Dive into the world of history's most audacious deceivers who managed to pull off incredible cons that fooled entire societies. From art forgeries to fake medical claims, these individuals prove that truth can be stranger than fiction.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Say, would you believe a man that smokes a pipe with his eye?
00:03Not.
00:05Live and learn, my boy.
00:07Watch.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at infamous scoundrels
00:11who managed to utterly bamboozle society with their clever cons.
00:15The truth is, I knew it was you.
00:17Now, maybe I didn't get the cuffs on you, but I knew.
00:20People only know what you tell them, Carl.
00:23Number 10, Mary Carlton, German Princess.
00:26In 1663, London was enthralled by German Princess von Valois,
00:30a supposedly orphan noble fleeing an unwanted suitor.
00:33In truth, she was born Mary Motors of Canterbury, England.
00:36Her early life was unremarkable.
00:38She married a shoemaker named Thomas, lost two children in infancy,
00:41left her husband, and wed another Thomas, a surgeon.
00:43This led to arrest for bigamy, and she fled to Cologne.
00:46There, she rebranded herself before returning to England,
00:49charming high society with fabricated tales.
00:51She married another surgeon, John Carlton,
00:53but her deception unraveled when an anonymous letter exposed her.
00:56Tried for fraud, she was acquitted and turned her notoriety into brief fame,
00:59even starring as herself on stage.
01:01Her cons continued until 1673,
01:03when she was executed for escaping penal transportation.
01:06Number nine, Han van Meegeren's fake Vermeers.
01:09You mentioned the name Han van Meegeren in Holland,
01:12and the reference will probably be met with a little wink, a little smile.
01:19Oh, yeah, Mr. April Fool, the man who fooled the art establishment,
01:24the man who fooled the Nazis.
01:26He's still seen as a kind of hero.
01:28In the 1930s and 1940s, Dutch painter Han van Meegeren
01:32pulled off one of history's greatest art cons.
01:34Frustrated by critics, he developed secret aging techniques.
01:37With them, he forged Vermeer paintings so convincingly
01:40that experts declared them masterpieces.
01:42Van Meegeren sold his best-known forgery,
01:44The Supper at Emmaus, for a fortune.
01:46This way I discovered how to replicate the hardness of 17th-century paint.
01:52During World War II, he duped high-ranking Nazis,
01:54including Hermann Göring, into buying his fakes.
01:57This act made van Meegeren an accidental folk hero.
02:00His forgeries helped to protect real Dutch art from Nazi clutches.
02:03After the war, he was arrested for selling national treasures to the enemy
02:06and forced to reveal his deception to avoid execution.
02:09Convicted of forgery, he died before serving his one-year sentence.
02:12I picked one of the five greatest artists who ever lived.
02:15I was looking for the grandest success and esteem
02:18that a forger could possibly achieve.
02:20And Vermeer seemed like a suitably big name for the job.
02:24Number 8. Calamity Jane's colorful biography.
02:26I think there's a certain amount of self-delusion.
02:29Calamity Jane must have been the kind of person
02:32who wanted so desperately to live the life that she invented for herself.
02:38Calamity Jane, born Martha Jane Canary in 1852,
02:41was a frontierswoman whose life, as we know it,
02:44is an inextricable blend of fact and fiction.
02:47She often spun tales of her adventures,
02:49many of which were self-aggrandizing fabrications.
02:51In her 1896 autobiography,
02:53she claimed to have served as a scout for the military
02:56and to have performed daring rescues.
02:58Now you sit down and listen.
03:00You're a fake, Calam.
03:01You dress, talk, ride, and shoot like a man,
03:04but you think like a female.
03:06A green-eyed, snarling, spitting female.
03:09Historians have since found these stories to be exaggerated at best
03:12and completely unsubstantiated at worst.
03:14Her reputation for charity,
03:15such as nursing smallpox victims in Deadwood,
03:18has also been questioned.
03:19This mix of truth and tall tales
03:21resulted in a larger-than-life folk hero in the eyes of the public.
03:24Her dime novels and Wild West shows
03:26forever enshrined her legend into the American West.
03:29The final irony is that when she died on August 1st, 1903,
03:34she was buried with a gravestone that says August 2nd
03:38because that was the anniversary of Wild Bill Hickok's death.
03:42What's real and what's not, it's very difficult to say.
03:48In the early 20th century,
03:49Russian religious writer Sergei Nelis
03:51played a pivotal role in propagating
03:53one of history's most infamous forgeries.
