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
  • 32 - David Lamar.

    32 - David Lamar.
    Jun 26 2026
    David Lamar.
    David Lamar (c. 1877 – January 12, 1934) was a con man known as the Wolf of Wall Street.

    Biography.
    David Lamar was born circa 1877. His exact birth date is unknown; his 1934 obituary reports that he was 65 years old.
    He appeared in New York City about 1893. In the 1890s "he had a Fifth Avenue house and was known for his trotting horses, his diamond studded walking stick, his appearances as a man about town."
    In 1899, Lamar claimed one of his most famous victims was 25-year-old John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Working through George Rogers, secretary to Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Lamar convinced the younger Rockefeller to buy stock in U.S. Leather, using money he had borrowed from his father. As Rockefeller Jr. was buying, Lamar was selling, and the younger Rockefeller lost nearly $1 million.
    On July 9, 1903, when his coachman James McMahon appeared in court to testify against Lamar on an assault charge, McMahon was stabbed and beaten by members of the Eastman Gang as he entered the courthouse and he was unable to testify.
    His obituary noted two brazen swindle attempts in which he hired two men as "hold up experts" in lawsuits he brought against the U.S. Steel Corporation and the Great Northern Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railroads; his "experts" were exposed as frauds.
    A 1913 profile of him remarked that he appeared to be wealthy at times and broke other times. That same year in New York, Lamar was indicted and charged with impersonating Congressman A. Mitchell Palmer.
    During 1915, Lamar acted as an agent for Franz von Rintelen, a captain in the intelligence wing of the German Imperial Navy who operated covertly in New York City. Lamar promoted strike action and work stoppages in munitions factories by means of the Labor's National Peace Council. From offices at 55 Liberty Street, Captain von Rintelen spent US$500,000, much of which went to Lamar, whose reports of his success were greatly exaggerated.
    For impersonating a Congressman, Lamar was sentenced to two years to the Federal Atlanta Prison in May 1916. In October 1916, while serving his Atlanta Prison sentence, he was working as a tailor.
    In 1923 after losing an appeal on a conspiracy charge, he fled New York City and was found 8 months later in Mexico and sent to the Essex County Penitentiary in North Caldwell, New Jersey, for one year for being involved in strikes in munition factories; he was released in 1924. In 1924 his first wife divorced him and retained custody of their daughter Dorothy. On November 22, 1925, in Ridgefield, Connecticut, he married a stage and screen actress Edna Eck aka Edna Fretch; in August 1926 he was served with a subpoena in regard to alleged stock manipulation of Consolidated Distributors [Motor parts]; after Lamar's demise—according to his attorney—Lamar had not been in the money since 1929.
    Lamar died in a New York City Hotel room of heart disease on January 13, 1934.


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    4 mins
  • 31 - John Ernst Worrell Keely.

