The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.

 Victor Lustig is known as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower, and he sold it not once, but twice. During his long criminal career, the jazz era, America and the rest of the world were shaken by his fast - rich - plans to become rich. 

    

He even duped Al Capone, who never knew he was being cheated, and even his own father. Victor's most famous scam was when he tried to fleece his former employer, the New York City Police Department (NYPD), for $10 million. It was also when Victor put his ex - his wife, his wife's husband, and his brother - in the dock to fleece him out of a $1 million loan from the US Department of Justice (DOJ). He is also the man responsible for one of history's most infamous robberies - the murder of John F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington, D.C. 

    

His fortune included syphilitic sausages and gangster Al Capone, but also his own father, brother-in-law and even his wife's husband. 

    

Apart from that, the most important thing he brought from university life was that he was fluent in at least five languages, so he decided to drop out. He did so to make cheating his career, though he never went into detail at the time. It was not a life outside the confines of society, but he took advantage of it, even if he had to do it in secret. 

    

He was sent to Alcatraz, where he served as Al Capone's decoy for 12 years before dying and being buried in a shared grave. This was the beginning of the end for a man the New York Times described as "E. Phillips Oppenheim's figure in flesh and blood," a popular English writer best known for "The Great Incarnation." 

When Victor died of pneumonia in 1947, he was listed on his death certificate as a "salesman," but by then he was transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison in New York City. For Count Victor Lustig there was no return to the nobility in Austria, which was destroyed by the First World War. 

    

Taking advantage of this, Lustig settled into his hotel room and forged a plan for his next big scam: a $10,000-a-month deal with a New York dealer. The good news was that Victor could return to Paris and do exactly the same trick for another group of dealers. Because the scam worked so well the first time, Victor Lustigs decided to try again six months later. 

    

Lustig secured $70,000 and was on his way back to Austria in less than an hour. After the successful sale of the Eiffel Tower, Ludwig set off for Vienna, but only when Lustig had completed his next big business. 

    

Capone was so impressed by Victor Lustig's honesty in returning the money that he agreed to pay him a $1,000 reward, which was exactly what he expected. Capone returned the money to him, but only after the reward was worth $5,000 - which Funstigs wanted in the first place. He was confident the notorious fraudster would play him straight and insisted that Victor keep the $1,500. But what would have happened to the money if there had been a double cross, what if the murderous Capones had given all that money away? 

    

When Lustig informed Capone that the gangster had not lost all the money, he offered the fraudster $5,000 to cover his losses at no time or at no cost. Victor decided that Andre Poisson was the lightest player in the lot, so he told him he would spend the rest. He might not have made the highest bid, but in fact they needed a little more money and had to entertain an important client for a luxury. So Victor guaranteed the contract, on the condition that Mr. Poissons could add that bit more cushion, and decided he might as well. 

    

He decided to truancy the city for a few days and simply took the train to Vienna with a suitcase full of francs. Victor Lustig promised to visit the sheriff and inspect the box, but offered to return his money and written instructions. Andre Poissons, also known as Dan Collins, the owner of the Vienna Poisson Hotel, hastily took a train from Vienna in a suitcase full of cash. Lustigs, born in 1890 in Austria-Hungary, spoke several languages and when he decided to see the world, he thought of making money by packing ocean giants with wealthy travelers. 

    

The bond was genuine, raising the question of how Victor got to the value of $32,000. One of the most important lessons we can learn from Victor Lustig is that we may not want to cheat as much as he does in our daily lives. In general, he relied on more subtle means to deceive us, but he also taught us that sometimes we need to make our arguments. 

    

For Details Watch: https://youtu.be/jMMDtM11ZYM



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