“There’s as sucker born every minute.”

-Attributed to P.T. Barnum

To begin with “Count” Victor Lustig wasn’t a real Count. He was a con man. And he is likely the king of all confidence men. From selling the Eiffel Tower to swindling Al Capone, no one could top his exploits. His most famous most used con was his money-printing machine.

Victor Lustig was born in Czechoslovakia in 1890 to a respectable family. He was well educated and leaned to speak many languages. After leaving school, he spent time in prison for petty crimes in several European countries. Jail became his “finishing” school. Later, he worked for a syndicate of gamblers and got caught holding out on them. In 1920, with the gang hot on his trail, he fled to America.

In America, he needed money and he devised his plan to sell the Eiffel Tower. He printed some fake French government stationery. On this, he wrote a letter to leading American scrap metal dealers. He invited them to a “top secret” meeting in a leading hotel. Once there, he told them the famous Paris landmark was in such bad shape that the French government had decided to take it down. Legitimate newspaper articles indeed told of the dilapidated condition of the structure. The story seemed real.

Of course the French people would object to loosing the Eiffel Tower. The government’s plan was that when the story broke, lucrative bids would have been secured for the metal. This would soften the blow on the people. No money was needed now, just bids. The dealers were not at risk.

One leading dealer was especially interested and the “Count” singled him out for special attention. Lustig complained of his poor salary as a French bureaucrat and the dealer correctly understood it was a request for a bribe. He presented Lustig with a thick bundle of money and was, in return, promised the bid. Back in Europe, Victor was surprised to learn the scrap dealer was too afraid or embarrassed to go to the police.

He tried the same scam again in France, but this time he was turned into the police. He had to flee back to America. He then turned to security fraud. Rather than picking on the public, he set his sights to swindle mobsters like Legs Diamond, Big Bill Dwyer, and Nicky Arnstein. Like his other victims, the gangsters were ashamed to have been taken by Lustig and did nothing to him.

Pushing his luck, he went after Al Capone. Capone knew him as a swindler and Lustig made a deal to bring Capone into his next scam. If Capone would lend Victor $50,000, it would be doubled in 60 days. Capone agreed, but warned his crooked partner what would happen if he didn’t get his money back. Lustig put the money in a safe deposit box and went into hiding.

After 60 days, he emerged and went “repentantly” back to Capone with apologies for not doubling the money. With Capone about to explode in anger, Lustig produced the entire amount of the loan and handed it to the astonished mob boss asking for forgiveness for his failure. This turn of events caught Capone off guard. He assumed that Lustig was really telling the truth. He pulled off five thousand-dollar bills and said, “You must be down on your luck. I take care of guys who play square with me.” Lustig walked out with $5,000 and Capone never suspected he had been scammed!

The Count’s next adventure was his money-printing machine. It worked like this; if you placed a $100 bill in the machine and waited six hours the machine would reproduce a new bill with scrambled serial numbers. It was nothing more than a box with some distracting mechanics and a hidden compartment for the “reproduced” bill to stay until needed.

With this machine “he could produce $400 a day!” But, as he would tell his victim, he needed more money right away and he might be willing to part with the machine for the right price. He pulled this caper a number of times. Sometimes he would get as much as $50,000 for his machine.

One well-known madam bought the machine and after two unsuccessful attempts realized she had been taken. Lustig had a 12-hour head start and it took a while for the lady’s muscle men to find him. He promptly repaid the $10,000 he had taken from her and then “sweet talked” her into buying $15,000 in worthless securities.

His next caper, in 1935, involved “real counterfeiting” of US currency. He was caught and while awaiting trial in federal detention he fashioned a rope out of bed sheets and escaped out of a restroom window. On his way down to the street, he noticed that lunchtime pedestrians were watching him. He began to go through the motions of cleaning windows and cleaned the windows on each floor until he hit the street.

Once on the street, he took off running. Someone approached the guard at the front of the building and said, “Did you know your window washer just ran away?” He stayed on the run for a while, but was finally caught and sentenced to prison for counterfeiting and his escape. He died in prison in 1947.