0:00

Hmm, what's

0:04

still in the zevia on my work laptop

0:06

and fucking my life up for

0:09

days? My me at

0:12

thirty when I finished working last night. This

0:15

is Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards,

0:18

recording immediately after the worst

0:20

disaster to happen to me

0:22

in in tens of hours,

0:25

just a just a tremendous funk

0:27

up last night as I was standing up from

0:29

my work desk and uh,

0:31

I am, I am, I am in a bad

0:33

way. Friends and fam

0:36

Lee my guest today to help

0:38

me through this this tragically difficult

0:40

time is Sharene, Lonnie, Unice,

0:43

Sharine, how are you doing? Thank you for waiting

0:45

forty minutes for me to get my gaming laptop

0:48

ready to be my working laptop. It is

0:50

okay. Me and Sophie had a much needed

0:52

catch up. And

0:54

I mean, yeah, you're having a much

0:56

better worse day than I am. And I am I'm having

0:59

a trash day. Yeah, I'm

1:01

very sorry, and I mean, honestly, I

1:03

commend you for even recording with me today.

1:05

You know, oh no, no, no, the show must go

1:07

on, even if the laptop that wrote

1:09

it seems to be permafued

1:12

um. But I guess, well, time will tell

1:14

on that one. Yeah, I do think it's funny that you were

1:16

drinking a zvia though those are great. That's

1:19

Robert's favorite thing. I don't

1:21

know what I have all the flavors in the house. I

1:23

don't know which one I was. I thought your favorite was

1:26

the ginger. That's

1:28

probably my favorite. But there's different zvias

1:30

for different times. There's like a squirt style

1:32

zvia that's like kind of citrusy. That's

1:35

very good. Um, the grape

1:37

one is quite nice. That's one of

1:39

my favorites one if

1:43

I'm kind of a the ginger ailes

1:45

great. I have the Cherry Cola and the dr Pepper

1:47

knockoffs for when I'm like because they have caffeine

1:49

that's like my my during the day drink. There's

1:52

a there's a there's a decaf

1:54

cola that I'll have later in

1:56

the evening before I switch over to my nighttime

1:58

zvia. Is that I take you ever water in

2:01

between? No? Why would I fish

2:03

fucking that? Do you want

2:06

come in your in your in your body? No?

2:08

No, thank you. I was gonna say. I brought

2:10

that up because I thought it was might maybe one

2:12

of those things where like you were you're gonna

2:15

hate Zevia forever now, but you can't do that.

2:17

You're not

2:20

the Zvia's fault that I

2:22

dropped a beverage that that

2:24

that can't be blamed upon the Zvia. There

2:26

have been hundreds of zebas on this desk that did

2:28

not trash my laptop, So the

2:30

fault must lie with me or

2:33

I don't know if the government feels like a good thing to blame

2:36

the government for. It's on every

2:38

day a white man takes responsibility, So I

2:40

really applauded you for that. It's it's

2:42

definitely an even mix of me and the

2:44

government. How

2:49

do you feel about con artists con

2:51

artists con artists?

2:53

I mean, depending on the con I'm okey kind

2:55

of respect a

2:58

fascinated by then yeah, um,

3:02

because I think

3:04

it's like there's a I

3:06

don't know what it is, but there's probably a particular

3:09

personality type or something.

3:12

It's like equivalent of pathological lying to

3:14

me, and they're very good at it, and there's something very

3:16

like scary interesting to me about that,

3:18

you know. And there you

3:20

know, there's con artists in every society. And we will

3:22

in part to talk about a con artist in India, but

3:25

I think con artists

3:27

are the most American thing you can be,

3:29

because this is a nation. As a

3:32

song I partly remember said Americans

3:35

love freedom, and nothing says freedom like getting

3:37

away with a crime. And that's like what

3:39

we love con artists like even when they're

3:41

fucking as as long as it's not like

3:43

we hate them when they've specifically fucked us over,

3:45

but as long as they haven't specifically sucked us over, we

3:47

love them. And I didn't mean respect, like

3:50

a loving respect. I just meant like,

3:52

depending on the cont Like, that's what I'm saying, Like,

3:55

like, if it's like a funny

3:57

scam that doesn't hurt anyone, I'm

3:59

all about that. But obviously the

4:01

majority, You're right, it's the most American

4:03

thing to do is to exploit people and then benefit

4:05

from it, you know, Yeah, I mean they mostly hurt

4:07

people. Like I love l Ron Hubbard.

4:09

I'm I'm I'm very on the record about my

4:12

my deep appreciation for that man and his schemes.

4:15

Um, because they're just so I don't

4:17

love l Ron Hubbard. How

4:19

did you say that with a straight face? He's the absolute

4:22

best. He stole his own baby, He

4:25

stole his own baby. He stole

4:27

his own baby and made himself a god

4:29

and then had teenagers search for gold in

4:31

the ocean. He was

4:33

a sick, sick person. He was

4:36

wonderful. Um, Yes he did.

4:38

He left an unthinkable amount of human

4:40

shrapnel in his wake, but he's so fun to

4:42

read about. Uh. And the guy we're

4:44

talking about today is a

4:46

better person. Um. And if we're

4:48

being entirely honest, both of

4:51

our characters today, I

4:53

don't know. I guess you could probably if if there

4:55

if they count as among the worst people in history,

4:57

they're on the very low end of that bar. You're

5:00

not you know, mass probably not mass

5:02

rapists, definitely not mass murderers.

5:05

Um. But they did scam

5:07

and destroy the financial lives of a lot

5:09

of people, depending on your they

5:12

both targeted rich people, so it's gonna be

5:14

pretty easy to sympathize with both of them. I

5:16

felt like we needed a little bit of a break. Um.

5:19

And I love a good connartist story. That's the thing

5:22

I'm all about, a Robin Hood story. You know,

5:24

like if you're scamming from corporations

5:28

or very rich people,

5:30

Like if you're scamming Jeff Bezos, keep doing

5:32

that, you know what I mean? Like, I would love you to keep that.

5:35

Um, but yeah, I'm a robin Hood kind

5:37

of scammer. I like that. Both

5:39

the guys were talking about today loved

5:41

to portray themselves as robin Hood

5:43

style characters. They were not. They

5:45

did steal from the rich to give

5:48

to themselves, like

5:51

and generally more like stell from the upper

5:53

middle class to give to themselves. Um,

5:56

robin Hood would be taking it a bit far. But they're both

5:58

very entertaining men. And we're going to start with the

6:00

tale of Victor Lustig. Have you

6:02

ever heard of Victor Lustig? I

6:04

don't know, I don't think so. Yeah, he's

6:07

he's a hoot. So Victor was born

6:09

on January four, probably

6:12

in Hostine, Austria, Hungary. So

6:14

this is back when you know that country existed

6:17

before they made a series of bad decisions.

6:20

Why are we saying probably, well, because

6:22

he's a con artist. And there's a debate as

6:24

to whether I mean to be honest. Does

6:26

they also say he's six to there's no hard

6:29

evidence this man was born at all. He definitely

6:31

existed, but we have no idea

6:34

where he was born. I like Sharnes. I like

6:36

Sharnes comment. So

6:39

he also say six too, and he got

6:41

his degree from insert faith university

6:44

here. Who are we talking about here?

6:47

I was just teasing about how you can't

6:49

rely on what people like you care,

6:52

why on the age or whatever, And I was just making jokes

6:54

that men live out their height, that's all. Yeah. I mean

6:56

he he lied about absolutely every

6:58

aspect of his life. And it's probably That's

7:00

why I say probably he claimed for his

7:02

whole life to have been born in haustin Austria,

7:04

Hungary. There's no evidence that he was born

7:07

there. Um, there's no evidence

7:09

that he was born at all, although he absolutely

7:11

existed. Um, like, there's no evidence

7:13

of where specifically he was born. I should say. That's so interesting

7:16

when you think about that. Yes, it is interesting

7:18

he covered his Yeah,

7:21

it's also he was born in the eighteen nineties,

7:23

which is like it was a lot easier to cover

7:26

your ship back then because all public

7:28

records were just like a guy with a sheet of paper

7:30

inside of building downtown and then

7:32

all of Europe burned down several times, so

7:34

it's a lot of people were able to hide

7:36

ship as a result of the World Wars

7:40

or anything. Yeah, exactly, Like

7:43

it's just a piece of paper with a description

7:45

of you as a baby on it. It's pretty easy to

7:47

to escape back in those days.

7:50

So the most credible version of

7:52

his early life that we have

7:54

suggests that he was a very intelligent

7:56

young boy born to a nearly impoverished

7:59

family. UM, something of a genius,

8:01

and based on the rest of his life, I believe this. Like obviously

8:03

he was a narcissist who lied constantly, he

8:05

was also a genius, so I have no

8:07

no doubt that he was a very intelligent boy.

8:10

Um. He himself described his parents,

8:12

Ludwig and Emma, as quote poor

8:15

peasant people who scraped out a living

8:17

on a rough land, uh in a

8:19

grim stone house. So these are

8:21

like poor peasants living off the land.

8:24

And he's a very gifted boy, noted by all

8:26

of his teachers, who have been very intelligent. Again,

8:28

Victor is our source, but you know, his

8:31

life kind of does back this up. And I

8:33

have no trouble seeing him as a brilliant youth who

8:35

was stifled by the demands of his peasant life

8:37

and its lack of opportunity. So he's he's

8:39

smart, he wants more out of life. His parents are dirt

8:41

poor farm and pigship in the middle of nowhere,

8:44

right, that's kind of the way this kid grows up.

8:46

He must have been bored and somewhat desperate

8:49

as a young man now. According

8:51

to Victor, his parents separated when he was

8:53

eight because they could not afford to take care

8:55

of him or his older and younger sibling.

8:58

He was sent to live with his father's relatives,

9:00

a situation he found even worse than his previous

9:02

life. By age twelve, he had run away

9:04

from his second home and decided to make a life

9:07

for himself somewhere else in Europe. Within

9:09

a year, he had made it to Budapest, a

9:11

beautiful and exciting city that offered much

9:13

more in terms of opportunity and stimulation.

9:16

Victor would later tell a secret service agent

9:19

who was interrogating him that one specific

9:21

event in Budapest inspired his

9:23

subsequent criminal career. In the spring

9:25

of nineteen o three, he was scavenging

9:27

for food in the dumpster of a Budapest hotel.

9:30

It was nighttime, the moon was out, and he

9:32

saw a young rich woman on the balcony

9:34

of that hotel wearing a golden evening

9:37

gown. He later recalled to

9:39

me, she was a fairy princess. She was with

9:41

a man much older than she. I saw the

9:43

waiter come and take their order. My mouth

9:45

began to water because all I had had to eat

9:47

for three weeks had come out of garbage cans. So,

9:51

you know what, I'm already

9:54

getting the bullshit meter. And

9:57

again he there's good chance he grew up poor.

