Nature endowed Victor Lustig with an extraordinary gift - he knew how to superbly deceive people. This man is not without reason considered one of the most talented swindlers in the world. Victor Lustig was born in 1890 in Bohemia (as the Czech Republic was called at that time). His family belonged to high society. He received an excellent education and was fluent in five foreign languages. At the age of 19, Victor got into a big fight over a girl. In memory of this incident, there was a scar on the right side of his face from eye to ear.
First scam
It is known that at a fairly young age, Victor Lustig turned his first major business. He managed to sell a printing press that produced counterfeit money for $ 30,000 (just a huge amount at the time).
Lustig lamented that this machine was very slow and only prints $ 100 in six hours, but the bills were of excellent quality. Victor supposedly needed money right now. So he has to part with this "miracle machine" for only some 30,000, which can be easily recaptured in a few months.
The fraudster demonstrated to the buyer the work of his extraordinary apparatus. The naive buyer realized that he was deceived 12 hours later, when the printing press stopped issuing bills.
How Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower
Throughout his life, Lustig had about 50 different pseudonyms. He specialized in organizing fraudulent lotteries and bank scams.
In 1920, the resourceful Victor left for the United States. Here he was arrested more than 50 times, but all the time he was released for lack of evidence of corpus delicti. Incredibly, he always managed to get out of the water.
Victor Lustig turned the main scam of his life in 1925 when he arrived in Paris. In one of the newspapers, he read an article in which it was told that the Eiffel Tower was already somewhat dilapidated and it needed major repairs.
Lustig came up with an ingenious plan: he made himself a credential in which he appointed himself Deputy Minister of Post and Telegraph. He sent letters to six metal recycling companies.
The fraudster gathered company representatives in an expensive hotel and told the story of how expensive it is for the French government to maintain the Eiffel Tower. Allegedly, a decision has already been made to demolish the building and a closed auction will be held to sell the symbol of France for scrap. Victor said that this deal was kept in the strictest confidence and after a while he sold the right to demolish the Eiffel Tower to André Poisson, and he himself happily fled to Austria.
Poisson did not expand on the fact that he was the victim of a cruel scam, so Lustig again managed to escape punishment.
After some time, the enterprising swindler returned to France and again sold the Eiffel Tower under the same scheme. This time he was unlucky - the defrauded buyer reported him to the police.
Lustig was forced to leave for the United States again, Victor was arrested and charged with counterfeiting dollars. This happened in December 1935.
Victor Lustig was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He died of pneumonia in 1947 at the famous Alcatraz prison.
