September 10, 2019 • 38 mins
When Oscar Hartzell's mother met Milo and Sudie, she fell for a story too good to be true: She, as an heir to the fortune of Sir Francis Drake, was eligible to receive a large part of his treasure -- all she had to do was help pay for court costs in the UK. Yet when Oscar finally figured out the con, he joined forces with the fraudsters, eventually becoming the head of one of the largest scams of the age. Join Ben and special guest Christopher Hassiotis as they explore the bizarre rise (and fall) of Oscar Hartzell.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Here's hoping today's episode finds
you well, in good health, and not being beguiled by
con artist flim flam Folks. Confidence men. My name is Ben,
trustee co host Noel is on the road. But don't worry.
You won't have to listen to me monologue at Casey
(00:50):
for thirty minutes because today we are joined again by
one of our long time favorite guest on the show,
our former Reese Search associate and now executive producer at
I Heart Media, Christopher Hasiotis. Hello, Ben, Hello, everyone, Hello,
Casey Hello Hello. And that's our super producer Casey Pegrum Christopher.
(01:14):
It is I always say this, nos mean it is
a pleasure to join forces with you on the show again. Today.
I should point out that I was promised cookies. There
was a trail of cookies leading from my desk to this, uh,
this recording booth here. Yeah, I don't see any cookies.
I feel like I was conned. Well, uh, you were
(01:36):
not entirely bamboozled here, my friends, because if you look
at the fine print of that contract, it's more like
your promise the pursuit of cookies. Ben, all I can
say right now and listeners, I plead with you, the
door is locked. I can't get out of this studio.
So I've got the pleasure of sitting here with Ben
and chatting about what I seem to be called back
(01:58):
for with some relative frequency con artists. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
We didn't start out planning to do so many episodes
about scams and con artists, but it turns out that
this ridiculous history of human civilization is lousy with con artists,
some who are hilariously bad, some who are unbelievably lucky,
(02:23):
and a small few who for quite a while seemed
to get away scott free. Today is also sort of
our Iowa episode. I don't know if we checked in
with you about this man, but we're still on our
crazy suf John Stevens esque quest to do an episode
(02:44):
for every state in the United States. I encourage your endeavor,
I I say, stick with it. Yeah, well, we're already
way ahead of Soufia. Well, the last time we talked
about that and it came up was we were talking
about George Washington and speaking of scams, you tried to
pull one over on the listeners if I remember correctly
by saying that talking about George Washington counted as a
Washington State episode, to which I then and now objected
(03:08):
and object Yes, the motion carries I find that sustained.
What what would you say, Casey? Is that too much
of a scam? It's a little bit of scam. Yeah,
I'm gonna give it. Um, I don't know five pinocchios
or whatever dumb rating people would use for a scam.
This is your show, and I am but a warm
body and a warm voice, Casey on the case. Uh
(03:29):
it is it is Casey's show. Thanks. I'm also locked
in here. But today's show takes us in a way
to Iowa. But before we get to Iowa, we have
to introduce you to someone who is who must be
at least vaguely familiar to many of us listening today,
(03:50):
and that is sir Francis Drake. Right, Um, how would
you describe him? Ben? Would you say? He's a a sailor,
man of the high seas, hero, a pirate, a privateer, uh,
a slave trader, a human trafficker. Yeah, Francis Drake is
(04:11):
one of those historical figures who has not aged well
because growing up, especially in the West, a lot of
school children were taught, let's say, the sanitized version of
this guy's story. And he did impressive things. He's got
a lot of accolades. He accomplished things. Yes, yeah, he
(04:33):
was the second person ever to circumnavigate the globe, the
first Englishman for whatever that counts for. That's big, that's
a big deal with the English. And he also had
the approval of the Queen as far as his privateering
and his piracy went. She was completely, you know, fine
with his activities. He wasn't in his time in his country,
(04:57):
he was not considered a criminal. However, of course the
Spanish hated him. Well, he wasn't considered a criminal because basically,
you know, it's one of those technicalities. If you don't
make something a crime, you're not a criminal. If you
if you produce results, people can ignore the way you
got those results. And that's definitely the case with Francis
Drake and a lot of the privateers who were active
(05:21):
in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Absolutely he was differentiated
from you know, your independent mom and pop piracy business
by the commission from Queen Elizabeth. And when privateers received
this sort of well, they were called letters of mark.
When privateers received one of these things, it was fairly specific,
(05:44):
described where and when he could operate and against whom.
So he was given the green light to prey on
Spanish galleons. And by the time he was twenty talked
about an early start, he was deep in the privateering game.
Francis Drake looted a lot of Spanish gold. And I'll
(06:06):
interrupt you please, Spanish gold is a bit of a
misnomer as well, right, So the Spanish gold, it's not
like the Spanish just had the gold or made the gold.
So the Spanish came to the America's or what would
become called the America's and uh, you know, it took
gold that they found there. They you know, they took
(06:26):
the gold from native populations, um, from those communities, and
we're taking it back to Spain. It was in Spanish
possession at the time. But I think a lot of
the way that we've talked about history, especially pirate history,
and sort of this this romantic notion of the Caribbean
and the back and forth between the continents. You know,
we talked about the British, we talked about English, we
talked about the Spanish Portuguese to a certain extent, and
(06:48):
and their gold. But it was only Spanish because the
Spanish took it right. And that is a very good point,
because when you look at it that way, which is
the most accurate way to look at the sequence of events,
Francis Drake was stealing goods that had already been stolen, right,
and it just had this, uh, this thin veneer of legality.
(07:13):
And one thing we know about this, regardless of the
distinctions the rationalizations tossed about during the course of Drake's career,
he died a very very well off dude. He was
enormously successful stealing this stolen gold, and people also thought
(07:35):
this is the key part of his life for our purposes.
People also thought that Francis Drake had stashed away some
some treasure trove, you know, that he had, in addition
to his known earnings and his known you know, possessions
in his estate, that he had somewhere else, somewhere in
(07:56):
the world, hidden away a mysterious is fortune worth as
much as, by one estimate, one hundred billion dollars, which
is a lot of gold. That's a lot of gold.
That's a lot of gold, and that's not uncommon. That's
part of the romance of the ideas, especially when either
at the time or in retrospect you're talking about these
(08:17):
somewhat scurless characters who skirted the edge of legality, were
enemies to some friends to others, somewhat legal pirates working
with the sort of the stamp of approval of the queen.
And so as these pirates are pirrating their way around
the Caribbean, it's only natural to assume, as they're hiding
in coves, in little uh h endlets exactly, um, you
(08:41):
know that there might be a couple of chests somewhere.
And Drake he died in fifteen nineties six, so you know,
end of the sixteenth century. He died, um, somewhere in
the Caribbean, in the Greater Antilles. Dysenterius. What got him?
It wasn't any of the swashbuckling. There were no mutinies
or rebellions. Are angry deck swabbers, right. He passed away
(09:04):
in a surprisingly not that Dysenterry is a pleasant way
to go, but in a comparatively pleasant way compared to
you know, the other hazards of his occupation. I don't know,
a quick must get shot to the head or a
sword through the throat or whatever you see in the movies.
