What Is The Most Clever Scam?
The Eiffel Tower scam
Con artist Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower.
Not once, but twice.
After World War 1, Paris had difficulties maintaining the Eiffel Tower; even painting it was very expensive.
Lustig discovered this in a newspaper article, and developed a scheme.
He invited scrap dealers to a business meeting where he posed as the deputy director-general of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.
He told the scrap dealers that the city could no longer afford maintaining the Tower, and invited them for an inspection tour in a rented limousine.
Lustig used this as an opportunity to figure out who he could sell it to.
When he was about the sell it to a buyer by the name of Andre Poisson, Poisson’s wife caught suspicion by how fast the deal went through.
Lustig confessed, to the wife’s suspicion, that he actually was a government minister who wasn’t satisfied with his standard of living.
Poisson fell for the cover story, and the deal went through.Lustig thus ended up collecting not only the money for the Eiffel Tower, but also a large bribe.
Poisson, too ashamed, never reported it to the police.
A month later, Lustig repeated the same con. Only this time the buyer reported it to the police from which Lustig just barely managed to escape.
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