There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Caleb Newquist: In 1920s London, a man made a name for himself, selling things he didn't own. Arthur Ferguson, born in Scotland in 1883, first became infamous for selling Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square for 6,000 pounds. That's roughly 234,000 pounds today. He also supposedly swindled some American tourists into giving him a 1,000 pound down payment for Big Ben and others, a 200 0 pound down payment [00:00:30] for Buckingham Palace. Perhaps thinking he might have even better luck with Americans, Ferguson moved to the United States in 1925. There, he sold the white House to a rancher on an installment plan for annual payments of $100,000. That's about 1.8 million today. He then tried to sell the Statue of Liberty to a visiting but discerning Australian man who notified the police. Ferguson was arrested and eventually imprisoned. Released in 1930. [00:01:00] He then moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to defraud people until his death in 1938. But the most remarkable twist in this story came decades later, when a writer fellow Scotsman, Dana Love, went looking for Ferguson while researching the man and his exploits. Love couldn't find any evidence of him, no record of his arrests, no news stories about his trial, no prison records in New York. Likewise, love found no [00:01:30] trace of Ferguson in Los Angeles, where he supposedly died. It turns out that Arthur Ferguson, the man who sold some of Britain's and America's most famous landmarks, was himself a hoax.

Earmark CPE: Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement, you can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmarked.app in your web browser, take a short quiz and get your certificate.

Caleb Newquist: This [00:02:00] is Oh My Fraud, a true crime podcast where you can get more with a kind word and a spreadsheet than you can with a kind word alone. I'm Caleb Nyquist. Hey there. How's it going? What's going on? Hope you're well. And if you're not sorry, hope it gets better. I'm pretty well, all things considered. Um, I've been doing some new stuff in the [00:02:30] self-care realm. I think I mentioned that I was playing tennis and that that's been fun. I'm I'm my my record is one win and two losses in my matches though. And, um, this most recent one, I didn't play especially well. So that's disappointing. But you know, my therapist tells me that I'm doing something new and feeling disappointed about not doing something well and wanting to get better at it is healthy. So I guess I [00:03:00] guess it's growing great, I don't know. Anyway, I would still like to play better. We'll see. It takes practice, man. Anyway, how about how about a real headline? What happened? What's happening in the real world? Okay, uh, this title ran in the New York Times on April 30th. Chick fil A bilked for $80,000 in fake mac and cheese refunds. Police say that is a real New York Times headline. Um, and here I'm quoting [00:03:30] from the article. A month after being fired from a chick fil A franchise in grapevine, Texas, last fall, a former employee returned one night and began processing phony refunds for food items to his personal credit cards at a cash register, investigators said this week.

Caleb Newquist: Well, one menu item in particular, the authority, said 800 trays of gooey mac and cheese that are featured on the fast food chain's catering menu, a classic macaroni and cheese recipe featuring a special blend [00:04:00] of cheeses including cheddar, parmesan and Romano, says a description on the chain's website for the mac and cheese, a popular comfort food, which also comes in individual portions. Now I have to just stop and say I have never worked in a traditional newsroom, especially a newsroom like the one at a legacy publication like The New York Times. And in some ways, I feel like maybe I've missed out in other ways. I don't think I missed out at all. Like I've [00:04:30] never in my life as a writer had an editor say to me something to the effect of, you know, mac and cheese could use some context here. Should we? Maybe we should write something about his popularity with children or in general, that maybe it's just that it's a comfort food, I don't know. Feels like. Feels like the readers might appreciate that here. I don't have a shred of evidence that the editor on this story, in fact, said that. But that seems more likely than the reporter actually writing the words. [00:05:00] Mac and cheese. A popular comfort food. I, you know, I guess at a certain level of prestige journalism, in this case, the New York Times, you one cannot simply just acknowledge mac and cheese.