That that's pretty quick, That it is pretty quick, that's
true's gruesome? Well, I don't know, Dysenterry eyesn't imagine it's
(09:25):
fairly gruesome. Yeah, you know, of the three, I would
rather not pick any, you know. Uh, he probably he
probably did not want to go out that way either.
But Ben, can we fast forward a couple of hundred years? Yes,
we should, because you see, Francis Drake left no legitimate
air and his fortune seemed to have vanished. This became
(09:47):
a cool story to tell around the campfire for as
you said, several hundred years. Let's fast forward to the
early twentieth century in Iowa, in somewhere between nineteen fifteen
and nineteen nineteen, right, right, So, um, definitely not pirate territory, no, no, no, no. Uh.
(10:10):
The Iowan pirate industry was not in its glory days, right,
and maybe hasn't reached them yet. So there's this guy
in Madison County, Iowa. His name is Oscar Meryl heart Cell.
He had tried a couple of different occupations with middling success.
(10:30):
He was working as as a farmer. At times he
was working as a deputy sheriff there in Madison County.
And when he is about around about thirty nine forty
years old, he meets two people who are very charming,
very glad, handy, and it turns out that they have,
(10:53):
through mysterious unique means, aligne on the legendary fortune of
Sir Francis Drake. And they talked to Oscar's mom and
they say, Mrs Hartzell, we will give you a slice
of this amazing pie treasure. Wait, this amazing treasure of
(11:16):
this amazing pie of treasure. Yeah, treasure. I feel like
treasure pie. That is probably the more direct way. There's
probably if you go to like some Iowa church sale,
there's a nice woman who will sell you a slice
of treasure pie. It's probably studded with gummy bears and snickers.
But that's not what we're talking about. That's not no, no,
we could be we should. I am sorry about the
(11:38):
cookies I owe you. So. So this couple tells Oscar's
mom that, you know, they will turn this six thousand
dollars into a much larger sum of money. Reportedly six
million bucks, and they go along with it. His mother
is a victim of what turns out to be a
(11:59):
con be because you see, it was not uncommon for
people to falsely claim that they could help you get
a piece of the legendary treasure of Sir Francis Drake.
This is a version of an older con, the unclaimed
estate con right, and that still happens today via email.
(12:21):
Oh yeah, Nigerian Princes of plenty. Uh. You know, we've
we've talked about this before in the show, how people
are so willing to buy into something. But I think
what you mentioned is that it was a common con
and that's part of why I think it's easier for
people to go along with it. Right, if someone just
came to you and said, hey, we've got this in
on millions of dollars, you could be the only one
(12:43):
that may raise some questions. But you know, at the
time in Iowa, in Missouri around there, this was becoming
more and more common. There was a woman named Sudy
Whittaker who really got things going in this sort of
Drake fortune swindle. She claimed to be related to to
a man named George Drake and could trace her lineage
back to him, and then they claimed that Drake George
(13:07):
came from Sir Francis Drake. And basically the way the
swindle worked is pretty much what you've laid out. There's
this this massive fortune, but it's being held up in
court and we need your help to get it out. So, yeah,
Oscar Hartzel saw his mom getting swindled, Ben, what would
(13:29):
you do if you saw one of your parents getting
built out of some money? Would you defend them? Would
you try to argue with the people who stole money
from them? Possibly take legal action? Yeah? Um called the cops,
shout about it out of a window online in a podcast.
(13:50):
Would you joined forces with them? You know? That is
the plot twist, right Most people would say no, right
like that. That wouldn't be your instinct, would it. Christopher
would not, So so it was Oscar's instinct. And there's
there's a strange evolution here the two Connars. He meets
one the infamous Sudi Whittaker that you mentioned, the other
(14:13):
severely weasley lawyer named Milo Lewis, which I know can
sound sort of stereotypical, but this guy was a real cad.
It was a pill. These are the folks who built
Oscar's mom out of thousands of dollars, and Oscar notices that,
surprise rise the money from the Drake estate does not
(14:34):
come pouring down on them. He decides to seek out
Sudi and Milo, and at this point we're pretty sure
he still fought this was a legitimate thing and not
a con at first. And you know, he's essentially checking in,
where's the money? I hope you guys are doing well.
(14:54):
Talk soon. And so Louis and Whittaker, in an excellent
piece of improvisation I must say, they say, you know what, Oscar,
we like to cut a your jib. You want to
work with us because we can get this money faster
if we have a little more cash to prime the pump.
So would you help us recruit additional people to invest
(15:15):
in this astonishing opportunity and he says yes. The three
of them go to England and they tell their investors
we are traveling across the pond because we need to
work out just some of the legal kinks the bureaucracy
in person in England. And you know b R B
(15:36):
T T Y L love you that kind of stuff.
And while he's in England, they're still communicating, not just
with the marks that they had identified while in the US,
but they actually set up a network of even more
people to work for them, to act as their agents
in Iowa, in Missouri, in that region of the country.
So they're going around basically with a sort of pyramid
(15:59):
scheme set up where their agents are the ones going
to people and saying, listen, this Drake fortune could be
anywhere from They promised some people twenty two billion dollars.
They told some other people four hundred billion dollars, a
lot of billions of dollars. But here's why they needed
the help of the individual people in the US that
(16:20):
they were talking to. They said that this money has
been found. The fortune is in the United Kingdom, and
anyone with the last name Drake, anyone who can tie
their lineage back to Sir Francis Drake, is eligible for
a cut of that money. And you, sir or madam,
could be one of those people. But we need your
help because the court costs in the UK are outrageous.
(16:45):
Two thousand five dars a week is what they have
to spend just to keep the case going in the UK.
So they promised people as Hart soul's mother fell prey
to these ridiculous, ridiculous returns. They said, for every dollar
you invested, you would get five hundred dollars back. You know,
(17:06):
when this fortune has revealed it, Ben, I'm just gonna
step back and say, anytime anyone promises you, what is
a fifty thousand percent returned? Right, maybe maybe maybe take
a step back, juice your skepticism a little bit. But
seventy people in the US people bought into this. That
(17:30):
is a lot of people. That is, it's not four
billion people, but it is quite quite a large number.
And you know, as we say it's it can always
be tempting to look back and think, what a bunch
of rubes, you know, how gullible, how credulous. However, when
they were in the moment, a lot of these seventy
(17:52):
thousand people came from similar backgrounds. They knew one another
because there was this multi level market thing. Is what
it ultimately involved into the way people were recruiting. So
they were not necessarily getting strangers as often as they
were getting their friends, their neighbors, their loved ones. People
who went to the same general store, the same church
(18:15):
or something. People you could believe people who could vouch
for you, people who you know, and Hartstel made things
seem like they were on the up and up. He
established an official organization, the Sir Francis Strake Association. He
put out official newsletters. You know this was It looked legit.
It looked legit. It walked and quacked like a duck.
