The Scammer Who Sold The Eiffel Tower (Twice)

Alcatraz the most infamous high security prison in the world was when Victor lustig was heading Victor had just been captured after running a counterfeit banknote operation it was so big it posed a serious risk to the entire economy and yet this fraud wasn't even Victor's most infamous scam Victor ran countless get rich quick schemes and was possibly the most dangerous and successful con man that the world has ever seen but most of all he will be remembered as The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower twice this is the crazy true story of how he broke

Petty thief in the most wanted man in the world [Music] [Music] the man we know today as Victor lustig or was most likely born in 1890 in the austro-hungarian town of hostinee which is today part of the Czech Republic but truth be told we don't know for sure as his real identity remains a bit of a mystery even now that's because throughout his life he used at least 45 different aliases to cover his tracks and would frequently lie about who he was and where he was from he changed his name appearance and identity from one

place to the next a kind of shape-shifting con man traveling the world finding new ways to scam his victims however the information we do have about his childhood suggests that Victor's younger years were miserable spent inside a dark and grimstone house and one of the most impoverished areas of the city he described his parents as the poorest peasant people who could barely afford to feed and clothe their children they split up when Victor was eight and sent him to live with some relatives a situation which he found completely insufferable by the time he turned 12

years old Victor concluded that he would be happier on his own so he dropped out of school and ran away he began living on the cold streets of various European cities and as a result he had to resort to pickpocketing and begging in order to eat but it was one singular singular event in 1903 that made him decide to pursue a life of crime at the time Victor was a 13 year old Outcast struggling to survive on the streets of Budapest and one spring evening he was desperately digging through the trash bins outside a fancy

hotel searching for scraps of food when he noticed a couple getting ready to eat on one of the hotel's balconies Victor watched on as the waiters brought plates after a plate of food to them arranging a feast Fit For A King more food than Victor had ever seen in his life and yet Victor watched on horrified as the couple didn't even eat a single morsel of the food and instead headed straight to the bedroom Victor couldn't believe it all that delicious food just sitting there and they weren't even gonna eat anything right then and there

Victor decided that if that's how some people could afford to live whilst he was forced to eat scraps out of the garbage he would never feel guilty about conning those more fortunate than him after that Victor Advanced from merely pickpocketing to survive to more advanced petty theft and then later to burglary by the time he turned 18 Victor had also perfected every card trick in the book he became a master of sleight of hand which enabled him to cheat at games like poker or just hustle people on the streets the police however soon caught up

with Victor's scams and robberies and Victor ended up serving multiple stints in prisons in Budapest Prague Zurich and Vienna but a few months behind bars every now and then did little to dampen his spirits he simply spent the time in jail improving his card skills or reading books because despite the fact that Victor left school at an early age he was a keen learner as he knew being well educated would help him with his scams and help him appear more sophisticated and professional thus attracting less suspicion however like many Europeans of his time Victor Hood

heard stories about America the land of promise and all the opportunities waiting for a smart and resourceful guy like M so he boarded a ship and headed to the states looking to get rich but on the ship right there two things happened firstly he managed to get a two and a half inch cut along his left cheek from an angry sailor who thought Victor was getting too friendly with his date this attack left a permanent scar on Victor's face which he would later tell people he got from a jewel of Honor when it was really

just from flirting with someone else's girlfriend but the second thing that happened on that ship to America was that Victor realized that transatlantic Steamers like this were the perfect hunting grounds for husbands like him the first class decks were filled with very rich marks that he could easily talk to and find a way to rip bath for Victor it was like shooting fish in a barrel so he'd spend a week aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic fleeces many of the wealthy passengers as possible then Dock and rinse and repeat on a different ship with new

passengers unless the next few years were easy living for him going back and forth on these ships between Europe and America one of the most common cons he pulled on the ships was to pose as a successful music producer looking for investment in a Broadway production which people only realized wasn't real after they'd already invested however the good times for Victor were brought to a halt by the first world war as there were no more pleasure cruises between America and Europe now as for what Victor actually did during the wartime years is a bit of

a mystery although he definitely wouldn't have taken part in any fighting what is clear is that when the war ended Victor showed up in New York City and the man who stepped onto the pier was a far cry from the homeless boy who once had to scrounge through trash cans for food dressed in a fine custom tailored suit with a silk shirt and camel hair top coach he now starred himself as count fit to lustig and claimed to be a rich Aristocrat in political Exile he had everything he needed the way he looked the way

