and then runs away into the night. Yes, and gets
away for one month. He is captured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(53:10):
He's not able to talk his way out of these
these charges. He eventually pleads guilty to some of the
many things he is being hounded for. Yeah, and he
he ends up all the way on the other side
of the country. He's in uh in Alcatraz. That's where
his final days are. Well, no, not his final days
so he ends up in Alcatraz. He's there for a
stretch of time, like twenty years, I think, yeah, And
(53:31):
then he's transferred to another prison. I believe it was
in Missouri. I could be wrong about that, and uh,
and that's where he dies. He just dies of illness. Again.
It's the sort of anti climactic end for an exciting
life full of adventure and scam. But I mean, but
that's that's how life is, right. It doesn't always tie
(53:51):
up neatly in a bow. It's not a three act play.
You know, you you die in prison. On his death certificate,
do you know what it said his career was, I do?
I do? It listed his occupation as apprentice salesman. So
he yeah, he passes away of natural causes of pneumonia
on March nine seven. As you said, Christopher in Springfield, Missouri.
(54:17):
One of the most infamous apprentice salesman that ever apprenticed.
And the thing is, though you know he he was
so infamous, but his name was in the paper, like
people knew this guy. But you can have this acclaimed
life of infamy, of crime. And after he died, word
didn't even get out for two more years because he
was so forgotten. You know. I think his brother was
(54:37):
quoted in the New York Times as confirming his death,
But that wasn't until and that brother went by the
name Emil Lustig. And let us remember that the guy's
real name is Robert Miller. A lot of mysteries, a
lot of mysteries, A lot of mysteries here, Christopher, and
I gotta tell you, you know, here in ridiculous history,
(54:58):
we love the story of good con good heist, but
we do want to be clear that we're not we're
not endorsing this. Please don't start counterfeiting enough money to
imbalance the global economy. And despite that, you know, this
guy is clearly not a good person by any stretch, right,
(55:19):
and perhaps is psychologically compelled to engage in these shenanigans.
But even even with all that, even with all the
horrible things he's done, I have this reluctant and sincere
admiration for the guy's abilities. Well, I think no one
you have admired people's cones right there there where, well
(55:41):
wherewithal um. But I gotta say it's and and that's
the thing, you know, I don't like to uh to
gender something like this when you're talking about, but it
it does tend to be men who who pull these scams. Um,
But I would say in the future, you know, there
are a lot of really cool females, m artists who
could make for some interesting topics, some fake princesses. That's true. Oh,
(56:05):
that's true. You're right, Christopher. And also I would advance
if we're if we're having this discussion about cons and gender,
I would advance that it is completely possible that we
only know about more men because they are less skilled
and more likely to be caught. Oh yeah, so there's
there's this possibly that Well, in fact, it's it's because
of one man. There's one man in specific who who
(56:27):
gives this whole genre of criminal the name. So you know,
do you do you know why it's called a con?
Why is it called a colin Christopher, it's a condor
short for confidence, And it goes back to this one
guy in eighteen forty nine in New York City. William
Thompson was his name, and he had a scam where
he would butter people up with with golden words, with
(56:50):
sweet speech, and he was able to build up other
people's belief in himself so much that he said, I
want you to, as a show of confidence in me,
loan me your golden watch because you believe in me
so much. Yeah, because you believe in me so much,
loan me your golden watch. I'll go away for I'll
(57:11):
do whatever, and then i'll come back. You'll have your
watch back. And this man stole hundreds of watches this way,
so much so that he became known as the confidence Man.
He was written about in in newspapers, in the Times,
but he became its kind of like folk here, right,
And that's I think that's the thing that captures people's imagination,
especially here in the US, when there's what's perceived as
(57:33):
a victimless crime. There's no bodily harm. People just use
their use their wiles to steal money. So the confidence
Man ends up in prison and he would give interviews
to newspapers as the confidence Man, This William William Thompson,
the confidence Man. And then that became a term for
this scammer, for the grifter, the con man. That is
(57:56):
that is such a wonderful story. I had not heard that. Also,
that sounds like a terrible idea for a scam, but
I guess it was a different time. I mean, there's yeah,
sweet talking in the mid nineteenth century, it will get
you far. I'm pictorate a trans atlantic voice as a
mark of confidence. Give me all gold and watch i'ld rite.
And presently I'm gonna decline to do this. No more access,
(58:18):
no more access, Okay, all right, but I hope that
you do not decline to join us again in the future.
Christopher Hassi yotis wherein you and I and Casey and
Nolan's spirit will be exploring a very very strange story
about the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, if it's cool with you,
(58:38):
and if it's cool with the ghost of Noel on
the Cross Continental Divide, I'm gonna stick around this week.
Is that cool? I for one would love it if
you do. It's always a delight to have you on
the show. And uh no big spoilers, but Noel may
also make an appearance because he is, like me, a
big Christopher Hassi yotis fan and like you too, Casey. Right, absolutely,
(59:02):
and we hope that you have enjoyed this episode about
one of the most legendary con artists who ever lived.
What is your favorite story of a heist or a
con Let us know You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
and we'd especially love to invite you to our Facebook
community page, Ridiculous Historians, where you can hang out with
(59:23):
your fellow listeners and see some I don't know, some
top notch historical jokes honestly, yeah, jokes a plenty, wise cracking, sarcasm.
What else is on their clever thoughts Thoughts wordplay means
you're on there. I don't know if it's a good thing,
(59:46):
but do do check it out. As always, we want
to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram. We'd like to
thank my trustee co host Noel Brown. We'd like to
thank Alex Williams, who composed our opening track, and Christopher
will usually thank you on this show, but now I
can say it tuned directly. Thanks for coming, all of
(01:00:07):
you listening at home, at work, in the car, wherever
you are. You can't see it, but but Ben and
I are shaking hands quite vigorously right now. Hey, nice
watch
Ye, Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. It feels so
good to be back. We have a reunion of sorts.
(00:31):
You may have heard recently that Noel and I and
our good friend Matt Frederick were on the road with
our stuff they don't want you to know tour. But
we have finally returned, and we have not returned alone.
We are joined once again with our fantastic super producer,
Casey Pegrum, who came all the way back from France
(00:54):
to hang out with us on this show. Kay see
on the case, folks, and my trustee co host Noel
is on the road this week for a different project,
which I can't say too much about now other than
all will be revealed in time. And in the meantime,
(01:16):
we decided that it would be fantastic to have one
of our favorite how Stuff Works celebrities come on the
show this week. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome. Christopher
hasiotis back to Ridiculous History. Ben, thanks so much for
having me. I feel like I should just be sitting
here saying I'm no, but I'm not. No, I'm not.