(18:36):
But before we go into the beauty of his con,
let's let's take just a second to point out the
internal evolution of his his con gang. So, as we said,
Sudi and Milo right are the ones who inducted him
into this. Hart Sel is not particularly thick or dope
(18:59):
ish dude. He knows something is wonky about this, and
he figures out while they are in England that this
is part of a scam. And he notices that Lewis
and Whittaker, they have some internal tensions because, you know,
putting two con artists into a game seems like it's unsustainable.
(19:22):
It might not end well here today. I have no comment. No, uh,
non't know. He is. He's on an adventure that I
think he'll yeah, I think he'll tell us about He
should be in um, he should be in New York.
That's the story I'm sticking to and wait, are you
a cop? I have no pithy remark. All right, Casey, No,
(19:45):
leave it in, Leave it in for later legal proceeds.
Ho it't like Casey. That reminds me I just need
fifty bucks to keep that stuff moving through court? Are
you cool with that? Ben? I really don't think it's
a good idea to talk about this on the air.
That's true, unless some listeners want to, and into which
we should. I think I just violated several laws, broadcast laws,
digital laws, corporate policies. But it was a different time,
(20:11):
billion dollars Casey on the case, by the way, as well,
so our different moderndation. Annigan's aside. We could learn a
lot from Heartzell in England because he sees opportunity in
this increasingly chaotic partnership and he becomes sort of the
(20:33):
face of this He I don't want to say franchises,
but he punches up essentially the original scheme. He starts
dressing in custom suits and he starts looking the part
you know of someone who would be considered uh an
old money descendant right of of Francis Drake himself. There's
(20:56):
an excellent article in this called may I Hold Your Watch,
which comes from Susan Adams and refers to impart a different,
equally impressive con artist. But we have a rough idea
of the pitch. We know that the number that he
would give people varied, as you said, twenty two billion
billions somewhere in between, and it was tied up in
(21:18):
probate court. Also, the cash value wasn't the entirety of
the fortune. The entire English city of Plymouth was up
for grab. And he started off finding, you know, people
with the surname Drake, a relationship, some sort of possible
or plausible connection to this historical figure. But then I
(21:40):
guess the money got too good. He expanded the con
He started talking to people outside of Iowa, including a
lot of people who had no relation to Francis Drake,
not even in a sensible pretend one, no relation whatsoever.
And that's when he started getting to uh that havand
thousand people mark that you mentioned. And he was living
(22:05):
high on the hog, an opulent lifestyle, as we said,
top notch clothing, eating at the best restaurants, etcetera. Pretty
much the exact behavior we see con Artists Committee in
feature films. And the thing is, this con still powers on.
(22:25):
He was able to keep it running pretty successfully until
a couple of things happened. He was able to keep
it running until the Great Depression, despite various red flags
that proved his falsehoods. Right, the British government announced in
nine that there was no fortune from Francis Drake. Yeah,
(22:48):
that's the thing is, it's not like no one else
had thought about this, right, So the government had kind
of paid attention and um, they said, look, whatever fortune
that there was, it probably went to Drake's second wife, Elizabeth,
And so there's nothing left. There's no If there's a
hidden treasure, go grab a shovel. But there's nothing in
(23:10):
the probate courts. You know, there are no billions of
pounds just waiting to be dispersed exactly. But people don't
want to hear that, because if you believe in this
sort of audacious get rich quick dream, then you it'll
be part of your internal logic. Of course, the government
is going to say it's not there, you know, but
I am a descendant of Francis Drake, and this gold
(23:33):
at least some of it, at least a few billion
of it belongs to me. Another thing that Hartzel did
wisely was to stay in the UK at the time
because he wasn't breaking any British laws. He was. He
was just hanging out, making money, dressing nicely, walking around,
eating well and sending letters. Right. Because again his his
(23:58):
supporters were US based, it is very smart to have
an ocean between them in case the heat picked up.
It did, it always does, it always does. This heat
took the form of a pretty tenacious postal officer in
the UK who started to get suspicious and said, all right,
(24:20):
what's really going on with this Drake venture? And when
he found out, he reported this to the authorities. As
you said, Christopher, the British could not prosecute heart Swell.
He did not commit any crimes, right, he was just
sort of a foodie and a man about town in
a clothes horse. But what they could do is deport him.
(24:43):
They could extraditem to the US to stand trial for
mail fraud, which is how like the specific charge they
wanted to get him for. Fast forward n Iowa. Heartswell
is on trial Oscar Hartswell. And here's the crazy thing.
He doesn't show up alone. He has a hundreds strong
(25:05):
mob of fans, supporters, fellow investors who are cheering because
they feel like this is I don't know. This makes
me think of the context too, right when we're talking
about the thirties. This makes me think that at least
part of the psychology here could be a sort of
(25:27):
fight against authoritarian figures thing going on. You know, and
people are saying, well, the common man is always getting
crushed by the courts. Well sure, and at the time
not unlike some other times in uh in past or
more recent or contemporary history. You know, people are desperate.
They've they've lost a lot of money, but they also
don't necessarily see a path towards getting more stability or
(25:49):
more money for their lives. Right, so they feel like
they've exhausted the traditional paths. They've done what they were
told to do. They tried working for the farm, they
tried working for their company, and it didn't work out.
So even if you sat down with someone and said, listen,
do you really think you're going to get millions and
millions of dollars? We're like, wow, maybe I don't know,
(26:10):
but like, but what's it gonna hurt if I'm already
getting screwed? Over. If my life is already not in
great shape and I don't have good prospects, why not
put aside hundred two hundreds of thousand dollars with the
prospects of maybe this will pay off massively in the future.
I mean, you see very similar situation. You could argue
(26:30):
that state lotteries operate in much the same way. People know,
they know the odds are against them, but they might
not be. You know, it always makes you think. One
way my father used to describe lotteries and gambling. He said,
the lottery is a attacks on people who are bad
(26:51):
at math. It's like it's attacks for not thinking through
the math. He said. It was a much more charming
East Tennessee accent. He did, He did, he did. He
is really leaning into that accent post retirement. There's a
heartbreaking part of this because we have to realize that
(27:12):
a lot of people who had bought into this, even
if it were not their entire fortune, this was like
the dream that they clung to, you know, as things
got worse and worse and day to day life, they
were waiting for justice to be served and then to
receive their rightful inheritance from their lauded ancestor Francis Drake
(27:34):
and Oscar heart Cell is their golden ticket. He's the
conduit through which this success will arrive. There may or
may not also have been a little bit of you know,
American versus the British system of you know, the the
King's got things held up in court and we hard
working Americans are just trying to free that for ourselves. Um.
(27:58):
But yeah, as you point out, Hartel shows up in
court not just with supporters, not just with the people,
but with their money. I mean, he raised over the
fifteen years he ran this scam, he made two million
dollars for himself for himself, two million dollars. And yet
when he goes to court, his supporters still pledge money
(28:21):
for a defense fund. And um, I saw a couple
of different numbers. And when I was doing the research
for this piece, which, by the way, I really recommend
any listeners who want to read more about this checkout
a New Yorker article from two thousand to written by
Richard Rayner. It's called The Admiral and the con Man.