Caleb Newquist: You must contextualize mac and cheese. It must be properly situated in the culture for readers to understand. Anyway, back to the fraud, and I'm quoting again. By the time [00:05:30] the former employee whom the authorities identified as Keyshawn Jones, 23, had carried out his ruse, he had bilked the chick fil A franchise out of $80,000. The Grapevine Police Department said in a statement on Tuesday. A manhunt finally led to the arrest of Mr. Jones on April 17th. The police said he had evaded law enforcement officers on multiple occasions after the investigators discovered the fraud, a manhunt, a manhunt. And we're talking about $80,000 [00:06:00] in macaroni and cheese, a popular comfort food. Thank goodness Texas authorities got this guy off the streets, man. Much safer down there. Now, I know you know Texas. You know, Texas has strange priorities. And apparently mac and cheese is one of them. Okay. If you see a good fraud story out there, uh, for mention or even an episode, email us at fraud at earmark cpe.com. Okay, that's enough business time [00:06:30] for some more fraud. Act one. I've got a bridge to sell you. Late 19th century America is a time and place of staggering opportunity. Decades after the Civil War and decades before the World Wars of the 20th century, the United States stands as a beacon of freedom and opportunity.

Caleb Newquist: Millions of immigrants land on Ellis Island and are immediately engulfed [00:07:00] by the electric and chaotic swagger of New York City. The message. Welcome. Go make something of yourself. Not only is that message received, it is on display everywhere. Stories of people arriving with nothing and taking full advantage of what this exciting country has to offer. And in the process, they create opportunities for their families and their new communities, reinventing themselves and [00:07:30] a small part of the country. But there is a dark reality to it all. This is America's first Gilded Age gives rise to dynasties like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, creating massive wealth gaps. The city government, run by the infamous Tammany Hall, is brazenly corrupt. With so much money changing hands, it was not always easy to distinguish between an opportunity and a ruse. And [00:08:00] in those days, on virtually every corner there stood a man handsome, charming, clever, a man like George C Parker. Legislation that allowed for the construction of a suspension bridge between the cities of New York and Brooklyn was passed in February 1867, and the cities [00:08:30] were authorized to invest $5 million each to fund its construction. In April of the same year, fast forward to May 24th, 1883, and the New York and Brooklyn Bridge opened for use to great fanfare. Thousands of people attended the opening, including the then president, Chester A Arthur. There was a band gunfire from ships on the East River. Even a fireworks display.

Caleb Newquist: Sounds like it could have happened last week. On [00:09:00] that first day. More than 1800 vehicles, the horse drawn variety and more than 150 000 people crossed the bridge. And that's that's quite a feat, I have to say. But I don't even know if that does it justice. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge at that time in history was an astonishing architectural and constructional achievement. Whether you live in New York or not, or you've visited and seen or [00:09:30] even walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, when you take a few minutes to just think about how they built that bridge in a time when there were no cars, no cranes as we know them today, no jackhammers. Not a single computer or calculator. No OSHA, no safety nets, no hardhats, no safety instructions. It just all kind of blows your mind a bit. The bridge spanned spans 1600ft across the East River. It was a world record [00:10:00] at that time. Also at that time, the towers were taller than any building in New York. So that's kind of crazy to think about. It's, you know, the construction of this thing is it was a situation where the people involved were discovering and also solving problems during the project. You know, the old building, the plane while you're flying it. Except there were no planes back then either. All the more impressive is that the bridge exists more or less today, as [00:10:30] it did then. Yes, there's been plenty of reconfigurations.

Caleb Newquist: The traffic lanes serve cars, not buggies. Trolleys haven't run across the bridge since 1950, and there is way, way, way less horseshit. But the towers are basically the same Pedestrian boardwalk. The same. The cables the same. Funny aside about those cables, that's a especially relevant for this show. In the [00:11:00] 19th century, engineers didn't know anything about aerodynamics or related to bridge construction, and so they didn't test bridge designs in wind tunnels. That's what my research tells me anyway. The bridge's designer, John Roebling. He just made a truss system to be 6 to 8 times as strong as he thought he needed it to be, which in this day and age probably sounds insane. Anyway, the supplier of the initial cable [00:11:30] wire. A man by the name of J. Lloyd. Hi. He swapped out the approved wire for some of inferior quality and made $300,000 in the process, but he got busted upon Reinspection when they found out that the cable was only four times as strong as it needed to be. This, as you might expect, diminished his business prospects somewhat. And his business eventually failed in late 1879. That [00:12:00] led to a bank failure, which then led to his arrest for forgery in early 1880, and Lloyd High ended up serving four years in Sing Sing. So the Brooklyn Bridge, an engineering marvel, an iconic New York City landmark, and for a time an instrument of deceit. No dreamer could resist, one that George Parker used over and over again. [00:12:30]

