Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/01/5-most-evil-con-artists-in-history-their-shocking-scams-revealed.html
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What, no skyscraper with the name “MADOFF” emblazoned in gold on it? Amateur!
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And they all got caught-losers!
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An interesting list, to be sure, yet isn’t there one notable “most evil con artist in history” left out?
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Why doesn’t the list include any of the CEOs behind companies that gave us the subprime mortgage crisis that resulted in a global financial crisis? There was plenty of con artistry going on there.
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“Most evil”? Really? Given the countless con artists who took people’s life savings or their homes, sold fake medicine that resulted in (many) people’s deaths, etc., most of the people don’t seem to have done anything to warrant inclusion. Billy McFarland as a financial scammer seems like incredibly small potatoes compared even to the others on the list, much less the framing as one of the top 5 evil con artists. Most interesting? Most famous? Neither seems accurate. Is the framing for this “AI” generated, or is it just an attempt at radical clickbait because “Here’s Five Semi-Random Con Artists” didn’t work as a post title?
The Anthony Gignac story, though:
“He ordered pork”
I’m sorry, how does someone doing such an incredibly sloppy impersonation manage to be that successful up until that point? People are weirdly, inconsistently credulous who seem to want to believe certain things that aren’t true.
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It’s still playing out.
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“He ordered pork”I’m sorry, how does someone doing such an incredibly sloppy impersonation manage to be that successful up until that point? People are weirdly, inconsistently credulous who seem to want to believe certain things that aren’t true.
And how easy it would have been to get past that “tell.” He could have just said, “let this be our secret” or some such thing. I’ve had pork with several Jews and, many years ago, got hammered with a Muslim. Some stray, some outright pick the rules they want to follow and ignore the rest.
What did this guy do? Did he fall to the ground crying, “ya, got me! I’m a fraud.”
Odd. Very odd.
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If your talking about evil con-artists you need to mention Gregor McGregor. Who who as part of his real estate scheme shipped 250 people to a fake country in the Mosquito Coast and abandoned them to die of malaria.
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Because most of them are still at it at some of the larger banks, like Wells Fargo, PMC, and other mortgage companies after buying their way out of prison time. /snark
I would have rather seen Sam Bankman-Fried on that list, just due to the sheer size of the fraud, but even then, that wasn’t evil, per se.
And to +1 @OhHai 's reply, that one is still playing out, and the stakes are pretty much democracy as we know it. VOTE, PEOPLE. (Preferably for someone who’s not actively trying to make himself a king.)
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See princess Caraboo:
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“Radical Clickbait” is the name of my Meme-based Polka Band. #wehavetobeseentobebelieved
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Is this what BoingBoing is now? Hyperbolically-titled listicles?
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No love for the Catch Me If You Can guy, Frank W. Abagnale?
Jordan Belfort, from Wolf Of Wall Street?
Leo is making a career playing con artists!
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Yeah, there’s a whole “stealing the most from rich people” list which doesn’t even overlap with the “most evil” list.
Yeah exactly, reading between the lines, the problem doesn’t seem to be that he did it so much that he didn’t even realize he had broken character. That’s how sloppy it was.
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The Ponzi story I always find fascinating, and somehow a little less evil. Most of these folks knew they were running scams, but when I read more about Ponzi it seems he didn’t initially understand that he was running a con, he really thought he could make money exchanging these postal coupons. Then the size of the endeavor got away from him and he needed boatloads of coupons to make it work. At that point he was fucked and realized it but kept going under the sad hope that maybe he could somehow turn it into a legitimate investment firm.