It's got a lot of really great details in there.
But Hartzel's supporters race anywhere from sixty eight thousand to
(28:42):
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for his defense, to
pay for the lawyers when he was in court, despite
the fact that he had two million of well not
his own, but yeah, that he had kind of generated
the fortune he was claiming to have. Yet they also
paid for his bail. And despite all this public support,
(29:03):
Heartswell is convicted. They say they're going to ship him
off the Leavenworth for ten years on these mail fraud charges.
While he is in jail, the scam continues. It collects
another half a million dollars. Some people died convinced that,
you know, this fortune will not go to me now
that I am going to pass away, but it will
(29:26):
go to my children and their children. So there's there's
some hope at the end of the long day. And
it's nuts he had, you know, he had at this
point kind of I want to call him employees, associates
like his his agents. His brother, a guy named Canfield,
played an instrumental role in keeping the con going. But
(29:49):
now Uncle Sam is wise to it and Heartswell goes
to trial again. He loses again. This is is one
of my favorite parts. I wish we had the substance
of this to do a re enactment, but we'll we'll,
we'll spare you that because we don't have the exact
language here. At his sentencing, he jumps up and starts
(30:15):
raving like an unhinged lunatic about how amazing the Drake
estate is and how you know, history will see who
was right and who was on you know, who was
correct in this mad endeavor. And this is the weird thing.
We will probably never know how much or how little
(30:36):
he actually believed that I was. Really I'm really interested
to hear your take, because he spoke with prison psychiatrists
and they said that he was claiming he was he,
that he himself was Sir Francis Drake, and they diagnosed
him with paranoid schizophrenia at the time. But was this
another con you know what I mean? Was he like
(30:58):
angling to go for some kind of insanity please, I
don't know. I don't know that the it would have
benefited him at the time. It may be the sort
of narcissistic um, you know, personality traits where you you
just don't want to get caught in a line, even
if you know you're lying, so you build it bigger
and bigger and bigger, but a little extra addition to
(31:20):
a hurricane map. Um. Yeah, but but yeah, I mean,
so he spent his time in Leavenworth, which is a
big deal prison, right, That's where he would have been
there at the same time as a gangsters like machine
Gun Kelly, like in the same building. This is serious business.
But while he was there, he also you know, at
(31:40):
the prison psychiatrists you mentioned, They also encouraged him to
get his story out to help himself with these delusions.
So he wrote in six a prison autobiography, which I
think it would just be fascinating. I wasn't able to
find any of the original material, but it is mentioned
in that um in that Rainer piece. Because Rayner himself
(32:01):
and researching for this article that was published seventeen years ago,
got a lot of files released by Scotland Yard, you
know Scotland. Scotland Yard had three folders about Hartsel called
him a quote unquote notorious offender, and in there was
a copy of this probably the only copy of this
autobiography that he wrote while in prison. Yeah, and shouts
(32:23):
out to Richard Rayner because he did so much leg
work on this this story oddly enough sort of faded
from the conversation until hard working journalists and historians like
Rayner hunted it down. Well. I was able to find
out that in um in two thousand, there was a
play put on in London called Scam, Just just Scam,
(32:46):
to the tune of Fame. Yeah about this this very episode,
so a couple of years before Rayners article. So I
don't know if if one fed into the other. You know, sure,
maybe it was sort of bubbling up in the seite
geist and it's you know, one of those things where
people kind of knew about it, but it really took
the dedicated efforts of of serious writers and researchers to
really bring this thing to light. But yeah, I don't know.
(33:08):
I mean, listeners, if you are in Iowa or that
part of the country, does any of this ring familiar
to you? A lot of people have never heard about
this before. I knew very little about it. I had
heard of kind of the Drake swindle, but I didn't
know about its relationship to a very specific part of
the United States. Oh and if you'd like to learn
more about it too, Richard Rayner wrote a book about
(33:29):
this in two thousand and three called Drake's Fortune, The
Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist, which
that title those you have to be careful with those
sorts of superlatives. What exactly is a con artist help
sell books? It helps sell books. That's true, and it's
a real book. If you pay for it, you will
get a copy of the book. It's not like Drake's Fortune.
(33:51):
It's strange because although Rayner does pass away at the
age of sixties seven andree, he doesn't pass away in prison.
He passes away in a hospital for the criminally insane,
as they were called at the time. I do want
to point out that while it may have been different
(34:11):
from Leavenworth Prison, it was still not a particularly nice
place to be, right, Yeah, still a prison, still a prison.
And we could do an entire episode on the US
treatment of people with mental issues historically. Oh, if that's
a dark one, man, we might have to save that
one for October um. However, we know that despite him
passing away, people still believed the story, the story that
(34:36):
he created, well, the story that he punched up from
Milo and Sudi continued on without him, which I think
is amazing. Well, yeah, you know, it's the sort of
thing where sometimes founders don't know what they've got until
someone comes along and boosts it up. You know. You
see that in legitimate corporations, right uh. You know the
guys who founded McDonald's. They were doing okay, Sollen Burger's
(34:59):
and cow Fifornia until ray Kroc came along and said,
I've got an idea for you. Let's take this big
time exactly. And that's an excellent comparison. That is why,
according to Rayner in that New Yorker piece you mentioned earlier, Christopher,
even after Oscar Hartzwell's death, towns in Iowa and Minnesota
(35:22):
became divided between people who said, Okay, this was a scam,
I got got and people who said, no, big government
shut this down. The Drake fortune is out there, I
have a piece of it. I can't believe you're giving up,
nonbeliever or whatever you know. And this, this sort of
cultural conflict continued for years afterwards. This story makes me
(35:48):
think that while this guy may not have been the
world's greatest con man, whatever that means, he's definitely in
the top tier of the list. Wouldn't you say it's
it's certainly a ridiculous list. To be part of. It
is the ridiculous list to be part of. Uh, And
just emphasize this, it is a list that Casey my
co host Nolan I are not on by any means.
(36:10):
I still don't have cookies, all right, man, But you know,
it just takes a lot to prime the pump. What's ben,
what's the difference between a swindle and just a flat outlie?
A difference between a swindle and a flat outlie would
be that when I don't have cookies, that's the difference.
That's the difference. I was. I was going into it
at You heard me take a breath and I was like, well,
(36:33):
you know, uh, sometimes like a swindle would have a
sometimes a material exchange of goods would I'm just just
give me a cookie. Thank you so much for coming
on the show, Christopher Hacio. It is We will indeed
bring you some cookies. I have to I have to
say it is always a pleasure. I will be sending
(36:54):
an email requesting your cookie preferences, and we'd also like
to hear your take, folks, what what are your favorite cookies?
Do you know anyone who was maybe involved in this
sort of this huge con this huge swindle and do
you think that Oscar Hartswell at the very end of
(37:16):
his life, do you think he really believes he was
Francis Drake or do you think he was just trying
to get one last con over. Thank you so much
to our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed
our track, our research associates Gabe, Ryan Eve's Jeff Cote
who may be appearing on the show soon, and Christopher.