(01:38):
I can grow my beard as much as I like,
but I still can't match up to the man, but
I'll do my best. He has he has spent a
lot of time on that beard, Christopher. But you know what,
just since this is an audio podcast, I just want
to describe you a little bit, if that's okay while
we're on here. I'm curious, okay, okay, So Christopher, you
have a great beard. Thank you. And I think you've
been uh you know, you've growing it out a little bit.
(02:01):
I see, Uh, yeah, I mean I've had it for
a while. It's it's been on my face for decades. Uh.
If you want to start talking beards. The very first
poem that I ever fully memorized was a poem about beards.
Oh do tell she Silverstein. My beard grows to my toes.
I never wears no clothes. I wraps my hair around
(02:21):
my bear and down the road I goes all these smokes. Okay,
I did not know. I did not know that we
would be uh, we would be privileged to sit in
on a little bit of a poetry recital. Tommy, you
didn't You didn't bring your oration today. You're not ready
to go. I have I have one that is completely
unrelated to today's episode. Uh, and it's a little bit body.
(02:46):
It is a poem by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway, of course,
famous famous writer Old Man in the Sea, The Sun
also rises, all these, all these works of prose. He
has a collected book of poetry which is varied in
terms of talent and in terms of quality. But he
(03:09):
has one poem It's very short that I suspect he
wrote after a drunken night in Paris or Spain, where
he says, I know monks master bate at night, and
pet cats screw and some girls bite, and yet what
can I do to set things right? That's the whole poll.
It's a good poem to have in your back pocket.
Came in handy here. But speaking of fantastic segways, we
(03:34):
mentioned Paris just a second ago. Are you about to
talk about a taking a segue tour of Paris? I
think in a way we in a way, we we
are a segue of the mind, Christopher, And I'm already
embarrassed for you. We took we we talked a little
bit off air about some interesting stories in the world
(03:58):
of ridiculous history. And longtime listeners, you know that Christopher
hasiotis aside from having previously appeared on our show to
introduce us to some very strange covers of Louis Louis.
Christopher Hasiotis has been our longtime research associate and we're
we're big fans of you, Christopher. You will also always
have the coolest stories and off air. You came to
(04:22):
Casey and Nolan I with a pretty neat story about Paris,
non segue related. Absolutely. I thought, you know, let's let's
combine a lot of ridiculous histories interest. Let's let's take
Casey's uh francophilia. Let's take your love of Um Khan men.
(04:43):
You know, people who who have these elaborate scams like
Gregor McGregor and uh and Noel who is not with
us in flash but is in spirit here always uh.
He's he's got a love for the the man with
with hutzpah with uh with um. You know that that
go get him attitude, right? So I thought we should
(05:06):
dive into this story about Paris, about the Eiffel Tower,
and about a specific con man who wraps all of
these things up into one weird, crazy, unbelievable yet totally
human and ridiculous story. Are you talking about Victor Lustig.
I am Victor Listig born Robert V. Miller. Oh, there's
(05:30):
already a plot twist, there is. Yeah, so, um, there's
this man, Robert V. Miller. And so we're we're going
back to the turn of the most recent century, back
to the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. Victor Lustig is uh, well,
we'll we'll call him Count Victor Listig, Count Listig, because
that's what he called himself. It's not the only thing
he called himself, though. This is a man who had
twenty two different aliases. He was a criminal mastermind. He
(05:54):
was a scam artist, he was a swindler, he was
a grifter. He was born Robert V. Miller in a
little town called Hostaan a Um and that is at
the time of his birth eight that was in the
country of Austro Hungary. Uh, now it's the Czech Republic.
So the town is sort of near the border of
the Czech Republic and Poland. And this was eighteen nineties
(06:17):
when Robert V. Miller was born. So he is born
I believe January fourth. His real name is Robert. I
was not aware that he would accrue so many a
k A s. But we know that from a young
age he was both highly intelligent and a troublemaker. That's true.
(06:40):
So Miller as he was known at the time, when
he was nineteen years old, not too much is known
about his life beforehand. But when he's in his late teens,
he moves to Paris, he gets involved in gambling, he's
kind of a roused about, gets involved in the CD
Underbelly of the World, which you know is one of
the charms of Paris, right, and so uh, he he
(07:02):
gets scarred by a lover's boyfriend at the age of nineteen,
gets cut across the face with a knife. He's sleeping
with someone, who's sleeping with someone, and this and that.
So he's already got this sort of disreputable air about him.
Things are tough for for young Miller, right, So he
decides he needs to make some money. And we're not
(07:22):
getting to his big scam just yet, but I want
to lay the groundwork for some of his his history
of just taking advantage of people for his own benefits.
So Robert Miller is looking to make a name for himself,
or maybe make twenty two names for himself, or keep
his name off the books altogether. But Basically, he's been
in in trouble with the authorities in a bunch of
different countries for scamming people, robberies, uh, swindles, the sort
(07:46):
of thing. So his first big attempt at a at
a big plot involves ocean liners. He hops on an
ocean liner that's going from the Atlantic ports in France
to New York and back. And so basically like he
rides back and forth, back and forth, back and forth
between France and New York, pretending to be a Broadway producer. Yeah,
(08:08):
and this this is when he's only uh, he's he's
still in his teens or twenties. So we're talking right around, uh,
the time, right before World War One. So he's on
board literally saying, I'm I'm a Broadway producer. I have
all this money, but I need more to put on
a great, big show. And that's when he first adopts
the name Victor Listig. Victor Listig gives him the sense
(08:29):
of grandeur so much so that he starts calling himself
Count Victor Listig. And he meets all these other well,
they're not other rich people, they're the rich people. He's
the person trying to get their money. He meets these
people on board the ship, says, I'm putting together a
Broadway show. It's gonna be the best, it's going to
be the most beautiful, it's going to be the most
fantastic Broadway show ever put on. But I need some investors,
(08:51):
So are you on board? Will you give me some money?
And basically he he just sells them this whole fantasy
and he gets all this money, and uh goes back
and forth and back and forth and scams people out
of out of money for a show that doesn't exist.