03:55The fictitious Prodigals of the Elders of Zion
03:58first appeared in 1903 in a series of Russian newspapers.
04:01This fabricated document falsely claimed
04:03to reveal a Jewish plot for global domination.
04:05Two years later, Nelis included the full text in his book,
04:08The Great Within the Small and Antichrist.
04:10He presented the made-up work
04:11as empirical proof of a looming Jewish threat.
04:13Despite being debunked as a hoax,
04:15the protocols fueled anti-Semitic sentiments worldwide,
04:18contributing to widespread Jewish persecution.
04:20Nelis' endorsement lent the forgery an air of legitimacy,
04:23amplifying its reach and impact.
04:28I just grew up, and at 14,
04:30I made a statement that I was going to do something
04:33to help humanity.
04:35But when I made that statement,
04:36I also knew that I was going to come up against
04:40the established or prevailing philosophy of life.
04:45That I knew at 14 years of age.
04:48These days, you can't even open your email
04:49without getting advertisements for various health supplements.
04:52We forget that not too long ago,
04:54that was a trend that in part was popularized
04:56by a self-proclaimed herbalist from Honduras.
04:58Alfredo Bowman, better known as Dr. Sebi,
05:01rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s.
05:04Without medical training or evidence,
05:05Sebi claimed to cure diseases like AIDS and cancer.
05:08He pushed a discredited plant-based alkaline diet
05:11combined with a special blend of herbal remedies.
05:13Curing AIDS is easy.
05:15Curing sicker cells is like play for me.
05:17Diabetes, we cure 10 a month.
05:20Yet, there aren't any centers in Germany
05:23that is beset with diabetes.
05:26There aren't centers in the United States
05:28that cure diabetes.
05:29We cure diabetes.
05:31In 1987, he faced legal challenges in New York
05:34for practicing medicine without a license.
05:36He was acquitted when the state couldn't prove
05:38he'd provided medical diagnoses.
05:39Later, he was sued for fraud and prohibited
05:41from making therapeutic claims about his supplements.
05:44Whenever you make a statement that goes against the grain,
05:47you better be prepared.
05:49You better be prepared.
05:51Number five, Frank Abagnale, Forge Master.
05:54On one particular occasion,
05:55I impersonated a prison inspector
05:57and walked out the front door of this.
06:02But I eventually served my time.
06:04You did serve your time.
06:05I did serve my time.
06:06There must be a place for you in show business.
06:09Frank Abagnale Jr. is one of history's
06:11most infamous con men.
06:12In the 1960s, he allegedly posed as a Pan Am pilot,
06:15doctor, and lawyer, forging millions in bad checks
06:18before getting caught.
06:19His exploits inspired the film Catch Me If You Can,
06:21reinforcing his legend as a reformed genius
06:23who now helps the government stop fraudsters.
06:25How did you do it, Frank?
06:28How did you cheat on the bar exam at Louisiana?
06:36I didn't cheat.
06:39I studied for two weeks and I passed.
06:42But here's the real con.
06:43Much of his backstory is wildly exaggerated.
06:45Records show he spent most of his criminal career in prison.
06:48The FBI has denied he ever worked closely with them.
06:50His most famous cons, like impersonating a lawyer,
06:53were likely fabrications.
06:54Abagnale duped banks, then duped the public
06:57into believing he was the greatest con man ever.
06:59In reality, his biggest grift was selling his own myth.
07:02I truly believe I was able to accomplish all those things
07:05because I was just a teenage boy.
07:07I had no, really, conscience.
07:09I had really no fear of being caught.
07:14Here it is.
07:15Is it the face of a fanatic who would mislead his colleagues
07:18so cunningly for so long?
07:20Or is it the face of an enthusiastic amateur
07:23who was hoaxed and misled by some ill-wisher?
07:26Charles Dawson pulled off one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time.
07:29In 1912, Dawson supposedly unearthed a 500,000-year-old skull
07:33in Piltdown, England.
07:34With a large cranium and a primitive jaw,
07:36Piltdown Man fit neatly into the early 20th century ideas
07:39about human evolution.
07:40Dawson claimed that the skull belonged to the missing link
07:43on the evolutionary journey from apes to humans.
07:45For 40 years, the Piltdown Man was central
07:47to our understanding of evolution.
07:49Then, in 1953, advanced dating techniques
07:51revealed the skull was a fraud.
07:53Although Dawson's reputation in his lifetime was untarnished,
07:57once the forgery was revealed,
07:59his name began to crop up as a prime suspect.
