Buzz
The 19th century saw the rise of a new kind of criminal—the confidence man. Today, more commonly known as a con artist, this individual’s method involves targeting a vulnerable victim (known as a 'mark' or 'sucker'), gaining their trust, and then swindling them out of their money or assets. When executed perfectly, the victim doesn’t even realize they’ve been deceived, parting with their wealth without a second thought.
Cons began as small-time schemes but evolved into more elaborate and intricate operations. The 'long con' can span days, weeks, or even years, involving entire teams of tricksters, props, and settings that could easily be mistaken for a theatrical production. This elaborate nature is likely why cons have become such a popular subject in pop culture. People tend to admire a well-executed con for its creativity and boldness—so long as they’re not the ones being taken advantage of.
These 10 con artists truly mastered the art of deception and became the textbook examples of how to pull off a successful scam.
10. William Thompson
William Thompson’s crimes weren’t exactly daring or flashy, but considering he was the first person ever referred to as a 'confidence man,' his actions hold historical significance.
Thompson was active in mid-19th-century New York City. With a refined appearance and a polite manner, he would approach wealthy strangers and initiate casual conversations, often pretending to be an old acquaintance.
After a few minutes of friendly conversation, Thompson would ask his target if they had enough confidence to lend him their watch until the next day. On other occasions, he would request a small loan, and surprisingly, many people agreed. The 'Confidence Man' would then walk away with their belongings while his victims sat in confusion, unsure of what had just happened.
Thompson was arrested in July 1849 after being reported by Thomas McDonald, one of his victims. Months earlier, The Confidence Man had approached McDonald in the street and, using his usual methods, had swindled him out of a gold lever watch valued at $110. When the two met again, McDonald notified a police officer, who apprehended Thompson despite his protests and attempts to resist arrest.
9. Oscar Hartzell
In 1915, Oscar Hartzell’s mother invested $6,500 in a fraudulent scheme. Along with many other Americans from the Midwest, she was convinced they could earn a fortune by suing the British government over the mismanaged estate of the famous 16th-century explorer Sir Francis Drake. The con initially targeted people with the last name Drake, convincing them they were descendants of the wealthy explorer. However, it became so successful that it expanded to anyone willing to invest.
Oscar Hartzell believed the scheme was genuine. The masterminds behind the scam, Sudie Whittaker and her lawyer Milo Lewis, even employed Hartzell as a recruiter to further the con.
It wasn’t until a few years later, during a trip to England, that Hartzell realized he was part of the scam. Eager to join in, he took advantage of the conflict between Lewis and Whittaker to seize control of the operation. The fraud continued for 15 years, during which Hartzell enjoyed a lavish lifestyle in London. It wasn’t until 1933 that a postal inspector finally uncovered the scheme, leading to Hartzell’s deportation to the United States.
Even though Hartzell was sentenced to 10 years, he managed to keep the scam running for another year with help from his brother. By the end of the operation, the con artist had swindled tens of thousands, earning $20,000 a month at the height of the fraud.
8. Hungry Joe
Joseph Lewis, also known as Hungry Joe, was a notorious swindler active in late 19th-century New York. His favorite con involved tempting wealthy victims into rigged games of bunco, a popular parlor game at the time. Lewis’s success in this con earned him the title of 'king of the Bunco Men.'
Hungry Joe earned his infamous reputation by swindling some high-profile individuals out of thousands of dollars. Among his notable victims were General John A. Logan, Judge Noah Davis of New York, and Charles Francis Adams, the son of John Quincy Adams.
His most notorious victim was Oscar Wilde. During the author’s U.S. tour in 1882, Lewis successfully conned him out of $5,000 in a game of bunco. Luckily for Wilde, he paid with a check, which he was able to cancel before it was cashed.
Although Lewis was already known to the authorities, his downfall came in 1885 when he attempted to swindle a British manufacturer, Joseph Ramsden. Lewis went through his usual routine, pretending to be a reputable businessman, earning Ramsden’s trust, and subtly pushing him into a game of bunco.
However, Ramsden hesitated. In a desperate move, Lewis simply took his money and fled. He was soon captured by the police, identified by Ramsden, and sentenced to four years in prison. Upon his release, Hungry Joe was convicted again for another scam and received another 10-year sentence.
7. Lord Gordon Gordon
The true identity of this swindler, along with his background, has been lost to time. A 19th-century British conman, he successfully posed as a nobleman and swindled people out of large sums of money.
