The Eiffel Tower for Sale - $100,000
In 1925, Victor Lustig, a Czech con artist read in the newspaper that the Eiffel Tower needed a major repair, this gave him an idea of a scam that could potentially make him a millionaire, and thus he set sail for Paris.
Victor posted as “Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Mail and Telegraphs,” and organizes a face to face meeting with six or the largest scrap metal dealers in the country, the scam? He told the dealers that the French government ran out of money repairing the Eiffel Tower and decided to tear it down, those with the highest bid for the tower would salvage the metal parts from Eiffel Tower.
The plot thickens when Lustig pulled one of the men aside and told him that for a $100,000 bribe, he would award him the contract. The dealer went back to his office, got the money and gave it to Lustig, he then fled to Vienna.
Lustig manage to con a second person using the same trick again when he is in France, he was able to do so because the first victim did not report it to the police and when the second victim reported the scam, Lustig had already fled to America and live a rich and prosper life as a con artist.
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