What do you think of this fact?
You can’t buy the Eiffel Tower. We know that today. A Parisian scrap dealer apparently didn’t know it in 1925, and Victor Lustig knew how to use that.
A news story as a business plan
In May 1925, Lustig, a con man who liked to call himself “Count”, read an article in a Paris newspaper: the Eiffel Tower was in poor shape and expensive to maintain. To Lustig, that sounded like an opportunity.
He had stationery forged that identified him as a senior official at the ministry of posts and telegraphs. Then he invited scrap dealers to a confidential meeting at a hotel. According to Mental Floss, there were five of them. His story: the government wanted to tear down the tower and sell off the metal, all top secret, of course, to avoid a public uproar.
Too embarrassing for the police
The winning bid went to a dealer named André Poisson. He paid, and on top of that he paid Lustig a bribe to make sure the deal went through. Then Lustig was gone, off to Austria.
And Poisson? He didn’t go to the police. He was too embarrassed that he had fallen for such a trick.
Lustig waited and read the papers. When no story about the fraud appeared, he went back to Paris and ran the same scam again, this time on other scrap dealers. This time the victim did go to the police, the story hit the press, and Lustig fled to the United States.
Bonus fact: In the US, Lustig was later arrested for counterfeiting. The man who sold the Eiffel Tower was eventually tripped up by fake dollar bills.
Lustig sold France’s most famous landmark twice without ever owning it. The tower didn’t even notice.