91: Victor Lustig

Kathryn (00:10)

I even like what's my name? Who knows? Okay.

Gina (00:13)

Ha ha ha

Kathryn (00:15)

Hello. Welcome to I Scream You Scream. We're your weekly scoop of the most chilling histories, mysteries, and paranormal perplexities. My name is Kathryn.

Gina (00:24)

I'm Gina.

Kathryn (00:25)

And for the month of August, we are telling absolutely outrageous stories while we eat outrageous ice cream. If you already know us, welcome back. And if you want more from us each month, go on over and join us on Patreon. This episode is sponsored by Clobear Money Coach. If you're ready to start investing but unsure how to get started, visit getlazynow.com. But until then, we're drinking coffee. Sorry, no ice cream.

Grab a cup and take a sip because it's 7:30 in the morning for me, so I can't be eating ice cream. what would that be? Our outrageous flavor is that there's no flavor. We'll catch you next time.

Gina (01:06)

Literally think thinking outside the box for sure.

Kathryn (01:09)

Yes, no ice cream for me today.

Gina (01:10)

Like though. Cozy morning edition.

Kathryn (01:12)

I make an Americano every morning because.

We have an espresso machine, and there's not enough room on the counter for a faster coffee maker. but that broke, so I'm rocking the French press. And I really thought of just bringing the whole carafe up here and just drinking straight from that. No, there's no time. Yeah.

Gina (01:33)

Not even pouring it into a mug. Just stick a wacky straw in there.

Kathryn (01:39)

I did not though. I do have a mug of

Gina (01:42)

Aww and that's my favorite mug of yours. Maybe today, Satan. It's a great mug.

Kathryn (01:46)

Everyone loves this mug. This is I haven't I haven't

had it in a while because it's too big for the size of the Americanos I make. I've been using my tiny

Gina (01:53)

Mm

Kathryn (01:54)

ones. So that is a silver lining of having a broken coffee maker. Is I get to use my favorite mugs again.

Gina (02:02)

That is nice. I have my favorite mug today too. The one my sister got me. That sa I like it because

Kathryn (02:03)

Yes. that's pretty. I

Gina (02:07)

when I hold it it just looks like a yellow mug. But when I turn it around, it says, I'm a ray of fucking sunshine. I love this mug.

Kathryn (02:13)

Yes, yes.

I did just think it was a yellow mug. I was like, huh, that's interesting that I don't peg you

Gina (02:19)

Mm.

Kathryn (02:19)

as like a favorite mug is plain type of girl.

Gina (02:24)

no, no, not at all. I thought you were gonna

say Peggy was like a yellow mug person, and I was like, is that a type of person?

Kathryn (02:29)

Well that too.

I mean I yeah, I don't know.

never like I've never seen you wear yellow. And I know that doesn't mean you don't like yellow, but in my head there's a connection, which doesn't really make sense because I have very few purple clothes and that's my favorite color.

Gina (02:46)

I don't I'm not a yellow person. I don't really like yellow.

Kathryn (02:48)

Yeah.

Gina (02:49)

I don't wear it. I d but this mug I love, so I use this mug. This specific yellow is okay. Yeah, this is the one time I'll use it.

Kathryn (02:52)

It's different. I was gonna say it's this is the one.

I thought it was the cornbread gift, but I'm remembering now that that's that candle. Is that what is that the thing back in the background? Yeah. Okay. Yes.

Gina (03:04)

Yep, I have it right here.

I'm gonna give it a sniff.

Kathryn (03:07)

Yeah. I'm so jealous that I'm never you can't burn it down before I come see you 'cause I need

Gina (03:13)

I won't.

Kathryn (03:14)

to smell it. I guess I could just go to Trader Joe's,

Gina (03:16)

Ha ha ha.

Kathryn (03:17)

but it's not the same.

Gina (03:20)

When you come over for my wedding I'll plan a specific day where we can smell my cornbread candle and talk about it. actually, wait.

Kathryn (03:26)

Cornbread day that'd be so much fun.

Gina (03:30)

Cornbread themed bachelorette? Yes? That's a thing.

Kathryn (03:33)

I think we have to.

Gina (03:35)

It's just cornbread. It's just us eating cornbread drunk.

Kathryn (03:37)

It's just cornbread.

Well we have to now. It's it's out there in the world now, so this is happening.

Gina (03:43)

All

Kathryn (03:47)

Do you wanna tell me a story?

Gina (03:49)

I do want to tell you a story.

Kathryn (03:51)

Okay, good.

