You're never too young to rip someone off. Whereas most teenagers draw the line at nicking the odd fiver out of their mum's purse, 17 year-old Adam Barraclough was recently done for a fraud operation worth thousands of pounds a month. The cheeky scamp duped a number of big businesses into believing he ran an airline, as part of a business portfolio worth over four billion. The teen even had a range of different aliases, so as to keep one step ahead of the law. The kid was a professional for God's sake.
Barraclough is hardly the first to pull off the odd scam though. Take a look at our rogue's gallery of the greatest con-artists of all time. He's got a way to go before he troubles these boys, but he's on the right lines....
William Thompson – Mid 1840s
The term ‘confidence man’ actually comes from Thompson, due to his appearance as a refined gentleman – a factor that was instrumental in gaining the confidence of the ‘mark’ (the person being duped). Relying on his victim’s assumption that he was an old acquaintance they couldn’t quite place, he would exchange pleasantries, then ask, ‘Have you the confidence to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?’ Once the watch was handed over he would make his escape, leaving the mark bemused, presumably believing that the whole event must be a joke. After Thompson’s arrest, The New York Herald dubbed him ‘The Confidence Man’.
Ben Marks – 1860s
Ben Marks pioneered what was to become the blueprint for all big con games in the years to come. Starting his career as a confidence man on the street, he played marks at ‘Find the Lady’, a now-familiar short con that encourages people to see if they can pick the Queen from three cards, all dealt face down. The dealer would use a ‘shill’ (a man posing as a member of the public) then bet and win, luring in potential marks. Although this early con was adept at parting suckers from their cash, it was still not developed enough to turn an adequate profit. It was then that Marks had the idea to open a business as a front and to let the marks come to him: this technique would become known as the ‘big store’. The store window would be filled with a variety of desirable items all priced at to attract punters, but once they were inside, Marks would draw the victims’ attention away from the merchandise and toward one of the several games of ‘Find the Lady’ that were already in progress.
Phillip Arnold & John Slack – 1870s
These two Kentucky prospectors were responsible for the great diamond hoax of 1872. Claiming to have found uncut diamonds at their mine, the pair took ,000 from a local financer and travelled to Europe. It was here that they invested in some poor quality jewels, which they scattered around the site in a bid to fool potential marks. The ruse worked and the two men attracted a host of investors, including Tiffany’s, who bought a 0,000 stake in the mine. It was only after a geologist discovered partially polished stones that they were busted. Arnold settled out of court, while Slack was rumoured to have disappeared to Mexico.
Charlie and Frederick Gondorf – Early 1900s
Brothers Charlie and Fred Gondorf were such prolific conmen that they inspired the 1973 film, The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Amongst other scams, the brothers practised a version of the ‘big store’ known as the ‘wire’. Charlie would gain the trust of the mark, convincing him that, through a corrupt Western Union official, he could prolong the gap between the time a race had run and the time the results were announced, giving the mark enough time to place a bet after the race had finished. To make it more convincing, the men would set up a fake Western Union office and fake bookmakers. Charlie Gondorf has been noted as one of the best inside men when playing the big store, and is thought to have taken the biggest known score of the time: 5,000. In 1915 Charlie was caught and sent to jail. A year later his brother Frederick was arrested after he was found guilty of taking ,400 in a wire scam. The two Brothers were released in the mid-1920s, and continued to run cons despite being in their 60s.
George C. Parker – 1920s
Parker’s silver tongue and unflinching temerity helped him to sell a number of New York landmarks to unassuming tourists. Like many other confidence men, he used his own version of the big store cons by setting up fake offices. It was from these locations that he started selling people fake motorway and bridge tolls, as well as the Museum of Modern Art, The Statue of Liberty and Madison Square Gardens – and he sold Brooklyn Bridge to tourists up to twice a week for many years. During one of his most audacious scams, Parker would pose as the grandson of American Civil War General, Ulysses S. Grant, to sell Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park, Manhattan.
Charles Ponzi – 1920s
The Italian Ponzi arrived in America in 1903, and was to become notorious for the most famous scam of all, The Ponzi Scheme. The scheme would offer investors high short-term returns, ideal for luring in new marks. Existing investors (earlier marks) would then be paid off with the cash gained from the new investors. During the inevitably collapse of the scheme, Ponzi charmed the media and investors. He paid million out after an angry mob gathered outside his office, although he still managed to placate many with free coffee and doughnuts, sending them away with nothing but the belief that their ‘investments’ were still in tact. When questioned about the returns available, Ponzi assured the press that there was ‘Mountains of money available to pay all claims. All the boys and girls have to do is drop in and get it’. By 1920, the year of his arrest, he had made around .29 million in today’s money, although his liabilities were estimated at million. After his arrest, bankruptcy proceedings revealed that he never made any profit on the millions of dollars that he handled, and by 1948 died penniless.
Frank Abagnale Jr Late 1960s
Between the age of 16 and 21, Frank Abagnale wrote over .5 million dollars’ worth of bad cheques across every American state and 26 countries worldwide. It was during this time he also posed as an airline pilot, an attorney, a college professor and a paediatrician. His exploits were the subject of the 2002 Spielberg film, Catch Me If You Can. He is now associated with, amongst other organizations, the FBI, where he is recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on forgery and embezzlement.
Robert Hendy-Freegard - 2000
Sheffield’s Hendy-Freegard, known as ‘The Puppet Master’, posed as a secret service agent, not only to extort money, but to gain power and influence over his victims. He is known to have seduced at least five women with promises of marriage, some of which were subjected to torture. His victims, both male and female, included a psychologist, a solicitor and a company director. Many would be given loyalty tests, which involved a host of bizarre demands. One victim was ordered to travel to Manchester to buy a tin opener from a specified shop, and then to London where he was told to read the Gay Times openly on a train, all under the guise of being tested by the secret service. After his arrest, many of his victims initially refused to speak to the police, still believing that this was another loyalty test. He was convicted during 2005 of 20 offences of theft, deception and ‘kidnapping by fraud’, with the latter charge eventually being dropped.
Louis J Pearlman – 2007
The former N-SYNC and Backstreet Boys manager was imprisoned for 25 years during 2008 after running a Ponzi scheme which conned 1,400 investors out of an estimated 7 million, causing the American media to compare him Mel Brook's fictional Broadway Producer, Max Bialystock. During his trial the judge revealed court letters from Pearlman’s victims which included his family, friends and the elderly. For every million dollars returned to investors the judge agreed to reduce his sentence by 1 month. Previously to this, Pearlman had been sued by N-SYNC, the Backstreet Boys and Aaron Carter. Even more terrifying, it was during this time that court papers revealed that Pearlman had legally made himself the 6th member of the Backstreet Boys.
Bernard Madoff – 2008
During December 2008, this former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was dubbed ‘The man who conned the world’ after allegedly pulling off what federal officials described this as ‘the world’s largest Ponzi scheme’. In a ruse that fooled everyone from billionaire businessmen to struggling charities, Madoff managed to swipe an estimated billion. His current victims include such high profile celebrities as director Stephen Spielberg, and most recently Kevin Bacon and his actress wife Kyra Sedgwick. He was recently jailed for a maximum of 150 years. Ouch.
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