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Scammers and Con Artists. cover art

Scammers and Con Artists.

Scammers and Con Artists.

Written by: Popular Culture and Religion.
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Scammers and Con Artists.
The history of scammers and con artists dates back to antiquity, evolving from simple maritime insurance fraud in 300 BC to today's highly sophisticated global cyber schemes. While their methods have advanced alongside technology, the fundamental psychology of the con—exploiting greed, desperation, and human trust—remains unchanged.

1 - Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Early Swindles.
- 300 BC (Insurance Fraud): The earliest recorded scam involved a Greek sea merchant named Hegestratos, who took out a large bottomry loan (marine insurance), sank his empty ship, and attempted to flee with the cash. He was caught and drowned at sea.
- 3 AD (Counterfeiting & Power): Ancient Egyptian tax collectors frequently inflated the weight of goods, and in 193 AD, the Praetorian Guard brazenly auctioned off the Roman Emperor's throne to the highest bidder.

2 - The 18th & 19th Centuries: The "Confidence" Men.
- The Original "Con" (1849): William Thompson, an American grifter, is credited with inventing the term "con man". He approached wealthy strangers, struck up a polite conversation, and asked to borrow their expensive watches to see if they trusted him. Once handed the watch, he would vanish.
- The Prince of Poyais (1821): Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor successfully conned British and French investors out of millions by selling land in a completely fictional Central American country called "Poyais," which he claimed was booming with opportunity.

3 - The Roaring 20s: The Golden Age of Fraud.
- Charles Ponzi (1920): While the namesake of the modern "Ponzi scheme," Ponzi did not invent it. He defrauded investors by promising massive returns on international postal reply coupons, paying older investors with the funds contributed by newer ones.
- Victor Lustig (1925): Operating across Europe and America, Lustig famously pulled off "The Eiffel Tower Scam" by posing as a government official and conning a scrap metal dealer into "purchasing" the famous landmark for its raw iron.

4 - The Late 20th Century: Impostors and Embezzlers.
- Frank Abagnale Jr. (1960s): Fabricating a series of elaborate aliases, he successfully passed over $2.5 million in bad checks and impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer—all before the age of 30. His life later inspired the book and film Catch Me If You Can.
- Bernie Madoff (1970s–2008): Starting as a legitimate broker, Madoff evolved his business into the largest financial fraud in history, running a massive multi-decade Ponzi scheme estimated to be worth nearly $65 billion before it collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.

5 - The Digital Era: The Rise of Cyber Grifting.
- The 419 Scam: Popularized through early email (and originally traditional mail), this scam—often called the "Nigerian Prince" scam—persuades victims to send upfront money in exchange for a promised, but non-existent, massive fortune.
- Modern Schemes: Today's con artists rely on digital deception, such as phishing, identity theft, and ransomware, exploiting massive global networks to target millions of victims simultaneously.

If you are interested in a specific era, type of scam, or the psychology of why these people succeed, let me know how you would like to narrow down the topic.Copyright Popular Culture and Religion. Social Sciences True Crime World
Episodes
  • 35 - Phillip Musica.