It's it reminds me a little bit of I don't
know if you know this film The Producers by mel
Brooks that's nineteen sixties sixties seven. I think about Gene
(09:15):
Wilder and Zero Mostel pretend to be producers of a
Broadway show to raise money. They basically figure out if
you put on a failure of a show, you'll make
more money if if the whole thing loses. I don't
know that mel Brooks was inspired by the story of
Victor Listig wouldn't be surprised. And we should also mention
one of the big questions about this early scam, how
(09:37):
did he manage to do this? Successfully multiple times without
getting caught. I advanced to you that his fluency multiple
languages helped because I'm sure that sometimes the people he
was conning were entirely French speakers, and then sometimes they
might have been entirely German speakers. Yeah, and Listig spoke
(09:57):
five languages at least that we know of. So the
ability to switch back and forth between languages with fluency,
it puts forth this idea of confidence, of power, of authority,
and uh, you know, if you can, if you can
take on a cute accent, maybe, uh, that can sometimes
inspire feelings of of warmth, depending on who you're talking to. So, yeah,
(10:21):
as he's going back and forth across the Atlantic, he's
talking to all these people, just scamming them left and
right in various languages. But this didn't go on forever, correct,
because you said you said you was active at this
time directly before World War One, Right, So the First
World War kind of interrupts a lot of this transatlantic rigamarole,
(10:43):
and he finds himself in trouble in the US and
comes back to France on a more permanent basis in
and that's when we arrive at the main topic of
our story today, and um, I think it's I think
it's a good one. It's weird. It's the sort of
thing you would think could never happen today because of
the prevalence of information, the willingness of people to believe,
(11:06):
the skepticism. But I don't know. I think what the
shows and and we're about to get to it. But
it shows that people are always willing to believe what
will benefit them. Yes, yes, I do want to do
one brief sidetrack while we're on the way to France.
Let's do it. Okay. So Lustig also had some American
(11:27):
adventures during Prohibition. He went to Missouri. That's right. Yeah,
he went to Missouri and he used another alias, Robert
duval I like it, and he used he used this
alias to try to run a ranch. So essentially, he
(11:47):
offered this bank twenty two thous dollars in liberty bonds
and convinced them to exchange an additional ten thousand dollars
of the bonds for cash. They said yes. The money's
placed in two identical envelopes and he uses some like
stage magic, some sleight of hand to switch the envelopes,
make off of the bonds and the cash. He gets
(12:08):
arrested in Kansas City, but he manages to talk his
way out of the indictment. And that's the thing I
find so so so crazy. I mean, it's the sort
of thing you think you would never be able to
talk to a bank and walk away with both the
notes and the cash and everything, and then talk a
way out of court. Yeah, it's crazy. How how endearing
do you have to be? It's like some sort of crazy,
(12:31):
huge version of the you know, the twenty dollar change game,
where you I won't go into the details, but you
can go up to a cashier and you start quick
talking and asking them to make change for one thing
after you have a legitimate transaction. Then you get some change,
and you change some ones for a ten, and then
you switch things around a little bit, and all of
a sudden, you've doubled your money and you also got
(12:51):
whatever you bought. And here in Atlanta, just decide. Note, folks,
we do refer to that as the hasciotas do we?
We do know. I'm sorry that you had about that
on air, but that's that. The American Adventure is primarily
important because it shows how well he was able to
handle getting caught because almost anybody else would have gone
(13:15):
to jail. That is bank robbery, and it is fraud.
But Victor has at this point accumulated quite a range
of skills, quite a range of aliases. And as you said, Christopher,
in May, he goes back to Paris. He has had
a close call in Kansas City. He thinks, you know,
(13:35):
maybe things are getting a little too hot on this
side of the Atlantic. So so what happens when he
returns to France. Well, let me ask you, when when
you think of Paris, what do you think of when
I think of Paris? Well, this is this is a
weird story. I don't know if I ever told you
I was homeless in Paris for a week? Who wasn't?
Who was it at? Yeah? I think of wonderful music.
(13:59):
I think of street side cafes. I think of obviously,
I think of you, Casey, and I think of the
Eiffel Tower. I think that's one of the number one
things that people think of when they think of Paris. Yeah,
who doesn't. And and uh, you are not, unlike Victor, realistic,
at least in this one way, because he thought of
the Eiffel Tower as well. You want to go back
(14:20):
into a little bit of Eiffel Tower history for for
people who may not be familiar with it. I think
that's a great idea, man. Okay, so we all know
what the Eiffel Tower looks like. It's a huge iron
lattice tower. But how did it get there? Yeah? I
mean so, basically, the Eiffel Tower was constructed over four
or five year period in the late eighteen eighties, was
(14:40):
put in place for the eighteen eighty nine World's Fair.
It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant
to just go up for twenty years, kind of act
as this big attraction and then come down. But Parisians
loved it so much, and other people coming to Paris
loved it so much there was an argument made that
it should stand as an icon for the city. It
was also used as a really tower for telegraphs, so
it kind of came in handy too. Okay. But that
(15:03):
that sense of impermanence around the tower actually plays into
why Victor Listig thought of the Eiffel Tower and how
it became involved in his next scam. Oh that's right,
because he was I believe when he arrived in France
he was reading a newspaper about how the Eiffel Tower
was in poor condition and it needed some repairs, and
(15:24):
not everyone loved it. Some people in the city saw
it as I think the quote I read was an
expensive nuisance. Yeah, exactly. You can go either way, you know.
I mean. The thing about the Eiffel Tower is it
completely dominates the landscape. It stands out from all the
architecture in Paris. It's almost eighties stories tall, the or
the equivalent of eighty stories. It's like three twenty something meters.
(15:46):
It's almost a thousand feet tall, if not higher. And
most of the buildings around there are you know, three
four stories tall at the max um not not iron work.
So some people say it's an I saw. Some people
say it's magnificent either way. By when he returns to
Paris with I should add I uh looked up the
(16:08):
exact number. He already had forty arrests under his belt
by this time, so he was thirty five years old,
so more than one arrest for a year of his life.
And that's like two or three arrests for every year
of his adult life. That that is a baffling statistic.
Thank you for for putting it so succinctly. I guess
(16:29):
he wasn't that great then if he was continually getting arrested.
But I have a proposition for you, Christopher. I propose
that we call in one of our favorite segments to
learn a little bit about France. Let's do it all, right, Hey, Casey,
hey Ben, how's it going doing doing pretty well? As
(16:51):
we said at the top, you have returned from your
double life France, and we wanted to ask you a
little bit about how French people see the Eiffel Tower today.
That's an interesting topic, you know, it is. It is
very touristy. It is very much like even even me
having been there I think eight times in as many
(17:12):
years um. This past trip where I was there for
two weeks, I did not go visit the Eiffel Tower.
I didn't hang out on the Shampa Mars. I didn't,
you know, go to the Trocadero. I didn't really have
much uh involvement with the Eiffel Tower in general, other
than I could see it from the balcony of my airbnb.
So you know, as you guys were mentioning, the height
(17:34):
of the buildings in Paris is something that is kind
of strictly regulated, and it does ensure that the architecture
remains fairly uniform, that certain buildings like the Eiffel Tower,
or like the Tour Mont parnass or like the Arct
de Triomph, etcetera, remain visible through large parts of the city,
(17:55):
and it's kind of you know, you're you're always catching
glimpses of the Eiffel Tower throughout your day, which is
really really nice, and Casey correct me if I'm wrong,
But that's that's partially due to preference and tradition, but
also the just the simple geography and makeup of the
land in Paris itself. Like you've got these big sort
of modern looking business towers over in La de France.