Gina (03:53)

Today I have an outrageous story about an outrageous con man. He is someone the Milwaukee Journal

once described as a real-life storybook character. Someone

Kathryn (04:06)

my gosh.

Gina (04:06)

who spent decades using deception, disguise, and charm to trick the wealthy out of their money. But he is most famously known.

As the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice.

Kathryn (04:21)

my god.

Gina (04:22)

Yeah. His name, or at least his most well known alias, was Victor Lustig, one of the most infamous con men of all time. How do you feel about conmen? Con artists, Kathryn

Kathryn (04:35)

Okay,

it's so funny that you asked me that because we've never talked about it and I was thinking of this

Gina (04:39)

No, we haven't.

Kathryn (04:40)

yesterday. I'm gonna be honest, I kinda hate con men only because of current events. I you know,

Gina (04:51)

Mm, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (04:53)

love a con woman.

Gina (04:56)

Yes, more representation, please.

Kathryn (04:59)

but I do I know that you love them and I know that you love fun stories about con men. And I think I just don't think I know a lot of fun stories about con men who are like not actively hurting entire communities of people. So that's my

Gina (05:16)

Okay. Okay, okay.

Kathryn (05:20)

like I'm not a big fan, but I have a a skewed pr perception.

Gina (05:26)

Okay, I think

that is fair. And I think like that's

Kathryn (05:28)

Yeah.

Gina (05:28)

the view prob probably a lot of people have. It's like

Kathryn (05:31)

Yeah.

Gina (05:32)

con men, interesting, don't ever want to be conned though. So it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally get that.

Kathryn (05:36)

Yeah, yes. Mm-hmm.

Gina (05:39)

I I do love stories about con men, as long as I am not

Kathryn (05:42)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (05:42)

being hurt by what they're doing. mainly

Kathryn (05:45)

Yeah.

Gina (05:45)

because I think the skills necessary to be a long term and successful con artist are very specific and very interesting. Like how you develop

That tool set I find really cool. And to speak to your point

Kathryn (05:57)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (05:58)

about you know, damaging entire communities, I think you might feel comfortable enjoying parts of this story because Victor Lustig's

Kathryn (06:05)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (06:05)

whole MO is that he preys on the wealthy who can afford to lose money.

Kathryn (06:10)

Love that. That was another thing I was gonna say and I don't know how put it into words other than like love a a Robin Hood type con man. Love those types of stories, but

Gina (06:18)

Mm, yes. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kathryn (06:21)

I just don't know a lot of them.

Gina (06:23)

Yeah, well, hopefully today will be one. I will say he's not Robin Hoodie in that like he doesn't

Kathryn (06:27)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (06:28)

redistribute the wealth. He

Kathryn (06:30)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (06:31)

just keeps it for himself. But at least he takes it from the people at the top. So there's there's something there that's nice.

Kathryn (06:35)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Gina (06:37)

he was kind of a genius when it came to running confidence scams. We'll get into this a little while later, but Victor Lustig winds up being the guy who literally wrote the rules on how to con people. He wrote the ten commandments of

Conning, which I'll read to you in a little bit. But the skills

Kathryn (06:54)

cool.

Gina (06:55)

that he used to do it started showing up very, very early in his life. Or at least we think they did. There's not a whole lot from his early life that we can be sure about because his whole thing was that he was excellent at lying, and a lot of this information comes from him. So, grains of salt, at the ready, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the boy who would become Victor Lustig.

was born on the 4th of July in 1890 in modern day Czech Republic. Back then it was Bohemia. He was the middle of three children. And as Victor was growing up, he, along with everyone else in the house, experienced a lot of abuse at the hands of his father. Which is perhaps why, at the age of twelve, Victor ran away from home and he took to just like traipsing around

Europe living on the streets and surviving off of whatever food he could find. And he would later claim that this is when his life of crime began. The story goes that one night in 1903, he was in Budapest looking for food, and he wound up right by a very fancy hotel right on the Danube River. He looked up and he saw a couple sitting on the balcony of their hotel room.

The woman was this like stunningly gorgeous young woman. She was wearing this beautiful golden gown and she was with an older, very refined looking gentleman. And the couple were ordering room service. Victor would later say, I saw the waiter come to take their order, and my mouth began to water because all I'd had to eat for three weeks had come out of garbage cans. So he's like looking up at these, like, wow, like amazing. Imagine living that kind of life.

