Unlike the ubiquitous and “brainless” internet scams, the sale of the Eiffel Tower was truly a swindle that was so slick, it ranks as a timeless work-of-art
As long as history has been recorded, there have been endless schemes to separate the gullible from their money. The sale of the Eiffel Tower may be the greatest swindle of all time.
The world is full of examples of scams that are caught, exposed and quickly stamped out, only to popup again like a never-ending game of Wack-a-mole.
Although you would be hard pressed to find people who haven’t heard of pyramid schemes, the Nigerian swindle, or the ubiquitous get-rich-quick schemes, it seems there’s an endless line of people with an inability to connect the dots to a too-good-to-be-true deal.
Full Disclosure: I’ve been there … more than once!
These everyday shenanigans are what they are, but every once in a while, a true masterpiece of larceny will surface like a long-lost Rembrandt or Monet.
The Sale of the Eiffel Tower
One of the greatest con masters of all time was “Count” Victor Lusting. Lustig was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia to a middle-class family. Through a series of happenstances and events, Lustig gravitated towards the seedier side of life and discovered that he had an enormous talent for games of chance and for bluffing in general. A life of crime seemed an eminent fit.
Calling himself “Count” was just one of his dozens of aliases. He spoke five languages fluently with an uncanny ability to dupe a “mark” in any one of the five.
We’ve all heard the common expression about selling the Brooklyn Bridge, which has become a part of the American lexicon as the metaphor for the ultimate in gullibility or salesmanship. Well, you can thank the “Count” for that legend because he did even better than that; he “sold” the Eiffel Tower!
In 1925, Lustig read in a French newspaper that the Eiffel Tower needed major repairs. The article immediately gave him an idea. Posing as “France’s Minister of Public Buildings,” he contacted five of the country’s largest scrap metal dealers and brought them together for a face-to-face meeting at a Parisian hotel.
Count Lustig welcomed the scrap-metal merchants to his suite and explained, “Gentlemen, as France’s Minister for Public Buildings, it saddens me to have to say that our beloved Eiffel Tower must be dismantled and sold. The French government has concluded that the cost of its maintenance and preservation has gotten out of hand.”
He further added that the Eiffel Tower had been built for the 1889 Paris Exposition and was never intended to be a permanent site. Now that it was in such a state of disrepair, the government had concluded that it was best to recover what they could and dismantle it forever.
Lustig then took the men to the tower for an “official” inspection. As the men began to see the profit potential in all the prefabricated parts, Lustig urged them on. As a master salesman, he let the five merchants talk and talk until he knew their motives and deepest desires.
Back at the hotel, Lustig continued with his presentation. The tower itself will yield no less than 7,000 tons of high-grade iron, advised Lusting, and as you men are in the business, you can see enormous profit potential. I invite you to deliver your sealed bids to me within the next twenty-four hours.
When one of the dealers asked why the negotiations were in a hotel rather than at the Ministry, Lustig admitted that the public would be furious when it learned of the government’s decision to dismantle their beloved tower, so he asked them for total secrecy until the demolition began.
In reality, Lustig didn’t need to see the other four bids; he already knew he would accept the offer from André Poisson. That was his mark.
Within several days, and as “luck” would have it for Poisson, Lustig personally informed him that he was the “winning” bid. No sooner had Poisson been informed of his victory when doubts of the veracity of the whole affair began to set in. His wife sensed the entire affair was sketchy. There was far too much secrecy and haste for her liking.
So, when Poisson met Lustig at his hotel suite and suggested that he needed a little more time to think things through, Lustig’s true genius and uncanny knowledge of human behaviour kicked in.
Lustig then asked his secretary to leave the room. As soon as the two men were alone, Lustig quietly admitted that even though he was a government official, he still expected a kickback for his efforts. After all, he confided, he did bend the rules and chose Poisson’s bid over the others as a personal favour, even though it wasn’t the highest bid.
