[i]
In the early 1820s, a Scottish swindler named Gregor MacGregor devised one of history’s most outlandish moneymaking schemes: he invented his own country. After surfacing in London, the former military officer claimed he had been made the ruler of an idyllic Central American nation called Poyais. Nearly everything about the tropical paradise was fictional—MacGregor had forged a collection of official documents and a full-length guidebook—but that didn’t stop him from making a fortune promoting phony Poyais bonds, land certificates and even a disastrous settlement scheme. [/i


Beginning in 1821, the city of London was overrun with reports of a previously unknown nation nestled on the Caribbean coastline of what is now Honduras. Called Poyais, it was supposedly a lush and untapped paradise of fertile farmland, rolling hills and gold-rich streams. Its native “Poyers” were described as a friendly and hardworking people, and its capital, St. Joseph, was a European-style settlement dotted with public buildings and even an opera house. Poyais boasted a deep-water port and a pleasant climate that made it immune to the scourge of tropical disease. It was, a guidebook claimed, “one of the most healthy and beautiful spots in the world.” It was also a complete and total fraud. By the time it finally ran its course several years later, it had duped scores of unsuspecting investors and led to the deaths of over 150 people.


The mastermind behind the Poyais fairy tale was Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish adventurer with a colorful past. Born in 1786, he had spent his youth in the British army before heading to South America in the 1810s to fight as a soldier of fortune in the Venezuelan War of Independence against Spain. MacGregor served as a general under the legendary Simón Bolivar—whose cousin he married—and later led a series of independent military campaigns in the Caribbean. One of his notorious actions came in 1817, when he raised a small army of freebooters and briefly captured Florida’s Amelia Island from the Spanish.

19men e don tey

Hmm