Caleb Newquist: Parker started conning people, immigrants, especially shortly after graduating high school. The Brooklyn Bridge, as we've discussed, was a highly visible target of awe and inspiration for many, especially for those who are new to the United States. Perhaps aware of its allure to newcomers, Parker would tell his marks that he was the builder and owner of the bridge. He would then provide very [00:13:00] convincing documentation, forged naturally to support his claim. But Parker would go on operating. The bridge was extremely difficult, and he wished to sell it. So for a certain ambitious, albeit gullible person, this opportunity proved irresistible. They would pay thousands of dollars for the bridge, and then, at Parker's suggestion, [00:13:30] they would set up a toll to recoup their investment from people crossing the bridge. And this would all be fine until New York City police officers would inform them that they couldn't set up a toll booth and charge people for crossing the bridge In one account, it says Parker's victims had to be rousted from the bridge by police when they tried to erect toll barriers. It was then, and only then, did [00:14:00] the marks realize that they had been had. This worked for quite a while. Several years, apparently, and it makes sense. New York was a big place even then. Millions of people. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, there was no ask NYC subreddit where people would be like, yeah, there's a guy hanging around the bridge.

Caleb Newquist: He tries to sell it. Like there's. How would you know it would be? That's not going to get around quickly. But eventually [00:14:30] the NYPD noticed a pattern to the stories that all these hoodwinked would be toll collectors had. And then they started to actively try to squash any scams involving the Brooklyn Bridge. But George Parker must have sensed he was onto something because he quickly moved on from selling the Brooklyn Bridge to selling other notable New York City landmarks. In one case, Parker posed as [00:15:00] the grandson of Ulysses S Grant, the Civil War general and 18th president of the United States. Grant died in July 1885, and efforts began almost immediately to build a monument to him in New York. Parker told his marks that the construction could not be completed without their investment, without their capital. The original Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Statue of Liberty were all used by Parker as [00:15:30] bait for other cons. During this period, Parker was arrested and convicted of fraud three times, but he only served two prison sentences. In one case, he escaped, quote, by donning a sheriff's hat and coat, which had been set down by a sheriff who had walked in from the cold weather outdoors. It was his fourth arrest for attempting to cash a forged check of all things that finally ended his run.

Caleb Newquist: By this time, New York had implemented a three strikes law, so [00:16:00] Parker was sentenced to life in prison in December 1928, after eight years of regaling guards and his fellow inmates about his decades of scams. George C Parker died at Sing Sing in 1937 at the age of 76. Act two A Movable fraud. Al Capone's reign as the crime boss of Chicago is infamous [00:16:30] for lucrative bootlegging, gambling and other illegal businesses, violence and control over local politics and law enforcement. There was no one more respected. But more importantly, No one more feared in the underworld. Despite this reputation, Robert V Miller, who was no slouch in criminal circles himself, was confident that he could work with Capone. Maybe it was because they both had scars on their [00:17:00] faces, but then again, Capone hated the nickname that was given to him Scarface. So perhaps Miller knew to leave that well enough alone. He did have a proposition for Capone, though, a deal for which he needed $50,000 nearly $1 million in today's money. Miller wasn't the type to go to a bank for any sum of money, never mind one this large, and Capone was likely one of the few people that had that kind of cash just sitting around. And so Capone agreed to support [00:17:30] Miller's scam. But Miller knew that borrowing money from Capone came with a unique set of covenants the kind of covenants that, if broken, came with severe penalties.

Movie Clip The Untouchables: I want him dead. I want his family dead. I want his house burned to the ground. I want to go to the middle. And I want to piss on his ass.

