ipledge10:
The Ponzi scheme is popular in New York ( Wall Street ), My professor told me about one that happend recently

The Ponzi scheme should be the most popular after sleight of hand... Its the only scam I have been a victim of and that was a couple of years back when I was still fresh out of secondary school.

Most websites still use it to entice greedy folks..some call it robbing Peter to pay Paul.

ipledge10:
The Ponzi scheme is popular in New York ( Wall Street ), My professor told me about one that happend recently

STFUareyouG0d:
That's the Madoff scam. Hahaha. Wall Street

STFUareyouG0d:
Kinglekan, how did you miss Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff?



Nice writeup

Buhahahaha!! .. I actually didn't bro. But the longer the article the more people lose interest in reading it. Decided to trim it down

Thanks G!

The Indian man is still my favorite though..lol. How do you escape while been incapacitated on a wheel chair?

kinglekan:



Buhahahaha!! .. I actually didn't bro. But the longer the article the more people lose interest in reading it. Decided to trim it down

Thanks G!

The Indian man is still my favorite though..lol. How do you escape while been incapacitated on a wheel chair?

kinglekan:
Did you know that the noun CON means Confidence? I bet you did

Well did you also know that Samuel Thompson (1821–1856) was the original "Confidence Man” arrested in July 1849 although he was an unsuccessful grifter.

Let's give the devils their due. Yeah, they've screwed over thousands of innocent people. But some of them had balls the size of HOT BALLOON AIR BALLS and for that, we must salute them. – Kristi Harrison


1. Charles Ponzi - The Ponzi Scheme

Charles Ponzi was an Italian business man/con artist. He was so good they named a scheme after him. He promised investors 50% profit within 45 days and over a 100% profit within 90 days. He would then pay previous investors with money given to him by future investors. This type of scheme is now known as a Ponzi scheme and has been widely used in business and it’s well known as the “Get Rich Quick Scam”. Due to the nature of this scam, it was short lived. It ran for about a year before eventually collapsing.




2. Gregor MacGregor - The Prince of Poyais

A Scottish con man famous for creating a fictional country called Poyais, he convinced colonizers to buy lands on his non-existent island with relative ease. Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor's invented country in 1822–23 to find only an untouched jungle; over half of them died.

The water of Poyais, he said, was so pure it could quench any thirst – and as if that weren’t enough, chunks of gold lined the riverbeds. The French officials caught on to his scam but even after being convicted he kept selling non-existent lands to wealthy _idiots.




3. Calisto Tanzi

Calisto Tanzi is an Italian business man, The founder and former chief executive of Italian food conglomerate Parmalat. Notorious for embezzling an estimated 800 million euros from his own company. His company then collapsed with a 14bn-euro hole in its accounts in what was Europe's biggest bankruptcy.

He affectedly scammed 135,000 small investors who had been convinced that buying bonds in the company was a safe investment. In 2010, he was sentenced to 18 years in jail for his role in a fraud at the firm.




4. Victor Lustig
Austrian “Count” Victor Lustig, 46 years old at the time, was America’s most dangerous con man. In a lengthy criminal career, his sleight-of-hand tricks and get-rich-quick schemes had rocked Jazz-Era America and the rest of the world. In Paris, he had sold the frigging Eiffel Tower in an audacious confidence game—not once, but twice.

Finally, in 1935, Lustig was captured after masterminding a counterfeit banknote operation so vast that it threatened to shake confidence in the American economy. A judge in New York sentenced him to 20 years on Alcatraz.

Handsome Devil is a novel by Jeff Maysh that portrays the dazzling true story of Count Victor Lustig, history’s most daring – and flamboyant – con man. He possessed a hypnotic charm, spoke five languages fluently, he used 47 aliases and carried dozens of fake passports, He created a web of lies so thick that even today his true identity remains shrouded in mystery.

One Secret Service agent wrote that Lustig was “as elusive as a puff of cigarette smoke and as charming as a young girl’s dream,”




5. Mr Natwarlal - The infamous legendary Indian con man

There are con artists and then there are CON Artists!!!

This guy falls in the latter category. His name is Mr Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava, infamously known as Mr Natwarlal. Once you read about him you will never forget him and that’s a FACT.

He was a lawyer who turned into a conman because he was good at forgery. He was a master of disguise and had over 50 different aliases. He was at times the president and at times a business magnate. He sold the Taj Mahal thrice and other famous Indian monuments. He once sold the House of Parliament to foreigners and the MPs were included in the deal. That’s like selling the National Assembly with the senate members…lol

He was arrested various times and his cumulative sentences totaled 113 years in prison but he hardly spent 20 years in prison. His last great escape was in 1996 at the age of 84 while been transported from prison to the hospital, he vanished on his WHEEL CHAIR. He was never seen again, although his lawyer claimed he was still alive as at 2009.


[img]http://media.indiatimes.in/media/facebook/2015/Nov/fb_1448004511_600x315.jpg[/img]


6. Frank Abagnale, Jr.
Perhaps the Greatest of All Time (GOAT). If you haven’t seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can” and you call yourself a Leonardo Di Caprio fan, then you’ve gotta be absolutely kidding me. Frank is the most well-known impostor alive. He assumed 8 different identities and by his own admittance, he has been an airline pilot, a chief residence doctor on full pay, a university professor, U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. This guy was literally the God father of Badass.

Mr. Abagnale collected over $40,000 from various banks across New York City. He was caught by the French police and had already committed crimes in at least 12 countries. He served jail time in France and Sweden, was extradited to the United States, escaped from a moving damned airplane and nearly orchestrated a perfect getaway. Dude almost pulled a “fast and the furious” getaway...

Once Abagnale was imprisoned, he convinced his guards that he was actually an undercover prison inspector and that he needed the privilege of having an unsupervised meeting with his FBI agent contact. Yeah, they bought it. At 21 he had escaped from police custody twice and after spending 4 years in prison he was hired by the FBI to help catch other con men.







Source:
5 Ballsiest Con Artists Of All Time
The Man Who Sold The Eiffel Tower Twice
The Man Who Sold The Taj Mahal Thrice