His first known appearance in the criminal record was in 1868 when he attempted to claim a Scottish estate by posing as Lord Glencairn. After his deception was uncovered, he fled to America, having already tricked several banks, law firms, and a jeweler into believing his aristocratic background.
The swindler reappeared in Minnesota under the title of Lord Gordon Gordon, where he expressed particular interest in the emerging railway industry. As reported by Colonel J. Loomis, land commissioner for the Northern Pacific Railway, $45,000 of the railroad's funds were spent to court Lord Gordon, believing that he would invest millions in return.
In 1872, Lord Gordon traveled to New York, where he set his sights on his most significant target—Jay Gould, a wealthy and ruthless businessman of the Gilded Age. He convinced Gould that he controlled 60,000 shares of the Erie Railway.
Gould attempted to bribe Lord Gordon with approximately $1 million in stock and $200,000 in cash to secure control over the Erie Railway by assigning directors to the board. However, it took him two weeks to realize that he had been duped. Gould sued, but by that time, Gordon had already cashed in his stock and fled to Canada.
Gould's efforts to have Lord Gordon extradited were unsuccessful, and he even resorted to attempting to kidnap the swindler. Just as Gordon seemed to be escaping justice, in 1874, he was identified as Lord Glencairn by Marshall & Sons, the Edinburgh jeweler he had swindled out of £25,000. Rather than face deportation, Gordon threw a farewell party in Manitoba before taking his own life.
6. Henri Lemoine
If you search 'how to make diamonds' on Google, you'll find many so-called 'foolproof' methods that promise to teach you how to create diamonds at home. However, this scam dates back over a century to the time of French con artist Henri Lemoine.
In 1905, Lemoine claimed to have discovered a way to turn coal into diamonds and managed to secure a meeting with high-level De Beers executives, including Sir Julius Wernher. The demonstration took place in Lemoine's laboratory in Paris.
To prove his honesty, the inventor stripped off his clothes to show the audience that he wasn’t concealing any diamonds. He then placed coal and some undisclosed chemicals in a crucible and heated it in a furnace. After cooling, he sifted through the mixture to reveal 20 small diamonds. Lemoine managed to repeat the process successfully, convincing his patrons of his method.
Wernher, convinced by Lemoine’s demonstration, agreed to pay him a sum of money to keep his method secret, with the option to purchase it later. Additionally, Wernher offered to fund Lemoine’s ongoing research. According to an article in Le Figaro, Wernher paid the inventor more than 1.5 million francs over the next three years. Other investors, including writer Marcel Proust, also contributed funds.
In 1908, a Parisian jeweler exposed the fact that they had sold diamonds to Lemoine, leading to his indictment for fraud. He was unable to replicate his diamond-making process in court and fled the country before sentencing. The incident was later immortalized by Proust in The Lemoine Affair.
5. Lou Blonger
Born in 1849 in Vermont, Lou Blonger enlisted in the Union Army at just 14 years old. After the Civil War, he reunited with his older brother, Sam. Together, they ventured across the American frontier, trying their hand at prospecting, gambling, and various swindles.
By the late 1880s, the Blonger brothers had established themselves in Denver, where they opened several saloons and gambling halls, which thrived on the tourists who often fell victim to their scams, losing every cent they had.
The Blonger brothers found great success, and as their wealth grew, so did their ambitions. They began investing in mining claims, bribing local police and politicians, and even picking a fight with infamous Wild West con artist Soapy Smith, whom they eventually forced out of town.
The Blonger brothers became the unquestioned rulers of Denver’s criminal world, a reign they held onto for decades until Sam's death in 1914. Their gang earned the notorious title of the “Million-Dollar Bunco Ring.”
Blonger ran several offices across the town that looked like legitimate stock exchanges or betting parlors. His associates tricked wealthy marks into gambling on “sure things,” such as insider stock tips or rigged horse races. Unsurprisingly, they lost every single time.
Some of Blonger's victims never realized they had been duped and left town with nothing. Others, however, went to the authorities. The police tipped Blonger off, giving him the opportunity to clear out his offices and make the victim appear to be either a liar or madman.
4. William Elmer Mead
William Elmer Mead was a peculiar figure in the grifter world. Raised in a strict fundamentalist household, he refrained from drinking, smoking, or swearing, and attended church on Sundays. His pious behavior earned him the nickname “The Christian Kid,” but it didn’t stop him from swindling over $2 million from unsuspecting marks during his 40-year career.
Mead was the mastermind behind the magic wallet scam, a well-known con where the mark and the con artist find a wallet filled with money or important papers that belong to an accomplice. After returning the lost item to its owner, the grateful individual presents the benefactor with a lucrative, one-of-a-kind investment opportunity.