Caleb Newquist: Victor Lustig was born in Bohemia in 1890. By most accounts, his early life was difficult, being raised by a physically abusive father. He ran [00:18:00] away from home at age 14, only to return, and was promptly sent to a boarding school in Dresden, where he learned multiple languages, including English, French and Italian. It was 1909, after studying for a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris, that Victor took to gambling and eventually, due to his quick wit and fluency in many languages, a life as a professional con artist. It was also around this time that he obtained a defining scar on the left side of his face, courtesy [00:18:30] of a paramours jealous boyfriend. Lustig's first scams came aboard early 20th century cruise ships that sailed between France and New York. Aside from gambling, Lustig would pose as a Broadway producer, raising money for his next production. Naturally, these productions were not real in any sense of the word. After a few successful years of this world, War One put a very quick stop to the transatlantic ocean cruises, and [00:19:00] that led Lustig to make his first true foray into America, where he assumed the name Robert Duvall. By 1922, he had made his way to Springfield, Missouri, where he sought to acquire a ranch using Liberty Bonds worth $22,000. The bonds value exceeded the price of the land, so the bank gave him $10,000 in cash to help operate the ranch. But through a little sleight [00:19:30] of hand, Lustig switched the envelopes in order to make off with the cash and the bonds.

Caleb Newquist: Afterwards, he blew out of Springfield, but was finally tracked down in Kansas City. But another. But he somehow managed to squirm his way out of being indicted. It was 1925 when Lustig, back in Europe, pulled off the stunt that would make him a legend. [00:20:00] While staying in Paris, Lustig read about how the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889 and therefore nearly 40 years old, had begun falling into disrepair and becoming expensive to maintain. And how there was speculation that public opinion could shift toward supporting its removal. This was all Victor Lustig needed to know to start laying the groundwork for his next con. The [00:20:30] wrought iron to build the Eiffel Tower weighs over 7000 metric tons. That doesn't include whatever Accouterment existed on the tower at that time, including, for example, the lifts, elevators, whatever you like. That would add a bunch of weight to a fun fact when the Nazis occupied Paris. Beginning in 1940, the French cut the cables for the lifts. [00:21:00] Still, some German soldiers. Goose stepped their asses to the top to fly the Nazi flag. But then the flag was too big and it blew away. I mean, they avenged, you know. They eventually replaced it with a smaller one. But there's something very satisfying about that anyway. Also, apparently there was a Citroen sign on three sides of the tower starting in 1925, making it the tallest advertisement in the world. At the time, the [00:21:30] letters were like 30m high, and they ran from the top of the tower down to the top of the second level.

Caleb Newquist: And if you happen to look up the picture. I don't think you'll disagree with me that the signs look terrible. They look so bad. Apparently it can be seen for 25 miles and it was on the it was on the tower for like ten years. But then, you know, Sichuan declared bankruptcy in 1934. And, you know, in part due to the cost of [00:22:00] lighting that sign. So there you go. That's some fun stuff. Anyway, back to our pal Victor. He called together a small group of scrap metal dealers from around Paris to a confidential meeting at a fancy hotel. At that meeting, he presented himself as the deputy director general of the Ministry des Post-It et telegraphie, or Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. In [00:22:30] the meeting, he informed these scrap metal barons that maintain the tower had become too costly and that the French government wished to sell it for scrap, and it was his responsibility to find the dealer who would take ownership of the tower. Lustig told these men that they were chosen due to their integrity, and due to the controversial nature of this decision to take down the tower. He insisted that they all keep this fact a secret until all the details were sorted out. [00:23:00] Now, while Lustig was spinning this yarn, he was also sizing up his potential marks. He landed on an ambitious man who wished to make a name for himself in the Parisian business community, André Poisson.

Caleb Newquist: Lustig arranged a private meeting with Poisson, and it was at that meeting where Lustig lamented that he was a mere bureaucrat and did not make much money, but that deciding on [00:23:30] the buyer of the tower was a very important decision that he had been entrusted to make. Poisson picking up what Lustig was putting down. Must have thought, why else would this man be asking for a bribe if he wasn't a lowly government employee? So Poisson offered him a bribe of 20,000 francs. That's the equivalent of roughly 2 million USD today. Poisson then offered a bit of an additional 50,000 francs for the tower, [00:24:00] which Lustig accepted. Once Lustig had the 70,000 in hand, he hightailed it out of town and headed to Austria, where he awaited news of an audacious fraud involving someone fitting his description. But the newspapers said nothing of it, and so he reasoned that Poisson must have been too embarrassed by his gullibility to report the crime to the authorities while [00:24:30] on the lam, Lustig must have been feeling good about everything, and at some point must have thought poison couldn't be the only wealthy scrap metal dealer in Paris who would be too proud to report a crime due to their foolishness after all. Huh? Oui oui oui. So a short time later, Lustig who? You know, I don't know why I was doing French. He was born in Czechoslovakia. He probably didn't sound like that at all. But it's fun to do.