(18:16):
But yes, everything else, you know, the French have not
had this tradition of tearing down old buildings. And it's
located on somewhat wet ground near the same river, so
you can't build sixties story skyscrapers. Yeah, which you know
is a is a very happy accident, I think, because
Paris does have a very consistent architectural style, although it
(18:37):
has been transformed quite a bit within the last maybe
couple hundred years. UM Houseman in the nineteenth century, demolished
a lot of the old Paris and created a lot
of the grand boulevards that we know today, which were
useful for instance, uh, moving large numbers of troops in
and out of the city, that kind of thing. But
(18:58):
he had he had a very very strict requirement in
terms of keeping the style very consistent, keeping things very
close to the curb, always having shops on the ground
floor and then living space in the floors above that.
That gives the city a very coherent, cohesive feel, as
well as buildings not terminating in a sharp corner but
(19:21):
instead kind of in a flat, outward facing corner. That
essentially keeps the buildings again feeling more open and inviting
and just keeping the street life very virant and alive.
I have a question for you, casey okay, what do
you have an alias when you're in France? No, um
other than kase you know that that would be it's
(19:43):
just kind of the frenchified monsieur monsieur case All right,
Well that has been cause on the case east wildly
d Q Yeah, perfect, perfect. So this gives us a
(20:04):
sense of just how iconic the building is today and
back in Lustig's time, right right, and we're talking, you know,
ish um, we're back in the seventh Arondissement. And again
this this structure was meant to last about twenty years,
so it was built in eighteen eighty nine. The plan
(20:26):
was initially let's take it down around nine or so,
oh no nine. Yeah, so it's already almost doubled its
lifetime and it's getting expensive. The city is complaining, saying
we don't have the money for the upkeep. It's just
really a pain in the French. But this, this is
(20:46):
where Lustig sees an opportunity and he says, you know what,
I bet that I could just forge some credentials and
appoint myself to a position in the local government. Yeah. Well,
he actually hires a forger. I mean, this is It's
the thing about Listig is he always thought out his
(21:09):
scams to the nth degree. This wasn't just some sort
of fly by night operation. And he hires a forger.
He comes up with these credentials and he presents himself
as a the deputy director general of this or that.
I think it's something like the Postal Service, the Ministry
of Post and Telegraphs exactly. So He takes advantage of
(21:31):
the news that the city is unhappy with the structure.
The Eiffel Tower itself weighs more than ten thousand tons.
He approaches scrap metal dealers in Paris, the five most prestigious,
the five with the biggest operation, and he says, Mr
scrap metal dealer, my name is Victor Listig. I'm the
(21:51):
Deputy director General. We want to sell you the Eiffel Tower.
We want to scrap the Eiffel Tower. We want to
set you seven thousand tons of it. However, let's meet
at this hotel in secret, because we can't let work
get out about this. So Listig in fights five different
representatives of scrap metal dealerships to this hotel and asks
(22:15):
them to bid to fight amongst themselves to offer the
most money for seven thousand tons of metal, claiming that
the Eiffel Tower is going to be scrapped, and how
how did it work out well for whom? Ben for
whom it worked out really well for Victor Listig. So
he's got these five guys in the hotel. He says,
all right, guys, you've got to keep this deal quiet
(22:37):
because the government doesn't want word to get out so
I want you to think about it, see what you
can do with a seven thousand tons of scrap metal,
and come back to me with an offer. But before
the meeting was over, he had identified who he wanted
to award the bid to his mark. Exactly. It was
a guy named Andre Poissan, and Listig identified Poissan as
(22:59):
kind of an up and summer. He was one of
the least successful of the group, and he had low
self esteem. Exactly. Yeah, So list I thought this guy
is gonna be really desperate to secure this bid. He
thought Poissant would really want to make a name for
himself with this deal and secure his place in the
business world because he felt intimidated by all these other
(23:19):
scrap metal dealers who are relatively well established. There's this
is where we see some of the art of the
con or the craft of psychological manipulation come into play.
Because I believe what happens is after that meeting with
the five people, where he's buttering them up, and he
where he identifies Andrea's his mark. He meets with Andre
(23:39):
the next day and Andrea says, you know, I slept
on it. I'm having a couple of doubts. I don't
know if this is the best thing, because this is
a huge project, this is a lot of money, and
Lustig gives him a very compelling empathy, building absolutely fake
story about you know, hey, just between you and me, Like,
(24:01):
I get it. You're an up and comer. I'm a
government employee. I don't get paid that much. Times are
tough all around, and I really you know, Andrea, you
get it. You and I are kind of similar. So
how about this, I will guarantee you the contract just
between us. Forget about those other four guys. If you
can give me just a little, you know, give me
(24:21):
a big give me a little bit of something on
the side, grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Yeah. So Listing
is genius in adding layer upon layer of this scam.
He builds confidence not just by putting forth this story,
but by roping Andrea poissan In on that that they're
in this together, you know. So, and it goes through,
(24:42):
It goes through. So not only does Andrea Possan give
Listig the money for for the Eiffel Tower, he also
bribes him to do it right. Yes, so he's he's
paying the bribe plus the deal the price that they
agree on and what happened his next So then Listick says,
(25:02):
I've got all this money and I'm splitting town. He
goes back to Austria and uh, he just hangs out.
He takes up with someone someone else. The details on
this or a little sketchy. I couldn't really find out
um in my research who it was, but reports said
that he swindled someone else to let him stay with them.
And while he's hanging out in Austria with all this money,
(25:23):
he keeps his eye on the French newspapers just to
see if he's been discovered, because he's betting on the
fact that that Andre would be so ashamed that he
wouldn't report the theft, right right, And we do know
a little bit of what happens to the unfortunate Andrea here.
After loose date skips town, Andre, who is out a
(25:45):
significant sum of money, goes to the government officials to
follow up on the deal, at which point they say,
what who are you talking about? You know, maybe they
were empathetic and said, I'm very sorry this happened to you,
but can you imagine that just the utter shame and
embarrassment there, That's that's what Victor. Would he played this
(26:06):
guy like a cello? You know? Yeah? And that's when
I like the shame is such a powerful, powerful emotion
when you're trying to get someone else to do what
you want. Yes, And so I've heard, I've heard, I
don't know from Oh you're a dangerous man. What's your
real name? After you know, during this episode, I am
now suspecting everybody of having a different alias, at least
(26:29):
one or two. Right, I have a couple. I have
a couple. I had to retire. One had to retire,
Chris from Boston because one day in Atlanta, someone who
knew me as Chris from Boston found me and luckily
I was with some good friends of mine who helped
me out and backed me up when I went back
to the table at the restaurant we're at and it
(26:50):
was like, guys, look, there might be someone here who
thinks my name is Chris. So let's just go along
with that, and if you do, the next round of
drinks is on me. So so if you're listening to this,
I hope you're having I hope you're having a great time.