10:00

He's also a consummate liar. We'll

10:02

get to that in a second. So as he

10:04

claims, he's watching

10:06

like as from the dumpster, watching this rich

10:09

couple. And the food gets delivered, but instead of

10:11

eating it, they leave it on the table. The man

10:13

pulls out a lot of cash, gives it to

10:15

the more money than Victor had ever seen in his whole

10:17

life, and he gives it to the woman, who Victor

10:19

slowly realized was a prostitute

10:22

um and then the too depart for the bedroom, leaving

10:24

this fancy meal on the table to be thrown

10:26

out. Uh quote. They

10:28

both got up without touching a morsel of that delicious

10:31

food. What I saw that night shattered

10:33

my faith in women forever. That's

10:36

the takeaway. Yeah, that's the takeaway. That's

10:38

that's well, that's one of his takeaways. Yeah, we

10:40

can't trust women because some of them are rich

10:45

people wasting ship. It's about women.

10:48

Some of it's about rich people wasting ship, Like it's

10:50

all of that. Um,

10:52

I don't like that first takeaway at all. No,

10:54

it's terrible. Again, this is

10:57

a man talking in like the twenties is when

10:59

he's relating a story to a secret service

11:01

agent. So again, this backstory

11:03

comes courtesy of a criminal being interrogated

11:06

after he was caught for his many crimes talking

11:08

to a cop. So grain assault

11:10

here, that's very maybe

11:13

I just I'm thinking about this because I just

11:15

realized the last time I heard your voice was and when I was

11:17

listening to the Elita podcast. But that's very

11:19

like, uh, the

11:22

protagonist name, like, Yeah,

11:25

the whole book is him re talking

11:27

to someone about his life, and it's just like, and

11:30

that's fully half of this guy's life

11:32

story. Right. We do have objective facts about

11:34

him because he committed a bunch of well documented

11:37

crimes, but in terms of his early life, we're

11:39

just kind of trusting Victor here. Um.

11:42

And I'm sure there are elements of truth to

11:44

this, because any really good lie is based on

11:46

elements of truth, and he was a good liar.

11:48

But also he's talking

11:51

to a cop This is the story he gives to

11:53

a cop. Victor claims, in addition

11:55

to convincing him that women could not be trusted,

11:57

this also convinced him that no person with enough

11:59

money to waste a meal deserved to keep

12:01

their wealth. He dedicated himself

12:04

batman like to relieving the rich from

12:06

their money from that point forward. Not

12:08

only that, but he would spend the rest of his life pursuing

12:11

beautiful women as many as he could sleep with,

12:13

because obviously they were willing to suck anyone with

12:15

money and he was going to have a lot of it. So

12:18

he takes a couple of lessons out of this

12:20

moment. Moment, Yeah, I agree

12:23

with you up until the beautiful woman thinks to be

12:25

honest absolutely, like, I don't agree.

12:27

If you're going to waste a meal, you shouldn't. You shouldn't

12:30

be you deserve exactly

12:33

you. I would love to lift

12:35

some wealth off of the wealthy, you know, Like, I agree

12:38

with that. And then realizing at the very

12:40

end it's just he wants to get late a bunch,

12:42

you know. That's and again, as another spoiler,

12:44

by the time he tells this story, he's the most famous

12:47

con man in America. UM and he

12:49

is telling us to a cop, but he is also

12:51

telling us because he knows this is going to become

12:53

the public story of his life and he

12:55

wants as much sympathy as he can get. And

12:57

this interrogation where he else

13:00

his life story happens during the apex of the

13:02

Great Depression. Most working

13:04

people could sympathize with a story like

13:06

this, Oh, he's not a bad like all of the great get

13:08

Like my cousin Pretty Boy, Floyd's whole story is,

13:10

yeah, he robbed banks, but he did it to give money to

13:12

the little people. And there's evidence that he did. You

13:15

can argue a lot of that was him protecting himself

13:17

by making sure that regular people wouldn't

13:19

want to turn him in. Um and that Victor's

13:22

got a similar story a lot of these con artists

13:24

too, So he's trying to frame himself as

13:26

I'm a crusader for the little guy fighting

13:28

the corrupt rich, you know, I mean, if you

13:30

have the opportunity to leave your own narrative.

13:33

Of course, more like,

13:35

especially during the time, a good card artist would

13:37

know that, like, people are going to sympathize with

13:39

this, you know, It's it's very layered. It

13:42

still happens. We're selling this. The same week

13:44

as eight women or eight

13:46

people, including six Asian women,

13:48

were shot to death at a series of massage

13:50

parlors in Atlanta, and the police uncritically

13:53

reported the shooters claims that, like it

13:55

was, obviously Victor is a much better person than this. Victor

13:57

does not murder anybody. Um, it

14:00

is the story of Okay, law enforcement

14:02

has caught me. I'm going away.

14:05

But at least if I tell if they repeat

14:07

the story I tell them, maybe I will at least

14:09

be able to like set up a better narrative about

14:11

myself, you know, Um,

14:14

that's what's happening here as well. Obviously

14:16

a much better person than that. Yeah,

14:19

I mean thing,

14:21

even thinking about it makes my blood boil. And just

14:24

just the idea that the cops were like, you

14:27

tell us if you were a racist, right, Like I

14:29

was like, yeah, not, Like racists

14:31

don't decide if they're racist. The

14:34

racist in that case is trying to He's

14:36

specifically trying to set him self up to be

14:38

more sympathetic for both cops and sort

14:40

of like other white supremacists

14:42

in Georgia, you know, like, oh, he's just a guy

14:44

with a sexual addiction. And these damn you know, these

14:46

evil interlopers coming into our country,

14:49

uh, fucking up our morals. Victor is

14:51

playing towards the impoverished masses

14:54

of the Great Depression, being like, look, you

14:56

guys got sucked over by the banks. All I did

14:58

was steal from bankers because as

15:00

a child starving in the street, I knew

15:02

that I needed to get revenge, you

15:04

know. Yeah, it's smart. He's

15:06

a very smart man. Um.

15:08

Yeah, and again I should note also profoundly

15:11

anti woman, although for the time I

15:13

don't think this would have stood out. Um

15:15

because again talking like the twenties and

15:17

thirties, you know. Um.

15:20

So, I don't doubt though that Victor did spend time

15:22

poor and developed an anger at

15:24

the wealthy, because he did focus on the wealthy

15:27

his entire career here was not conning farmers

15:29

out of their homes, um, and his

15:31

frustration with the wealthy probably did

15:33

have an influence on his career. I would that

15:35

there. I would, however, be very shocked to hear

15:37

that the exact story he told during

15:39

his interrogation was true in any way. Um,

15:42

there's probably aspects of truth to it. He was in Budapest,

15:45

probably, but yeah, so Victor

15:47

claims that his younger brother Emile, had

15:49

moved to Budapest it around the same time and

15:51

had taken to the life of a small time crook,

15:53

and they're both in their early teens at this point.

15:56

Victor claims to have followed after him,

15:58

starting with simple panhandling and moving

16:00

on to picking pockets, and then to burgling

16:02

homes and businesses, and then finally

16:05

to the noble trade of a street hustler.

16:07

Have you ever seen one of those movies where there's like a guy in

16:09

New York or whatever playing one of those games where you guess

16:11

which cup has the ball in it for money. That's

16:14

the kind of ship Victor was doing, usually with cards.

16:16

Like he was kind of a card shark um

16:18

and he loved doing this kind of thing. He

16:20

loves street hustling. He has fast little

16:23

hands, and before long he had become an expert

16:25

card shark, learning how to cheat at various

16:27

games in a hundred different ways. It

16:29

was said he could make a deck of cards, quote

16:32

do everything but talk. So he's

16:34

very good with cards. There's an element

16:37

of performance there, right, like he likes

16:39

to perform.

16:40

He yea in

16:43

a different time he might have been an actor.

16:45

He was a good actor. Um, you

16:47

have to be to be this kind of kind artist. So he was. However,

16:50

especially you know, early teens into

16:52

his late teens, he was caught several times. You know, he's

16:54

learning how to do this right, and you're gonna sunk

16:56

up. In nineteen o eight, when he was

16:58

eighteen, he spent two months in a Prague

17:01

prison for stealing. In November of

17:03

that year, he was arrested in Vienna for larceny,

17:05

quote, attempted false pretenses and

17:07

being a hobo. So by this point

17:09

we know a few things. The tricks that had

17:12

worked for him in Budapest apparently had

17:14

not translated well to other cities, and

17:16

as a young adult, Victor was not exactly raking

17:18

in the big bucks. He never gave up

17:20

on being a con man, though, and he spent the next four

17:23

years working a series of schemes in Vienna,

17:25

Prague, in Zurich. He was arrested and

17:27

jailed for periods in all three cities. In

17:29

nineteen twelve, eventually he made

17:31

the call to move to Paris, where he scammed people

17:33

in bridge and poker and got in trouble over his

17:36

constant flirtation with the girlfriends of

17:38

his marks. In the book Handsome

17:40

Devil, Jeff Mache writes, quote, he

17:42

paid too close attention to the girlfriend of a

17:44

French sailor who snapped a wineglass from

17:46

its stem and slashed his handsome face.

17:49

The resulting scar, Lusted would later

17:51

boast to spell bound audiences came

17:53

from a duel of honor at Heidelberg.

17:56

So he gets he's he's like in a bar

17:59

being a card and he starts like flirting

18:01

with the girlfriend of a French sailor who

18:03

slashes his fucking face with a wide bress

18:06

just but like further drives

18:09

home like I hate women. I

18:11

don't know that it does because he doesn't is

18:14

a spelling for the rest of his life. He's cheats

18:17

on women constantly. I don't have any of it. He's

18:19

I don't think he beats them. He's just kind of like

18:22

a sleazy guy. Hate beats

18:24

Okay, he hates Did I say beats

18:26

on accident? No? No, no, no hate. I just I

18:28

think of, like, I don't know, probably

18:31

he's definitely misogynist. Yeah, I just feel like

18:33

it's a very instell mentality, right, Like

18:35

he blames the prostitute for

18:37

whatever he saw when he was a kid, apparently,

18:40

and then a woman doesn't

18:42

like her his coming onto him, and she's probably

18:44

a bit you know, here's here's the thing. We'll

18:47

see how you feel about this. He might have been lying

18:49

about all of that just because he thought that Americans

18:52

were misogynistic enough that that would be

18:55

a productive lae to tell. I

18:57

don't know, we'll see how you think about it from the because

18:59

he's he's got an he's got a really interesting relationship

19:01

with his daughter. Interesting, Okay,

19:03

has a daughter daughter. Yeah,

19:07

and he's he's apparently anyway, we'll we'll

19:09

get to that. So this lie about

19:11

the scar in his face is really

19:13

smart and an example of how resource believes. You get slashed

19:15

into the face, you turn it into something that can make

19:17

you money. And having a dueling

19:20

scar at this time, especially in Germanic

19:22

parts of Europe, was a huge deal.