Caleb Newquist: Okay. I don't know. So [00:25:00] a short time later, Lustig returned to Paris to try this scam again. Same approach as before. He wined and dined a different set of scrap metal dealers. How many metal dealers can. How many scrap metal guys can. Can Paris sustain? I mean, he had he had six. There's six more. Like just really how many were there? This is just I don't know, maybe it was the time a lot of scrap metal had to be disposed of. Anyway, just when Lustig was about to settle on his next victim, [00:25:30] one of the other dealers became suspicious and contacted the police. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like even in 1920s Paris, it's not like people didn't talk to each other. And again, how many scrap metal dealers like was the scrap metal? Like, was the scrap metal industry so big that none of these guys would talk to each other? They must have heard rumors about some sketchy deal involving, you know, the most visible monument in the entire city that would have gotten around anyway. [00:26:00] Lustig, always on his guard, figured out that he had been found out, and he immediately fled to the US. For most people, I think if you had pulled off something like convincing someone to pay you a lot of money for the Eiffel Tower, and you got away with it, and then you decided, I'm going to try this again, but then narrowly escaped. I think most people would be like, I'm good, I'm good. [00:26:30]

Caleb Newquist: But not. But not our man, Victor. No, no. Once back in the U.S., he quickly came up with new scams, including one known as the Rumanian Box or Money Box scam. He would show his marks how he could insert any paper currency into a machine that would, over the course of several hours, duplicate the money perfectly. Lustig would take the mark and the miraculously produced note to a bank to have it authenticated, [00:27:00] where someone inevitably would, because the money was, in fact, real. It had just been simply inserted to the machine before the demonstration. Once the mark was convinced and comfortable operating the free money machine, Lustig would sell it to them for some ungodly amount. Then, of course, they would find out later that the money box was just a box. There's one account of Lustig selling a box [00:27:30] to a Texas sheriff For thousands of dollars. When the sheriff realized that he had been had. He tracked Lustig to Chicago and confronted him. And of course, Lustig, always good on his feet, explained to the sheriff that he was just operating the machine incorrectly. But, you know, for the trouble, he gave him a large sum of cash. You know, he came all that way. But that cash was counterfeit and probably serves a [00:28:00] crooked sheriff. Right? It's now the 1930s prohibition is in effect, and the Great Depression has overwhelmed the nation. By this time, Lustig had been arrested several times. And so his reputation as a con man was well known.

Caleb Newquist: In one instance, he and an associate were arrested in Paris for possessing the notorious money box and many forged documents. The two men claimed [00:28:30] to be part of Al Capone's gang. Why you would mention that? I have no idea. But when authorities checked it out, no one had heard of Lustig. And from there, perhaps it was his lack of notoriety by the Underworld's most well-known figure that got into his head. Or maybe, you know, just because danger was his middle name. Victor had his next idea. So he adopted a [00:29:00] new alias, Robert V Miller, and approached Capone with a pitch and asked for $50,000. Now, as we told you at the top of this story. Capone agreed to give him the money. So what did Lustig do with it? What was the con? Nothing. There was no con. He stuck the money in a safe deposit box for two months. At that time, he [00:29:30] went back to Capone, told him that the deal had fallen through, and returned the $50,000. Now accounts differ whether he simply returned the money or claim to be paying Capone back out of his own pocket. But either way, it doesn't matter. Capone saw this guy that he knew as Miller, as an honest crook who was now down on his luck. So Capone gave him a small sum of money for his trouble. And again, accounts differ. Some say it was $1,000, some say [00:30:00] it was 5000. But the point is, Victor Lustig had conned Al Capone and lived to see another day.