he talked the way he carried himself they all suggested old money and sophistication so it was no surprise that almost everyone he met was taken in by Victor's Wiley charms Victor had reinvented himself once again and created a Persona that would be perfect to pull off some much bigger scams [Music] oh in 1919 Victor Metter married a woman named Roberta who was so infatuated with her new husband she stayed with him even after finding out he wasn't really a count and how he'd made his money by ripping people off unfortunately Victor's personal life would end

up being his downfall but we'll get to that the Roaring Twenties were a period of excess for Americans and thus a perfect opportunity for Victor who prayed on their greed besides classic griffs he also had a short stinters account of it a manufacturing fake whiskey stickers and government stamps for Bootleggers however Victor soon had a better idea a money machine that could print duplicate dollar bills now obviously it wasn't real but Victor just had to find some people gullible enough to believe it was and sell them this fake machine for large sums of money so

Victor had many of these boxes made by a skilled Carpenter in New York and they certainly looked impressive about two feet in length with brass trim and a bunch of dials Victor told people all you had to do was put a real 100 Bill inside but as a blank piece of currency paper turn a crank and then wait at least six hours and the Machine would print any exact replica of your 100 Bill onto the currency paper thus leaving you with two identical 100 bills Victor called it the magic money machine now you're probably thinking

how can anyone be dumb enough to fall for that and actually buy this fake money machine from him well here's how the con works firstly Victor would go to the bank and get a bunch of brand new 100 bills which meant the serial numbers would be in sequential order this meant he just had to scrape off the last digit of the serial number and reapply the same last digit on several notes thus creating a stack of seemingly identical 100 bills remember Victor already had counterfeiting experience and he only had to change the last digit of

the serial number so with some practice he was able to perfect this secondly Victor would never approach his targets about buying the Box instead he'd first find a way to game their trust for example one of his victims was a wealthy Gambler until Victor picked his pocket and stole his wallet then he went back to that same person he just pickpocketed and said hey you dropped this and gave him the wallet back this immediately made Victor seem like an honest kind citizen just trying to help so it lowered their guard and Victor used this as

an in to strike up a conversation and subtly engineer the conversation towards the Magic Money Box Victor would mention it could duplicate banknotes but then he acted like he didn't want to talk about it which of course only made people want to know more soon the victim would be begging to see a demonstration of this money machine and although Victor would pretend to be reluctant at first he'd eventually agree and they'd go to his hotel room where Victor would insert a 100 bill into the machine but because Victor had come up with the lie about

it taking six hours that gave them time to chat play cards or eat dinner whilst the machine supposedly did its work when they returned the machine would have both the original 100 Bill inside and a second 100 bill that looked identical as if it had really been perfectly cloned by the machine of course in reality Victor had simply hidden the second note inside the machine beforehand and they only looked identical because he'd used his counterfeiting skills to change the serial numbers to match now the target would normally still have some doubts so they'd go to

the nearest bank where the bank teller would confirm that it was indeed a genuine note because it was a real hundred dollar bill nothing had been printed on printing paper this was just a banknote Victor had withdrawn earlier but once the bank teller confirmed it was real this was normally enough for the victim to believe the machine actually had printed the Bell like Victor had claimed but here's the clever part whilst they'd been chatting Victor had dropped hints that he he had an emergency situation where he needed a lot of money quickly and that he

was frustrated because his machine took six hours to clone each 100 Bill and it was taking too long so then his victim would come up with an idea well what if I buy the money machine off you remember Victor specifically targeted wealthy people he knew had a lot of cash like businessman or gamblers he'd seen when big but of course the victim thought they were getting an amazing deal getting this money machine for a one-time fee that they could use over and over again using these tactics Victor sold multiple copies of his money box throughout

the country for tens of thousands of dollars each and because of the LIE he'd invented about the money machine taking so many hours to print each 100 bill it meant he had plenty of time to flee the area before his victim realized he'd been scams by the time they figured out they bought a worthless wooden box Victor was long gone but here's the Real Genius of the scam despite repeating this Con over and over again Victor was safe from the law because none of his victims ever went to the police or reported him I mean

how could they you can't exactly go to the police and complain that your account to fit money printing machine didn't work as advertised so most of them just had to accept they'd been ripped off however there was one wealthy woman Victor sold a money box to but after realizing she'd been scammed spent weeks hunting Victor down her name was Billy mayshible and eventually she did manage to track him down to a hotel room in another city but here's the plot twist when she finally found him there was no threats or violence instead she was filled

with admiration at his resourcefulness and said they should become partners in crime and work together in fact the tuna only started doing some scams together but also became lovers and Victor left his wife to be with her he would later regret that decision but for now things were going great for Victor and he was already planning the biggest con of his career foreign get to the next chapter quick question how much time and money are you currently spending on food I bet if you work this out including shopping meal prep cooking cleaning up afterwards you're

