Buying the Brooklyn Bridge Trivia Quiz

Answer: Victor Lustig

In 1925 Paris was recovering from the first World War and was booming, but there were still financial problems and, on reading an article stating that the city had problems maintaining the Eiffel Tower, Victor Lustig saw the ideal opportunity. Posing as a Government official he invited six scrap metal dealers to a secret meeting where, using forged documents, he invited them to bid for scrapping the Eiffel Tower.

He insisted on secrecy because of possible public outcry. The idea was not completely implausible, the tower had never been intended to be permanent, and everyone knew it was in bad repair. Selecting the most gullible of the men to work on Lustig was able to complete the con and collected not only the funds for the tower, but also a sizable bribe from the man to accept his bid. Amazingly he got away with it as the dealer was too embarrassed to go to the Police.

A month later he tried it again with six new scrap dealers, but one of them reported it to the Police and Lustig had to flee France to avoid arrest.

Answer: George C Parker

George C Parker made a very good living selling New York's landmarks to unwary tourists. He sold Madison Square Garden, The Statue of Liberty, Grant's Tomb and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His absolute favourite con was selling Brooklyn Bridge, which he did around twice a week for several years, by convincing his "clients" that they could make a fortune by traffic control measures. Several times the Police had to intervene to stop people erecting barriers and toll booths on the bridge.

When he sold Grant's Tomb, which he did more than once, he posed as the general's grandson and had very impressive fake documents to prove ownership. Convicted of fraud three times he died in Sing Sing Prison.

Answer: Frank Abagnale

Starting when he was only sixteen Frank Abagnale passed an impressive $2.5M worth of forged cheques in a five year period. He posed as an airline pilot, doctor, prison inspector and lawyer and twice escaped from police custody, once from inside a penitentiary, and all before he was twenty-one. Arrested and sentenced to 12 years prison he was released after five years on condition he helped the FBI in their fight against fraud.

He now runs his own Security Consultancy advising the business world on how to avoid fraud, a classic poacher turned gamekeeper scenario.

The film "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonardo DiCaprio was released in 2002 and is based on his ghostwritten autobiography.

Answer: William Thompson

William Thompson operated in New York in the 1840s. He would approach a well dressed and obviously affluent person pretending that they knew each other. The person approached was usually too embarrassed to admit they had no idea of who he was. After a while he would ask if they had the confidence in him to lend him money or a valuable item, such as a watch or piece of jewellery, until the next day, and would then disappear never to be seen again.

He was eventually arrested and in their report of his 1849 trial the "New York Herald" christened him "confidence man". According to the "Oxford English Dictionary" the first time confidence trickster appeared in print was in the "New Orleans Picayune".

Answer: Fairies

Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright took the fairy photos on a plate camera borrowed from Mr Wright, and for some years they laid undisturbed at the bottom of a drawer. However, in 1920 Mrs Wright went to a folklore lecture in Bradford and mentioned the fairy photos to a friend, who mentioned them to Edward Gardner, a leading theosophist of the day, who asked to see them. He sent them to both a leading expert on fake photographs and Kodak. The expert pronounced them genuine, Kodak would not comment one way or the other. They were soon published in "Strand" magazine, and ignited a debate which went on for the next 63 years.

Over the years the two women refused to comment further on the photographs but eventually, in 1983, Elsie admitted that they were a hoax, and that they had made the fairies out of paper and pinned them into place. Frances however always maintained that one of the photos was genuine.

Neither of the girls or their families made any money out of the hoax.

Answer: Charles Ponzi

Charles Ponzi has given his name to any get rich quick scheme that involves paying early investors with money obtained from later investors. He promised a 50% return within 45 days or a 100% return within 90 days, and his early investors were paid out at this rate.

This was the first recorded pyramid scheme, all of which depend on a never ending flow of investors. Once the flow of money coming in dries up, then pay-outs to earlier investors also stop and the whole scheme collapses. The original Ponzi scheme brought down five banks and hundreds of investors lost their life savings.

Answer: MI5

Robert Hendy-Freegard spent ten years posing as an MI5 Agent. During that time he lived a millionaire lifestyle with fast cars, designer clothes and expensive foreign holidays, all paid for on money extracted from his victims. With women he seduced them, often becoming engaged to them, and then controlled their every move with tales of assassins watching them and foreign spies hunting them. With men he often convinced them they were undergoing training for recruitment.

He was eventually caught and found guilty of 20 separate offences and jailed for life.

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Kujau started his career by illegally importing Nazi memorabilia from East Germany and selling it to collectors. To increase the value of the items he forged provenance documents. In 1978 he forged his first Hitler Diary and sold it to a collector. A journalist from "Stern" got to hear of this and contacted him to see if he had any more diaries. Telling him that the diaries were in the possession of his brother, who was in East Germany, Kujau made a deal for the sale of the other diaries and over the next two years forged 61 of them, which he sold for a total of DM2.5M. "Stern" bought them from the journalist for DM9.5M. Published in 1983 the diaries were quickly exposed as fakes.

Answer: Gold mines

For twelve years Walter Scott toured the USA and Europe with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. He left the show to get married and moved to Colorado where he tried to start a gold mining business. When this failed and he was not allowed to rejoin the Wild West Show, he started his life as a con artist, persuading a New York businessman to invest in his non-existent gold mine. For two years the man invested without any ore ever being shipped.

Through 1904 into 1906, he continued to persuade investors to part with money and managed to evade inspectors they sent to check on the mine. He also began to steal high grade ore from other mines in the area. In 1912, he stated that he had sold his mine in Death valley for $12M. This caused various people to sue him for their money and he ended up in jail. Amazingly he remained friends with one of the investors he had defrauded and, in 1922, this man, Albert Johnson, began work in Death Valley on a vacation home for himself. Scott however claimed that he had built it and it became known as Scotty's Castle.

Answer: Andrew Carnegie

Cassie L. Chadwick, born in 1859, was, at various times, a fortune teller, forger and brothel owner. In 1897 she met and married Dr Leroy Chadwick and, through him, met Ohio Banker, Mr Dillon. She somehow convinced Dillon that she was the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie and would inherit some $400M on his death. On the strength of this and various forged promissory notes allegedly signed by Andrew Carnegie, Dillon and various other bankers queued up to lend her money.

The bankers let the loans grow and grow as they believed they would be repaid with handsome interest in due course. Her scheme collapsed when someone actually demanded repayment of a loan, and when it was not forthcoming sued her. Her promissory notes were then revealed to be fake, and Andrew Carnegie went to the lengths of issuing a statement to the effect that he did not know her and had never signed a note to her. She died in prison at the age of 48. The full extent of her borrowing was never fully revealed, with some reports putting it as high as $20M, but it forced at least one bank into liquidation.