In 1910, as Halley’s Comet was making its way to Earth, The Christian Kid elevated the magic wallet scam to new heights. His target was a wealthy contractor.
The scam began as usual. Mead and his mark found the wallet. After returning it to its rightful owner, who was in fact Mead’s accomplice, the grateful owner took them out for lunch. Presenting himself as a sports promoter, he soon proposed an intriguing idea: why not lease his stadiums to the contractor during the off-season? The stadiums could be packed with people eager to see Halley’s Comet.
Naturally, Mead, playing the role of a neutral third party, endorsed the idea with enthusiasm. Eventually, Mead and his confederate walked away with a check worth thousands of dollars. He successfully repeated this scam several times before Halley’s Comet passed.
3. Victor Lustig
Victor Lustig gained notoriety as 'the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice.' Not only did he fool the French, but he also managed to con Al Capone and escape unscathed. One of his recurring scams involved selling a small, seemingly useless box for tens of thousands of dollars. During his trial, a Secret Service agent famously referred to him as 'the smoothest con man that ever lived.'
Lustig's origins are as elusive as his cons. According to interviews conducted while he was in prison, he claimed to have been born in Hostinne, Austria-Hungary in 1890, to a poor family. However, no records could be found to verify this, making it just as credible as any of the other stories he told.
He began his criminal career with smaller scams before moving to the high seas, working aboard ocean liners between Europe and America. It was on these ships that he first executed the 'money box' scam. Lustig sold a small mechanical box that allegedly replicated $100 bills using radium. The box only dispensed a few real bills before it ceased working altogether, making it a worthless contraption.
In Paris, Lustig posed as a government official selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal. He orchestrated a secret meeting with several metal dealers, presenting such a convincing act that the highest bidder handed over money for both the tower and a bribe. Lustig managed to repeat the scam, but the second victim alerted the authorities, causing Lustig to flee France.
In America, Lustig ran a counterfeiting operation that produced fake $100 bills so realistic that they tricked even bank tellers. The government feared that his counterfeit currency would undermine the public’s trust in the U.S. dollar. Arrested in 1935, Lustig briefly escaped, but was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison at Alcatraz.
2. Reed Waddell
Reed 'Kid' Waddell was born into a comfortable family in Springfield, Illinois, but he didn’t appear to be the type for a life of crime. However, his growing gambling addiction led his family to sever ties with him by the time he reached his early twenties.
Waddell moved to New York City in 1880, where he became involved in the green goods game. This scam involved the distribution of secretive leaflets promoting the sale of 'perfect' counterfeit bills. Targeted primarily at gamblers seeking to use fake currency for wagers or to hide previous losses, the marks never received their money and were unable to turn to the authorities for help.
Reed Waddell is credited with creating the gold brick scam, which allegedly earned him over $250,000. He would take a block of lead, plate it with gold, and shape it into a bar. The details made it convincing—official stamps, markings, and even a plug of real gold inserted in the middle, which he would later remove and offer to have authenticated by a jeweler.
Kid Waddell would sell his fake gold bars for thousands of dollars, mainly to affluent farmers who believed their investments would grow two or three times over.
In his later years, Waddell formed a partnership with another swindler, Tom O’Brien. By the 1890s, the duo had moved their operation to Paris, where, in 1895, a financial dispute led to O’Brien fatally shooting Waddell.
1. John St. John Long
History has seen its share of notorious quacks, and one of the most successful was John St. John Long. Born in Ireland in 1798, Long initially studied art but soon realized that fraud in the medical field would be far more profitable.
In 1826, John St. John Long claimed to have discovered a cure for tuberculosis (then called consumption). His treatment consisted of two secretive chemicals—one inhaled as a vapor and the other applied topically to the chest and back. The lotion, containing turpentine, would create painful sores, supposedly helping the lung infection to surface and leave the body.
Aside from his medical claims, Long was both attractive and charismatic, which helped him establish a prosperous practice on London’s renowned Harley Street. However, in 1830, he faced a trial over the death of one of his patients. He was found guilty of manslaughter, though he was only fined £250, which he paid immediately. Yet, just a month later, another patient died—but this time, Long was acquitted.
By then, the medical community had turned against the so-called 'Handsome Hoaxer of Harley Street.' Despite this, Long maintained connections with influential figures in London’s high society. He passed away in 1834, possibly from a riding accident, although a more dramatic story suggests he succumbed to tuberculosis after rejecting his own treatment.