08:02It had been cobbled together from a medieval human skull
08:04and an orangutan's jaw, then stained to look ancient.
08:07The perpetrator was almost certainly Dawson himself,
08:09a serial forger who had planted fake fossils for years.
08:12Whether he put them there,
08:13whether they were planted there for him to find,
08:15it is curious that they were found on two of his visits.
08:19What I know is that I've put the best people in place
08:22to be able to investigate every aspect of this
08:26and ensure that we meet the quality standards
08:29that we hold ourselves to.
08:30Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003,
08:33promising to revolutionize blood testing with just a few drops.
08:36With a black turtleneck and a deep voice,
08:38she styled herself after Steve Jobs.
08:40Holmes wooed an all-star lineup of investors
08:42and political heavyweights.
08:43People like Rupert Murdoch and the Waltons of Walmart fame
08:46invested tens of millions.
08:47By 2015, Theranos was valued at $9 billion,
08:50despite its technology never actually working.
09:03Whistleblowers and investigative reports exposed the scam,
09:06revealing that patients had been misdiagnosed
09:08and investors misled.
09:09The empire crumbled.
09:10In 2022, Holmes was convicted of fraud
09:13and sentenced to over 11 years in prison.
09:15Theranos employees told us they were closely watched
09:18and required to sign nondisclosure agreements,
09:21all reinforced, they said,
09:23by a threatening team of lawyers and private investigators.
09:29He was not a likely person to become a superstar.
09:33Ladies and gentlemen,
09:35tonight's program is one of the most astounding I've ever attempted.
09:39Believe it or not.
09:40Robert Ripley made a mint convincing the world to believe it or not.
09:43Born in 1890, he started as a cartoonist,
09:45sketching bizarre facts and feats of human endurance.
09:48His syndicated column exploded in popularity,
09:51evolving into radio shows, books,
09:53and eventually museums filled with oddities.
09:55He traveled the world collecting curiosities
09:57from shrunken heads to two-headed animals,
09:59turning them into entertainment gold.
10:01True to form, Ripley's show was a huge success.
10:04America believed in believe it or not,
10:07so much so that people were happy to sit around a radio
10:11and hear the world's tallest man describe to them.
10:14By the time of his death in 1949,
10:16Ripley had built a global empire of the weird,
10:19one unbelievable fact at a time.
10:21Ripley claimed every fact he printed was true.
10:23Many ultimately proved to be exaggerated,
10:25unverifiable, or downright false.
10:27No one looks at things the way you do.
10:29You're one of a kind, man.
10:31Thank you for saying so, my friend.
10:34And thank you for coming to my world.
10:37Before we continue,
10:38be sure to subscribe to our channel
10:40and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
10:43You have the option to be notified for occasional videos
10:46or all of them.
10:47If you're on your phone,
10:48make sure you go into your settings
10:50and switch on notifications.
10:53Number one, Charles Ponzi, the man behind the scheme.
10:56Ponzi saw an opportunity with postal reply coupons
10:59that, properly exploited, could result in great wealth.
11:03Bernie Madoff was a New York financier
11:05who swindled investors out of nearly $65 billion.
11:08For decades, he promised investors steady high returns
11:11that never actually existed.
11:12His fraud devastated thousands,
11:14from everyday retirees to celebrities and charities.
11:17But Madoff didn't invent the game.
11:18He just perfected it.
11:19The scheme's namesake, Charles Ponzi,
11:21ran a nearly identical con in the 1920s,
11:24using international postal reply coupons as the bait.
11:27As it turned out,
11:28Ponzi never purchased any postal reply coupons.
11:33But nearly 17,000 investors
11:36plunged more than $10 million into Ponzi's coffers
11:39within an eight-month period.
11:41He promised that his investors
11:42could double their money in just three months.
11:44In reality, he was just using new money
11:46to pay off old investors.
11:47At his peak, Ponzi was raking in nearly a million a day.
11:50When the fraud unraveled, Ponzi was convicted and deported.
11:53He would eventually die penniless and alone.
11:55One young couple had deposited $4,600
11:58with a dream of using the profits to buy their first home.
12:03Holding a worthless Ponzi note,
12:05the bitter husband remarked,
12:07Guess it's a doghouse for us now.
12:09Did we con you into watching a video
12:11that's missing your favorite grifter from history?
12:13Let us know in the comments below.
12:15Did you enjoy this video?
12:16Check out these other clips from WatchMojo
12:18and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell
12:20to be notified about our latest videos.