(37:38):
Despite the fact that you and I have had our
baked goods related differences in the course of this show,
how how would you feel about coming back on for
another one? Sometimes you know that's the way it crumbles.
There's no one I'd rather be locked in a studio with.
Thank you that Okay, it's very specific compliment. Thank you
(37:59):
so much. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Here's hoping today's episode finds
you well, in good health, and not being beguiled by
con artist flim flam Folks. Confidence men. My name is Ben,
trustee co host Noel is on the road. But don't worry.
You won't have to listen to me monologue at Casey
(00:50):
for thirty minutes because today we are joined again by
one of our long time favorite guest on the show,
our former Reese Search associate and now executive producer at
I Heart Media, Christopher Hasiotis. Hello, Ben, Hello, everyone, Hello,
Casey Hello Hello. And that's our super producer Casey Pegrum Christopher.
(01:14):
It is I always say this, nos mean it is
a pleasure to join forces with you on the show again. Today.
I should point out that I was promised cookies. There
was a trail of cookies leading from my desk to this, uh,
this recording booth here. Yeah, I don't see any cookies.
I feel like I was conned. Well, uh, you were
(01:36):
not entirely bamboozled here, my friends, because if you look
at the fine print of that contract, it's more like
your promise the pursuit of cookies. Ben, all I can
say right now and listeners, I plead with you, the
door is locked. I can't get out of this studio.
So I've got the pleasure of sitting here with Ben
and chatting about what I seem to be called back
(01:58):
for with some relative frequency con artists. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
We didn't start out planning to do so many episodes
about scams and con artists, but it turns out that
this ridiculous history of human civilization is lousy with con artists,
some who are hilariously bad, some who are unbelievably lucky,
(02:23):
and a small few who for quite a while seemed
to get away scott free. Today is also sort of
our Iowa episode. I don't know if we checked in
with you about this man, but we're still on our
crazy suf John Stevens esque quest to do an episode
(02:44):
for every state in the United States. I encourage your endeavor,
I I say, stick with it. Yeah, well, we're already
way ahead of Soufia. Well, the last time we talked
about that and it came up was we were talking
about George Washington and speaking of scams, you tried to
pull one over on the listeners if I remember correctly
by saying that talking about George Washington counted as a
Washington State episode, to which I then and now objected
(03:08):
and object Yes, the motion carries I find that sustained.
What what would you say, Casey? Is that too much
of a scam? It's a little bit of scam. Yeah,
I'm gonna give it. Um, I don't know five pinocchios
or whatever dumb rating people would use for a scam.
This is your show, and I am but a warm
body and a warm voice, Casey on the case. Uh
(03:29):
it is it is Casey's show. Thanks. I'm also locked
in here. But today's show takes us in a way
to Iowa. But before we get to Iowa, we have
to introduce you to someone who is who must be
at least vaguely familiar to many of us listening today,
(03:50):
and that is sir Francis Drake. Right, Um, how would
you describe him? Ben? Would you say? He's a a sailor,
man of the high seas, hero, a pirate, a privateer, uh,
a slave trader, a human trafficker. Yeah, Francis Drake is
(04:11):
one of those historical figures who has not aged well
because growing up, especially in the West, a lot of
school children were taught, let's say, the sanitized version of
this guy's story. And he did impressive things. He's got
a lot of accolades. He accomplished things. Yes, yeah, he
(04:33):
was the second person ever to circumnavigate the globe, the
first Englishman for whatever that counts for. That's big, that's
a big deal with the English. And he also had
the approval of the Queen as far as his privateering
and his piracy went. She was completely, you know, fine
with his activities. He wasn't in his time in his country,
(04:57):
he was not considered a criminal. However, of course the
Spanish hated him. Well, he wasn't considered a criminal because basically,
you know, it's one of those technicalities. If you don't
make something a crime, you're not a criminal. If you
if you produce results, people can ignore the way you
got those results. And that's definitely the case with Francis
Drake and a lot of the privateers who were active
(05:21):
in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Absolutely he was differentiated
from you know, your independent mom and pop piracy business
by the commission from Queen Elizabeth. And when privateers received
this sort of well, they were called letters of mark.
When privateers received one of these things, it was fairly specific,
(05:44):
described where and when he could operate and against whom.
So he was given the green light to prey on
Spanish galleons. And by the time he was twenty talked
about an early start, he was deep in the privateering game.
Francis Drake looted a lot of Spanish gold. And I'll
(06:06):
interrupt you please, Spanish gold is a bit of a
misnomer as well, right, So the Spanish gold, it's not
like the Spanish just had the gold or made the gold.
So the Spanish came to the America's or what would
become called the America's and uh, you know, it took
gold that they found there. They you know, they took
(06:26):
the gold from native populations, um, from those communities, and
we're taking it back to Spain. It was in Spanish
possession at the time. But I think a lot of
the way that we've talked about history, especially pirate history,
and sort of this this romantic notion of the Caribbean
and the back and forth between the continents. You know,
we talked about the British, we talked about English, we
talked about the Spanish Portuguese to a certain extent, and
(06:48):
and their gold. But it was only Spanish because the
Spanish took it right. And that is a very good point,
because when you look at it that way, which is
the most accurate way to look at the sequence of events,
Francis Drake was stealing goods that had already been stolen, right,
and it just had this, uh, this thin veneer of legality.
(07:13):
And one thing we know about this, regardless of the
distinctions the rationalizations tossed about during the course of Drake's career,
he died a very very well off dude. He was
enormously successful stealing this stolen gold, and people also thought
(07:35):
this is the key part of his life for our purposes.
People also thought that Francis Drake had stashed away some
some treasure trove, you know, that he had, in addition
to his known earnings and his known you know, possessions
in his estate, that he had somewhere else, somewhere in
(07:56):
the world, hidden away a mysterious is fortune worth as
much as, by one estimate, one hundred billion dollars, which
is a lot of gold. That's a lot of gold.
That's a lot of gold, and that's not uncommon. That's
part of the romance of the ideas, especially when either
at the time or in retrospect you're talking about these
(08:17):
somewhat scurless characters who skirted the edge of legality, were
enemies to some friends to others, somewhat legal pirates working
with the sort of the stamp of approval of the queen.
And so as these pirates are pirrating their way around
the Caribbean, it's only natural to assume, as they're hiding
in coves, in little uh h endlets exactly, um, you
(08:41):
know that there might be a couple of chests somewhere.
And Drake he died in fifteen nineties six, so you know,
end of the sixteenth century. He died, um, somewhere in
the Caribbean, in the Greater Antilles. Dysenterius. What got him?
It wasn't any of the swashbuckling. There were no mutinies
or rebellions. Are angry deck swabbers, right. He passed away
(09:04):
in a surprisingly not that Dysenterry is a pleasant way
to go, but in a comparatively pleasant way compared to
you know, the other hazards of his occupation. I don't know,
a quick must get shot to the head or a
sword through the throat or whatever you see in the movies.
That that's pretty quick, That it is pretty quick, that's
true's gruesome? Well, I don't know, Dysenterry eyesn't imagine it's
(09:25):
fairly gruesome. Yeah, you know, of the three, I would
rather not pick any, you know. Uh, he probably he
probably did not want to go out that way either.
