05 of the Most Brazen Con Artists in History

It takes a lot of brassiness to be a confident man, as they say. Being able to look someone in the eye, lie to them, and cheat them out of their time, money, and trust is not a job. And when a con artist can do this to multiple people for huge sums of money based on the most outrageous lies, well, that's another thing entirely. Yet people do. Sometimes these losses become so great and out of control that they become almost unbelievable. About…

5. Frederic Bourdin Pretended to be Children

Frederick Borden left a string of scams across Europe and the United States. When he was 31 years old, he managed to convince school officials and students that he was a 15-year-old orphan for a whole month as he attended classes and made friends. He constantly traveled from country to country, and more often than not pretended to be a teenage boy.

Even more surprising than the scandal is the fact that Bourdain didn't do it for any reason. He was taking money from people. He did not prey on the other children around him. It was just a plot for me. He describes himself as manipulative and has a tattoo on his arm that reads "The Chameleon from Nantes", the name of the city where he grew up.

His scandals in Spain, where he played the role of an orphan, only ended when a school official watched a television program about Bourdain and recognized his face.

Years earlier, when he was 23, Borden had successfully pretended to be the missing 16-year-old son, even though he had different eyes and a French accent. He lived with the missing boy's parents for several months, before he was forced to take a DNA test by the FBI (who feared he was a spy), exposing his scam.

4. The First International Bank of Grenada

No matter how much money you try to con someone else, you're still just someone who takes money from other people, and it's always an uphill battle. Realizing this, Van Brink conceived of a major scam. And what is greater than a person, but still able to get money? Bank. So he built a bank.

In 1997, Brink bought a license to open his own bank in Grenada. He convinced the government he had just purchased his citizenship of that he was legitimate by claiming to own a giant ruby complete with pictures and valued at $20 million. Ruby was obviously there, but it wasn't his. Nevertheless, secured by another $26 billion in assets, the bank was set up and within a year had registered $14 billion in assets.

In fact, the bank defrauded the investors of $170 million. The insurance was indeed claimed by the bank, but it was issued by another fake company. Investors were promised high interest rates, but in reality, Brink and his partners were buying up luxury goods, using new investors' investments to pay old investors bogus interest, all until the scam was over.

Brink fled to Uganda, denying any wrongdoing the whole time. He was eventually indicted but died of a heart attack while awaiting trial.

3. Victor Lustig Sold the Eiffel Tower Twice

A good artist should be able to win a person's trust. A great con artist can earn his faith. That is, they can make you believe the impossible. Victor Lustig has also somehow convinced people that he not only owns the Eiffel Tower, but that he is willing to sell it to them. And he did it twice.

In 1925, the French government was lamenting the poor state of the Eiffel Tower and apparently an official made an unusual comment to a newspaper about selling it for scrap. Lustig read it and put a plan into action.

He had fake stationery listing him as a government official and invited local junk dealers to meet him. They told the merchants that the tower, which was not meant to be permanent, was demolished, and whoever had the best offer for 7,000 tons of scrap could claim it in full. At the same time, he assures his favorite target of the merchants that if they paint the wheels, the knots will be theirs.

Bribe in hand, Lustig left the country and waited for news of the fraud to surface. This never happened, perhaps because of his victim's embarrassment, which prevented them from advancing. So Lustig did what any successful scammer would do: He went back to France and pulled the same scam again with new victims.

When he escaped this time, he reported the crime to his victim, but Lustig was already in America.

2. Arthur Furguson Sold Landmarks In England and America

1925 turned out to be a big year for landmarks because while Victor Lustig was selling the Eiffel Tower in France, Scotsman Arthur Ferguson managed to sell Nelson's Colon, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace to American tourists visiting London. He later moved to America and sold the White House to a Texas rancher and the Statue of Liberty to an Australian.

Naturally you'd wonder how anyone could believe these things were for sale, but Ferguson was nothing if not convinced. In England, he made it clear that since the end of the First World War the government was in dire need of new funds. He felt Americans were so unfamiliar with how things worked that they would be easy marks. And they were.

He did not sell the tags directly. Instead, take confidence. A few thousand dollars here or there, that was all he needed. Especially when he can repeat the scam over and over again, selling the same building to different people.

Most of the victims were too embarrassed to tell the police, which allowed Ferguson to continue his scam. It was only when the Australian would-be Statue of Liberty buyer took so long to come up with funds and Ferguson's impatience became suspicious that he was finally caught.

1. Mary Bateman’s Prophetic Chicken

Harry Houdini was famous for targeting scam artists who took advantage of the faith and beliefs of some victims by claiming that they could speak to the dead or the divine. Some of these scammers pretend to be mentoring from the outside, but Mary Bateman has tried to take it to another level by presenting what at first seemed like irrefutable evidence. He had a chicken laying eggs with messages from God on them. Not bad, right?

In 1806, Mary claimed that one of her chickens laid an egg with the words "Christ is coming" clearly visible in the shell. Despite the typo, it was great. Especially for the woman whose claim to fame was committing poorly planned robberies that got caught every time.

Word quickly spread and people traveled to his farm where they paid a pretty penny to see the miracle chicken and her eggs. She also would show people official seals to ensure they would get to the right side of the Rapture, which were apparently just slips of paper with the word "JC" written on them.

A suspicious visitor soon becomes aware of the fraud when he discovers Batman's somewhat stubborn determination to use simple alchemy and end his miracles. She would take the eggs and write her message on them in the vinegar, which thinned the shell just enough so that the letters could be seen. He then froze the eggs back into the chickens, forcing them to place them back where witnesses could see them. The stranger hid near his barn early in the morning and saw him do this.