My Day: Most Noted Con Men in History
This is a subject seldom talked about in polite circles… until this election year. I knew a con man. He was a member of my family and my Dad could not stand him. I remember him as always being well dressed with two toned Stacy Adams shoes, a ‘process’ and a freshly polished car.
Con men, gangsters, racketeers scam artists are people that try to get your confident and money. The average-to-moderate con artist has a 99% success rate with his poverty –to-upper middle class targeted market. Great con men have not traditionally set their sights on the average American. Mind you I said ‘great con men’. Their game is best practiced on the rich and famous or the enormously wealthy in an effort to maximize the effectiveness of their game. And, do be aware they have existed for centuries.
A lot of people want to label Mr. Trump, the presumed Republican candidate, as a con artist. In a recent Time Magazine article, Rana Foroohar, wrote some hairy comments about the Presidential hopeful. She writes “unlike many highly leveraged owners who lose everything when their properties go bankrupt, he (Trump) was able to restructure his company’s debt in relatively favorable ways each time his deals went bad”. This article explains that ‘this was in part because Trump was adept at getting casino creditors to pay him to use his name, even as properties were going under’. Property in this case including the glassware, the chips, towels, the carpet, the boutiques. The final nail in the coffin on these deals was that it was “incrediblely expensive to wash this famous name off.”
Throughout history, noted con artist have pulled off rather amazing schemes. There was Victor Lustig, who immediately comes to mind, selling the Eiffel Tower . . . twice. Then, of course, Gregor McGregor pulled together an elaborate international master con inventing an entire false country, convincing ‘investors’ to hand over money to exploit natural resources found in his false country, where he just happened to be a member of royal family.
Charles Ponzi is credited with the original ponzi scheme. Ponzi was the con who invented the most famous scheme of its day. Ponzi came up with a way to turn a profit by buying postage stamps in one country and selling them in another for a profit. He found investors for the swindle. Lou Pearlman, another noted con man, was notorious and famous. A con artist in the music business. . . imagine that! A promoter of sorts, he claims that thanks to his directions, each member of the Backstreet Boys earned up to $50 million. Of course, that was not enough for him, so he went on to amass a $300 million Ponzi scheme. Pearlman used his music gig to operate an investment scheme. And investors again fell for the swindle.
Part II: Most Noted Con Men in History continues.
Coming Soon: 9th Annual Southwest Art Show-African American Museum. Frank Frazier, Founder.
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