Chris from Boston never did any shady criminal acts, though
(27:12):
Christ from Boston is not a con man, It's just
not in his character. But Lustig is an inveterate con
then an irredeemable con artist, and he clearly doesn't feel
too broken up about causing such a financial disaster. No, no,
not at all. He doesn't feel broken up. He feels emboldened.
(27:32):
In fact, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower for
scrap metal goes back to France, goes right back to
Paris and sells it a second time. Right, yeah, this
is crazy. The same thing. He goes and does it again. Uh,
I will say this time not quite so successfully, right,
(27:53):
because he he was correct in his gamble, in his
original assumption that the story would not be widely reported,
and if the news had made it to the papers,
we can say that he would not have attempted this
a second time. I don't think so. I mean, the
guy is clever, he's he may have been arrested forty times,
but he's also gotten away at least that many, right,
(28:17):
So he he doesn't even wait that long, you know,
He just I guess, waits until he runs out of cash, yeah,
and just needs some more and says, well, let me
go sell the Eiffel Tower again. Uh. But he so
he goes back to Paris. He gets five more guys together,
pitches them the idea says, I, you want to buy this.
See this big hunk a junk over here. Uh you
(28:37):
want to you want to buy it because you need
the scrap metal. Uh. This time, however, there's someone who's
suspicious of of the deal, and they go to the
police right away and um, and Victor Lestig does not succeed,
but he does succeed in in skipping town once again. Yes,
and this time he goes to the United States. He
(28:58):
goes back. I guess the heat from Kansas City is dissipated. Well,
the U s is a big place, right, you know,
there's a lot of places you can go. The myth
of the American West and other parts of America is
that you can reinvent yourself, especially in this pre internet,
pre telephone day. You can just present yourself as someone new.
You can present yourself as someone successful, as a count,
(29:20):
as a as a salesman of mystery boxes. Ah, yes,
Romanian box, Romanian boxes, yeah, after them. You know, relative success.
The first time around of the sale of the Eiffel
Tower and the lack of success. The second time list,
it goes to the US and he finds himself in Texas.
(29:41):
He sells something called a Romanian box. Are you m
a in I A N? I sure am sorry? So yeah?
So so what is the Romanian box? I am so
glad you asked Christopher. Essentially is a money box. That's
(30:02):
how he would present it. The Count, because he's Count
lu Stick again, would whine and dine and befriend Americans.
And then when people would say, hey, you know, you're
an interesting guy. What what is it that you do, Count?
What what's your line of work? What's your line of business?
And essentially, in a polite way, they were trying to ask,
(30:23):
how are you so wealthy? And then with the utmost secrecy,
with a just between us and the lamp post kind
of confidence, the Count would pull out this box. It's
literal box, and it's a money box that looks fantastic.
It's built out of mahogany. It's about the size of
(30:43):
a steamer trunk. And he would say, let me show
you how this works. And the Mark would hand him
a bill, usually asked for a hundred dollar bill, and
then he would put the bill into the machine, wait
a few hours is for quote unquote chemical processing. And
then when the people came back they went and get dinner,
(31:05):
lunch or something. Two bills would be there to bills,
and so Lustig would say that this box pays for itself.
What it really is is a fake contraption. Yeah, there's
there's no way you can have a It's basically a counterfeit,
counterfeiting machine. Right, So he's telling people, I have this
(31:28):
thing that can make fake money for you, that can
duplicate your dollar, double your money in six hours or less.
And it doesn't even work. It's a scam of a scam.
It's a scale double scam. Yeah, which you know a
lot of cons work that way because they prey on um, ambition,
greed insecurity, you know what I mean. Well, and that's
the sort of thing. So even if he were caught,
(31:50):
even if someone confronted him and said, hey man, this
money box you sold me doesn't work as as you
as you said it would, they're not going to go
to the police because then it would be admitting two
attempting to counterfeit. Yeah. And here's here's the thing. This
is the beautiful part of this Lou Stick's friends will
see this and they'll say, oh man, they're convinced, you know,
(32:13):
because he's been so reluctant and secretive about it. They say,
will you sell this to me? You name your price, anything,
And the count is very reluctant. It's been in my
family for a while. It's I don't know. I mean,
I like you, but this is a big decision for me.
And then after cajoling and raising the price sky high,
(32:36):
Lustig would eventually agree to sell it, sometimes for up
to thirty thousand dollars. You can read a pretty good
description of some of these adventures in various articles in
the Smithsonian who They seem to have a fascination with
loose Stick. But after he sold it, here's the thing,
he didn't skip down right away. They did some more
(32:56):
demonstrations so you can show them how it worked. There
are still is hidden in the machine, obviously. Yeah, well,
there are a variety of bills hidden in the machine.
And so Lustig again, it's it's his mastery of manipulation.
There were different kinds of money hidden in the machine,
and he would use his power of persuasion to convince
the person giving him the money to give him the
right kind of money that he could then slip out
(33:17):
a duplicate of. But the last time that Lusti sells
the Romanian mystery box, Uh, it's not even called a
mystery I'm just calling it a mystery box, the Romanian box.
It's in Texas, and his purchaser is a sheriff, right,
and the sheriff does not take being built. No, he's
out thousands of dollars. So in the past Lustig had
(33:39):
scammed people, left town and was generally kind of off
Scott Free, Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Chicago. But this sheriff follows
Lustig across the country. He tracks him down finally in
I Believe in Chicago, and again this is it's about
to be listed gets away with it one more time
(34:00):
because the sheriff confronts Listick. He says, Man, you rip
me off. This thing is a hoax. It does not
make money. I need my tens of thousands of dollars
back or I don't know what I'm gonna do, to
which Lustig replies, Oh, that's so terrible that that happened.
Are you sure you were working the box correctly? Oh? Man,
(34:22):
and it works. He he convinces the sheriff, that the
sheriff was the one not operating the contraption properly. He
even as a show of good faith, gives him some
of the money back to say, hey, look, I'm promised,
I'm not scamming you. Here, take a take a portion
of the money back as good faith. Go back to Texas.
(34:43):
Take the box with you, figure out how to work
it on your own. You must be the one making
a mistake. And he continues because look, in addition to
oys getting away with things, Lustig never learns his lesson,
and he starts messing with some very dangerous characters. Sometime
before this is a speculative story, an alleged story, we
(35:07):
don't we don't have a lot of primary sources on this.