But Ben, can we fast forward a couple of hundred years? Yes,
we should, because you see, Francis Drake left no legitimate
air and his fortune seemed to have vanished. This became
(09:47):
a cool story to tell around the campfire for as
you said, several hundred years. Let's fast forward to the
early twentieth century in Iowa, in somewhere between nineteen fifteen
and nineteen nineteen, right, right, So, um, definitely not pirate territory, no, no, no, no. Uh.
(10:10):
The Iowan pirate industry was not in its glory days, right,
and maybe hasn't reached them yet. So there's this guy
in Madison County, Iowa. His name is Oscar Meryl heart Cell.
He had tried a couple of different occupations with middling success.
(10:30):
He was working as as a farmer. At times he
was working as a deputy sheriff there in Madison County.
And when he is about around about thirty nine forty
years old, he meets two people who are very charming,
very glad, handy, and it turns out that they have,
(10:53):
through mysterious unique means, aligne on the legendary fortune of
Sir Francis Drake. And they talked to Oscar's mom and
they say, Mrs Hartzell, we will give you a slice
of this amazing pie treasure. Wait, this amazing treasure of
(11:16):
this amazing pie of treasure. Yeah, treasure. I feel like
treasure pie. That is probably the more direct way. There's
probably if you go to like some Iowa church sale,
there's a nice woman who will sell you a slice
of treasure pie. It's probably studded with gummy bears and snickers.
But that's not what we're talking about. That's not no, no,
we could be we should. I am sorry about the
(11:38):
cookies I owe you. So. So this couple tells Oscar's
mom that, you know, they will turn this six thousand
dollars into a much larger sum of money. Reportedly six
million bucks, and they go along with it. His mother
is a victim of what turns out to be a
(11:59):
con be because you see, it was not uncommon for
people to falsely claim that they could help you get
a piece of the legendary treasure of Sir Francis Drake.
This is a version of an older con, the unclaimed
estate con right, and that still happens today via email.
(12:21):
Oh yeah, Nigerian Princes of plenty. Uh. You know, we've
we've talked about this before in the show, how people
are so willing to buy into something. But I think
what you mentioned is that it was a common con
and that's part of why I think it's easier for
people to go along with it. Right, if someone just
came to you and said, hey, we've got this in
on millions of dollars, you could be the only one
(12:43):
that may raise some questions. But you know, at the
time in Iowa, in Missouri around there, this was becoming
more and more common. There was a woman named Sudy
Whittaker who really got things going in this sort of
Drake fortune swindle. She claimed to be related to to
a man named George Drake and could trace her lineage
back to him, and then they claimed that Drake George
(13:07):
came from Sir Francis Drake. And basically the way the
swindle worked is pretty much what you've laid out. There's
this this massive fortune, but it's being held up in
court and we need your help to get it out. So, yeah,
Oscar Hartzel saw his mom getting swindled, Ben, what would
(13:29):
you do if you saw one of your parents getting
built out of some money? Would you defend them? Would
you try to argue with the people who stole money
from them? Possibly take legal action? Yeah? Um called the cops,
shout about it out of a window online in a podcast.
(13:50):
Would you joined forces with them? You know? That is
the plot twist, right Most people would say no, right
like that. That wouldn't be your instinct, would it. Christopher
would not, So so it was Oscar's instinct. And there's
there's a strange evolution here the two Connars. He meets
one the infamous Sudi Whittaker that you mentioned, the other
(14:13):
severely weasley lawyer named Milo Lewis, which I know can
sound sort of stereotypical, but this guy was a real cad.
It was a pill. These are the folks who built
Oscar's mom out of thousands of dollars, and Oscar notices that,
surprise rise the money from the Drake estate does not
(14:34):
come pouring down on them. He decides to seek out
Sudi and Milo, and at this point we're pretty sure
he still fought this was a legitimate thing and not
a con at first. And you know, he's essentially checking in,
where's the money? I hope you guys are doing well.
(14:54):
Talk soon. And so Louis and Whittaker, in an excellent
piece of improvisation I must say, they say, you know what, Oscar,
we like to cut a your jib. You want to
work with us because we can get this money faster
if we have a little more cash to prime the pump.
So would you help us recruit additional people to invest
(15:15):
in this astonishing opportunity and he says yes. The three
of them go to England and they tell their investors
we are traveling across the pond because we need to
work out just some of the legal kinks the bureaucracy
in person in England. And you know b R B
(15:36):
T T Y L love you that kind of stuff.
And while he's in England, they're still communicating, not just
with the marks that they had identified while in the US,
but they actually set up a network of even more
people to work for them, to act as their agents
in Iowa, in Missouri, in that region of the country.
So they're going around basically with a sort of pyramid
(15:59):
scheme set up where their agents are the ones going
to people and saying, listen, this Drake fortune could be
anywhere from They promised some people twenty two billion dollars.
They told some other people four hundred billion dollars, a
lot of billions of dollars. But here's why they needed
the help of the individual people in the US that
(16:20):
they were talking to. They said that this money has
been found. The fortune is in the United Kingdom, and
anyone with the last name Drake, anyone who can tie
their lineage back to Sir Francis Drake, is eligible for
a cut of that money. And you, sir or madam,
could be one of those people. But we need your
help because the court costs in the UK are outrageous.
(16:45):
Two thousand five dars a week is what they have
to spend just to keep the case going in the UK.
So they promised people as Hart soul's mother fell prey
to these ridiculous, ridiculous returns. They said, for every dollar
you invested, you would get five hundred dollars back. You know,
(17:06):
when this fortune has revealed it, Ben, I'm just gonna
step back and say, anytime anyone promises you, what is
a fifty thousand percent returned? Right, maybe maybe maybe take
a step back, juice your skepticism a little bit. But
seventy people in the US people bought into this. That
(17:30):
is a lot of people. That is, it's not four
billion people, but it is quite quite a large number.
And you know, as we say it's it can always
be tempting to look back and think, what a bunch
of rubes, you know, how gullible, how credulous. However, when
they were in the moment, a lot of these seventy
(17:52):
thousand people came from similar backgrounds. They knew one another
because there was this multi level market thing. Is what
it ultimately involved into the way people were recruiting. So
they were not necessarily getting strangers as often as they
were getting their friends, their neighbors, their loved ones. People
who went to the same general store, the same church
(18:15):
or something. People you could believe people who could vouch
for you, people who you know, and Hartstel made things
seem like they were on the up and up. He
established an official organization, the Sir Francis Strake Association. He
put out official newsletters. You know this was It looked legit.
It looked legit. It walked and quacked like a duck.
(18:36):
But before we go into the beauty of his con,
let's let's take just a second to point out the
internal evolution of his his con gang. So, as we said,
Sudi and Milo right are the ones who inducted him
into this. Hart Sel is not particularly thick or dope
(18:59):
ish dude. He knows something is wonky about this, and
he figures out while they are in England that this
is part of a scam. And he notices that Lewis
and Whittaker, they have some internal tensions because, you know,
putting two con artists into a game seems like it's unsustainable.