    35 - Phillip Musica.
    Jun 26 2026
    Phillip Musica. Philip Mariano Fausto Musica (1877 – December 16, 1938), also known as F. Donald Coster, was an Italian swindler whose criminal career spanned parts of three decades. His various crimes included tax fraud, bank fraud, and bootlegging. However, he is best known as the mastermind of the McKesson and Robbins scandal in 1938, one of the largest financial scandals ever perpetuated by a single person. Early life. Musica was born in 1877 in Naples, Italy, to Antonio and Maria Musica. His family moved to New York City when he was seven years old. He grew up in Mulberry's Bend, a rough neighborhood in Little Italy. Philip would eventually have three brothers and a sister. As a boy, Musica admired Theodore Roosevelt, at the time the New York Police Department's hard-charging police commissioner. He followed Roosevelt's activities in the newspapers and attended his public speaking engagements. Musica started copying the commissioner's speech and mannerisms. First convictions for fraud. A. Musica and Son. Musica dropped out of school at the age of 14 to help out at his father's small grocery store, A. Musica and Son. Within two years, he was running the store. He soon left day-to-day operations to his younger brother Arthur while turning his own attention to building an import-export operation. By importing cheese, olive oil, and spices directly from Italy (as opposed to using a middleman), he was able to underprice his competitors. Within a few years, A. Musica and Son was one of the largest importers of Italian food in New York, grossing a half-million dollars a year. The Musicas moved to a home in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and became leaders of the city's Italian community. There was a dark secret to the store's success, however. Musica bribed dock officials to replace the real bills of lading with phony ones listing the weights of their shipments as substantially lighter than they really were. The unpaid tariffs grew to astronomical proportions when the Musicas increased their orders. Combined with the lower prices they paid for importing directly, they substantially outsold all their competitors in Little Italy. In 1909, Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. began a drive to clean up the East River waterfront. Police soon discovered the fraud, and Philip and Antonio Musica were arrested for tax evasion, tax fraud, and bribery. Musica pleaded guilty in return for having the charges against his father dropped (even though his father had signed several of the phony invoices) and served a year in jail. However, President William Howard Taft pardoned him after only six months. U.S. Hair. Not long after getting out of jail, Musica founded the United States Hair Company, ostensibly to sell hairpieces that fashionable women of the day used to create elaborate hairstyles. Good-quality hair sold for as much as $80 a pound. Musica had his mother gather up nearly worthless sweepings from barbershop floors. He then put them in crates with a layer of expensive hair on top. The money was soon rolling in again, and Musica moved his family to a larger house in Bay Ridge. He also bought a suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Musica sent his mother to Italy with the ostensible purpose of getting loans to finance the shipment of long strands of human hair across the Atlantic. The bankers bought the story, and Musica soon set up satellite offices around the world. However, these were nothing more than maildrops for the paper trail to support the existence of the company's nonexistent inventory. In July 1912, U.S. Hair was capitalized at $2 million, with $600,000 in assets—mostly human hair located abroad. Three months later, Musica took the company public, and it was listed on the Curb Exchange. The original price of $2 a share jumped to $10, making Musica an instant millionaire. Then just as fast as Musica rose, he fell—and this time almost as ignobly as he had three years before. By the time U.S. Hair went public, it was $500,000 in arrears to several banks. Two British banks got suspicious of U.S. Hair's financing and refused to honor some company drafts, sending U.S. Hair stock into a tailspin. To get as much money as possible out of the company before being unmasked, Musica sought a $370,000 loan from Bank of Manhattan (now part of JPMorgan Chase), pledging 216 crates of hair as collateral. However, a bank clerk discovered a bill of lading for Musica's collateral had been altered. Suspicious bank representatives went to the piers to inspect the hair and discovered that the crates held only a small layer of valuable hair. The rest of the contents were nearly worthless ends and short pieces. The total value of the contents in the warehouse was about $250. Musica got word that the bank had alerted federal authorities and proceeded to strip his Bay Ridge home of virtually everything of value. The Musica family fled to various cities on the East Coast before meeting in New Orleans. They got on a ...
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    17 mins
  • 34 - Victor Lustig.

