Railey Savage - A Century of Swindles: Ponzi Schemes, Con Men, and Fraudsters

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The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright 2021 by Railey Jane Savage

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Names: Savage, Railey Jane, author.

Title: A century of swindles : Ponzi schemes, con men, and fraudsters / Railey Jane Savage.

Description: Lanham, MD : Lyons Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021020482 (print) | LCCN 2021020483 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493053681 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781493053698 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Swindlers and swindlingUnited StatesHistory. | FraudUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC HV6695 .S28 2021 (print) | LCC HV6695 (ebook) | DDC 364.16/30973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020482

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020483

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/ NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Chuck
the real McCoy

Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

CARL SAGAN, THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD:
SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK

Shut up and take my money!

PHILIP J. FRY, EVERYMAN, FUTURAMA

Dear Reader:

The conspirators in the following pages were all guilty and, for the most part, received generous helpings of their just desserts. The crimes are fascinating and, once upon a time, diverting. I wrote the majority of this book in 2020 while under COVID-19 lockdown and was glad for the distraction from the world around me. But as I became more familiar with the scammers modes and methods, the distraction faded; for all the reports of pain and suffering these baddies were inflicting, their overarching response was, Dont believe the press. The swindlers true enemy is information, and by undermining the Fourth Estate they are better able to direct the narrative and, therefore, interrupt the flow of objective information. When there is no longer a consensus on fact then the border abutting fiction becomes increasingly fuzzy. This is dangerous territory.

The dogged journalism that helped unmask each of the confidence tricksters in the following pages was not the end of the story, by any meansthe victims still had to admit to being bamboozled, which was no small featbut the louder the con men cried to ignore the pesky reporters, the hollower their words became. I remember being a young girl and hanging out in the kitchen where an aging boombox constantly blared NPR. The late great Cokie Roberts told a story of New York Times reporter Charles Mohr covering the Goldwater campaign in 1964 when a woman ran from the rally with frantic tears in her eyes shouting, Stop them! Stop those reporters! Theyre writing down every word hes saying! I let out a short, sharp laugh when I heard this because it was so absurd, so backward. But the tearful woman was not alone and probably not even malicious in her intent. I have thought of this story many times since I first heard it in the 1990s. When truth is devalued and rejected, the architects of fiction prevail.

I have only examined con artists working in Americathe Land of Opportunityand only those working the pre-internet era (18501950). I saved myself from wading into the opaque waters of email scams and modern-day catfishing, but I have passed judgment on the characters in these chapters and have developed fully formed, 2020-based opinions of them. However, their stories do not require editorializing but, rather, retelling. I have kept myself out of these narratives because you, dear readers, can reach your own conclusions based on the evidence before you. Worry not, though, for the writing is energetic and colorful, but the facts are there. The haunting echoes of these long cons still ring today, which made writing this ... challenging. To ignore and reject history only imperils the future, and the 2020 present was proof. Of course, I hope that readers will not look through the wrong end of the telescope herethis is not an instructional manualbut instead, I hope you come away from these stories with a renewed appreciation for The Truth.

Railey Jane Savage

THE REVEREND SIMPSON LIVED QUIETLY AT HIS RECTORY OF THE FREE Church Manse in Forfarshire, Scotland. The mid-nineteenth century was bucolic but hard in rural Britain. The landed gentry had their estates, and the clergy had their housing, but class mobility was rare and always hard-fought. In the summer of 1868, an affable young man leased a small plot for shooting and quickly became friendly with Rev. Simpson, his neighbor. This pleasant neighborto all appearances a gentlemanwas familiarly known as Hamilton. And, as Simpson described, There was much surmising as to who he was, but as he paid his bills punctually, lived quietly and had the manners of a gentleman, no one could find anything against his character or conduct. Hamilton went away but returned the following season as Lord Glencairn, (well call him GG) and sought an introduction to those who could help elevate his furnishings and dress to match his recently elevated bearing. Rev. Simpson obliged and took him to a jewelry firm in Edinburgh, Marshall & Sons, of which Simpson was a regular client. And though Simpson had been curious about the apparently upstanding young man, as he continued to behave in a gentlemanly way and had friends from England with him who were men of standing and respectability, and especially as he was certified to be a man of rank and wealth by his lawyers, a well-known firm in Lincolns Inn, I was willing to think the best of him, and at least to wait until he discovered himself before I judged him.

Simpsons attitude was representative of nearly all those who came to know GG; there was no real reason to question claims that the man never explicitly made; he never claimed to be a lord but never balked when others presumed. Presumption, assumption, and inference were his currency, and in this way, GG was wealthy beyond measure.