(19:22):
It might not end well here today. I have no comment. No, uh,
non't know. He is. He's on an adventure that I
think he'll yeah, I think he'll tell us about He
should be in um, he should be in New York.
That's the story I'm sticking to and wait, are you
a cop? I have no pithy remark. All right, Casey, No,
(19:45):
leave it in, Leave it in for later legal proceeds.
Ho it't like Casey. That reminds me I just need
fifty bucks to keep that stuff moving through court? Are
you cool with that? Ben? I really don't think it's
a good idea to talk about this on the air.
That's true, unless some listeners want to, and into which
we should. I think I just violated several laws, broadcast laws,
digital laws, corporate policies. But it was a different time,
(20:11):
billion dollars Casey on the case, by the way, as well,
so our different moderndation. Annigan's aside. We could learn a
lot from Heartzell in England because he sees opportunity in
this increasingly chaotic partnership and he becomes sort of the
(20:33):
face of this He I don't want to say franchises,
but he punches up essentially the original scheme. He starts
dressing in custom suits and he starts looking the part
you know of someone who would be considered uh an
old money descendant right of of Francis Drake himself. There's
(20:56):
an excellent article in this called may I Hold Your Watch,
which comes from Susan Adams and refers to impart a different,
equally impressive con artist. But we have a rough idea
of the pitch. We know that the number that he
would give people varied, as you said, twenty two billion
billions somewhere in between, and it was tied up in
(21:18):
probate court. Also, the cash value wasn't the entirety of
the fortune. The entire English city of Plymouth was up
for grab. And he started off finding, you know, people
with the surname Drake, a relationship, some sort of possible
or plausible connection to this historical figure. But then I
(21:40):
guess the money got too good. He expanded the con
He started talking to people outside of Iowa, including a
lot of people who had no relation to Francis Drake,
not even in a sensible pretend one, no relation whatsoever.
And that's when he started getting to uh that havand
thousand people mark that you mentioned. And he was living
(22:05):
high on the hog, an opulent lifestyle, as we said,
top notch clothing, eating at the best restaurants, etcetera. Pretty
much the exact behavior we see con Artists Committee in
feature films. And the thing is, this con still powers on.
(22:25):
He was able to keep it running pretty successfully until
a couple of things happened. He was able to keep
it running until the Great Depression, despite various red flags
that proved his falsehoods. Right, the British government announced in
nine that there was no fortune from Francis Drake. Yeah,
(22:48):
that's the thing is, it's not like no one else
had thought about this, right, So the government had kind
of paid attention and um, they said, look, whatever fortune
that there was, it probably went to Drake's second wife, Elizabeth,
And so there's nothing left. There's no If there's a
hidden treasure, go grab a shovel. But there's nothing in
(23:10):
the probate courts. You know, there are no billions of
pounds just waiting to be dispersed exactly. But people don't
want to hear that, because if you believe in this
sort of audacious get rich quick dream, then you it'll
be part of your internal logic. Of course, the government
is going to say it's not there, you know, but
I am a descendant of Francis Drake, and this gold
(23:33):
at least some of it, at least a few billion
of it belongs to me. Another thing that Hartzel did
wisely was to stay in the UK at the time
because he wasn't breaking any British laws. He was. He
was just hanging out, making money, dressing nicely, walking around,
eating well and sending letters. Right. Because again his his
(23:58):
supporters were US based, it is very smart to have
an ocean between them in case the heat picked up.
It did, it always does, it always does. This heat
took the form of a pretty tenacious postal officer in
the UK who started to get suspicious and said, all right,
(24:20):
what's really going on with this Drake venture? And when
he found out, he reported this to the authorities. As
you said, Christopher, the British could not prosecute heart Swell.
He did not commit any crimes, right, he was just
sort of a foodie and a man about town in
a clothes horse. But what they could do is deport him.
(24:43):
They could extraditem to the US to stand trial for
mail fraud, which is how like the specific charge they
wanted to get him for. Fast forward n Iowa. Heartswell
is on trial Oscar Hartswell. And here's the crazy thing.
He doesn't show up alone. He has a hundreds strong
(25:05):
mob of fans, supporters, fellow investors who are cheering because
they feel like this is I don't know. This makes
me think of the context too, right when we're talking
about the thirties. This makes me think that at least
part of the psychology here could be a sort of
(25:27):
fight against authoritarian figures thing going on. You know, and
people are saying, well, the common man is always getting
crushed by the courts. Well sure, and at the time
not unlike some other times in uh in past or
more recent or contemporary history. You know, people are desperate.
They've they've lost a lot of money, but they also
don't necessarily see a path towards getting more stability or
(25:49):
more money for their lives. Right, so they feel like
they've exhausted the traditional paths. They've done what they were
told to do. They tried working for the farm, they
tried working for their company, and it didn't work out.
So even if you sat down with someone and said, listen,
do you really think you're going to get millions and
millions of dollars? We're like, wow, maybe I don't know,
(26:10):
but like, but what's it gonna hurt if I'm already
getting screwed? Over. If my life is already not in
great shape and I don't have good prospects, why not
put aside hundred two hundreds of thousand dollars with the
prospects of maybe this will pay off massively in the future.
I mean, you see very similar situation. You could argue
(26:30):
that state lotteries operate in much the same way. People know,
they know the odds are against them, but they might
not be. You know, it always makes you think. One
way my father used to describe lotteries and gambling. He said,
the lottery is a attacks on people who are bad
(26:51):
at math. It's like it's attacks for not thinking through
the math. He said. It was a much more charming
East Tennessee accent. He did, He did, he did. He
is really leaning into that accent post retirement. There's a
heartbreaking part of this because we have to realize that
(27:12):
a lot of people who had bought into this, even
if it were not their entire fortune, this was like
the dream that they clung to, you know, as things
got worse and worse and day to day life, they
were waiting for justice to be served and then to
receive their rightful inheritance from their lauded ancestor Francis Drake
(27:34):
and Oscar heart Cell is their golden ticket. He's the
conduit through which this success will arrive. There may or
may not also have been a little bit of you know,
American versus the British system of you know, the the
King's got things held up in court and we hard
working Americans are just trying to free that for ourselves. Um.
(27:58):
But yeah, as you point out, Hartel shows up in
court not just with supporters, not just with the people,
but with their money. I mean, he raised over the
fifteen years he ran this scam, he made two million
dollars for himself for himself, two million dollars. And yet
when he goes to court, his supporters still pledge money
(28:21):
for a defense fund. And um, I saw a couple
of different numbers. And when I was doing the research
for this piece, which, by the way, I really recommend
any listeners who want to read more about this checkout
a New Yorker article from two thousand to written by
Richard Rayner. It's called The Admiral and the con Man.
It's got a lot of really great details in there.
But Hartzel's supporters race anywhere from sixty eight thousand to
(28:42):
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for his defense, to
pay for the lawyers when he was in court, despite
the fact that he had two million of well not
his own, but yeah, that he had kind of generated
the fortune he was claiming to have. Yet they also
paid for his bail. And despite all this public support,
(29:03):
Heartswell is convicted. They say they're going to ship him
off the Leavenworth for ten years on these mail fraud charges.