    31 - John Ernst Worrell Keely.
    Jun 26 2026
    John Ernst Worrell Keely. John Ernst Worrell Keely (September 3, 1837 – November 18, 1898) was an American fraudster and self-proclaimed inventor from Philadelphia who claimed to have discovered a new motive power which was initially described as "vaporic" or "etheric" force, and later as an unnamed force based on "vibratory sympathy", by which he produced "interatomic ether" from water and air. Keely's claims were highly disputed throughout his career and, in the 21st century, are generally considered to be pseudoscientific. Keely secured substantial investments from many people, including John Jacob Astor IV. Despite numerous requests from the stockholders of the Keely Motor Company, which had been established to produce a practicable motor based on his work, he consistently refused to fully discuss the principles on which his motor supposedly operated and also repeatedly refused demands to produce a marketable product by claiming that he needed to perfect his inventions. He became embroiled in several lawsuits, and after Keely's death, evidence of his elaborate fraud was discovered. Biography. Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, John Keely was orphaned in early childhood and was raised by his grandparents. Before becoming an inventor, he worked as a member of a theatrical orchestra, a painter, a carpenter, a carnival barker, and as a mechanic. Career. In 1872, Keely invited scientists to a demonstration at his laboratory at 1422 North Twentieth Street, Philadelphia, of a machine that he asserted was motivated by a new and previously unknown force. Keely announced that he had discovered a principle for power production based on the musical vibrations of tuning forks and that music could resonate with atoms or with the aether. In the 19th century, luminiferous aether was the hypothesized substance that allowed light waves to propagate through the vacuum of outer space. Public interest was aroused, and within a few months, the Keely Motor Company was formed in New York, with a capital of $5,000,000, equivalent to $95 million in 2013. Keely's theories. Keely delivered descriptions of the supposed principles of his process on various occasions. In 1884, following the demonstration of his "vaporic gun": Stripping the process of all technical terms, it is simply this: I take water and air, two mediums of different specific gravity, and produces from them by generation an effect under vibrations that liberates from the air and water an inter atomic ether. The energy of this ether is boundless and can hardly be comprehended. The specific gravity of the ether is about four times lighter than that of hydrogen gas, the lightest gas so far discovered. — The New York Times, September 22, 1884[3]Following a demonstration in June 1885:It is an elaboration of interatomic ether by vibration. The atomic ether vibrates all around the molecules of matter. There is a magnetic force attached to it at the same time, and it assimilates with the molecular atomic aggregations — that is, assimilates with a certain attractive force that it is hard to tell what it is. I call it a vibratory negative. It don't act like a magnet drawing metals toward it. There is a certain magnetic effect about it that causes it to adhere by vibratory rotation to different forms of matter — that is the molecular, atomic, etheric, and ether-etheric. The impulse is given by metallic impulses, the rotary power that is formed by etheric vibration — that is the force that holds it in position.— The New York Times, June 7, 1885. In the 19th century, most physicists believed that all space was filled with a medium called the "luminiferous aether" (or "ether"). This hypothetical substance was thought necessary for the transmission of electromagnetic waves and the propagation of light, which was believed to be impossible in "empty" space. Etheric generator. On November 10, 1874, Keely demonstrated an "etheric generator" to a small group in Philadelphia. Keely blew into a nozzle for half a minute, then poured five gallons of tap water into the same nozzle. After some adjustments, a pressure gauge indicated pressures of 10,000 psi, which Keely said was evidence that the water had been disintegrated and a mysterious vapor had been liberated in the generator, capable of powering machinery. In subsequent demonstrations, he kept changing the terminology he used, from "vibratory-generator" to a "hydro-pneumatic-pulsating-vacu-engine" to "quadruple negative harmonics". It was later reported that the witnesses of the demonstration were so impressed that they formed a stock company, purchased patent rights for the six New England states, and paid $50,000 in cash for their share in the invention. The New York Times reported in June 1875 that Keely's new motive power was generated from cold water and air and evolved into a vapor "more powerful than steam, and considerably more economical". It reported that Keely refused to ...
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    35 mins
  • 30 - Canada Bill Jones.