19:24

This was something that if if you went to a

19:26

school in Germany or the Austro Hungarian

19:29

Empire in particular, if you were a

19:31

noble child, like an aristocrat, you

19:33

would not make it out of college without a facial

19:35

scar. You had to get one, otherwise

19:38

you would be mocked the rest of your life. It was

19:40

de rigor um. It was a thing

19:42

that you did. In particular, there were all these these

19:44

fencing clubs, dueling clubs in colleges,

19:47

all of the colleges and kind of the Germanic and like

19:50

Eastern European world. And

19:52

it started just the thing. If you're going to be dueling,

19:54

you're dueling often with live blades, you're

19:56

gonna get slashed. But it became such like

19:59

a There were so any men who got famous

20:01

who would have dueling scars that every

20:03

man who was anyone had to get

20:05

a dueling scar. And so it would happen

20:07

in these clubs is that young men would mutually

20:09

agree to scar each other and then lie

20:11

they would like slash each other's faces

20:13

so that they would make sure they got out of college

20:16

with a nice scar on their face. If you look

20:18

at pictures of like officers and the German

20:20

and Austro Hungarian military, um, if

20:22

the early part of World War One in particular, almost

20:25

all of them are going to have some sort of mark on their face

20:27

because it's just like what you did at the time. Otherwise

20:29

you weren't really a man, You weren't really a

20:31

man of class, you know. Um,

20:33

that's interesting and when you learn ship

20:35

like that, World War one makes a lot more sense.

20:38

Just how like stupidly modular.

20:40

Yeah, we all got to get a scar on our faces. That

20:42

is very that's that's a very good point. Back then

20:45

especially, it was probably just like, yeah,

20:47

yeah, I don't want to be I

20:49

don't want to be emasculated by not having this

20:52

this wound that shows I can fight. Yeah,

20:54

so this is a good of myself. This, this

20:56

is a big deal for Victor because the fact that

20:58

he gets a facial scar makes it easy for him

21:01

to claim that, especially since he comes from Austria

21:03

Hungary. Now that he's got a facial scar, it makes it

21:05

easier. As long as he dresses nice, nobody's gonna

21:08

doubt that he's an aristocrat, which

21:10

is kind of becomes a big part of his life after

21:12

this. So this this really having this scar.

21:14

It's like the fact that this he gets this scar

21:17

in a drunken brawl is the best thing that could have happened

21:19

to him. Um So, during

21:21

his time in the bars and brothels of Paris, Victor

21:23

heard lurid stories of the riches and opportunity

21:26

in the United States and what might be one of

21:28

the first signs that he really was brilliant.

21:30

Victor did not immediately commit to moving

21:33

to the New World. Instead, he started

21:35

booking passage on first class cruise

21:37

ships, listening that the board rich

21:39

people hanging out on those cruise ships

21:41

would be a captive audience for his scams.

21:44

So he's like, yeah,

21:47

that's that's exactly what he's doing, right, like and

21:49

that that was a whole a type

21:51

of guy, like the dude

21:53

and like Jack and Titanic, right, he's like a scammer

21:56

trying to get ship out of rich people on the Titanic.

21:58

There was a whole class of man who would

22:00

do that because there's all these different boats

22:03

that are going from um from Europe

22:05

to the United States. And that's

22:08

really the best place to call rich people

22:10

out of their money because their board, they've got all their

22:12

cash with them, um, and

22:15

you're not going to if you can get them too, you

22:17

can con them into investing in something in

22:20

you know, New York or whatever. They're

22:22

not gonna you're gonna have weeks on that boat

22:25

before they realize you're lying to them. Um.

22:27

It's a great place to do a scam. Stewart Donnelly

22:29

who was a con man who worked the same racket

22:32

later recalled quote. Victor

22:34

had managed to fleece quite a number of smart

22:36

American businessmen, and he did it with a handicap

22:39

of knowing only a few words of English.

22:41

He was the only swindler I ever knew who

22:43

could do his fast talking through an interpreter.

22:46

And I have to imagine that the interpreter was actually

22:48

something Victor found a way to use to his

22:51

advantage. He would often later in life

22:53

claim to have been a wealthy count, And

22:55

I can see how if he was dressing really well and

22:57

hiring a slick interpreter, he could call rich

22:59

guys into investments and purchases they thought

23:01

were completely legitimate. Um,

23:04

just because like, oh, there's this rich count and

23:06

he's got his interpreter who's going to like help

23:08

him make deals. Gives him more credibility,

23:11

gives him more credibility. Yeah, he's

23:13

good at this. Victor took the voyage

23:15

across the Atlantic and back four times before

23:17

he met the man who would become his mentor,

23:20

Nikki Arnstein. Nikki

23:22

was an enormous He's like six ft six,

23:24

half German jew from New Jersey. Nikki

23:27

recognized talent in Victor, and rather than

23:29

try to protect his territory, Nicky took the

23:32

other scammer under his scammy wing.

23:34

Jeff Mash explains the crash course he

23:36

gave and con artistry quote. You

23:39

always always let the sucker suggest

23:41

the game, the master explained, as the two men

23:43

leaned on the ship's rail, staring out over the vast

23:45

oat but ocean. He must press you

23:47

to get you to play. Victor

23:50

copied his mentors every move, adopted

23:52

his fancy clothing and manners, and studied his

23:54

effortless swagger. So he

23:56

basically goes to con college on these

23:58

boats. He meets this guy is really good at

24:00

it, and like, yeah, it works

24:02

out well for him. The experience got LUSTI thinking

24:05

about the rules to successful conning

24:07

and trying to actually develop kind of a scientific

24:10

list of what allowed you to con well,

24:13

and he would spend the next several years refining

24:15

this list. Unfortunately for him

24:17

and unfortunately for a couple of other people,

24:19

World War One started in nineteen fourteen,

24:22

in part due to the aforementioned German rich

24:24

kids with facial scars. We don't know

24:26

what Victor got up to during the war years,

24:28

but pretty much everyone who studies him seems to

24:30

agree. There's absolutely no way he fought for

24:32

any side in that war, but just

24:35

not a chance to self

24:37

serving for that. You know who else

24:39

wouldn't fight in World War One? Hubbard?

24:42

No, Hud

24:44

Debt, Well, no, he fought kind of kind of fought

24:47

world don't defend him. He bombed

24:49

Mexico during World War two? Just

24:52

stop it? Uh? And you know who

24:54

else would have bombed Mexico during World War Two?

24:58

I was gonna say, Raytheon. Yeah,

25:01

and there's a hell of a lot of weddings in Mexico

25:04

and Raytheon. If there's one thing Raytheon

25:06

hates, it's a wedding. Uh.

25:09

Good times. This is a very long

25:11

way for you to say those. It

25:14

is time for ads. We're

25:21

back, Okay. So by the

25:23

time he was twenty eight years old and by the

25:25

time World War One ended, Victor

25:27

was in New York City, which suggests that

25:29

all of the violence and the evident collapse of

25:31

the old European social order convinced

25:34

him that the United States was going to be a better

25:36

place to con people for the foreseeable future.

25:39

Moving to the USA had a number of benefits,

25:41

aside from its separation from the violence.

25:43

For one thing, he'd learned English and his time

25:45

conning rich Europeans meant he was already

25:47

pretty good at pretending to be one of those,

25:50

and so in America, Victor Listig

25:52

became Count Victor Listick. He

25:55

claimed to have been exiled from his domain

25:57

due to the fighting in the Balkans. He said he lost all

25:59

of his castles and a revolution now,

26:02

despite the finery with which he draped himself

26:04

in order to play this role, Victor's first

26:06

u S schemes were distinctly middling an

26:08

ambition. His first was the pocketbook

26:11

scam. He would be friend to Mark on a

26:13

train or in some other transitory point.

26:15

After talking for a while, the two would find

26:18

a wallet and work together to return it to

26:20

its rightful owner, a wealthy gambler

26:22

who was also Lustig's accomplice in the scheme.

26:25

Listed would convince his new friend to turn

26:27

down the cash reward from the gambler, but agree

26:29

to let the gambler gamble the cash in the

26:32

wallet on a horse race, and that he and his new

26:34

friend would take the proceeds from that, which

26:36

were expected to be somewhere around twenty five dollars.

26:39

During this process, Listing would get the mark

26:41

excited one way or the other and convince

26:44

him to add his own money to the bet in

26:46

order to increase the payout. At

26:48

the end of the con Victor would hand his friend

26:50

a bag that was supposed to be full of cash but was really

26:52

full of old newspapers, and then of course walk

26:55

away, pocketing the money and splitting it with his partner.

26:58

So that was his con. Is his early

27:00

first us con a first

27:03

grift. Yeah. We

27:05

all got to start somewhere, right, You

27:07

know, before I was podcasting

27:09

professionally, I would just shout at people from street

27:11

corners.

27:14

Why did you say, before you started podcasting,

27:16

you still do that? Yeah? I love It's

27:19

an art form shouting at people from street

27:21

corners. It's it's a it's a calling in

27:23

a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah,

27:25

Well it's everyone's got to start

27:27

somewhere, you know, Victor, you,

27:31

um, yeah,

27:33

at World War One had to start somewhere. Which

27:36

was anybody to bring it back? Yeah?

27:38

So Victor was arrested in nineteen eighteen,

27:40

a little before the war's end, for one such

27:43

pocketbook scheme. He jumped bail rather

27:45

than go to trial and this happened in Kansas

27:47

City. But even though Kansas City

27:50

is kind of where he it's is the first place we

27:52

have on record of him getting in trouble in the US.

27:54

It also held a prize for him the only woman

27:56

he would ever probably maybe love, Roberta

27:59

Norik. Now. Roberta had grown

28:01

up in a small town in Kansas and after her father's

28:04

death, had nearly been forced into child labor

28:06

because you know, this

28:07

is that's what you do

28:10

with kids, as you make them work to death if they don't have

28:12

rich parents. Uh. She got

28:14

out of that barely. And she meets

28:16

Victor. And by the time she meets him, she's like

28:18

still in her late teens. I think she's

28:21

probably an adult. Um. Victor's

28:23

like a decade older than her. He is much

28:26

more experienced. He's already a veteran con

28:28

man. So clearly there's a power and balance

28:30

here. Um. And he he tells her

28:32

a bunch of really pretty lies he paints

28:35

he claims to be a count to her. Uh.

28:37

And he paints her a picture that, Oh, if you leave with me,

28:40

we can leave Kansas behind, well, visit the great

28:42

cities of the world. You'll be wealthy and pampered,

28:44

and he's not lying about like he's lying

28:46

about being account but he's not lying about taking her out

28:48

of Kansas and giving her a bunch of fine things.

28:51

Um, they go to Paris immediately, and

28:53

obviously, like, of course she goes with him,

28:55

right, You're a teenager in rural Kansas

28:57

in nineteen eighteen who's barely escaped slave.

29:00

Um, Kansas is isn't great

29:02

today, It was even worse back than And some dashing

29:05

European count says, I'm going to give you all the

29:07

finery in the world to take you to Europe. Of course

29:09

you go with him, right, And I'm

29:11

sure like once you're there, and you're like, oh, he wasn't

29:13

just I'll talk like once you

29:16

know he has money there in Paris.

