List of con artists

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This is a list of notable individuals who exploited

confidence tricks
.

Born or active in the 17th century

  • Sir Isaac Newton[1]

Born or active in the 18th century

  • Gregor MacGregor (1786–1845): Scottish con man who tried to attract investment and settlers for the non-existent country of "Poyais"[2]
  • Jeanne of Valois-Saint-Rémy (1756–1791): Chief conspirator in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which further tarnished the French royal family's already-poor reputation and, along with other causes, eventually led to the French Revolution[3]

Born or active in the 19th century

  • William Rockefeller Sr. (1810–1906): an American businessman, lumberman, herbalist, salesman, and con-artist.[4] Two of his sons were Standard Oil co-founders John Davison Rockefeller Sr. and William Avery Rockefeller Jr.
  • George Appo (1856–1930): American fraudster, operated in New York and was involved in green goods scams. Wrote an autobiography and also had a biography written about him which discusses prison conditions and various other socio-economic conditions in the later 19th century.
  • Lou Blonger (1849–1924): American pickpocket and fraudster, organized a massive ring of con men in Denver in the early 1900s.[5]
  • C. L. Blood (1835–1908): American patent medicine huckster, fraudster, and blackmailer.[6]
  • Amy Bock (1859–1943): Tasmanian-born New Zealand con artist who committed numerous petty scams and frauds, and in 1909 impersonated a man in order to marry a wealthy woman.
  • Cassie Chadwick (1857–1907): Canadian woman who defrauded banks out of millions by pretending to be the illegitimate daughter (and heir) of Andrew Carnegie[7]
  • Eduardo de Valfierno (1850–1931): Argentine con man who posed as a marqués and allegedly masterminded the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.
  • Lord Gordon Gordon (1840–1874): British man who defrauded $1 million from Jay Gould, who was fighting for control of the Erie Railroad.
  • Bertha Heyman (born c. 1851): American con artist, also known as "Big Bertha"; active in the United States in the late 19th century.[8][9]
  • Canada Bill Jones (c.1837–1880): King of the three-card monte men[5]
  • John E.W. Keely (1837–1898): American mechanic and carnival barker who claimed to have discovered a new "force" on the likes of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla and bilked investors and socialites until the day of his death.[10][11]
  • David Lamar (1877–1934): American con artist known as "The Wolf of Wall Street".
  • Daniel Levey (c. 1875–?): American swindler and gambler, specialized in passing fake checks and stealing goods under the pretense of brokering sales for their owners.
  • Victor Lustig (1890–1947): Born in Bohemia (today's Czech Republic) and known as "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice".[12]
  • William McCloundy (1859–19??): American con artist, convicted of selling the Brooklyn Bridge to a tourist.
  • Phillip Musica (1877–1938): Italian fraudster known for tax and securities frauds culminating in the McKesson & Robbins scandal (1938).
  • George C. Parker (1860–1936): American con man who sold New York monuments to tourists, including most famously the Brooklyn Bridge, which he sold twice a week for years. The saying "I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge" originated from this con. [13]
  • Charles Ponzi (1882–1949): Italian swindler and con artist; "Ponzi scheme" is a type of fraud named after him.[14]
  • Soapy Smith (1860–1898): American con artist and gangster in Denver and Creede, Colorado, and Skagway, Alaska, in the 1880s and 1890s[15]
  • Adele Spitzeder (1832–1895): German actress that arguably was the first to perpetrate a Ponzi scheme between 1869 and 1872 when she defrauded thousands of people by promising them 10% return of interest monthly which she paid with the money of new investors.
  • William Thompson (fl. 1840–1849): American criminal whose deceptions caused the term confidence man to be coined.[16]
  • Ferdinand Ward (1851–1925): American swindler whose victims included Thomas Nast and the former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.[17]
  • Joseph Weil (1875–1976): American con man.[18]
  • California Gold Rush.[19]

Born or active in the 20th century

  • Harry Anderson (1952–2018) American actor, comedian and magician. Anderson was towed around the country by his mother, a grifter, where he learned the trade. He funneled that into a career as a magician and a comedian landing his own TV show.
  • Archibald Stansfeld Belaney a.k.a. Grey Owl (1888–1938), a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer impersonated a Native American man.
  • Alan Conway (1934–1998): American con man best known for impersonating film director Stanley Kubrick.
  • Bernie Cornfeld (1927–1995): Ran the Investors Overseas Service, alleged to be a Ponzi scheme.[20]
  • Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921–1982): Famed as "the Great Imposter".
  • David Hampton (1964–2003): American actor and impostor who posed as Sidney Poitier's son "David" in 1983, which inspired a play and a film, Six Degrees of Separation.
  • Susanna Mildred Hill: perpetrator of the “lonely hearts scam”.
  • Marie Sophie Hingst (1987–2019): Blogger and historian who claimed to be descended from Holocaust survivors.[21]
  • Sharmel Iris (1889–1967), poet who used pseudonyms to publish praise of himself and used false claims to obtain benefits.[22]
  • Harry Jelinek (1905–1986): Czech con artist alleged to have sold the Karlstejn Castle to American industrialists.
  • Sante Kimes (1934–2014): Convicted of fraud, robbery, murder, and over 100 other crimes along with her son Kenneth Kimes, Jr.[23]
  • David Lamar (1877–1934) a.k.a. "The Wolf of Wall Street".
  • Edgar Laplante (?–1944): Claimed to be "Chief White Elk." Stole from aristocratic European women and gave away large quantities of the money in cash. Presented to Mussolini as a visiting foreign dignitary.[24][25][26]
  • get-rich-quick schemes
    .
  • Daniel Levey (c. 1875–?): American swindler and gambler, specialized in passing fake checks and stealing goods under the pretense of brokering sales for their owners.
  • Bernard Madoff (1938–2021): Former American stock broker and non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market who admitted to the operation of the largest Ponzi scheme in history.[27]
  • Gaston Means (1879–1938): American con-man and associate of the Ohio Gang.
  • Natwarlal (1912–2009): Legendary Indian con man known for having repeatedly "sold" the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Parliament House of India.[28]
  • Lou Pearlman (1954–2016): Former boy band impresario, convicted for perpetrating a large and long-running Ponzi scheme.[29]
  • Charles Ponzi (1882–1949): Italian American businessman and con artist.
  • Riley Shepard (1918–2009): Country musician who used numerous pseudonyms to break the terms of his recording contracts and defraud investors.[30]
  • Reed Slatkin (1949–2015): American investor and co-founder of EarthLink, sentenced in 2003 to 14 years in prison for running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history, scamming more than $600 million from 800 investors.[31]
  • Jerry Tarbot (?–?): Claimed he was amnesic victim of World War I.
  • Alvin Clarence "Titanic Thompson" Thomas (1892–1974): Gambler, golf hustler, proposition bet conman.
  • E.F. Hutton
    broker and embezzled funds from his former business partner in WS Services.
  • Alessandro Zarrelli (1984–2018): Italian amateur footballer who posed as a fictitious Italian Football Federation official and attempted to dupe clubs in the United Kingdom in to signing a supposed talented young professional player (himself) in a bid to earn a pro contract and kick start a career in the sport.[32]