    30 - Canada Bill Jones.
    Jun 26 2026
    Canada Bill Jones. William "Canada Bill" Jones (c. 1837 – 1877) was an English-born Romanichal confidence artist, riverboat gambler and card sharp in Canada and the United States. He has been described by historians, news reporters and others who have written about his life since the late 19th century with such superlatives as "the greatest of confidence men" and "without doubt the greatest three-card-monte sharp ever to work the boats, perhaps the greatest of them all." Life. Born in a Romanichal tent in Yorkshire, England, Jones learned the techniques of his future trade at a young age, and honed his skills into his late teenage years. In 1860, he emigrated to Canada, where he learned and perfected his three-card monte skills while travelling with Dick Cady as a "thrower". Heading south to the United States, he found success as a Mississippi riverboat gambler, teaming up with George Devol, Holly Chappell and Tom Brown. Brown's share alone was reportedly $240,000. After the foursome broke up, Jones and Devol continued working the boats until the pair severed their relationship sometime around the outbreak of the American Civil War when both accused each other of cheating. Several people who knew Jones personally reported that he was generally a kind and charitable man. A detective described him "as gentle as a woman and as cunning as a fox" and "could beat any man at his own game", adding that Jones liked to "snake in" the greenhorns. Devol stated that he once witnessed Jones hand $50 to a Sister of Charity he passed on the street. According to Allan Pinkerton, founder of America's Pinkerton National Detective Agency: [Jones'] personal appearance, which was most ludicrous, undeniably had much to do with his success. He was the veritable country gawky, the ridiculous, ignorant, absurd creature that has been so imperfectly imitated on and off the stage for years, and whose true description can scarcely be written. He was fully six feet high, with dark eyes and hair, and always had a smooth-shaven face, full of seams and wrinkles, that were put to all manner of difficult expressions with a marvelous facility and ease. All this coupled with long, loose-jointed arms, long, thin, and apparently a trifle unsteady legs, a shambling, shuffling, awkward gait, and this remarkable face and head bent forward and turned a little to one side, like an inquiring and wise owl, and then an outfit of Granger clothing, the entire cost of which never exceeded fifteen dollars—made a combination that never failed to call a smile to a stranger’s face, or awaken a feeling of curiosity and interest wherever he might be seen. One striking difference between Canada Bill and all the other sharpers of his ilk lay in the fact that he was the thing he seemed to be…. [T]hose who knew him, as far as it was possible to know the wandering vagabond that he was, assert that he was the most unaffected, innocent, and really simple-hearted of human beings. Post-war, Jones moved to Kansas City, where he partnered with "Dutch Charlie". After winning $200,000 there, they began working the Omaha, Nebraska to Kansas City trains until the Union Pacific Railroad management started clamping down on three-card monte players. In response, Jones wrote to the general superintendent of the railroad, offering $10,000 a year to secure an exclusive franchise while other accounts reported that he offered Union Pacific's officers $1000 a month or $30,000 a year if they would let him play monte on their trains, but those offers were rebuffed. Jones moved on to Chicago, in 1874, teaming up with Jimmy Porter and "Colonel" Charlie Starr. While there, he opened and worked four gambling houses, all reportedly with criminal histories. Winning and losing as much as $150,000 in a year, he reportedly was often duped by other gamblers during short card cons. Moving on to Cleveland with Porter, he continued to lose to professionals there as fast as he won from his marks. After relocating to Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1877, Jones fell ill with consumption (tuberculosis). A pauper, he was admitted to the charity hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania for treatment. Roughly 40 years old at the time of his death there on October 22, 1877, he was buried at Reading's Charles Evans Cemetery. Reading's mayor was later reimbursed for the funeral by the gamblers of Chicago. John Quinn wrote in Fools of Fortune that: ... as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, one of his friends offered to bet $1,000 to $500 that 'Bill was not in the box.' The offer found no takers, for the reason, as one of his acquaintances said, 'that he had known Bill to squeeze through tighter holes than that'. In popular culture. The German writer Karl May wrote two stories about Canada Bill Jones: Ein Self-man (1878) and Three carde monte (1879). The narrator meets several times with the young Abraham Lincoln and together they oppose "Kanada-Bill." Later on, May revised...
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    6 mins
  • 29 - Bertha Heyman.

    29 - Bertha Heyman.
    Jun 26 2026
    Bertha Heyman.
    Bertha Heyman (born c. 1851 - 1901) was an American criminal, also known as "Big Bertha" or the "Confidence Queen." She was described by famed New York City detective Thomas F. Byrnes as "one of the smartest confidence women in America", and was considered by the New York City police to be "the boldest and most expert of the many female adventuresses who infest the country." She managed to swindle several men out of a total of many thousands of dollars, even while behind bars.

    Background, description, and criminal methodology.
    She was born Bertha Schlesinger in Prussia, and came to the United States in 1878. She was married twice; first to Fritz Karko, with whom she lived in New York and later Milwaukee; and then to a man she identified as John Heyman. Contemporary sources described her as "a stout gross looking woman", or alternatively as having a "somewhat pleasing face" or "a lady of the same smart appearance and engaging manners." Byrnes profiled her in his 1886 book Professional Criminals of America, and described her as follows:
    Thirty-five years old in 1886. Born in Germany. Married. Very stout woman. Height, 5 feet 4½ inches. Weight, 245 pounds. Hair brown, eyes brown, fair complexion. German face. An excellent talker. Has four moles on her right cheek.
    Heyman's typical scheme involved conning money out of men by pretending to be a wealthy woman who was unable to access her fortune. She stayed at the best hotels and retained both a maid and a manservant in her service, while bragging about having influential friends. Her confidence tricks "were extraordinarily bold and ingenious, and they were covered by much ostentatious display."
    Heyman told The New York Times in 1883 that she was only interested in getting money, not in having or spending it, and claimed that she gave the bulk of her ill-gotten funds to the poor. "The moment I discover a man's a fool I let him drop, but I delight in getting into the confidence and pockets of men who think they can't be 'skinned.' It ministers to my intellectual pride."