Caleb Newquist: It's not like Lustig would be satisfied with Hoodwinking mob bosses. The money was too little and the risk was way too great. That's that's the exact wrong kind of asymmetry in life. In business, and [00:30:30] especially in fraud. Okay, so he got into counterfeiting, and I get it. Why would you schlep a box around that, spits out a few pieces of actual money when you could just manufacture as much money as you want? And because it's close enough to the real thing, no one can tell the difference. I mean, sure, you could send you to jail, but it kind of reminds me of Brian Regan a bit. He did from a few years ago. Don't do the crime if you can't do [00:31:00] the time. Somehow, I don't think the severity of the prison sentence was part of Victor Lustig's calculus. Anyway, in 1930, Lustig partnered with a pharmacist, William Watts, and chemist Tom Shaw, both from Nebraska. Of all the goddamn places. And they built a large scale counterfeit operation. Watts and Shaw made the plates to create the bills, and [00:31:30] Lustig assembled the couriers to put the money out into the system. Counterfeiting wasn't just another scam in America at that time. It was considered something closer to an attack on the financial system itself. After the Civil War, counterfeit money was everywhere. Thousands of different banknotes circulating around the country, and ordinary people [00:32:00] often had no idea whether the bills in their pockets were real.

Caleb Newquist: Merchants used special guide books just to identify fake currency. In fact, when the Secret Service was created in 1865, its original mission wasn't protecting the president. It was hunting counterfeiters. And decades later, even in the 1930s, the federal government still treated large scale counterfeit operations as a serious threat to the financial system, especially during [00:32:30] the Great Depression, when confidence in banks and money was already shaky and counterfeiting was a different category entirely. Selling fake money machines or convincing someone to buy the Eiffel Tower. Those scams relied on charm, timing, gullibility, counterfeiting required infrastructure. Printing plates, special paper and ink distribution networks. People willing to pass the bills without attracting any attention. [00:33:00] This wasn't one man talking his way into easy money anymore. It was organized financial fraud on a massive scale. Lustig made the counterfeiting racket work for a while. Five years. But then he made a mistake that has doomed many men. He betrayed his mistress for a younger woman, and she reported [00:33:30] him to the federal authorities. Lustig was arrested on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in May 1935. He refused to cop to anything but a key that he had on him at the time of his arrest led investigators to a locker in Times Square that contained some interesting items, specifically $51,000 in counterfeit bills and the plates that were used to make them. A day before he was set to go to trial, [00:34:00] Lustig somehow escaped from the federal detention headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Caleb Newquist: He had created a rope out of bed sheets and slipped out a window, wiping windows on his way down so people would think he was just a window washer. And it worked. He got away. But then, you know, 27 days later, he was located and arrested in Pittsburgh. After pleading guilty, a judge sentenced Lustig to 15 years for the counterfeiting and five years for the escape. All to be served [00:34:30] at Alcatraz Island. He arrived at Alcatraz in 1936. Interestingly enough, there was another notable Alcatraz inmate at that time. Al Capone serving 11 years for tax evasion. He had arrived in 1934. There is no evidence that Lustig, who was still going by Robert V Miller and Capone, ever crossed paths inside Alcatraz, but it seems fitting that they both [00:35:00] ended up there. Capone would serve just over four years before being transferred and eventually released in 1939. Due to his poor health, Lustig served ten years at Alcatraz before being transferred. Capone died at his Miami mansion in January 1947. Two months later, Lustig died at a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. All [00:35:30] right. Did we learn anything? Yeah, we learned a few things. Um, some of them old, old lessons, but, uh. But tried and true, you know. Speaking of true, uh, this is a classic example. These stories are classic examples of, um, you know, if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. No one is trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge or the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or, you know, but, but I an American [00:36:00] culture, like everywhere you go, you cannot go anywhere without someone trying to sell you something.

Caleb Newquist: You cannot turn on your TV without someone trying to sell you something. You can't turn on your computer. You can't visit a website without someone trying to sell you something. Um, that doesn't mean that everything that's been trying to be sold to you is fraud. Of course not. But, you know, there's plenty of stuff out there that when you when when people talk about it, you're just like, that's got to be too good to be true. And so, uh, I [00:36:30] think the lesson is if that, if that phrase kinds of kind of runs through your mind, too good to be true, fuck it. Don't like blockchain, crypto AI, whatever it is, the hype around stuff, the so-called potential, uh, is just, is just relentless. So, you know, um, whatever is the modern day Brooklyn Bridge and who knows? And it doesn't have to be like a, oh, it's something. [00:37:00] Does it have to be tangible? Does it have to be constructed? Like, I don't fucking know, like it just, it just has to be something like kind of amazing. Like AI is the easiest thing to think about. And it's just like, it's kind of blowing everybody's minds right now. Does that mean that, you know, you should go all in on it? It's like, this is what I'm staking.