He kept watching this couple. He saw their food arrive. And it looked beautiful and delicious, and there was just so much food there. And then before the couple even touched the food, he saw the older man give some money to the woman. She was a sex worker. And they left all of this food on the table while they went off to go have sex. And Victor was just in complete shock that they had left all of this food right on the table. And so he claimed that.

Later that night, that he decided that anyone who could afford to leave plates of food while others starved did not deserve to keep their fortunes. And so it was at the age of twelve slash thirteen that he decided to dedicate his life to the pursuit of, according to him, cash and beautiful women. Yep.

Kathryn (09:32)

I mean fair, honestly.

Gina (09:37)

Now, whether or not that's a true story, of course, we don't know, but it certainly fits with what we were talking about earlier with his MO.

Kathryn (09:44)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (09:44)

He started pretty much exclusively preying on people who he thought could afford to lose some money and still be completely fine. He started pickpocketing, burglarizing, and he worked particularly hard at sleight of hand. It's said that he became a phenomenal.

Card sharp. A lot of his early cons were basically like rigged card games. And he was so good at this, it's said that he could make a deck of cards do anything but talk. That's how quick he was with his hands and how artful.

Kathryn (10:15)

Yeah.

Gina (10:15)

A card sharp is another thing that I absolutely love. I think they're so cool.

Kathryn (10:19)

You know, every time you say you love something, it's like right after I'm thinking, I could see you doing that. You would be a great con man. And I intentionally say con man. Just

Gina (10:32)

Ha ha ha ha.

Kathryn (10:33)

like that vibe. Just like yep.

Gina (10:35)

I'm just picturing myself in a bowler hat with like the Groucho

marks, like mask.

Kathryn (10:40)

Yes. That's

literally what's in my head right now. That's your first con.

Gina (10:51)

okay, yes. da carts. So he starts writing all these cons. like little small time, not even really cons yet, more so like petty crime, petty little scams. And unsurprisingly, this is when he started having issues with law enforcement. In his late teens, he spent a few months imprisoned in Prague for theft. In November that year, he was arrested in Switzerland on charges of false pretenses.

And the following April, he was arrested in Vienna this period in his life is basically just like characterized by a string of arrests in a lot of different places across Europe and him always managing to get out of it somehow. Either by serving like a really short sentence or talking his way out of it because he was incredibly charming, or also by just like straight up running.

He would do that a lot, and he got really, really good at evading capture by police. When he was 19, he moved to Paris. And he did actually start a semester at the Sorbonne there because he was a very, very smart kid. By this point in his life, he already knew multiple languages. I want to say he knew five by this point. and he was just incredibly witty, very, very fast, very sharp-minded. So he gave it the old college try. But

University didn't really last long because he was much more interested in things like poker and bridge and billiards. This is when he started to develop something of a gambling addiction. And so he dropped out of the Sorbonne after a little while, and he instead refocused on what was truly important to him, which was crime and hot women. The last one did not end very well for him all the time. While he was in Paris, he got what would come to be a very characteristic scar.

On the side of his face. It was a two and a half inch long scar on his left cheekbone. And according to him, he got it because he was conning some dude during a card game or something, and the dude's girlfriend was right there. And Victor started flirting with the girlfriend, and the boyfriend got so angry that he took his wine glass, snapped the stem, and then slashed Victor across the face.

I know. It's very French revenge, isn't it?

Kathryn (13:04)

Yeah, the specifically the wine glass.

Gina (13:07)

And

then he took his baguette and he beat him with it.

Kathryn (13:10)

Yeah.

Gina (13:13)

But again, we don't know whether or not that is actually how he got that scar. He would also at points claim that he got it in a duel of honor. So who's to say? But that is the most popular version of that story. After an incident like that, he decided that he had had enough of Paris, and he started looking for something more exciting and more lucrative.

Now, around this time is when pleasure cruises started getting really, really big. Think like Titanic era, like luxury cross-ocean cruise situation. And Victor saw these things growing in popularity. And he thought to himself, hmm, cruise ships are kind of just a holding pen for rich people. So I bet I can make a bunch of money by conning this literal captive audience.

On a cruise. They'll have nowhere to go. I can corner them and get their money. And he was right. He started popping up on these really fancy ocean liners sailing between France and New York City. And he started off pulling some pretty basic cons. One of his go-tos was he would pretend to be this big Broadway show producer, he would get people to invest money in a show that didn't actually exist. And of course, they wouldn't find that out until they were already off the boat.