Living people

See also

References

  1. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; Paul Hopkins and Stuart Handley, 'Chaloner, William (d. 1699)'
  2. ^ "Document of the Month January 2005". The Scottish Executive. January 2005. Retrieved 19 August 2007.
  3. ISBN 9781555841836
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    OCLC 1446571
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  6. The Inter Ocean
    . 1890-02-19. Retrieved 2015-10-26.
  7. ^ "Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: CHADWICK, CASSIE L." ech.cwru.edu. Retrieved 2017-05-09.
  8. ^ Byrnes, Thomas (1886), Professional Criminals of America, New York: Cassell & Company, pp. 200–201.
  9. ^ Jay, Ricky (February 2011), "Grifters, Bunco Artists & Flimflam Men", Wired, vol. 19, no. 2, p. 92.
  10. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 2023-10-18.
  11. ^ "John E.W Keely : Etheric Generator ~ Articles, Photos & Patent".
  12. ^ Johnson, James F.; Miller, Floyd (1961), The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower, Doubleday
  13. ^ Cohen, Gabriel (27 November 2005). "For You, Half Price". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 August 2007.
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  15. ISBN 0-9819743-0-9
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  17. ^ "Son's Gems Claimed By Ferdinand Ward" (PDF). New York Times. 6 April 1909.
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  19. ISBN 0-201-62463-X
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  20. ^ "The Fund Industry's Black Eye". Brian Trumbore, StocksandNews.com. 2002-04-19. Retrieved 19 August 2007.
  21. ^ Doerry, Martin (6 June 2019). "The Historian Who Invented 22 Holocaust Victims". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
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  23. ^ "Life Terms For Pair". The New York Times. 2005-03-22. Retrieved 2011-04-10.
  24. ^ Dirda, Michael (August 8, 2018). "Book Review : The most shameless con artist of the Jazz Age knew that the biggest lies work best". Washington Post. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
  25. ^ Willetts, Paul (August 8, 2018). "White Elk, Black Shirt by Paul Willetts". Powell's. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
  26. ^ "Con-man Edgar Laplante's Oregon connections discovered in new publication". Oregon Digital Newspaper Program. July 21, 2018. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
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  29. ^ Liston, Barbara (2008-05-21). "Boy band mogul Pearlman sentenced to 25 years". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
  30. ^ "The Cowboy Philosopher: A Tale Of Obsession, Scams, And Family". National Public Radio: Hidden Brain. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
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  35. ^ Faith Karimi (12 July 2020). "He flaunted private jets and luxury cars on Instagram. Feds used his posts to link him to alleged cyber crimes". CNN. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
  36. ^ "Money laundering: US court to sentence Hushpuppi on Valentine's Day". Punch Newspapers. 2022-01-26. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  37. ^ Ratliff, Evan. "The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2021-12-05.
  38. ^ "'GPO Girl' who pretended to be trafficking victim pleads guilty to kidnapping charges in Australia". 30 March 2021.
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  40. ^ "Four years after 'GPO girl' mystery, the woman behind it appeals jail sentence in Australia". 4 November 2017.
  41. ^ a b Agence France-Presse in Paris (March 11, 2020). "Gang impersonated Jean-Yves Le Drian, sometimes with lookalike mask, to dupe rich and famous". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
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  43. ^ Gibbs, Thom (7 February 2011). "Five terrible debuts to make Fernando Torres feel better". The Daily Telegraph. London.
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  46. ^ "Fake Saudi prince Anthony Gignac jailed for $8m fraud". BBC News. BBC. BBC. 1 June 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
  47. ^ Mintz, John (2002-08-02). "U.S. Reopens Arms Case In Probe for Taliban Role". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-08-16.
  48. ^ "Fake spy guilty of kidnapping con". BBC. 2005-06-23. Retrieved 19 August 2007.
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  66. ^ Perry, Rachel (January 17, 2007). "Matt The Knife: Fire-Teething Never Looked So Good". Play (Philadelphia Edition): 10–12.
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  69. ^ Gorman, Anna (2001-12-01). "Rapist in Sex Scam Case Sentenced to Life in Prison". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
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