But sometime before the story is that he even attempted
to pull a scam on al Capone in Chicago. Did
you hear about that? I did? And it's it's uh.
So he had been in Chicago for a while, he
had kind of built up his name. He was getting
into the deep counterfeiting business, so not just this sort
of confidence scam, but legitimate counterfeiting of cash. And so
(35:31):
he's kind of operating in the same circles as Capone.
He knows of Capone, Compone doesn't quite know of him.
But Listig wants to gain his confidence. Right, So the
story is this Lustig convinced, and he's still the count loose.
Do you think he's talking with an accent? Of course
he has to, man, it would be such a missed opportunity.
(35:52):
If you are going to put a fake aristocratic title
in front of your name, then you must have an accent. Yeah,
that's true, because that's if he wants. If he wants
to appear to be um, a wealthy, mysterious European of
noble blood, then he has to conform to the American
stereotype of that, which requires an accent. I think probably
(36:15):
if you put on that that accent, then you you
give yourself the benefit of pretending there are things you
don't understand. You know that that you don't quite understand
the intricacies of American English. So maybe if someone thinks
you insulted them, you could just say, I don't know,
I'm s yes, i I'm not understand. He's how you'll
say a scam exactly. Look, we are choosing to imagine
(36:41):
that he has an accent, and uh, I would like
to I'd like to hear everyone's guess as to what
sort of accent he had. I thought yours was really good. Christopher. Also,
you have traveled the world and heard many accents, so
I will defer to your speculation here. Anyway, point being lustick,
goes to Cappone. The Count goes to Capone and convinces
(37:02):
him that if al Capone gives him fifty thou dollars,
he will double the money for Capone in sixty days
with his newest adventures, newest discovery. And he knew that
Capone was a very, very dangerous man, so once he
got the money, he just let it sit in a bank.
He didn't touch it. He let us sit in a
(37:24):
bank for fifty nine days. On the fifty ninth day,
he comes back to out Cappone himself and says, look,
Mr Capone, the deal fell through. I'm very sorry, but
I feel so bad about this because I made you
a sincere promise, and I feel so bad about this
that I will repay the money and lost. And that's
(37:44):
not the only thing. He says to capon Right again,
this is it's about gaining confidence, it's about bringing people
over to your side. So not only is he involving
Capone from the get go in this complicity in the
scam that he was planning to do. The thing is
there was never a scam planned, right, Listig just wanted
to get Capone on his side. So he says, hey,
(38:05):
give me fifty grand, which fifty grands a lot of
money today. Back then way more money. Yes, we have
our handy dandy inflation calculator. Around that period of time,
fifty thousand dollars in today's money would be equal to
around nine hundred and forty thousand dollars. That's amazing. Can
(38:29):
you imagine going to someone and saying, hey, if you
could just let me borrow a million dollars too much?
Just two months? Just two months, I will give you.
I'll let me double your money. And UH and Capone.
I don't know why if it was this guy's UH
is wherewithal? But but he said yeah, but Listig did
nothing with it, and he he planned to do nothing
with it. So he went back. He said, I'm really
(38:50):
sorry it didn't work out, but here's your money back,
all of it, because I I lost everything. I will
pay you back out of my own pocket. Yeah, I
I don't have I've lost my clothes, I've lost my house.
But I'm an honest guy. Yeah, and this works like
a charm. According to the story, Capone is so impressed,
(39:11):
and he's like, hey, this guy's gotta he's got some integrity,
you know what I mean, like a you know, he's
got a little bit of spine, he's got a lot
of gold. Tell you what you don't you don't have
to pay me back all the money. You seem like
an honest fellow. And because Capone is so built, he
only accepts a certain amount. He doesn't accept the full
(39:31):
fifty grand back. Right, It's like he The reports vary,
but we know that Capone left him with some extrac
at least five thousand dollars, So that that's the whole scame.
So Listing borrowed almost in today's money, a million dollars
from al Capone, did nothing with it, gave it back
to pretend to be honest, gained his confidence, gained his trust,
(39:54):
gained a reputation as a good guy in al Capone's eyes,
and then also got almost a hundred thousand dollars just
just for hey, you know which is it's brilliant, it's effective.
But I think this sort of success leads to loose
Stig's ultimate downfall. You know, I think some criminals have
(40:18):
the idea that they'll get to a certain point and
then they're they're out, you know, they quit the life,
one last con. Yeah, for Lostig, the con was the life.
There was no end to this, and so he was
actually pursued at this point. You know, he's deep in
the counterfeiting game. Like we mentioned earlier, he's being pursued
by a Secret Service agent, Peter Rubino. And this is
(40:39):
back when the secrets you know. Today, I think a
lot of people think of a Secret Service in its
most prominent role in the public eye now is protecting
the life of the President of the United States and all,
you know, the the people around that office. But its
origins are in fighting counterfeiting. Yeah, absolutely, its origins are
fighting counterfeiting. In the him is that Loostig was just
(41:02):
becoming too prominent. He teamed up with a Nebraska chemist,
a guy named Tom Shaw, and they created like a
soup to nuts counterfeiting operation plates, paper ink everything. Yeah,
they were. They were so good that the Secret Service
identified them as the best counterfeiters in the country that
(41:23):
they called these bills that they were turning out the
Shawl Stig notes. Yeah, yeah, and this Loo Stig money
was showing up everywhere from New Orleans to Chicago. And
there's a question about whether the Secret Service would have
actually caught him because he was aware it was like
in today's money, it's it was like one point four
(41:45):
million dollars fake cash in the country. So it was
altering to a degree the economy. Yeah, there was a
fear that it would imbalance world world faith in the
American dollar because there was so much fake U S
money out there right right, And he would have this
is our Scooby Doo moment. He would have gotten away
(42:07):
with it too, if it wasn't for his girlfriend. Well, yeah,
it goes back, right, like that's that's how this thing started.
So he got he got cut across the face when
he was a teenager because he was having a romance
with someone else's romance. And you know, now we're now
we're in the thirties and the same thing happened again, right,
because he was having an affair with his friend's mistress.
(42:29):
Is that right, I believe so? Right, So he so
he had a lady friend who was not an official
wife or anything like that, and then his friend, who
was married, had a romantic entanglement on the side that
Lustig was then involved with that woman, and then the
woman he was seeing got mad and called the cops. Yeah,
(42:50):
it turned him in, And so with her assistance, the
Secret Service is able to catch Lustig in in a
pretty anti clament actic way. I think he's just walking
down Broadway on the Upper West Side in New York
and the Secret Service comes up and apprehends him, and
even they can't help but admire him a little bit.