29:19

He's got a scar on his face and a weird European

29:21

accent. There's no way for her to not know he's account

29:24

And for a while things are great. He buys her elegant

29:27

dresses, he tells her sweet things, and by late

29:29

nineteen nineteen the two were married in

29:31

New York City. Together, they made

29:33

quite a site at society gatherings. A

29:35

European count in his American countess

29:38

very few Americans knew enough about where the Balkans

29:40

were or what they were to ask any questions

29:42

about listings supposed

29:45

domain. Eventually, Victor

29:47

did come clean about the fact that he was not

29:49

a European count, and she does not seem

29:51

to have cared. She was in love with him either

29:53

way, and just as importantly, he had rescued

29:56

her from a life of Midwestern poverty, and I think

29:58

pretty much anyone would have made the same all in her

30:00

shoes, like a

30:03

real one. Of course, of course,

30:06

so for a few blissful years, Victor and

30:08

Roberta conned their way up and down the Eastern

30:10

seaboard. Victor was a contemporary

30:13

of men like Charles Ponzi, who will do an

30:15

ex episode on someday. Ponzi

30:17

was an immigrant from Italy, and in fact,

30:19

a lot of American convent all of the best ones

30:21

in this period are European pretty much their

30:23

guys who come here. And maybe it's just a matter

30:25

of like, if you don't grow up in American

30:27

society, you're better able to manipulate

30:30

it, just because you see the culture from a different

30:32

angle. Um, I don't know. Some

30:35

of this probably has to do with yeah, I think there's

30:37

I think it also has to do with the fact that a lot of Americans

30:39

will trust anything a stranger with an accent

30:41

tells them, especially in

30:43

the nineteen twenties. Yeah, especially

30:46

if it's like like a more western

30:48

e or like European accent. You know, they

30:51

like far than I am. Count

30:53

wouldn't lie to me. In

30:55

nineteen twenty two, Roberta and Victor had

30:58

their first child, a daughter. Her name

31:00

was Betty Gene, but Victor nicknamed

31:02

her Skeezicks for reasons I could

31:04

explain, but I am not going to because it's

31:06

funnier if I don't um.

31:10

So. This was broadly a good time for

31:12

the family, but the law was never very far

31:14

behind them, and as a result, Skeezis grew

31:17

up with a father who constantly warned her

31:19

about the man. He taught her Morse

31:21

code so that if they got questioned,

31:24

he could tap the message do not talk

31:26

into her hand and she would know to shut up,

31:29

which is pretty cool. I

31:32

mean, you're not wrong, cool,

31:35

but creepy is what's

31:37

her name? The nickname Betty Jane.

31:39

The nickname is sk sis sis

31:43

Jesus. What do you want to guess? Why she's

31:45

got that nickname. Just give

31:48

me a guess, sez its

31:50

um, it's not actually that funniest

31:52

story, but I want to know what your guests would be. I

31:55

don't even know the sez

31:58

It's maybe she's what

32:00

is say it again? Sis, I'm

32:04

saying it right? Um?

32:06

Maybe she uh.

32:10

I saw a pair of skis at

32:13

a shot and she was

32:15

like that was her first word she saw

32:17

the skis. I gotta have a ski, Papa

32:20

ski. And then he was like, you know what for you

32:23

where you're gonna have Let's

32:25

just pretend that's the truth and move on. Tell me

32:28

truth. It's it's a character from

32:30

a comic strip called Gasoline Alley that

32:32

was popular at the time. Characters like a baby who's found

32:34

in a bassinet by one of the characters in the

32:36

comic. I never read Gasoline Alley. I think it

32:38

was a big influence on Bill Waterson, the guy who did

32:40

um uh capolent Hobbs was one of the first

32:42

great really popular newspaper. Yes,

32:46

nobody, nobody would um it's funny or

32:48

if you don't know the truth is just like, oh, he liked this comic.

32:51

He named his daughter after the character. Yeah.

32:53

Now, Victor having grown up poor had

32:55

vowed that his daughter would never eat from the trash,

32:58

is he ad uh? And he kept this promise.

33:00

His daughter would spend her life wearing fine furs,

33:03

going to private schools uh. And it

33:05

is unclear the extent to which Victor

33:07

came clean to his wife about his background.

33:10

She definitely knew he was a con man,

33:12

but she seems to have believed for some time that he

33:14

was also a count. Um Now, Lustig

33:17

was, if nothing else, consistent about maintaining

33:19

his cover. When he would make friends and new

33:21

cities, he would forbid them from sharing gossip

33:24

or telling dirty jokes around him. He

33:26

treated all women as ladies in the European

33:28

sense, and he acted with the kind of dignified

33:30

air that Americans expected from their nobility.

33:33

So when he pretends to be a noble, he's not hamming

33:35

it up. He's very reserved and restrained,

33:37

and he's very consistent about

33:39

the performance that he puts on. Part the way, it's like this

33:41

guy is a very good actor. He goes method on this

33:43

ship. Um. He will like

33:46

like people will like tell jokes that he'll be playing

33:48

cards with a group of shady characters and we'll say

33:50

something dirty and he'll yell it'll be like, you don't I am

33:52

like, you don't say those words around me. I'm a

33:54

nobleman, you know. Um deep

33:57

deep scale deep scam

33:59

with a dud or defeat. Count Listig increased

34:01

the grandiosity of his schemes. The year

34:03

she was born, he presented himself to a bank

34:05

in New York, pretending to own a company

34:07

that wanted to buy land to make a chemical

34:10

plant. He goes to his banks like, I need some land.

34:12

The banker shows him a plot of land that is completely

34:14

worthless because he thinks like this European doesn't

34:16

know the value of any land. And sure enough, Count Listig

34:19

agrees to pay twenty five dollars for this useless

34:21

land. Um. So they agree

34:24

to do the deal, but Listing tells the

34:26

banker he could only pay in a fifty thou

34:28

dollar liberty bond. So he's like, I'll give you this fifty

34:31

dollar bond, you'll give me twenty granded cash.

34:33

That seems like a good deal, right, And the

34:35

president of the bank agrees. So

34:37

while they're settling out the paperwork, so like

34:40

he gives the liberty bond to the banker. The banker

34:42

gives him the cash. He puts the liberty bond

34:44

in a in a like a

34:46

filing cabinet behind him, and while they're settling

34:48

on the paperwork, Listing fakes a heart attack,

34:51

so the bank president runs out to fetch help,

34:53

and Listing opens the file cabinet and takes

34:55

the original liberty bond back out. Then

34:57

he closes it and departs for his cab to see

35:00

medical aid and just fleece town with his family,

35:02

having taken both the liberty bond and grade

35:05

in cash for the bank. That

35:07

is not where I thought the story was headed. Yeah,

35:11

is incredible, wonderful

35:14

scam. I also just this

35:17

should be a video podcast sometimes only

35:19

because when you say things, my face

35:21

is contorts most like I'm

35:24

just speechless. But yeah,

35:27

that is elaborate, and you

35:29

know what, I respect it and you

35:31

kind of respect it. And his his daughter.

35:33

We have a number of interviews from his daughter, and

35:35

she she would for her whole life stick

35:38

to the idea that her father's her father was

35:40

a con man, yes, but his victims were the real

35:42

villains. Um she described

35:44

them using. His language is researched MISCREANTSS

35:47

and he's researches the people he calls to make

35:49

sure they deserve it. His cons were

35:51

then a good deed to uncover their

35:53

misdeeds. Um. And in

35:56

the case of this banker, it was he's trying. He was trying

35:58

to ski him, this poor European and

36:00

out of like, out of twenty grand to buy a

36:02

worthless plot of land. He needed to

36:04

be hurt, you know, he needed to have his

36:06

money taken, and it was ensured anyway, which

36:08

is fair. It was. That's why it's

36:10

again never immoral to rob a bank.

36:13

Um, you said it, I said,

36:15

of course, we have a T shirt that says it. Um.

36:18

Sorry, I'm not cut up on your merch, Robert, thank

36:20

you. There are always rob ensured banks. T shirts

36:22

are very popular. Um.

36:25

So yeah. And she has a

36:28

little bit of a point here. Victor's cons did

36:30

always center around exploiting the

36:32

greed of his marks um,

36:34

and that is one of the reasons why it's

36:36

easier to be sympathetic with him. He was not. He

36:39

was not like getting a conning a bunch of like poor

36:41

people into getting in like a Ponzi

36:43

scheme or something. Um. He

36:45

was he was stealing from bankers

36:48

and ship most of the time, and in gamblers

36:50

and whatnot. Um, so yeah,

36:52

I don't know. It was Victor's next great

36:54

con that truly elevated him to the level

36:57

of a legend. He took a pile of

36:59

his ill gotten winnings and exchanged them

37:01

for fifty thou dollars and freshly

37:03

minted banknotes with serial numbers

37:05

in sequential order, and then,

37:08

using like a razor blade and stuff,

37:10

he would painstakingly set to work scraping

37:12

off the last digit of each serial

37:14

number and replacing it so that

37:16

all five hundred bills five hundred

37:19

dollar bills had the exact same serial number

37:21

on them, so they appeared to be identical bills.

37:24

Right, we get where we're going so far? Okay.

37:27

Listed been paid a wood worker to

37:29

make a series of small boxes two

37:31

ft long, nine inches wide and a foot

37:33

deep. All the boxes had bronze

37:36

knobs and dials which did nothing, and they

37:38

were weighted with lead so that they would feel heavy

37:40

and thus valuable. In doing this,

37:42

Listed was appropriating an old scheme created

37:44

by a British con man called the Roumanian

37:47

money box scheme. Victor

37:49

brought it to the US, but he added a commitment

37:52

to detail that made it truly special. So

37:54

he would start this con the way all goods cons

37:56

do start. He would meet some guy and

37:59

like somebody with money, usually like a

38:01

wealthy business owner, and over course

38:03

of some small talk, establish a baseline of trust

38:05

and understanding. Then at some

38:07

point in the conversation he would ask his mark, you've

38:10

heard of Himile Debray right now?

38:12

They hadn't, because Emil Debray never existed,

38:14

But Listing would explain that Dubray was a genius

38:17

from Serbia who was quote a little unbalanced.

38:21

Uh. And he would go for the I'm gonna read

38:23

like, we have an exact copy of his spield

38:25

that he gives to the secret Service, So I'm gonna read that.

38:27

Now this is him what he would tell his marks

38:29

about this fake person, Emile Debray.

38:32

Emile Debray was in Sarajevo on that

38:34

fateful day in nineteen fourteen when Archduke

38:36

Francis was assassinated. In fact, there

38:38

was some suspicion he wasn't on the plot, for he was a

38:41

Serb patriot. In any event, the Central

38:43

Powers captured him, but instead of putting him

38:45

in prison, they took him to Berlin and installed him

38:47

in a luxurious apartment stocked with vintage

38:49

wines and a quite delicious housemaid, and

38:51

gave him the facilities of their most modern laboratory.