    Crimes and arrests.
    Heyman was arrested and jailed numerous times over the course of her criminal career. She was arrested in September 1880 for conning a sleeping car conductor she had met while on a train from Chicago. Heyman had told him she had a large estate she wanted him to manage, and he quit his job on her promise to hire him. Heyman then told him she needed to borrow some money to obtain the sum that was due to her from her agent, and furthered the deception by taking him to a large house she claimed to own, as evidence of her wealth.
    Heyman was soon arrested again in London, Ontario on February 8, 1881, charged with swindling several hundred dollars from a Montreal businessman. She stood trial in June 1881 for stealing $250 and two gold watches from an elderly woman she boarded with in Staten Island, but was acquitted. She was arrested again while leaving the court, this time for conning two New York City businessmen out of a total of $1460. She was convicted on one of the indictments and sentenced on October 29, 1881 to two years in prison. While serving time in prison on Blackwell's Island, she managed to befriend a man and con him out of his life savings of $900 (the equivalent of $20,700 in 2011 dollars).
    As part of a scam on her own attorney, she once claimed to be worth $20 million. She also defrauded a Wall Street broker who she had convinced she was worth $8 million, with forged securities. For this crime, she was again convicted in the Court of General Sessions, on August 22, 1883, and sentenced to five years in prison.
    Heyman died on April 26, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois.


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    4 mins
  • 28 - Lord Gordon Gordon.

    28 - Lord Gordon Gordon.
    Jun 26 2026
    Lord Gordon Gordon.
    Lord Gordon-Gordon (c. 1840 – August 1, 1874), also known as Lord Gordon Gordon, Lord Glencairn, and The Hon. Mr. Herbert Hamilton, was a British impostor responsible for a major swindle in 19th century United States. He swindled a million dollars from Jay Gould (equivalent to 27 million dollars in 2025), who was fighting for control of the Erie Railroad, and then fled to Canada. Gould and associates attempted to kidnap him but were arrested themselves, which nearly caused a military confrontation between the United States and Canada.

    Life in Britain.
    Little is known about the early life of Lord Gordon-Gordon. His real name was John Crowningsfield and it was rumoured that he was the illegitimate son of a North Country clergyman and his family maid. The first incident involving him was in 1868 under the name of "Lord Glencairn", when he swindled London jewellers Marshall & Son for £25,000, equivalent to £2,400,000 in 2025. In March 1870, he left Britain and travelled to the United States.

    Swindles in America.
    Glencairn took the name "Lord Gordon-Gordon" as his alias, claiming to be a cousin of the Campbell clan, a descendant of Lochinvar and of the ancient kings of the Scottish Highlands. He arrived in Minneapolis, Minnesota and became involved with the Northern Pacific Railway. He told them that he was in America so that he could buy large tracts of land on which to settle tenants from his over-populated estates in Scotland.
    His next major incident came three months later when he moved to New York City, claiming that he was going to transfer his funds from Scotland in order to finance his land purchase. He carried a letter of introduction from Gould, who was then trying to gain control of the Erie Railroad in the Erie War. Gordon-Gordon told Gould that he could help him gain control of the railroad, with the help of several Europeans who had stock in the company, on the condition that he give Gordon-Gordon a million dollars in negotiable stock in what he called "a pooling of interests". However, as soon as Gould delivered the stock, he turned it around and sold it.
    Gould sued Gordon-Gordon, and he was put on trial in March 1873. He gave the names of Europeans whom he claimed to represent, and the court granted him bail while checking the references. Gordon-Gordon took this opportunity to flee to Canada where he convinced authorities that the allegations were false. He then offered to buy large parts of Manitoba, an investment which would bring prosperity to Canada.
    Gould was unable to convince Canadian authorities to hand over Gordon-Gordon, so he attempted to abduct him with his associates, including future members of Congress Loren Fletcher, John Gilfillan, and Eugene McLanahan Wilson. They were successful, but they were stopped and arrested by the North-West Mounted Police before they could return to the United States. The authorities put them in prison and refused them bail, which led to an international incident between the United States and Canada. Minnesota Governor Horace Austin demanded their return when he learned that they had been refused bail, and he put the militia on full readiness. Thousands of Minnesotans volunteered for a full military invasion of Canada, but the Canadian authorities released the abductors on bail.
    Gordon-Gordon believed himself safe, as grand larceny and embezzlement were not crimes serious enough to warrant extradition. However, news reached Europe of his scandal, and the jewellers whom he had robbed years before sent a representative to Canada who identified Gordon-Gordon as Lord Glencairn. Gordon-Gordon claimed that it was a smear campaign created by Gould and his associates, but the Canadian authorities considered the charges serious enough to deport him. He held a farewell party in his hotel room, where he gave expensive presents to his guests.
    He then shot himself on August 1, 1874 in Headingley.


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