Caleb Newquist: Like, I don't know, probably not. You know, we don't know how it's all going to shake out. But anyway, the other thing con artists. Hey, there's [00:37:30] old as human beings, I think. I mean, they're just they're everywhere. This reminds me of our interview, our conversation with Jonathan Walton, who is the, uh, journalist TV guy who turned into kind of an investigator like, uh, and had the most kind of unequivocal, uh, take on fraudsters, especially con artists. But he's like, just bad people. And are they all bad? Yeah, [00:38:00] I mean, I don't know. Uh, it's it's it's it's a gradient. Right? Uh, but this is also just human nature at work. Like some people, uh, they see a situation that they can exploit or take advantage of and they, they know how to do that or they can, they can sense an opportunity when they're talking to a person. Um, and is that person a? Is that person a potential business partner or are they a mark? You know, like, again, [00:38:30] the spectrum is, is not, it's not always clear. There's lots of gray area in that stuff. So, uh, you know, Elon Musk con artist or great businessman, I don't know, you know, it's in the eye of the beholder. All right. Um, also, uh, the psychology of these people is, is very interesting. Uh, my producer Zack brought this up for some con artists. Um, you know, money eventually stops being the point, [00:39:00] right? Once you've made a certain amount, like it's the law of diminishing returns, right? After a while, the, the, the thrill is getting away with it, you know, tricking people, you know, being the smart person in, you know, uh, because if, if money was the only goal, okay, guys like George Parker and Victor Lustig would have stopped long before they ended up in prison, you know? Especially Lustig.

Caleb Newquist: Like he he scammed Al Capone for a pretty small payout. I mean, that's [00:39:30] that's like insane. Like the A we talked about. I think I mentioned asymmetry during the, the episode at one point and it's like, uh, you either get a thousand bucks or Al Capone, uh, chops you up and throws you in the river. Like that's not, that's that's irrational. Doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? So, um, you know, the con itself, like having that story, uh, you know, maybe not telling that story when you're at Alcatraz and potentially he's in there, um, [00:40:00] you know, going crazy, but nevertheless still potentially a danger. Um, that doesn't make any sense. So it just the knowledge that you outsmarted someone, um, and, and, and took them for a ride and maybe the size of that ride has something to do with it, But also, if you don't need the money, then yeah, it's not about the money. It's about the it's about the mark. It's about the person that you were able to fool. So [00:40:30] in any case, oh, also this episode, I don't know if you've noticed, there's lots of rabbit holes.

Caleb Newquist: I went down a lot of rabbit holes making this episode. And one of them, including the Capone rabbit hole, which has a whole bunch of like derivative rabbit holes. But while Capone was at Alcatraz, uh, he, uh, played banjo in a band, apparently. And, um, so that's, that's something you may have not known before. Also, uh, [00:41:00] there is apparently Tom Hardy made a movie about Al Capone, um, in his, in his, in his twilight years, uh, down in Florida, losing his mind and, uh, by, from as far as I can tell, nobody saw that movie. No one like literally no one has seen that movie, but there are pictures of Tom Hardy out there looking like Al Capone. So if you care for something like that, go find it. Anyway, that's [00:41:30] it for this episode. And remember, if someone tries to sell you a famous landmark, ask if they offer competitive financing. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for stories, drop us a line at oh my fraud at earmark cpe.com. This episode of Oh My Fraud was written by me, Caleb Newquist and Zach Frank. Oh my fraud is created and produced by me, Caleb Newquist. Zach Frank is my co producer, audio engineer, music supervisor. Laura Hobbs designed the logo. Rate, review and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. [00:42:00] If you listen on earmark, you can get CPE. All right, join us next time for more average swindlers and scams from stories that will make you say, oh my fraud.