38:54

He had only one instruction, produce a

38:56

quick, full proof method, full proof

38:58

method of duplicating four in currency. You

39:01

see, as the German armies overran the low

39:03

countries, they had to maintain them, and they

39:05

wished to use British and French and Dutch Dutch

39:07

currency rather than their own. So

39:10

at this point in the scam list it would take

39:12

out the box, which he would claim was

39:14

an evolution of Dubray's chemical method

39:16

of duplicating currency that he developed

39:19

for the Germans. He'd say that the genius

39:21

had only completed his research at

39:23

the very end of the war, so Germany never had a chance

39:25

to use it. The inventor had grown

39:27

frightened that he'd be executed as a collaborator,

39:29

and of course he'd gone to the count's

39:31

like Count Listig's royal father, and his

39:34

father had taken Debray in and protected

39:36

him. Debray had died soon after the war, and Listic

39:39

had found the formula for this money duplicating

39:41

box in the man's possessions and

39:43

he'd crafted this box to the inventor's

39:45

specifications. At this point,

39:47

Listig would take a real hundred dollar bill

39:50

one of his clone notes out of the box. He'd

39:52

put in a blank piece of white currency

39:54

paper with it, and then he would turn a crank

39:56

on the box. He would tell his mark that machine

39:59

worked by using a radium roller, and

40:01

since radium was so expensive, the boxes

40:03

cost fifty dollars each just to as symbol.

40:06

He would then claim that the way the special chemical

40:08

process worked would allow men to make perfect

40:10

duplicates of any bank note or liberty bond

40:12

in circulation. It just took eighteen

40:15

twelve to eighteen hours for the copy to be fully

40:17

printed. Showing a true commitment to the scheme,

40:20

lest It would wait with his mark into the until

40:22

the new bill was ready. Using sleight

40:24

of hand, he'd replaced the blank paper with

40:26

one of his identical hundred dollar cloned

40:28

bills. The mark would then walk away, convinced

40:31

he'd seen Listing duplicate perfectly

40:33

a hundred dollar bill. To further

40:35

submit his legitimacy, he would go with them to

40:37

the bank to cash the cloned bill, and since

40:39

the bills were legitimates, save for the serial number.

40:42

The clerks never noticed anything. MOSTI

40:44

would then sell the box to the mark, and

40:46

of course the mark would immediately put a

40:49

blank like currency paper in

40:51

there. And but he'd have to start that twelve to

40:53

eighteen hour like waiting period, which

40:55

would good lusted, plenty of lustig, plenty of time

40:57

to escape with the money that they'd given him.

40:59

Uh. Well, it's a pretty

41:01

great con right. That is an elaborate

41:04

asspot And again I

41:06

respect it. He's not a lazy

41:09

con man. That is a lot of work. That

41:11

is groundwork. You know, you gotta

41:13

respect the groundwork, the fucking labor.

41:16

Uh. He thought about everything. He

41:18

thought about everything, Like

41:21

he established his trust. He stays

41:23

with them. You know, he goes to the bank with them.

41:25

There's no way he's gonna scam, you

41:27

know this. Not this guy looks

41:30

at how much work. This has to be legitimate. Yeah,

41:32

So he sold boxes. This was a very

41:34

successful scheme. He made a fortune

41:36

off of this. He sold boxes for varying

41:39

prices, like kind of whatever they would put in. He'd

41:41

be like, well, i'm your friend. You know it costs me this much, but I

41:43

okay, I have extras. I'll give you whatever it like you

41:45

can. So he sold one for forty three thousand

41:47

dollars to the owners of a pool hall in

41:49

Montana. He sold another for ten thousand

41:51

dollars to merchants in Chicago, one grand

41:54

to a cans and businessman. A crime syndicate

41:57

in New York paid forty six thousand for one, and

41:59

a banker and Lafornia paid a hundred thousand.

42:02

Just like, that's like a million dollars in this time he

42:04

is making. He would have to leave town every

42:06

time, right, yes, absolutely, he immediately

42:09

books at the funk out of there. And

42:11

is he with his family during this

42:13

time? Like they we'll talk about sometimes often

42:16

he had We'll talk about this a little bit later. The

42:18

best thing about this scam from a con man's

42:21

point of view is that very few of his victims

42:23

could go to the police because doing

42:26

so it did mean admitting that they

42:28

had intended to counterfeit US currency.

42:30

I mean everything. It's

42:33

a great scam. It's really great

42:35

scamp. It's really great. It's

42:38

so good respect

42:40

that your respect. I hate to say it, but yeah,

42:42

it's it's very very good.

42:47

One of his marks did catch him once, but

42:49

hilariously, the man was so convinced

42:51

that the box was real that he thought he had fucked

42:54

up the machine by turning the crank early

42:56

and as soon he says like, man, I'm so like, I'm

42:58

glad I caught you. I'm so sorry I turned

43:00

it early and it didn't work incally. Oh, you idiot,

43:03

you've destroyed the machine. You have to give me another twenty

43:05

five grand for a new box. Oh my

43:07

god, he's so good

43:10

at this. Yeah,

43:13

he is amazing. He was

43:15

only arrested once for the scheme, and he likely

43:18

escaped conviction that time by bribing

43:20

the cops with some of the fortune that he had accumulated

43:22

at that point. Listig spent his money

43:25

as quickly as he made it. Of course, he could lose tens of

43:27

thousands of dollars in a manner of days gambling.

43:29

Uh, and he also developed a penchant for setting up

43:32

well, we'll talk about his secret family later.

43:35

By Victor, Listig was at the

43:37

absolute height of his powers. He had paid

43:39

his tailor to sew fifteen thousand dollars

43:41

into the lining of his suit so he'd have cash to

43:43

bribe his way out of emergencies. When

43:45

he was arrested for swindling a real estate man

43:47

out of ten thousand dollars. Listick was sent

43:49

to a jail that he immediately broke out of, and

43:51

we don't know how he broke out of. It said that he broke out

43:53

of a bunch of jails. The reality he's probably just

43:55

paying people, like he was just bribing guards and

43:57

stuff to get out. Money

44:00

talks, money talks, money talks, and a

44:02

good current artist walks. That

44:04

was very good. Wait did you just make that up? Thank

44:08

you? Thank you? Are you about to do a really cool

44:10

I mean it was like the perfect It was a perfect

44:12

time. You know what

44:14

else walks the good people at Raitheon,

44:18

because it is not a crime to sell

44:20

weapons of war if you are

44:24

raytheon we're

44:30

back from outer space. So

44:32

by nineteen Victor Lustig

44:35

is like he's he's doing the best that he's

44:37

ever been doing. And it was around this period that

44:39

Victor, who was probably the premier

44:41

con man of at least the United States,

44:43

maybe the whole western world, it authored

44:46

a list of rules that he believed all successful

44:48

con men ought to follow. These are like his Tin

44:51

Commandments of Conning, Motherfucker's.

44:53

Here's how they were reported in an

44:55

article I found in the Smithsonian magazine. Quote

44:59

be a patient center. It is this, not

45:01

fast talking, that gets a con man his

45:03

coups. Number two never

45:06

look bored. Number three. Wait

45:08

for the other person to reveal any political

45:10

opinions, then agree with them.

45:13

Number four. Let the other person reveal

45:15

religious views, then have the same ones.

45:18

Number five hint at sex talk,

45:20

but don't follow it up unless the other person,

45:22

unless the other fellow shows a strong interest.

45:25

Number six. Never discuss

45:28

illness unless some special concern is

45:30

shown. Number seven never

45:32

pry into a person's personal circumstances.

45:35

They'll tell you all eventually. Number

45:37

eight never boast, Just let your importance

45:40

be quietly obvious. Number nine

45:43

never be untidy, and number ten

45:45

never get drunk.

45:47

Good good rules for conning people. Yeah,

45:50

I mean, honestly not bad

45:52

rules for being a journalist.

45:54

Not because do

45:56

you want them to do you want to just mirror

45:59

them? You know you want you have to feel comfortable in

46:01

every way, so you don't you wait for them

46:03

to share information, then you just agree with it.

46:05

Yeah. Well, and I mean that part is

46:07

not the good journalism stuff, but the never

46:10

look board wait for the other person to reveal

46:12

things. Um don't pry into their

46:14

personal circumstances, Like what about

46:17

don't drink it? Yeah, no, absolutely,

46:19

you drink when you're writing, you drink when

46:21

you're recovering from doing journalism.

46:23

You don't want to be drunk conducting an interview. It's

46:26

not helpful. Um, sometimes

46:28

you might have a beer or two because like sometimes

46:30

you that's that's the circumstances in which

46:32

you're conversing with the person. And if they don't

46:34

drink, But don't you think like there

46:36

is an element if you are if you

46:38

know, if you know that you're gonna be talking to someone that

46:40

maybe it has a different view than you, you're not gonna just

46:43

straight out say you have a different view. You're just gonna let

46:45

them share and just like not right, Yeah,

46:47

well you're going to share. You ask them, You ask

46:49

them questions when those questions are relevant.

46:51

You don't need to disagree with them because

46:53

that's not your job in that instance. Yeah,

46:57

but yeah, no, I mean this is just good,

46:59

Like he's he's right about all of this. None of this

47:01

is like yeah, very

47:04

reasonable stuff. Yeah. Now, Listen

47:06

shared his success with his family, buying

47:08

his wife and daughter whatever they desired and filling

47:10

cash boxes at various banks with money

47:12

for them. He also acquired a mistress,

47:15

Ruth Etting, who was a famous singer at the time.

47:17

Victor kept his wife and his daughter out of his

47:19

life on the road as much as possible. He

47:22

justified this to them by claiming that they needed

47:24

to be hidden both from his marks and from the laft

47:26

for their own protection. He hired a bodyguard

47:29

and a maid to watch over them while he was away,

47:31

which had the added benefit of ensuring his by

47:33

now very suspicious wife was always watched

47:36

by two employees who answered to him. And

47:38

of course he is fucking around constantly

47:40

on them. And he keeps his family a secret from this

47:43

is like his secret family. Most people who

47:45

meet the Count don't know that he has a wife and

47:47

kid um, so his actual

47:49

wife and child are his secret family. But he has

47:51

a string of mistresses and he also

47:54

sleeps with a tone of prostitutes

47:56

that he meets at various bronthlos because brathlos

47:58

are the best place to meet rich people that you can con

48:00

right. And his trips

48:03

to brothels there was a pleasure aspect. It

48:05

was also a business aspect because, as he later

48:07

recalled quote, there is no better place

48:09

to find a mark than at a madam's. They

48:11

are the best people in the world to point out a mark

48:14

to you. They know them all. Like again,

48:16

you find him Adam at a brothel, she's gonna know who's

48:18

got money and who is dumb, you know, like

48:21

yeah, like that's that's as like. And

48:24

also and also networking.

48:26

And he's

48:28

getting late, although I

48:31

don't think he pays off. And he's a very good

48:33

looking, charming man and he's making the money.