(43:11):
One Secret Service agent is observing the fact that Lustig
is cool as a cucumber. He's dressed very nicely, dressed
to the nines, he has a suitcase of very nice clothes,
and the Secret Service guy has to kind of just
reluctantly shake his head and go, you're the smoothest con
man that ever lived, to which Lustig was probably like
a uh self deprecating shrug and a thank you, because
(43:35):
that's how he talked to people. Oh, do you want
to do his commandments? Yeah, well, I thought this would
be the perfect time before we get to to Lustig's
final fate you know, because you did bring this up.
Um okay, spoiler alert. Lustig goes to prison at some
point in his life, right right, But while in prison
for his most ultimate stint, he decides to write the
(43:56):
ten rules of a of a good con Right. There's
ten commandments and um, yeah, and they refer to just
what you said that he was the coolest cucumber out there.
You want to go through them? Yeah, let's do it.
So the set of instructions known as the Ten Commandments
for conment and and for those of you out there listening,
these are not legal advice. Yes, this is not legal
(44:19):
advice from Casey Christopher Nolan myself. These are observations. But
you know, I think they're pretty good. Why don't we
just why don't we round robin and will alternate? How
about that? Yeah? And let me if you let me
know if you agree with these. Yeah. Yeah, First, be
a patient listener. It is this not fast talking that
(44:39):
gets the con man his cups. You know, if if
you listen, you let the other person open up to you.
There's that innate sense of connection between two people and uh,
and that you immediately formed this bond and All you
have to do is listen, be compassionate, nod your head,
look him in the eye. I think it works. Number
two never look bored. Would she is huge And this
(45:01):
is this is from the time before everybody had a
smartphone sitting around. You know. The idea is to be
actively engaged with people. That means the eye contact. That
probably means a little bit of mirroring their physicality, right,
and you would be you'd be surprised how much it works.
(45:22):
I agree with that one. The third one is the
third one is wait for the other person to reveal
any political opinions and then agree with them. It's great.
I like it, which is which is kind of a
spycraft thing too. Yeah, it's the sort of politics. It's
gone back and forth. And this episode is appearing in
(45:42):
your your subscription feed on election day here in the
United States for the midterm elections. So maybe you've recognized
this in your personal life. If you go out and
you talk to someone, if you find that politically you
guys kind of jibe. There's that again, it's an immediate connection,
exactly exactly. And then he has a another observation about
(46:03):
how to react to people's opinions, let the other person
reveal religious views, then have the same views. I feel
like I've done this on dates. Well, I mean this
is what like, it's it's your yes ending an improv right,
you're just building off the other person. You build a
story together, and then you're in that existence together. And
(46:23):
here's this one I think is a little bit more
of a gambit. This next one it is hint at
sex talk speaking of dates, but don't follow it up
unless the other person shows a strong interest. Yeah. Again,
I think it's the sort of thing where you can
talk around an issue and you take your cues from
the other person. So you bring up you know, you
(46:44):
could say, oh, yeah, last weekend, I was in Cleveland,
and let me tell you the girls there are something else.
And then if the other person seems intrigued, you know,
kind of what wavelength they're on, If they seem a
little like, uh, that's not really the kind of thing
I talk about, then you might follow up with and
I'm glad I didn't go out with them, because boy,
(47:04):
that is not my scene. You know. Yeah, yeah, you're
you're building that rapport. I just feel like that takes
another level of skill to find the right hint, because
all of these are about attempting to create rapport, and
we should say, I mean this is where the twenties,
the thirties pretty much he's only dealing with man. So
(47:25):
this is this is there's that kind of like boys
room locker room talk, uh, sort of sort of atmosphere,
And how are you going to build confidence with other
people who you want to scam? In the next five
commandments are things that lu Stick believes you should never do.
Correct number six, Never discuss illness unless some special concern
(47:46):
is shown. So what do you what do you think
that means? I think I think it's probably a time
when private lives are a little more private. I also
think there's a sense that, um, you know, illnesses it
was a much more mysteriou thing eight years ago, could
show weakness perhaps. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too, because
at this time, you know, disabilities were still largely vilified,
(48:09):
and an illness could make you undesirable, it might be contagious,
as you said, it might make you weak. Uh. He
also said, to your point about private lives, never pry
into a person's personal circumstances. Parentheses, They'll tell you all eventually. Yeah. Again,
it's it's letting your mark open up to you, right,
following the lead um and after that again number eight,
(48:33):
never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious. This
is crucial most of the time. If you see someone
who has great influence or power or importance, they're not
going around spouting their accolades. They don't have to. If
that's the difference between you know, old money and new money, right, yes,
(48:54):
that's what people say, right. Old money will be much
more subtle, right, and new money is like what else
can we put gold on? So this this one, I
think never boasting. I think this remains incredibly important today,
not just in cons He has another one, never be untidy.
(49:17):
Yeah good, Yeah, that makes sense. You know you you
want to be respectable, you want to gain people's trust. Look,
look nice. Finally, I'm gonna give listeners a chance to
think about what you think the last the last commandment
might be what you should do, what you shouldn't do?
Are you thinking? Are you thinking, casey? Can we get
a little bit of thinking music? And number ten is
(49:52):
never get drunk. Never get drunk. That's it, never get drunk.
And it makes sense because you will not be in
full control of your faculties. You need to be a
hundred percent engaged with the people you are trying to swindle. Yeah.
I would probably guess though, that there's a subset to
that rule. Maybe it's in one of the impendices or something.
But never get drunk, but try to get the other
(50:13):
person drunk. Maybe right, you apply them with a couple
of Vodkas and drink water on your own, I don't know,
or have a have a cocktail that is always just
like halfway empty half people. Yeah, and I think those
are those are pretty good and it's surprising how simplistic
they are. I would argue that a lot of these
(50:34):
rules aren't just applicable to trying to scam people. They're
pretty good in most things in life, some of them.
Some of them, well, I think be a patient listener,
be engaged, and avoiding being messy and drunk. I think
those four at least are just great advice. Well, I mean,
so these are all great things to uh, you know,
(50:56):
if you want to comport yourself as an empathetic, normal
human being and if your goal is to make connections
with other people, they're great. If your goal is to
take advantage of people, get their money and do whatever
you want with it. I guess they're also great too,
and just blindly agreeing with someone's opinions about things that
are very important to them. I totally agree with you, No,
(51:17):
I do. No, I agree with you on everything. Then
I agree with you on everything, Christopher. But despite our
I guess reluctant admiration of Lustig's techniques, not everybody agreed
with his methods, and law enforcement continued to hunt him. Now,
after he was arrested by the Secret Service, he did
(51:41):
manage to escape prison for a moment. I think not
through some clever scheme. I think he just literally used
bed sheets. Right. Well, so here's the thing. Yeah, so
Lustig was arrested, he was all set to go to trial.