    34 - Victor Lustig.
    Jun 26 2026
    Victor Lustig. Victor Lustig (4 January 1890 – 11 March 1947) was a con artist from Austria-Hungary, who undertook a criminal career that involved conducting scams across Europe and the United States during the early 20th century. Lustig is widely regarded as one of the most notorious con artists of his time, and is infamous for being "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice" and for conducting the "Rumanian Box" scam. Early life. Lustig was born in Hostinné, at the time more widely known by its German name Arnau (an der Elbe), part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, as the second of three children, to Ludwig and Amelia "Fanny" Lustig. Raised in a German-speaking middle-class Catholic family, Lustig grew up in a four-room house at Tyrsovy street, near the central market square. Lustig's father was a tobacco goods salesman and at one point a mayor of Hostinné, who was reportedly physically abusive towards his children and wife, who was fifteen years his junior. At age eight, Lustig was forced to sign a written oath to abstain from alcohol and always attend church. Lustig also had to attend violin lessons, which he hated, and during an argument over this, his father beat Lustig over the head with the instrument. His parents divorced around 1898, although they still lived together during the 1900 census. As a child, Lustig frequently travelled across Europe with his father on business trips to Prague and Zurich, recalling that seeing Paris for the first time at age seven, the inner city appeared "exquisite" while the outer areas were a "sad, soiled place that slitered around in a sea of immorality". On his first day of infant school, Lustig was immediately expelled for obscenity, after telling a female teacher "Leck mich am Arsch" ("Kiss my ass"). He was subsequently transferred to a one-room school in Čermná, around 5 kilometres from Hostinné. Classmates later recalled that Lustig was well-liked for his headstrong personality and expressive impressions of military leaders. Meanwhile, a 1902 school report described Lustig as "retarded morally, an idiot in other respects". By age thirteen, Lustig had taken up boxing and despite chronic health issues, such as recurring migraines and breathing difficulties due to sinus swelling, he had an unbroken attendance record. In 1904, Lustig ran away from home for a week before returning to Hostinné. He was subsequently sent to a boarding school in Dresden, where he learnt English, French, Italian, and Hungarian (other sources claim he learnt five or six languages) and took a course in design. While his graunddaughter Bettina claimed that Lustig excelled in his studies and continued his education there until his early twenties, most biographers state that he dropped out before his 17th birthday. Lustig's childhood friend Karl Harrer stated that Lustig had returned to Hostinné after receiving a poor grade on his design portfolio in June 1906. The two got drunk, with Harrer listening to Lustig complain about the elitist attitudes at his boarding school and the general unfairness of the world. The following year, Harrer received postcards by Lustig from Vienna, with the final correspondence claiming that he would study law at Charles University. In 1909, shortly after starting a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris, Lustig took to gambling. During this time he also sustained a defining scar on the left side of his face from the jealous boyfriend of a woman he consorted with. Upon leaving school, Lustig applied both his quick wit and sizing up of a situation and his fluency in several languages to embark on a life of crime, eventually focusing on conducting a variety of scams and cons that provided him with property and money, and which transformed him into a professional con man. Career. Many of Lustig's initial cons were committed on ocean liners sailing between the Atlantic ports of France and New York City. He would pose as a musical producer seeking investors in a non-existent Broadway production. When the services of Trans-Atlantic liners were suspended in the wake of World War I, Lustig found himself in search of new territory to make an income from and opted to travel to the United States. In May 1922, Lustig posed as Robert Duval and visited a bank in Springfield, Missouri. He purchased some land from the bank and overpaid with Liberty bonds. His change amounted to $10,000 in the bank's cash, and before leaving Lustig also pocketed his bonds. He was arrested in New York City and extradited by Governor Nathan L. Miller. Around this time, Lustig's infamy was growing among law enforcement. Eiffel Tower scam. In 1925, Lustig traveled back to France. While staying in Paris, he chanced upon a newspaper article discussing the problems faced with maintaining the Eiffel Tower, which gave him inspiration for a new con. The monument had begun falling into disrepair, and the city was finding it increasingly expensive to maintain and ...
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    15 mins
  • 33 - Daniel Levey.