48:35

So my guess is that a lot of this was just like

48:38

ship, we're both in deconning rich guys, and you're

48:40

hot, let's do it. You know, how good looking I want

48:42

to see? I mean, I don't think is

48:44

by modern standards, but yeah, he was. He

48:46

was considered to be very handsome. So

48:48

most of the pictures we have of him are older when he was kind

48:51

of balding. But he's got a very he's

48:53

got a very like distinctive

48:55

face. Um. And again,

48:57

most people at the time, okay, here's a decent

49:00

one. Yeah, and most people at the time considered him handsome. He's

49:02

got like a nice, nice jawline and stuff. Um.

49:05

The standards were lower in the twenties. Uh

49:07

yeah, so yeah.

49:10

This tactic, his tactic like kind of going

49:13

into brothels and using them to find Marx,

49:15

eventually led him to fall in love with yet another

49:17

woman, Billy May Schibel, a

49:19

famous Philadelphia madam, and I'm gonna quote

49:21

from the book Handsome Devil here about their relationship.

49:25

She handed Listing the menu a book of nudes.

49:27

These girls toiled day and night, earning Sibel

49:30

two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.

49:32

Listing soon discovered Pittsburgh's

49:34

Grand Duchess Advice had piqued his interest.

49:36

Naturally listed contor using his

49:39

money making machine, but Schibel tracked

49:41

him down rather impressively to a hotel

49:43

room in another city. There, Listing did

49:45

something he'd never done before. He gave

49:48

the money back. Sibel was everything.

49:50

His homemaking wife, Roberta was not. Loud,

49:53

body sharp as attack. They shared

49:55

an innate desire to exploit American greed

49:57

to separate those of high net worth and low more

50:00

world value from their cash Lustig

50:02

and Scheibel became lovers and partners in crime,

50:04

maintaining apartments on New York's Park Avenue

50:06

Chicago's Lakeshore drive and a mansion

50:08

in Beverly Hills, the homes Lustig's

50:11

wife yearned for. So

50:13

he yeah, this this

50:15

is maybe more maybe

50:18

his soul mate. Right, Like he gives the money

50:20

back that he cons because he's so impressed. How

50:22

good at this woman is at conning people, and they

50:24

go on a conning spree they buy the houses that he'd

50:26

always promised his actual wife. Um,

50:29

it's a bummer of a tale in some ways, but like

50:31

this is he does seem to really love this woman.

50:34

He's low key and romantic, you know, like

50:36

that's he met her

50:38

and he was like you're you get me. He

50:41

was smooth as hell. Like Yeah. Now,

50:44

Victor stayed married to his wife, but emotionally

50:46

and largely physically, he abandoned her at

50:49

this point. Now, he did not do that abandon

50:51

her financially. He kept her and his daughter

50:53

well supplied with money. But the whirlwind

50:55

romance that had swept Roberta out of Kansas

50:57

was over. One night, he had a dates

51:00

edjeweled with his wife, but he forgot to pick her up

51:02

at the hotel for an elaborate planned

51:04

night out. She drank all the wine alone

51:06

and when he finally arrived she screamed at

51:08

him. By the end of nine, the two

51:10

were divorced. His daughter never understood,

51:13

later asking how could a man who

51:15

had so often vowed eternal love for his

51:17

wife, whom he really loved, have an affair

51:19

with another woman. She's a bummer now

51:21

While Roberta headed into an unhappy

51:24

marriage with some other guy, Victor sent

51:26

his daughter off to an expensive convent boarding

51:28

school near Pittsburgh. Now

51:30

he was, it must be said, a doting father,

51:32

and he visited her constantly. He also

51:35

formed a deep friendship with the mother Superior,

51:37

who he bought expensive jewelry for in

51:39

spite of the fact that she could not wear it. Betty

51:42

said that her father loved the nuns but hated

51:44

the priests because they pressured the nuns to do

51:46

bullshit work around the church. So

51:49

kind of an interesting little detail about him. I feel

51:51

like he just always plays like I like the underdog

51:53

here. Yeah, he's he's definitely like

51:56

has a has a has a has a thing for

51:58

that. In May of Night eighteen twenty

52:00

five, his marriage like this is back when

52:02

his marriage is on the rocks a little bit before he gets divorced,

52:05

Victor headed back to Paris by luxury

52:07

steamer with one of the true few men he

52:09

would ever trust as a partner, Dapper

52:11

Dan Collins Collins, Dapper

52:14

Dan, Dapper Dan, that's his nickname. Dapper

52:16

Dan Collins.

52:18

Dapper Dan was an infamous trickster. He'd

52:21

started off his working life as a lion tamer

52:23

and a bicycle writer in the circus, but had

52:25

graduated to counterfeiting, fitting and

52:27

eventually running rum into the United

52:29

States during Prohibition via a submarine

52:32

he piloted from the Bahamas to Philly.

52:34

This is Dapper

52:36

Dan is a fascinating man, definitely

52:39

more of a piece of ship than Victor. He cons a

52:41

lot of women who don't have much like. He's

52:43

a I don't know if you call him the sexual

52:46

predator, but definitely takes significant

52:48

sexual like uses sex to take financial

52:50

advantage of women, which Victor does not do.

52:53

He definitely lies

52:55

and cheets on women constantly. He always

52:57

pays them well, he's never stealing from them,

52:59

So I don't know. I don't know how that I think morally.

53:01

Dapper Dan is a creepier guy than Victor.

53:04

Um. Neither of them are very good men. The

53:06

two traveled to Paris intent on pulling off

53:09

a big deal, but without a clear idea of

53:11

what precisely it would be. After

53:13

a few days of walking around and plotting, the

53:15

count figured it out. He was going

53:17

to sell the Eiffel Tower. Now,

53:19

of course the building already. Yes, I

53:24

don't understand. Every time I'm

53:26

more surprised, like I

53:28

sell the Eiffel Towers, sell the Eiffel

53:31

Tower. On that's

53:34

all of the great con artists have leaps of evolution

53:36

like that, lu Hub. I'm gonna I'm gonna

53:38

write pulp stories for cheap

53:41

little comic books, and then I'm gonna

53:43

create a new mental science,

53:45

and then I have become the

53:48

prophet of my own religion. I just

53:51

respect. He just has a man crush

53:53

on Alron, you

53:56

know. Really, it's the way he stole

53:58

his own baby that that impressed me most.

54:01

That's a that's a that's a

54:03

champion move. Not a lot of people.

54:06

He's a horrible he's able person. You've

54:09

got to respect. The grift, is what you're saying. I

54:12

like the way he made all of those young people live

54:14

on boats for ten years and search for gold

54:17

that he buried in past lives. I

54:19

mean, yeah, that's funny. Now he would

54:23

throw them off the boat when he got bored because

54:26

he was lunatic. I love the man,

54:29

Robert. I want everyone to know, has the biggest

54:31

smile I've ever seen.

54:32

He talks about Hubbard,

54:35

he looks so happy. It is story.

54:37

Can you please let the listeners know what my face

54:39

looks like right now? Sophie,

54:43

she has she's concerned, she's disappointed, she's

54:45

shaking her head. I'm bummed out whenever

54:47

I realized that we've covered l Run Hubbard

54:49

in such detail that there's really nothing left

54:51

for me to say about him on this show. But

54:54

you still do. But I mean,

54:56

I'm always thinking about him. To stick with Koresh,

54:58

Robert, that was a better ta I

55:01

do love. I do love David Koresh

55:03

and his incredible cum gutters. But that is

55:05

a story for another day or for the

55:07

HBO miniseries um

55:12

where we were the

55:15

Eiffel Tower. So Victor Lust

55:18

goes to Paris looking for a con right.

55:20

He and his friend go there, Dapper Dan, and

55:23

they know they're gonna scam, but they don't know what scam

55:25

they're gonna do. And they spent a couple of days just kind of walking

55:27

around talking to people, getting the light of the land, and

55:29

Victor keeps seeing the Eiffel Tower in

55:31

the skyline and he's like, I'm

55:33

gonna fucking sell that to somebody, because

55:36

he's he rules, that's ambitious,

55:38

that is ambitious, and he's invincible.

55:40

At that point, he does right, like he's

55:43

like, I could do anything. I can sell the Eiffel Tower.

55:45

Fuck it. So I should

55:47

note that at the time, the idea that the Eiffel

55:50

Tower would be for sale was not

55:52

as preposterous as it seems now. The

55:54

Eiffel Tower was built for the eighteen eighty

55:56

nine World's Fair, and at the time it was the tallest

55:59

wrought iron billing on earth. It was hated

56:01

by the art community in Paris for being a threat

56:04

to the art and history of France and a slight

56:06

upon the hitherto untouched

56:08

beauty of Paris. It was very unpopular

56:11

with like I

56:13

have an art history miner, I should have I should have remembered

56:15

this sooner. But it's like it was represented of this

56:18

like really cold metal

56:21

industrial things. Yeah,

56:23

And the reason it had gotten greenlit and big part

56:25

was that, like we talked about this in the Krup episodes

56:28

the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds,

56:30

everybody is like making as

56:32

many things out of steel? Is the

56:34

possibly it's the industrial revolution.

56:36

Yeah, like, look at what we can do. Look at how big

56:39

an iron building we can we can

56:41

make um. So the building

56:43

was unpopular with a lot of folks, and by nine

56:46

it was also badly in need of repairs. Listigs

56:49

con revolved around convincing the

56:51

right man that the government had decided not to

56:54

repair it. His mark, he decided,

56:56

would be an iron monger, someone in the

56:58

salvage business with a lot of cats. The

57:00

Count and his partner would convince the right man

57:03

that the tower was being torn back down and

57:05

the city was soliciting bids for people

57:07

who would salvage the scrap metal once

57:09

it was destroyed. So that's the way in which he was

57:11

selling it, is like they're gonna tear it down. There's gonna

57:13

be all this perfectly usable scrap metal. Who's

57:16

going to buy it? Right? Like, you've got an opportunity

57:18

to get a lot of of scrap iron here for

57:20

a good price. The Smithsonian

57:22

writes about the next stage in this con quote

57:26

listed commissioned to stationary carrying

57:28

the official French government seal. Next,

57:30

he presented himself at the front desk of the Hotel

57:33

de Creon, a stone palace on the Palace

57:35

de la Concorde. From there, pretending to

57:37

be a French government official, Listing wrote to the

57:39

top people in the French scrap metal industry,

57:41

inviting them to a hotel for a meeting. Because

57:44

of engineering faults, costly repairs and political

57:46

problems, I cannot discuss, the tearing down

57:49

of the Eiffel Tower has become mandatory.