The day before his trial, he faked an illness and
so I think he got a few extra liberties he
(52:02):
might not otherwise have. He was put in a less
secure location, and I loved it it. I don't want
to be the person who admires the criminal, you know.
I don't want to be the guy who lifts up
the person who's taking the money of everyone else. But
this is pretty amazing. You gotta say. Listing the night
before his trial, he takes a bedsheet, he ties it
around the window. He breaks through the bars somehow he
(52:24):
gets out. As he's hanging from the side of the prison,
you know, and that the prison is in the city.
There are some passers by who look up at him,
and he takes out a rag from his pocket and
he pretends to be washing the windows. That's I mean,
that's so not only does he have this great planning,
(52:45):
but he's got great improvisational skills too. It would be
great to do improv with this guy. Yeah, and uh,
so he pretends to be washing windows so people don't
report him. He leaps down from his bed sheet, lands
in front of some onlookers and passers by by hours,
and then runs away into the night. Yes, and gets
away for one month. He is captured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(53:10):
He's not able to talk his way out of these
these charges. He eventually pleads guilty to some of the
many things he is being hounded for. Yeah, and he
he ends up all the way on the other side
of the country. He's in uh in Alcatraz. That's where
his final days are. Well, no, not his final days
so he ends up in Alcatraz. He's there for a
stretch of time, like twenty years, I think, yeah, And
(53:31):
then he's transferred to another prison. I believe it was
in Missouri. I could be wrong about that, and uh,
and that's where he dies. He just dies of illness. Again.
It's the sort of anti climactic end for an exciting
life full of adventure and scam. But I mean, but
that's that's how life is, right. It doesn't always tie
(53:51):
up neatly in a bow. It's not a three act play.
You know, you you die in prison. On his death certificate,
do you know what it said his career was, I do?
I do? It listed his occupation as apprentice salesman. So
he yeah, he passes away of natural causes of pneumonia
on March nine seven. As you said, Christopher in Springfield, Missouri.
(54:17):
One of the most infamous apprentice salesman that ever apprenticed.
And the thing is, though you know he he was
so infamous, but his name was in the paper, like
people knew this guy. But you can have this acclaimed
life of infamy, of crime. And after he died, word
didn't even get out for two more years because he
was so forgotten. You know. I think his brother was
(54:37):
quoted in the New York Times as confirming his death,
But that wasn't until and that brother went by the
name Emil Lustig. And let us remember that the guy's
real name is Robert Miller. A lot of mysteries, a
lot of mysteries, A lot of mysteries here, Christopher, and
I gotta tell you, you know, here in ridiculous history,
(54:58):
we love the story of good con good heist, but
we do want to be clear that we're not we're
not endorsing this. Please don't start counterfeiting enough money to
imbalance the global economy. And despite that, you know, this
guy is clearly not a good person by any stretch, right,
(55:19):
and perhaps is psychologically compelled to engage in these shenanigans.
But even even with all that, even with all the
horrible things he's done, I have this reluctant and sincere
admiration for the guy's abilities. Well, I think no one
you have admired people's cones right there there where, well
(55:41):
wherewithal um. But I gotta say it's and and that's
the thing, you know, I don't like to uh to
gender something like this when you're talking about, but it
it does tend to be men who who pull these scams. Um,
But I would say in the future, you know, there
are a lot of really cool females, m artists who
could make for some interesting topics, some fake princesses. That's true. Oh,
(56:05):
that's true. You're right, Christopher. And also I would advance
if we're if we're having this discussion about cons and gender,
I would advance that it is completely possible that we
only know about more men because they are less skilled
and more likely to be caught. Oh yeah, so there's
there's this possibly that Well, in fact, it's it's because
of one man. There's one man in specific who who
(56:27):
gives this whole genre of criminal the name. So you know,
do you do you know why it's called a con?
Why is it called a colin Christopher, it's a condor
short for confidence, And it goes back to this one
guy in eighteen forty nine in New York City. William
Thompson was his name, and he had a scam where
he would butter people up with with golden words, with
(56:50):
sweet speech, and he was able to build up other
people's belief in himself so much that he said, I
want you to, as a show of confidence in me,
loan me your golden watch because you believe in me
so much. Yeah, because you believe in me so much,
loan me your golden watch. I'll go away for I'll
(57:11):
do whatever, and then i'll come back. You'll have your
watch back. And this man stole hundreds of watches this way,
so much so that he became known as the confidence Man.
He was written about in in newspapers, in the Times,
but he became its kind of like folk here, right,
And that's I think that's the thing that captures people's imagination,
especially here in the US, when there's what's perceived as
(57:33):
a victimless crime. There's no bodily harm. People just use
their use their wiles to steal money. So the confidence
Man ends up in prison and he would give interviews
to newspapers as the confidence Man, This William William Thompson,
the confidence Man. And then that became a term for
this scammer, for the grifter, the con man. That is
(57:56):
that is such a wonderful story. I had not heard that. Also,
that sounds like a terrible idea for a scam, but
I guess it was a different time. I mean, there's yeah,
sweet talking in the mid nineteenth century, it will get
you far. I'm pictorate a trans atlantic voice as a
mark of confidence. Give me all gold and watch i'ld rite.
And presently I'm gonna decline to do this. No more access,
(58:18):
no more access, Okay, all right, but I hope that
you do not decline to join us again in the future.
Christopher Hassi yotis wherein you and I and Casey and
Nolan's spirit will be exploring a very very strange story
about the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, if it's cool with you,
(58:38):
and if it's cool with the ghost of Noel on
the Cross Continental Divide, I'm gonna stick around this week.
Is that cool? I for one would love it if
you do. It's always a delight to have you on
the show. And uh no big spoilers, but Noel may
also make an appearance because he is, like me, a
big Christopher Hassi yotis fan and like you too, Casey. Right, absolutely,
(59:02):
and we hope that you have enjoyed this episode about
one of the most legendary con artists who ever lived.
What is your favorite story of a heist or a
con Let us know You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
and we'd especially love to invite you to our Facebook
community page, Ridiculous Historians, where you can hang out with
(59:23):
your fellow listeners and see some I don't know, some
top notch historical jokes honestly, yeah, jokes a plenty, wise cracking, sarcasm.
What else is on their clever thoughts Thoughts wordplay means
you're on there. I don't know if it's a good thing,
(59:46):
but do do check it out. As always, we want
to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram. We'd like to
thank my trustee co host Noel Brown. We'd like to
thank Alex Williams, who composed our opening track, and Christopher
will usually thank you on this show, but now I
can say it tuned directly. Thanks for coming, all of
(01:00:07):
you listening at home, at work, in the car, wherever
you are. You can't see it, but but Ben and
I are shaking hands quite vigorously right now. Hey, nice
watch
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.