Description :

Victor Lustig

Victor Lustig or “The man who sold Eiffel tower twice” is a notorious fraudster who scammed almost everyone he met. He started his scamming career in his late teens. He conned the foreign travelers in the port of France as a music composer in need of investment for his unreal theatre in Broadway. He then happened to see the news about the high maintenance cost of Eiffel tower which caused the government a great headache and were in thought of selling it. Victor grasped this opportunity and executed his best ever scam of selling the Eiffel tower to some of the best construction firms of France. Later, ‘he invented a new gadget for scamming namely, Rumanian box or money box’.

  He scammed many wealthy individuals by selling this Rumanian box to them, which “Xeroxes the money inserted into it”; and it became a successful scam where he swindled loads of many from many rich people and individuals, including a police officer. He later planned big to crash the American economy in the year1935, where he printed his own money also called as ‘Lustig money’ and circulated those to the foreigners for every month, for five years. This fraud became a failure as he was captured in the year 1937 for his crimes. He was sentenced to 20 years of prison and he later died of pneumonia.