57:51

He reportedly told them in a quiet hotel room,

57:53

the tower would be sold to the highest bidder. He announced,

57:56

his audience was captivated and their bids

57:58

flowed in. Now, listen,

58:02

I was gonna say that it

58:04

really is a huge benefit to like

58:08

conning people. Was so much easier without

58:10

the Internet, without being able to confirm

58:13

things, even with good telephone service or telegraphs

58:15

wherever the fun they had back then, Like it's

58:18

just of course you're gonna look at

58:20

an official seat, like you know what I mean, it's yeah,

58:24

guy with an accent, he's dressed

58:26

well, he has money. Yeah, you

58:28

know, Like it's of course it's easy to do

58:30

that. It's like it's like how easy it is

58:33

for murderers to get away with it before. DNA is

58:35

the same same thing. It's not hard for

58:37

them. Now about half of murderers do get away

58:39

with it in the United States. It's something

58:42

like that. But yeah, like you said that with a smile. But

58:44

continue, Look, I mean we canna

58:46

talk about stumping some day anyway. Um Listig

58:49

pretended that he was the deputy director

58:51

of the French Ministry of the Post and Telegraph.

58:54

This was another brilliant move. If he pretended

58:56

to be too high ranking, his marks

58:58

might have recognized the lie. Right, you pretend I'm

59:00

the head of the French ministry, Well they might know that guy's

59:03

name, you know, just kind of like how you know that a lot of

59:05

people know that the head of the Department of education. Do you know

59:07

the deputy deputy director of Department of Education?

59:09

Probably not? Um so

59:12

Uh. The whole scam was as meticulous as

59:14

you would expect from a guy like Listing, right, that's

59:16

his whole thing, is he He is meticulous in

59:18

his preparations. So for example, he

59:21

made sure they were really fancy refreshments.

59:23

There truffles in patte but he

59:25

made sure they were the cheapest brands of

59:27

fancy refreshments, because this is a

59:29

government meeting, right, the Government's

59:31

gonna put out freffles and patte for these rich businessmen.

59:34

But they're not going to buy the knife ship. It's the government.

59:36

You know. He thinks about all this ship. You

59:38

can't try too hard, you know, he put

59:41

he that's the thing that makes them specially. He thinks

59:43

of everything. Yeah. After evaluating

59:45

all of the businessmen in the in the room, all of whom are putting

59:47

in bids, Listing settled on one man in

59:50

particular, Andrew Poissan. Now,

59:52

Andre had not given the highest

59:54

bid, but he was the right man

59:56

to con the fact that he was new to

59:59

the being wealthy and new to being influential

1:00:01

also meant that he would have fewer connections, which

1:00:03

would mean he would not be as good at pursuing

1:00:05

Listig afterwards. So once

1:00:08

the big meeting was over, Listig informed

1:00:10

Poisson that he had been selected, and the two met

1:00:12

privately. This was where the actual

1:00:14

closure to the con came. Listig pointed

1:00:17

out that Poissan's bid wasn't the best,

1:00:19

but he wanted to support the young upstart in

1:00:21

his new business. Unfortunately, list

1:00:23

It was a poor man. His government salary

1:00:25

didn't go far, and he was going to need a bribe

1:00:27

to give Poissan the deal to buy the Eiffel

1:00:29

Tower scrap metal. Now, the whole

1:00:32

scrap industry worked by bribes at this point, so this

1:00:34

was not seen as odd at all, and the fact that Listig

1:00:36

asked for a bribe actually made Poissan

1:00:38

less suspicious because he's been wondering, like, where were we meeting

1:00:41

at a hotel instead of a government office. Oh, it's

1:00:43

because he wants a bribe. Okay, I

1:00:45

know how to do with bribe. This is how business is done in Paris,

1:00:47

you know. So Poissan writes,

1:00:50

listing a sizeable check in exchange for the

1:00:52

tower, and Listig skips put down with his business

1:00:54

partner as soon as it clears. They expected

1:00:56

to have to lie low for a while. But that's

1:00:58

not the way things went. As the magazine Proghetto

1:01:01

summarizes, After a few

1:01:03

days, he realized that something didn't add up. There

1:01:05

wasn't a word in newspapers about the barely occurred

1:01:08

fraud. Humiliated and offended,

1:01:10

the unfortunate Andrew Poissan decided to maintain

1:01:12

absolute silence, not making a complaint

1:01:15

and preferring to accept the scam rather than

1:01:17

exposing himself to a certain humiliation.

1:01:19

The unthinkable had been accomplished, and so

1:01:22

with the ardor of a seasoned and limitless gambler,

1:01:24

Gambler Listig resumed once again. He

1:01:26

returned to Paris to sell the Eiffel Tower

1:01:28

again. Wow's

1:01:36

giving a shot. And you know this actually

1:01:38

shows how smart he is, because a lot of sources will describe

1:01:40

Lusting as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower

1:01:42

twice. That is not accurate. His

1:01:45

second mark was a lot saffier than

1:01:47

Poissan and started asking for too many guarantees,

1:01:49

asked to meet in a government building to do the final

1:01:51

deed, and Listig bail's he realizes,

1:01:54

like this, my I'm I'm gonna get in trouble

1:01:56

for this, Like this guy is a little bit too

1:01:58

bright for me to con. He fucking bails

1:02:00

and goes back to the United States because he's he's

1:02:03

at this point very smart con

1:02:05

artist. Throughout the late nineteen

1:02:07

twenties, Victor continued to con without pause.

1:02:10

He was such a big name in the world of charming

1:02:12

criminals that he soon had imposters copycat

1:02:15

counts who would pretend to be him or

1:02:18

someone like him in order to carry out their own

1:02:20

schemes. Count Boris Dobrinsky

1:02:23

developed a sleight of hand money boxed scam

1:02:25

that included fireworks for some weaks reasons.

1:02:27

So many men imitated Count Listing that it

1:02:30

is difficult to say for certain which scams were

1:02:32

him and which were made by impostors. After this

1:02:34

point, things become clearer in

1:02:36

Thecember of ninety when Victor

1:02:38

Listig finally made a bad decision,

1:02:41

probably the worst one of his life, and decided

1:02:43

to rob a businessman named Thomas Karns.

1:02:46

Now, you will note that I said rob and not con.

1:02:49

Victor clearly had plans to con the man

1:02:51

because they were meeting in Victor in in

1:02:53

karns his house. But he seems to have been in some

1:02:55

sort of financial jeopardy at this point, probably

1:02:57

as a result of all of his mistresses and his daughter

1:03:00

her in his gambling. He had expenses

1:03:02

and he got greedy, and whatever

1:03:04

the reason, he sneaks upstairs in this guy's

1:03:06

house during their meeting and just takes sixteen

1:03:08

grand from a box in a drawer, just robs

1:03:10

him. Right, Um, I think this is the

1:03:13

only time he does it, and it's a horrible decision

1:03:15

because it seems so

1:03:17

unlike, unlike him, and very impulsive

1:03:20

versus calculated, which is what he usually

1:03:22

was. I think it's a mix of thing. So it's

1:03:25

probably financial inspiration. You know, he gets to do a

1:03:27

bad spot. He needs cash quick, he doesn't have time

1:03:29

to work the con. I think some of it's just ego.

1:03:31

You know, you have so many hits,

1:03:34

right, you get away with so much for

1:03:36

so long. I'm sure that. I'm

1:03:38

sure the success of the Eiffel Tower scam played a

1:03:40

factor to this, because like that could have report

1:03:42

me I can do anything. Um, So

1:03:45

he he fucks up, He fox up bad uh,

1:03:47

and Thomas Currens goes immediately to the cops.

1:03:50

They started a man hunt for this guy, who was by

1:03:52

this point very prominent and hard to miss.

1:03:55

Listed left town quickly, but he almost

1:03:57

immediately got into trouble in Texas again when

1:03:59

he picked Shareff as the latest victim of his

1:04:01

money box scam. This scam worked,

1:04:03

but again Victor got greedy and he passed

1:04:06

the sheriff a number of actual counterfeit

1:04:08

bills, and this is what finally brought

1:04:10

the Secret Service down on Listig's head. Smithsonian

1:04:13

Magazine reports on what happened next, and how Listing

1:04:16

advanced from pretending to counterfeit money with the

1:04:18

cash box scam to actually counterfeiting

1:04:20

money, which would be his ultimate downfall. Quote.

1:04:24

It was secret service agent Peter A. Rubano

1:04:26

who vowed to put Listing behind bars. Rubano

1:04:29

was a heavy set Italian American with a double chin,

1:04:31

sad eyes, and endless ambition. Born

1:04:33

and raised in the Bronx, Rubano had main has

1:04:35

made his name by trapping the notorious gangster

1:04:38

Ignazio the Wolf Lupo. Rubano

1:04:40

delighted in seeing his name in the newspapers, and he would

1:04:42

dedicate many years to catching Listed. When

1:04:44

the Austrian entered the counterfeit banknote business

1:04:46

in nineteen thirty, Listing fell across Rubano's

1:04:49

crosshairs. Teaming up with the ganglin

1:04:51

forger William Watts. Listed created banknotes

1:04:54

so flawless they fooled even bank tellers.

1:04:56

Listed Watts notes were the super notes of

1:04:58

the era, says Joseph Ling, chief judge

1:05:00

of the American Numismatic Association,

1:05:03

a specialist in authenticating notes, Listed

1:05:05

daringly chose to copy hundred dollar bills

1:05:08

those scrutinized most by bank tellers. And

1:05:10

became like some other government

1:05:12

issuing money in rivalry with the United

1:05:14

States Treasury. A judge leader commented

1:05:16

it was feared that a run of fake bills this large

1:05:19

could wobble international confidence in

1:05:21

the dollar. Catching the count became

1:05:23

a cat and mouse game for Rubano in the Secret

1:05:25

Service. Listig traveled with the trunk of disguises

1:05:27

and could transform easily into a rabbi, a priest,

1:05:30

a bellhopper reporter. Dressed like a baggage

1:05:32

man. He could escape any hotel in a pinch, and even

1:05:34

take his luggage with him. But the net was closing

1:05:37

in. Listig finally felt a tug on

1:05:39

the velvet collar of his Chesterfield coat. On a

1:05:41

New York street corner on May tenth, nineteen

1:05:43

thirty five, a voice ordered hands

1:05:45

in the air. Listig studied the circle of men

1:05:48

surrounding him and noticed Agent Rubano, who

1:05:50

led him away in handcuffs. So

1:05:53

Listig start the man hunt for him.

1:05:55

Starts heavily in n when he

1:05:57

robs this guy, and instead of laying

1:05:59

low, he goes on to start counterfeiting, and

1:06:01

counterfeiting so well that the US government

1:06:04

worries he might collapse the national economy

1:06:06

because how does he count? How does he how does

1:06:09

he churn out? Also, so many counterfeit

1:06:11

bills. Um, he's he's you

1:06:14

know, it's it's the attention to detail that

1:06:16

he uses with all of his schemes. He he applies

1:06:18

that to counterfeiting. He picks the best counterfeitter

1:06:21

and he gets the bills almost perfect.