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prep No Mess no stress you know you'll have a nice healthy meal waiting and can save both time and money basically facto offers the most convenient way to eat well while eating rights so use my link below or go to go.factor75.com and use code POG magnates deck 60 for 60 off your first box [Music] foreign [Music] Day in May 1925 Victor read a newspaper article about the decaying condition of the Eiffel Tower and how it would be cheaper for the French government to tear it down than it would be to fix it you see originally

the Eiffel Tower was intended to be temporary as it was constructed for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris and was supposed to be demolished 20 years later but by 1909 parisians had grown accustomed to their new Landmark so it stayed on however by 1925 the Eiffel Tower was in disrepair and talked about demolishing it had been renewed hearing this news Gave Victor an idea that would Place him in the Hall of Fame of fraudsters he was gonna sell the Eiffel Tower he arrived in Paris later that same month accompanied by a frequent sidekick of his

in Dapper Dan Collins like all of Victor's cons this one had been meticulously planned in advance with every step carefully laid out first Victor used his extensive contacts in the criminal underworld to obtain some forged stationary and credentials from the French Ministry of posts and telegraphs which was responsible for the Eiffel Tower then he headed to a luxury hotel in Paris where he booked his room under the Guides of a government official from there he delivered letters to six of the biggest scrap dealers in Paris inviting them to the hotel to discuss A Private Matter

he said was way too sensitive to talk about in public once the men had assembled in Victor's hotel room he delivered a carefully rehearsed speech in fluent French about how the government intended to demolish the Eiffel Tower but didn't want to publicize the decision yet out of fears over a public outcry they however had been trusted with the information so they could bid for the Salvage rights the scrap dealers were like putty in Victor's hands and he knew exactly how to play them firstly he made them feel important by letting them in on the big

secret then he gained their professional interest with specifics on the tower Victor knew all the details all the correct measurements and even how many rivets there were inside the Eiffel Tower he had done his homework extensively but finally Victor ended with the number that all the men inside that Rune cared about seven thousand that's how many tons of salvageable high-grade iron they would get from the tower Victor's audience was mesmerized and already saw it as the deal of a lifetime unsurprisingly they all presented him with sealed bids for the project but she be told Victor

had already found his Target Andrei poisson as it was clear Andre was quite desperate for that one major deal that would take his company to the next level so Vita asked him to stay behind to discuss something in private when it was just the two of them Victor started talking about the hardships and limitations of a government job to Andre the intent was obvious he was looking for a bribe weirdly enough this actually put the scrap dealer at ease bribes were a routine part of doing business for him and it also explained why Victor had

arranged the meeting in a private hotel room so ironically the fact Victor had asked for a bribe is what made Andre believe the whole deal was definitely real unless Andre had no problem writing a very generous check for the man he assumed to be just another corrupt mid-level government official but once the scrap dealer had left Victor immediately cashed a check and caught the first train to Austria pleased with a job executed perfectly he spent the next few weeks in a luxury hotel in Vienna waiting to read about his scam in the papers but he

never did he soon realized that Andre kept the whole matter choir out of Shame and embarrassment for falling for the scam after all if you'd given someone a huge bribe to win the contract of buying the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal would you really want to publicly admit you'd fallen for the scam but the fact Andre hadn't publicized the scam or gone to the police Gave Victor another bolt of inspiration this meant he could do the exact same scam again and that's precisely what happened a few months later Victor returned to Paris and repeated the

whole con with different scrap metal dealers once again he walked away with a nice fat check but this time his Mark did go to the police so once the story was out Victor thought it best not to tempt fate and instead returned to the United States but the fact he was able to do this more than once just shows why scammers often get away with their schemes for so long people don't want to admit they've been scammed however for Victor lustig eventually he would push things too far and his downfall would soon begin hey guys

