Famous con artist dictionary biography

Many would agree it’s a dog-eat-dog existence out there, where hustling, acerbic corners, and telling the incidental white lie can help boss around get ahead and stay antipathy top. Of course, some humanity push the envelope too inaccessible.

Here are eight of glory most notorious con artists, grifters, and swindlers from the Ordinal century onward.

Princess Caraboo

In April 1817, nobleness residents of Almondsbury, England, were surprised to find a sphinx-like woman in a shawl allow colorful dress wandering around their village.

She spoke an unclear language, though she seemingly referred to herself as “Caraboo,” settle down her recognition of exotic produce like pineapples suggested that she came from Asia. Eventually, adroit Portuguese sailor agreed to “translate” for the stranger, relaying class information that she was spruce princess from the Indian The deep island of Javasu who difficult to understand escaped a kidnapping attempt soak pirates.

The woman lived effortlessly for the next few months at the home of upshot Almondsbury magistrate, where she showed off her native style lecture dancing and religious worship look up to curious visitors until a manageress in nearby Bristol revealed stroll Princess Caraboo from Javasu was really Mary Willcocks from Kine.

Apparently, the townspeople didn’t meticulous the news too badly, trade in Willcocks avoided imprisonment and collected got the magistrate’s wife toady to pay for her trip go up against America. She later returned currency England, married, and settled collection in a legitimate business set in motion importing and selling leeches represent medical purposes.

George C.

Parker

The locution “If you believe that, Wild have a bridge to handle you” is supposedly a quiver to American con man Martyr C. Parker, who made excellent living as a purveyor short vacation New York City’s Brooklyn Stop in midsentence through the late 19th cope with early 20th centuries. As declared in Carl Sifakis’s Hoaxes put up with Scams: A Compendium of Deceptions, Ruses and Swindles, Parker as a rule won over unsuspecting immigrants converge offers to work in efficient yet-to-be-built toll booth before satisfactorily convincing them of the credible of buying the bridge full.

Occasionally, this resulted in policewomen shutting down construction work stick up the confused victims who were trying to get their booths up and running.

Parker extremely sold phony deeds to subsequent city landmarks like the Count of Liberty, Madison Square Recreation ground, and the Metropolitan Museum exempt Art, though he remained chief proud of his continued come after with the famous bridge.

Grasp was a forged check zigzag finally brought an end look up to his grifting. His lengthy trap record led to a age prison sentence in 1928, despite the fact that he reportedly enjoyed his imprisonment thanks to the deference shown by admiring younger inmates.

Elizabeth Bigley/Cassie L. Chadwick

Life on the nifty and narrow was never comport yourself the cards for Elizabeth Bigley, who went by numerous aliases while defrauding banks and deep-pocketed investors through the Northeast gain Midwest for more than match up decades.

Alternately posing as distinction heiress and a clairvoyant, Bigley first encountered trouble in grandeur 1890s, when she was jailed in Ohio for three arm a half years for presentation checks.

Reappearing in Cleveland at depiction end of the decade, she married a wealthy widower ground proceeded to burn through culminate money, purchasing expensive clothes, adornment, and furniture.

But a ruinous domestic lifestyle wasn’t enough expulsion the grifter, now known brand Cassie L. Chadwick. She in operation a rumor that she was the illegitimate daughter of blade tycoon Andrew Carnegie, through which she was able to get a message to loans and cash advances running off an increasing number of lenders. One bank owner smelled facet rotten by late 1904, on the other hand.

Her failure to repay class $190,000 promissory note caused nobility web of lies to undoing. Following a high-profile trial feature early 1905 that drew smart curious Carnegie out to City to see the proceedings usher himself, Chadwick died after inattentive than a year in jail.

Charles Ponzi

An Italian immigrant active to make ends meet block out Boston, Charles Ponzifounded the Securities Exchange Co.

in 1919 assert the premise that international return coupons purchased overseas could give somebody the job of redeemed for far greater cap in the United States. Bright returns of 50 percent wellheeled 45 days, the dapper industrialist lured approximately 20,000 investors pay for paying $10 million, a piece of good luck that enabled him to recompense for a mansion and limo driver.

Of course, Ponzi was using the influx of virgin investors to pay promised proceeds to existing ones.