1:06:23

Um. You can find pictures of his notes today. There's still

1:06:25

some of the best forgeries that have ever been made. And

1:06:28

again, this is happening during the Great Depression,

1:06:30

and he's gotten he gets to be so good at

1:06:32

making fake bills that they're worried

1:06:34

he's going to crash a confidence in the

1:06:37

U. S. Economy. So it becomes kind

1:06:39

of a matter of national security to catch

1:06:41

this guy. And again he just got too big for his

1:06:43

bridges, you know, all those costumes

1:06:45

and stuff. I feel like, who's going to play

1:06:48

him in the movie, you know, like Leotocaprio or

1:06:51

I think, yeah, DiCaprio could probably pull

1:06:53

it off, you know, just natural succession from Jack. I

1:06:55

think, yeah, Well, and he played a Frank

1:06:57

abcnail and catch me if you can. Yeah right,

1:07:00

yeah, yeah, he's good at doing that. That

1:07:02

kind of con man I would also accept George Clooney.

1:07:04

They don't look alike, but George Clooney can do a hell

1:07:07

of a con man. I would

1:07:09

always accept George Clooney. We

1:07:11

we Yeah, of course now looks

1:07:14

take it. I would agree

1:07:16

with you on that. Um. I'm a fan of his

1:07:19

love of pigs. I'm a fan of his face.

1:07:21

But go ahead, he does his

1:07:24

his life was saved by a pig. Okay,

1:07:27

just have to look

1:07:29

it up that that is a fact. George

1:07:33

when he was a young man, he

1:07:36

had he He's always loved pigs, populade

1:07:38

pigs, I think, And he was a young man, he hadn't

1:07:40

made it big yet and he was sleeping with his pig

1:07:43

in his tiny apartment and his pig

1:07:45

started freaking out, and George took the pig

1:07:47

out for a walk, thinking that it needed to go to the

1:07:49

bathroom. And it turned out the pig had since

1:07:52

that there was going to be an earthquake, and the earthquake

1:07:54

collapsed the building that he had been sleeping in. Wow.

1:07:58

Yeah, so thank you pigs

1:08:01

forgiveness. George Clooney. Yeah,

1:08:03

I wonder if he eats bacon. I

1:08:05

don't know. I know he cuts his own hair a great

1:08:07

man with

1:08:10

a weird like nineteen eighties contraption

1:08:12

that you put around your head and it gives you a bus cut

1:08:15

me. I thought, I

1:08:18

love and I'm over here like great face.

1:08:21

Yeah, he's like he's hot, he's

1:08:23

absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, his wife is there

1:08:27

anything about? So

1:08:30

Listig was taken to the Federal Detention Center

1:08:32

in Manhattan, which was supposed to be inescapable.

1:08:35

Of course, he immediately escaped. In September.

1:08:38

Listed crafted a rope from prison bedsheets,

1:08:40

cut through his bars using items he'd had

1:08:42

smuggled in, and swung down out

1:08:45

his window and repelled downwards. This

1:08:47

was extremely visible, and a crowd form

1:08:49

to watch him repelling down the side of the of

1:08:51

the prison, so Listig took a rag from

1:08:54

his pocket and started pretending to be cleaning the

1:08:56

windows. When he reached the ground, he

1:08:58

bowed to his audience and darted a quote

1:09:00

like a deer. He's a performers

1:09:06

so good. Yeah, he

1:09:08

loves he loves the stage. He loves

1:09:10

the stage. He would have been a great actor. When

1:09:13

police realized that Listing had escaped, they

1:09:15

found a note on his pillow, a handwritten

1:09:17

extract from the book Limiserab and

1:09:19

This is the quote from the book that he put on his pillow.

1:09:22

He allowed himself to be led in a promise.

1:09:25

Jean Valjean had his promise even

1:09:27

to a convict, especially to a convict,

1:09:29

and may give the convict confidence and guide

1:09:31

him on the right path. Law was not made

1:09:34

by God, and man can be wrong, which

1:09:37

is like, I mean, you were counterfeiting bills. Yeah,

1:09:40

he's still trying to cry. He's crafting so narrative

1:09:43

still like he knows people are going to talk about that. He's

1:09:45

like, oh, he's he's well read

1:09:48

and cultured. And he looked at this. Look he's

1:09:50

the He's like Jean Valjean. You know he's a convict,

1:09:52

but he's a hero. Listing

1:09:55

stayed free for more than three weeks. He was

1:09:57

eventually caught in Pittsburgh by a joint

1:10:00

b I Secret Service task force. They

1:10:02

spotted him getting into a car and gave chase.

1:10:04

His driver attempted to escape, and the police eventually

1:10:07

rammed the car, locking their wheels together

1:10:09

and grinding both wheels to a halt. The agents

1:10:11

ripped the doors open and pointed their guns at the men

1:10:14

inside. Listing told the agents, well,

1:10:16

boys, here, I am never

1:10:20

clustered. He's he's he's a great character.

1:10:22

Yeah. He was taken before

1:10:25

a judge in November of ninety five.

1:10:27

The New York Herald Tribune described him thus,

1:10:29

his pale, lean face was a study, and his

1:10:32

tapering white hands rested on the bar before

1:10:34

a bench. Another journalist overheard

1:10:36

a Secret Service agent tell Listig Count,

1:10:38

you're the smoothest con man whoever lived.

1:10:41

All the sympathy and his undeniable

1:10:43

smoothness was not enough to save the Count from

1:10:46

Alcatraz Island, where he was sent. His

1:10:48

body was searched when he arrived, and he was

1:10:50

hustled or hose down with freezing water,

1:10:53

and then interned in one of the most brutal prisons the

1:10:55

US justice system ever derived. To

1:10:58

to humiliate him, the Count was marched naked

1:11:00

to his cell, and I think as

1:11:02

a result of getting spread with cold watering march naked,

1:11:04

he gets sick. He gets very sick, almost

1:11:07

immediately, and he remains sick for

1:11:09

the entire time he's in Alcatraz. He makes nearly

1:11:11

twelve hundred medical requests and has issued five

1:11:13

hundred seven prescriptions. His guards

1:11:16

assumed he was faking an illness as part of

1:11:18

an elaborate escape plan, but he was not. He

1:11:20

was genuinely ill. His ex wife,

1:11:22

Roberta, who had divorced her husband by this point,

1:11:24

was still in love with him, and she repeatedly

1:11:27

tried to free him, even offering the director of

1:11:29

prison seventy dollars. Eventually,

1:11:31

his release was set for August of nineteen forty

1:11:34

eight. Lustig did not think he could

1:11:36

make it that long. November twenty nine,

1:11:38

nineteen forty six, he woke up with massive

1:11:40

swelling on the left side of his head. The Alcatraz

1:11:43

doctors finally took his sickness seriously and

1:11:45

shipped him to a secure medical facility

1:11:47

in Missouri. It turned out he had severe

1:11:49

pneumonia, which had not been adequately treated

1:11:52

over his time in prison. He was attempted.

1:11:54

They attempted to help him, but it was far too late.

1:11:57

Betty, his daughter by this point an adulter's

1:11:59

self, managed to track her father down to the hospital,

1:12:01

where she arrived in March of n from

1:12:04

the book Handsome Devil quote, she

1:12:06

knew instantly that she had waited too long. That

1:12:09

he found her father paralyzed. Watched carefully

1:12:11

by guards, she took his hand and whispered in

1:12:13

his ear Morse code. I

1:12:15

love you, daddy. She tapped onto his palm

1:12:18

his his fingers tapped back faintly,

1:12:20

I love you too. Sis. He

1:12:23

died two days after her visit. Wow.

1:12:26

Yeah, it's bummer. I

1:12:29

mean it really is like the very

1:12:32

extreme case of like the boy who cried Wolf, right,

1:12:34

Yeah, yeah, I mean right, Like, of course

1:12:36

they didn't believe. I'm not one to

1:12:38

defend the prison system, but like kind

1:12:41

of hard to believe the man who did nothing

1:12:43

but life for seventy years around. I

1:12:45

mean, I will say that's a very good call back to

1:12:47

the Morse code to

1:12:51

happen. It's a perfectly cinematic. I'm sure there

1:12:53

have been movies made about this guy. Wait, I have a question.

1:12:56

Did I miss what happened to the soul Nate lady? Oh?

1:12:59

I mean they just split up at some point. Oh okay,

1:13:01

Yeah. You know he's he's never really

1:13:04

able to stay with anybody because his true

1:13:06

love is conning people. You know, Yeah,

1:13:09

it is daughter. He is as

1:13:11

good a father as a man who does the things

1:13:13

he does can be. Right. Yeah.

1:13:17

So, I mean that's

1:13:20

the story of Victor Lustig. I don't hate him.

1:13:22

It's hard to hate him. Right, he's not a good man,

1:13:25

but he's not a monster, you know, he's

1:13:28

he's he was a great con man,

1:13:30

and he's an interesting, an incredible

1:13:33

con man. He thought about everything, he

1:13:35

caned people, and they wouldn't go

1:13:37

to the police because they were also like

1:13:39

that scam is fucking

1:13:42

boss. Yeah, he's present.

1:13:45

I do respect that he targeted

1:13:47

the wealthy, eat

1:13:49

the rich. I'm all for it. Um.

1:13:53

Yeah, I don't hate him. Yeah, all con

1:13:55

men target greed. Unfortunately, a lot of them

1:13:57

target the greed of people who are also very

1:14:00

more and less. Dig seemed to pretty much

1:14:02

just go after people who were greedy and rich. Yeah,

1:14:04

and to hate that hard, to hate

1:14:07

that. Not great to women. She slept

1:14:09

around, constantly, treated his wife

1:14:11

like ship and she really loved him. Um.

1:14:14

But he taught his daughter morse quote.

1:14:16

He did teach his daughter morse code. Um.

1:14:19

That is not nothing. Um

1:14:22

wow. Yeah, that's the story of Victor

1:14:24

Lustig. And now it's time for the story

1:14:26

of Sharine's pluggables. Yeah,

1:14:28

oh me, oh my god, thank you so much. That

1:14:31

was an interesting segway. I'll give you that.

1:14:33

It's pronounced segua. I'm

1:14:36

Sharine. Well you and s. You can follow

1:14:39

me on Instagram at Shiro hero

1:14:41

S h E E r O h E

1:14:43

r O, and then on Twitter at Shiro hero six six

1:14:46

six. Uh called

1:14:48

ethnically ambiguous on a host

1:14:50

name, But that was honestly, I

1:14:53

really enjoyed hearing about this man. I wanted

1:14:55

to give you a fun one, Sharine. We've

1:14:57

had some we've had some heavy conversations

1:15:00

on this show. Put me so,

1:15:03

here's a guy who never murdered any babies

1:15:06

or destroyed anybody's bodies,

1:15:08

just con some some rich folks. And that's a good

1:15:11

time, right, everybody needs It's it's

1:15:13

a rough world out there. This show is always

1:15:15

pretty heavy. Let's talk about some con artists

1:15:17

for a week, you know, let's have a good That

1:15:19

was my thinking with this episode. Well, thank

1:15:22

you for letting me talk about it. Yeah,

1:15:25

it was very refreshing. It's always

1:15:27

good to talk about a con artist talk about

1:15:29

another con artist on Thursday,