While he is in jail, the scam continues. It collects
another half a million dollars. Some people died convinced that,
you know, this fortune will not go to me now
that I am going to pass away, but it will
(29:26):
go to my children and their children. So there's there's
some hope at the end of the long day. And
it's nuts he had, you know, he had at this
point kind of I want to call him employees, associates
like his his agents. His brother, a guy named Canfield,
played an instrumental role in keeping the con going. But
(29:49):
now Uncle Sam is wise to it and Heartswell goes
to trial again. He loses again. This is is one
of my favorite parts. I wish we had the substance
of this to do a re enactment, but we'll we'll,
we'll spare you that because we don't have the exact
language here. At his sentencing, he jumps up and starts
(30:15):
raving like an unhinged lunatic about how amazing the Drake
estate is and how you know, history will see who
was right and who was on you know, who was
correct in this mad endeavor. And this is the weird thing.
We will probably never know how much or how little
(30:36):
he actually believed that I was. Really I'm really interested
to hear your take, because he spoke with prison psychiatrists
and they said that he was claiming he was he,
that he himself was Sir Francis Drake, and they diagnosed
him with paranoid schizophrenia at the time. But was this
another con you know what I mean? Was he like
(30:58):
angling to go for some kind of insanity please, I
don't know. I don't know that the it would have
benefited him at the time. It may be the sort
of narcissistic um, you know, personality traits where you you
just don't want to get caught in a line, even
if you know you're lying, so you build it bigger
and bigger and bigger, but a little extra addition to
(31:20):
a hurricane map. Um. Yeah, but but yeah, I mean,
so he spent his time in Leavenworth, which is a
big deal prison, right, That's where he would have been
there at the same time as a gangsters like machine
Gun Kelly, like in the same building. This is serious business.
But while he was there, he also you know, at
(31:40):
the prison psychiatrists you mentioned, They also encouraged him to
get his story out to help himself with these delusions.
So he wrote in six a prison autobiography, which I
think it would just be fascinating. I wasn't able to
find any of the original material, but it is mentioned
in that um in that Rainer piece. Because Rayner himself
(32:01):
and researching for this article that was published seventeen years ago,
got a lot of files released by Scotland Yard, you
know Scotland. Scotland Yard had three folders about Hartsel called
him a quote unquote notorious offender, and in there was
a copy of this probably the only copy of this
autobiography that he wrote while in prison. Yeah, and shouts
(32:23):
out to Richard Rayner because he did so much leg
work on this this story oddly enough sort of faded
from the conversation until hard working journalists and historians like
Rayner hunted it down. Well. I was able to find
out that in um in two thousand, there was a
play put on in London called Scam, Just just Scam,
(32:46):
to the tune of Fame. Yeah about this this very episode,
so a couple of years before Rayners article. So I
don't know if if one fed into the other. You know, sure,
maybe it was sort of bubbling up in the seite
geist and it's you know, one of those things where
people kind of knew about it, but it really took
the dedicated efforts of of serious writers and researchers to
really bring this thing to light. But yeah, I don't know.
(33:08):
I mean, listeners, if you are in Iowa or that
part of the country, does any of this ring familiar
to you? A lot of people have never heard about
this before. I knew very little about it. I had
heard of kind of the Drake swindle, but I didn't
know about its relationship to a very specific part of
the United States. Oh and if you'd like to learn
more about it too, Richard Rayner wrote a book about
(33:29):
this in two thousand and three called Drake's Fortune, The
Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist, which
that title those you have to be careful with those
sorts of superlatives. What exactly is a con artist help
sell books? It helps sell books. That's true, and it's
a real book. If you pay for it, you will
get a copy of the book. It's not like Drake's Fortune.
(33:51):
It's strange because although Rayner does pass away at the
age of sixties seven andree, he doesn't pass away in prison.
He passes away in a hospital for the criminally insane,
as they were called at the time. I do want
to point out that while it may have been different
(34:11):
from Leavenworth Prison, it was still not a particularly nice
place to be, right, Yeah, still a prison, still a prison.
And we could do an entire episode on the US
treatment of people with mental issues historically. Oh, if that's
a dark one, man, we might have to save that
one for October um. However, we know that despite him
passing away, people still believed the story, the story that
(34:36):
he created, well, the story that he punched up from
Milo and Sudi continued on without him, which I think
is amazing. Well, yeah, you know, it's the sort of
thing where sometimes founders don't know what they've got until
someone comes along and boosts it up. You know. You
see that in legitimate corporations, right uh. You know the
guys who founded McDonald's. They were doing okay, Sollen Burger's
(34:59):
and cow Fifornia until ray Kroc came along and said,
I've got an idea for you. Let's take this big
time exactly. And that's an excellent comparison. That is why,
according to Rayner in that New Yorker piece you mentioned earlier, Christopher,
even after Oscar Hartzwell's death, towns in Iowa and Minnesota
(35:22):
became divided between people who said, Okay, this was a scam,
I got got and people who said, no, big government
shut this down. The Drake fortune is out there, I
have a piece of it. I can't believe you're giving up,
nonbeliever or whatever you know. And this, this sort of
cultural conflict continued for years afterwards. This story makes me
(35:48):
think that while this guy may not have been the
world's greatest con man, whatever that means, he's definitely in
the top tier of the list. Wouldn't you say it's
it's certainly a ridiculous list. To be part of. It
is the ridiculous list to be part of. Uh, And
just emphasize this, it is a list that Casey my
co host Nolan I are not on by any means.
(36:10):
I still don't have cookies, all right, man, But you know,
it just takes a lot to prime the pump. What's ben,
what's the difference between a swindle and just a flat outlie?
A difference between a swindle and a flat outlie would
be that when I don't have cookies, that's the difference.
That's the difference. I was. I was going into it
at You heard me take a breath and I was like, well,
(36:33):
you know, uh, sometimes like a swindle would have a
sometimes a material exchange of goods would I'm just just
give me a cookie. Thank you so much for coming
on the show, Christopher Hacio. It is We will indeed
bring you some cookies. I have to I have to
say it is always a pleasure. I will be sending
(36:54):
an email requesting your cookie preferences, and we'd also like
to hear your take, folks, what what are your favorite cookies?
Do you know anyone who was maybe involved in this
sort of this huge con this huge swindle and do
you think that Oscar Hartswell at the very end of
(37:16):
his life, do you think he really believes he was
Francis Drake or do you think he was just trying
to get one last con over. Thank you so much
to our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed
our track, our research associates Gabe, Ryan Eve's Jeff Cote
who may be appearing on the show soon, and Christopher.
(37:38):
Despite the fact that you and I have had our
baked goods related differences in the course of this show,
how how would you feel about coming back on for
another one? Sometimes you know that's the way it crumbles.
There's no one I'd rather be locked in a studio with.
Thank you that Okay, it's very specific compliment. Thank you
(37:59):
so much. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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