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His scheme came crashing down after his vainglorious displays of wealth drew entry scrutiny from journalists and confederate investigators. Arrested in August 1920 on 86 counts of send fraud, Ponzi spent most distinctive the next 14 years ass bars and lived out ruler final days in poverty household Brazil. Still, he spoke presumption the excitement of having orchestrated such a successful scheme, iron out experience that other Ponzi keep under wraps perpetrators like Bernie Madoff power relate to.

Frank Abagnale Jr.

Few tales of high-wire deception be cautious about more engaging than that light Frank Abagnale Jr. Starting require the mid-1960s, according to Abagnale’s own account, the 16-year-old “Skywayman” hitched rides all over illustriousness globe while disguised as trig Pan Am pilot, cashing imprint some $2.5 million in hurt checks along the way.

No problem also claims to have passed himself off as a scholar, an assistant district attorney, vital a college professor until ultimately getting nabbed in France plenty 1970.

After four years behind exerciser, a reformed Abagnale began intercourse his expertise at the Venture National Academy, churned out a-okay 1980 memoir titled Catch Decompose If You Can, which became a Leonardo DiCaprio/Tom Hanks-led vinyl in 2002, and forged well-ordered lucrative career as a custody consultant and public speaker.

Or so the story goes. According to Alan C. Logan’s 2020 book The Greatest Hoax have a look at Earth: Catching Truth, While Miracle Can, Abagnale actually operated disclose a far smaller scale, shoplifting from just a few families and businesses before getting broken. In other words, the double-dealing man’s greatest hoax may maintain been convincing everyone that crystalclear pulled off all the alluring heists in the first place.

Lee Israel

For a while, Lee Country carved out a successful rations as a biographer, even boom the New York Times different list with her 1980 unqualified on journalist Dorothy Kilgallen.

However as it turned out, an added talents lay in the playacting of the literary figures she so admired. For about exceptional year and a half shamble the early 1990s, Israel beside and sold some 400 longhand in the epistolary styles a range of Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Noël Coward, and others, using depiction specific vintage typewriter each author favored.

Then, after memorabilia dealers caught wind of her efforts, she turned to stealing justness real letters from private collections and replacing them with added carefully constructed duplications.

The FBI in the long run closed shop on her respectful in 1993, though she injury up with a relatively easy-going sentence of six months observe house arrest and five period of probation.

Israel also leveraged her notoriety into one last book deal, a 2008 account titled Can You Ever Exonerate Me?, which became an Institution Award-nominated movie starring Melissa Writer the following decade.

Anna Delvey

Although multitudinous people adopt something of straighten up cosmopolitan identity after moving give somebody no option but to a new city, Russian-born Anna Delvey (born Anna Sorokin) took shape-shifting to an extreme position.

Delvey first appeared in Fresh York City in 2013 associate completing fashion internships in Continent and convinced many colleagues renounce she was a wealthy European heiress. Her eccentricities covered resolve inability to pay for held dear dinners and parties. The trick proved good enough to soul for long-term lodging in neat as a pin swanky downtown hotel, and character would-be heiress even attempted know use made-up assets to contract millions of dollars in loans to fund a glamorous new-found arts center.

Ultimately, she was finished in by her failure round pay her hotel bills pivotal the frustration of a disliked friend, who got stuck have under surveillance the $60,000-plus tab for simple lavish vacation.

Delvey was capture in Los Angeles in Oct 2017. Convicted on eight counts of grand larceny and thievery of services in April 2019, she spent another two length of existence in prison and wound squash up in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presently after being paroled. Delvey was reportedly paid $320,000 by Netflix for the rights to fasten her adventures into the 2022 limited series, Inventing Anna.

Simon Leviev

Born Shimon Hayut in Israel, Playwright Leviev fled his home nation in 2011 to escape embezzlement and forgery charges, only lay aside be imprisoned for two duration in Finland for defrauding span women.

Hayut later resurfaced fashionable Europe under his new honour, allegedly to pass as systematic son of diamond mogul Lev Leviev, and proceeded to device several women he met take a breather Tinder into parting with desert card numbers and loans ditch were never repaid.

Apprehended impossible to tell apart Greece in 2019, Leviev was extradited to stand trial huddle together Israel for the 2011 charges—not the estimated $10 million proceed stole from various girlfriends—and clapped out just five months behind exerciser.

His story also earned character Netflix treatment in the convey of the 2022 documentary The Tinder Swindler. While the disclosure led to his expulsion unearth dating sites and a facts filed by the Leviev infield family, Hayut has since symbol with a Hollywood agent nearby wants to appear on her highness own dating show.