Lustig knew that Poisson desperately wanted to get into the inner circles of the Parisian business community and that obtaining the deed to the Eiffel Tower would be just the ticket to the upper echelons. He would gain the status he sought and make a quick killing on the business end of things. It was simply a deal that was too good to pass up.
If a little larceny likes company, Lustig’s admission of corruption was all Poisson needed to hear. In his mind, the entire lot of Parisian bureaucrats were crooks, so upon hearing of Lustig’s depravity, he was certain the deal had to be authentic.
Within forty-eight hours, Poisson had raised the money and handed Lustig two certified checks. One was for the deed of sale, and the other was a “little something” for Lustig’s efforts.
Within an hour, Lustig had cashed the checks, and he and his ‘secretary’ were riding first class to Vienna with a suitcase full of cash.
When Poisson found out shortly thereafter that he had been scammed, he never said a word. He was just too embarrassed to report it.
The 100% Guaranteed Potato Bug Solution
I particularly love the next story because it’s so much closer to home, and as scams go, this one, too, was a real beauty.
While growing up, I must have heard the story about the “guaranteed potato bug solution” a few dozen times.
My father was raised on an agricultural farm during the late 30s and early 40s. They had a large variety of crops, which included an assortment of fruits and vegetables. A nice selection of crops inevitably attracts the usual suspects. In this case, it was a hated and feared potato beetle. If you thought that the third and fourth plagues of gnats and flies that Moses, Pharaoh and the Egyptians suffered through were horrific, that was a mere nuisance compared to the voracious potato beetle!
A farmer could go to bed at dusk with a perfectly healthy crop and wake up to see his field stripped of leaves before breakfast. What makes the potato beetle so devastating is its proliferation and unmatched ability to develop resistance to virtually every chemical that’s been used against it.
Back then, the local fruit and vegetable distributor was the lifeblood of the community, for it was here that the neighbouring farmers would gather to purchase fertilizer, seed, and the necessary range of equipment from ladders to tractors. It was the perfect place to trade stories, tell hard luck tales, gossip and discuss methods of combating the potato scourge.
As the suggestions, laments and woes of impending doom were being lobbed about, one of the farmers noted a small advertisement in the Farmer’s Almanac. The ad claimed to have documented proof that it held a 100% guaranteed solution to killing the pesky potato beetle.
The ad said something to the effect that if you mailed $1.15 in either cash or a teller’s check to The Beetle Bug Solution at the address listed, you would be given the “secret weapon” that killed this scourge every time and without fail. It guaranteed that no potato beetle has ever, or could ever, survive this ingenious weapon. It was further promised that the solution would be mailed the very day your money arrived, and of course, this assurance was backed with an iron-clad money-back guarantee.
Well, there was immediate skepticism to such a claim, but as these things are prone to do, the offer proved irresistible. After all, as one farmer pointed out, “What do we have to lose? If it doesn’t work, we’re guaranteed our money back.” That line of logic seemed to hold up under the weight of analysis as the farmers went their various ways.
The following day the neighbourhood postman collected a satchel full of envelopes addressed to The Beetle Bug Solution. Well, it wasn’t two weeks later that the guaranteed solutions were delivered. When the anxious recipients tore open their packages, it was a sight to behold. There in the little brown envelope was the secret weapon; two small blocks of wood and the typed instructions for their exact use. The instructions were short, succinct, and elegantly simple to follow. They read:\]
To kill the potato beetle, place it on one of the blocks of wood, and before it can escape, smash down hard on it with the other block. It works every time!
As you can imagine, it took some time for the story to come out since no one wanted to admit they had been duped by such an obvious con. But eventually, such a beautiful swindle had to be accepted for what it was, and the locals had a good laugh at their own expense.
When someone suggested that ‘something ought to be done about this kind of larceny and that the lying cheat who sold this malarkey should be locked up for a thousand years,’ an old wag elegantly pointed out, “The ad, the materials and the instructions did exactly as they promised!”
That of course, brings us back to the beginning of this writing … the time, the place or the situation matters not — if it seems too good to be true … it is!
