Case file #4
EIFFEL
Filed under fraud, 1920s.
- Era
- 1920s (1925)
- Date
- Spring 1925
- Status
- Closed
Spoilers ahead
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In 1925, "Count" Victor Lustig forged credentials as a Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs and invited scrap dealers to bid, confidentially, on dismantling the Eiffel Tower, then genuinely unpopular and expensive to maintain. Dealer André Poisson paid for the tower and a bribe to seal the deal, then stayed silent out of embarrassment, allowing Lustig to attempt the con again. Lustig later ran the "Rumanian money box" scheme across America and a major counterfeiting operation, escaped the Federal Detention Headquarters in Manhattan on knotted bedsheets in 1935, and died in federal custody in 1947 at the prison medical center in Springfield, Missouri, after years on Alcatraz.