The 10 Greatest Scams Ever
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The 10 Greatest Scams Ever
You know, I’m a very positive guy that always see the best in people, but there’s no denying that there
are some people out there that are inherently bad, foremost among them are scammers. Today, we’ll
talk about the 10 greatest scams ever. In number one is the grand-daddy of them all and was so
successful, versions of it still exist today. Stay tuned to find out what it is.
Number 10. The Guy That Sold the Eifel Tower… Twice
A lifelong conman, Victor Lustig began his dubious career by selling “money-printing machines” which
he claimed could produce a perfect counterfeit $100 bill. He sells his machines for a ridiculously high
price, with buyers salivating at the thought of huge future profits. What Lustig didn’t tell his buyers is
that it would run out of ink in only 12 hours, and by the time the buyers find out the hard way, he’s long
gone. Although he did become quite famous, or rather infamous, for the counterfeiting scam, he will
forever be remembered as the man who sold the Eifel Tower… twice.
It all began in 1925 when Lustig read in a newspaper that the tower was being renovated. He invited six
scrap metal dealers and posing as a government official said that Eiffel tower would be taken down.
Then he asked them to submit a bid and finally secured a deal with one of the dealers. For finalizing the
deal, scrap dealer Andre Poisson offered a large bribe and secured the deal. After receiving the money,
Lustig went away and Poisson was too embarrassed to lodge a police complaint. A month later, Lustig
returned back to Paris and repeated the same trick. His second victim went to the police, but Lustig
evaded arrest.
Number 9. Fake Airport Sold
Selling something tangible like the Eifel Tower, but what about something that’s completely imaginary?
Leave it to this next guy on our list to make it possible.
Before becoming a con artist, Emmanuel Nwude was Director of the Union Bank of Nigeria, a title that
probably helped him pull of this scam so magnificently. In 1995, he impersonated the Director at the
Brazil’s Banco Noroeste Nelson Sakaguchi. Under this guise, he convinced Sakaguchi to invest in a new
airport located in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. In exchange, he asked for a $10 million commission.
The fraud remained undetected until 1997 when a Spanish bank decided to but out the Banco Noroeste
Brazil. When an official from the Spanish bank enquired about the large sum of Noroeste’s money which
was sitting in the Cayman Islands unmonitored, it led to a criminal investigation. It was discovered that
Sakaguchi had paid $242 million in between 1995 to 1998 to Emmanuel Nwude who promised him an
airport which actually never existed.
Number 8. The Portugal Bank Note Affair
In 1924, Alves dos Reis was in jail for embezzling money from a company. He spent 54 days in jail, but he
didn’t just sit idly by. He used the time to scheme out a scam so big that it later came to be known as the
“Portugal bank note affair.”
As soon as he was released from jail, Reis forged a contract in the name of Banco de Portugal. Then he
posed as a representative from the bank and convinced a London-based company that the bank had
authorized him to print his own bank notes. He even claimed that the money was a part of a secret
project, to be used to financially aid Angola, which was a struggling Portuguese colony at the time.
According to Reis’s instructions, the London-based company printed an equivalent of £1,007,963 of bank
notes, which were then circulated into the Portuguese economy. In June 1925, he created the Bank of
Angola & Metropole to help Angola. He even went on to buy the controlling interest in the Bank of
Portugal, a move which he hoped he would be able to successfully hide his scam. But the low-interest
rates of the Bank of Angola & Metropole raised a few eyebrows, and journalists raised questions. Finally,
the Bank of Portugal noticed the bank notes with duplicate serial numbers, and Reis’s scam was
exposed. Five years later, he was later sentenced to 20 years in jail.
Number 7. The Republic of Poyais
Have you ever heard of the Central American Republic of Poyais? No? Well you shouldn’t, because it
only exists in the mind of one man, and the people he scammed into believing it exists.
In the early 1820s, Gregor McGregor, son of the most hilarious parents ever, invented an entirely
fictional country and named it “Poyais”
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