    33 - Daniel Levey.
    Jun 26 2026
    Daniel Levey. Daniel "Professor Dan" Levey (born c. 1875) was a 19th and 20th century American criminal, operating in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon and California. He was a forger, embezzler, con artist, thief, gambler, body builder, physical trainer, and womanizer. Levey used many aliases, including "Red" Levey, David Lewis, Harry L. Lewis, Harry B. Clark, Harry D. Clark, Harry Levy, Harry Harvey, and possibly Henry D. Clark. He was born about 1875 to a respectable Brooklyn family, and his brothers were involved in legitimate and successful businesses. His first victims were his own relatives, followed by thefts from others in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He served short stints in Elmira and Sing Sing for those early crimes. However, he gained his greatest notoriety in Baltimore. He had started enjoying an establishment life there, marrying a wealthy divorcee, and starting a personal service business catering to the wealthy. Nevertheless, in a short period of time, he started committing crimes and disappeared, setting off a one month manhunt nationwide before being caught. In that time, he managed to raise his financial fortunes enough that he thought he might be able to return to the Baltimore society life he had begun enjoying. He was convicted of forgery in 1916 and spent over four years in prison. Upon release, he continued his criminal ways. Activities in Baltimore. When he appeared in Baltimore in early 1900, he took the title Professor, as a "physical culture instructor," a term used for athletics and physical fitness at the time. He made wagers on the abilities of Bernard Byrnes, who was later employed in Levey's gymnasium. Levey married Gertrude Heching Mendels in June 1901. It was her second marriage, having divorced six months earlier from Emanuel Mendels, scion of a clothing manufacturing family. Mrs. Levey had her daughter's name changed from Mildred Lenore Mendels to Mildred Lenore Levey, a change she later had legally retracted. Soon after, Levey borrowed money, much of it from his wife's family, to open a business that included gym facilities, a barbershop, and Turkish baths. It was a fashionable, high-end club, with $15,000 (1901 dollars) invested in it. Levey attracted a lot of attention with the business and developed a well-off clientele. He was advertising for additional help shortly after opening in August. He also spent lavishly on personal items and was a backer of sports competitions, including wrestling and horse racing during this period, and was an involved spectator at such events. However, by the beginning of the next year, he had developed significant financial problems, and got involved in some shady deals. Later reports indicated that he may have lost much of his money gambling on horses. On Saturday, January 4, 1902, he committed two crimes. He forged his brother's name on a Brooklyn check or bill of exchange, which bounced after being cashed at a local bank, and stole jewelry from a pawn shop, on a pretense of brokering a sale of the goods. That evening, he ran off for several days with his cashier and bookkeeper, Emma Kaufman, and sent word to Mrs. Levey that he was away unexpectedly on business. By Wednesday, the pawn shop and bank filed complaints against him, and his brother-in-law requested a receiver be appointed to keep the gym going. Police began a manhunt for him. Miss Kaufman reappeared on Tuesday, with information that she thought Levey had headed for Chicago, though she denied romantic involvement with him. On the lam. It took over a month to find Levey. In that time, he made his way to San Francisco and Oakland, California, winning and losing a fortune betting on horses. He left having ownership of two race horses and $41,000 from horse racing payouts, a huge sum at the time. By the time he had left, bookmakers were looking to have him arrested for repaying money he borrowed to make some of his debts, via bad checks. Levey slyly hired as bodyguards the same detective agency the bookies and police used, thus escaping them. In the meantime, Baltimore creditors petitioned the court system to declare the Levey businesses bankrupt, and were granted the motion within a few days. It quickly went from a local case to Federal bankruptcy oversight. Baltimore police kicked off a nationwide manhunt on January 11. By January 16 and 17, Brooklyn and New York (Manhattan) police had respectively matched him to a teenage criminal who had been sentenced to state prison half a decade earlier. His New York arrest record included: - Passing bogus checks on his brother, 1893; sent to Elmira Reformatory for one year. - Bicycle theft (larceny), 1897. - Bad checks and jewelry theft, 1897-1898; similar to the Baltimore pawn shop case, he pretended to have a buyer for a jewelers goods, but ran off with them instead. Sentenced to three years, but apparently paroled by 1900. - Served two prison terms total before arriving...
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    13 mins
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