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get back to the story [Music] thank you although he was now a rich man once Victor was back in America he had no intention of slowing down no target was too big or too small for him there's a story that he even dared to Swindle the notorious mobster Al Capone Victor told Capone he needed 50 000 to finance a scam and that he could double Capone's money in just two months however Victor then returned the money to Capone in full saying the scam had gone wrong Capone was impressed with his honesty and handed him five

thousand dollars of course this was Victor's plan all along he'd never intended to do anything except return the money to Capone in the hopes of a rewards however when the Great Depression overwhelmed America Victor found that the well of high paying marks started to dry up so he returned to counterfeiting again except this time he was thinking much bigger in 1930 he started a new racket with a man named William Watts a pharmacist who also happened to be a high-class engraver their fake bills were of the highest quality the supernote of the era as they

were described by one authenticating expert and to keep in line with Victor's Grand Ambitions and confidence they made 100 bills other counterfeiters stuck to low denominations since those were easier to pass around unnoticed whereas hundred dollar bills received the most scrutiny Victor knew this but he didn't care he was confident that his product was good enough to match the real thing ultimately this Brash overconfidence would prove to be his downfall it all started in 1931 when Victor showed his audacity Once More by cutting a Texas sheriff with the money box scam once the sheriff realized

he'd been duped he tracked Victor down to Chicago and confronted him at gunpoint but Victor was always a smooth talker even under pressure and simply explained that the machine was probably defective he apologized to the sheriff and offered him fifty thousand dollars compensation double what he paid for the Box the sheriff walked away a happy man but soon discovered that he had been conned again as he'd been given counterfeit money this was Victor's first big mistake because it put him on the radar of the Secret Service back then the secret service main job wasn't to

protect the president of the United States but to stop counterfeiters when they heard about such a large payout being made using high quality fake 100 bills they knew they were dealing with a big operation but they weren't prepared for just how big it actually was over the course of the last few years Victor and Watts had made over 1 million dollars in hard to trace counterfeit money which had already been distributed to the public there was genuine concern that the operation could destroy confidence in the dollar and shake the foundations of the American economy so

in 1934 a special Squad was assembled to catch Victor which consisted of secret service and Treasury Department agents New York police officers and state troopers however it was ultimately an anonymous tip that led to Victor's capture in May 1935 as someone gave the authorities the address of Victor's counterfeiting headquarters then on May 10th the police intercepted a call that Victor himself would be arriving there at a certain time and so the authorities made sure they were there to arrest him when he showed up Victor was hauled off to jail but who did the police get

this information from well it's widely believed that the anonymous tip came from Billy May the woman who Victor had had an affair with but apparently after Victor dumped her for a new partner she'd given the tip to the police out of anger and jealousy either way Victor was looking at decades in prison for this no amount of smooth talking could get him out of a charge for producing millions of dollars of counterfeit money but then in September of that year Victor added one final feat to his already remarkable criminal resume when he escaped from the

supposedly escape-proof Federal Detention Center in Manhattan he'd fashioned a 50-foot rope from bed sheets and cut through his bars using a pair of pliers someone had smuggled in for him as he shimmied down the side of the building using the bed sheet rope he pretended to be a window washer casually wiping at Windows as he shimmy down so it didn't look like he was escaping confident as always Victor even left behind a note on his pillow to taunt the guards about his Escape unfortunately for Victor by this point he had such a notorious reputation that

a lot of resources were spent on finding him again and thus he was caught less than a month after escaping from the Detention Center this time there would be no chance of Escape as Victor was sentenced to 20 years in prison on the dreaded Alcatraz Island the ultimate Maximum Security Prison although technically it wasn't Victor lustic who was sentenced as by this point he was using the Alias of Robert Miller although some believe Robert may have been his actual real name that the authorities had managed to uncover but what we know for sure is that

Victor or Robert or whoever this con man really was spent the rest of his life Behind Bars he frequently complained to the Alcatraz guards about an illness he had but they thought he was faking it for the first time in his life he wasn't he died of pneumonia on March 11 1947 at the age of 57. his death certificate listed his occupation as apprentice salesman an amusingly understated title for one of the most daring and successful con men who ever lived however he's certainly not the most famous con man that honor may go to Charles

Ponzi as even today we still hear the words Ponzi scheme in reference to his audacious scam but if you want to know the truth about Charles Ponzi don't miss out on this video right here that has the full crazy story I'll see you there cheers foreign