And by that point, Victor was already on his way back across the ocean. So the cruises made some really good money for Victor, but they also gave him the opportunity to spend a lot of time learning from the wealthy elite, including a fellow con man named Nicky Arnstein. The two met by complete chance on one of the cruises, and by this point, Nicky was a very well-established con artist. He was kind of like a gentleman con artist.

and Victor was like this little scrappy up-and-comer. And Nicky immediately like saw through what Victor was trying to convey himself as. He saw that he was actually a con man. And so Nicky kind of took little Victor under his wing. And he wound up becoming instrumental in Victor's development as a con artist. Nicky taught Victor essential rules such as always let the sucker suggest the game.

And the whole concept of when you're conning someone, the best con is something that makes your mark desperate to give you money. It should always seem like it's their idea to give you the money. It should never come from you. But he also taught Victor a lot about how to fit in with polite society. What to wear, when to wear what, how to speak, how to hold yourself, and how to be mysterious without being off-putting.

He gave him like I picture it in my romanticized version of this as like the glow-up montage of Victor's life. Yep. Yes. Yeah. And that's

Kathryn (15:59)

Yeah. I'm imagining like the makeover sequence in a movie. Yeah.

Gina (16:04)

pretty much what it was, because he started emulating Nicky with all of a sudden he had he was wearing all these really fine clothes and he was styling his

Kathryn (16:11)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (16:12)

hair in a very genteel way. And

he started approaching his cons with a level of refinement that he had been missing before. And that of course led to greater success, because people trust you if they think that you are but another fellow rich person. It was all starting to come together for Victor, and then World War One started. And suddenly pleasure cruises were not really a thing anymore. And that really threw a wrench into Victor's plans.

He needed a new hunting ground. And so when he was 28 years old, he decided to move to America, where he adopted what is now his most famous alias, Count Victor Lustig, a political exile from the Balkans who had lost his castle to revolutionaries. He would spin this yarn over and over again to tons of different people. And it was genius because the story made the rich people trust him because they thought he was an aristocrat.

But also Americans didn't really know enough about the Balkans to question him. And so it was the perfect mix of credible without being questionable. He really nailed it. And he started conning his way across the country using this and other aliases.

I think total he had like 47 aliases that he would use at various points.

Kathryn (17:27)

Wow, that's a lot.

Gina (17:29)

He was a very organized guy.

Kathryn (17:30)

Yeah. I couldn't

Gina (17:31)

That's right.

Kathryn (17:31)

keep all that straight.

Gina (17:33)

I forget how old I am all the time. Like I'm lucky

Kathryn (17:35)

my god, me too. Me too.

Gina (17:39)

I was born in a year that ends with five because it's very easy to do the math.

Kathryn (17:42)

That's how I feel. I mine ends

in zero and my mom's ends in five. So I've always known how old we are. My brother and my dad, forget it. No clue. Yeah.

Gina (17:50)

No idea. No idea.

Mm-hmm. Yep. So maybe I would not be a great con artist. But we can practice together.

Kathryn (17:57)

No,

you would be that's the thing. Yeah, you just need to practice. I would not be a good one. I'll be the getaway car. That's what I've always said. I'd be a great getaway car.

Gina (18:05)

Yeah, I think you would have great ideas.

You're a great ideas guy.

Kathryn (18:10)

I am. Thank you. People don't like saying that because they think it's an insult, but I love it. It's like my main personality trait.

Gina (18:17)

I don't really

understand the whole viewing it as an insult thing because the world but like not to be cheesy, but the world runs on ideas. Like we need idea ideas

Kathryn (18:24)

Yeah.

Gina (18:24)

are important.

Kathryn (18:25)

It's because of capitalism. Sorry to go there. But it's because

like it insinuates that I have no follow-through. Which guess what guys? I don't. And I'm okay with that. Like I don't. It's fine. I'm like a beginning

Gina (18:40)

Ha ha ha.

Kathryn (18:41)

of the plan kinda girly, and then someone else can wrap it up and punctuate it at the end.

Gina (18:46)

Ha ha.

Mm, I think you're

an essential part of the process, and I think we shouldn't measure ourselves

Kathryn (18:53)

Thank you.

Gina (18:54)

by our physical output.

Kathryn (18:56)

Thank you. I agree.

Gina (18:57)

And also, did you know that in the UK follow through means shitting yourself? I didn't. And I said it at work all the time and no one told me.

Kathryn (19:07)

Wait, that's a way dude, the

number of things that you will like come to me and be like, Hey, did you know that this means this here? And I'm like, no, how'd you find that out? It's always work. You always that's so funny.

Gina (19:21)

Yeah, because I would tell people I'm really good at following

through, like I have a lot of follow through and it turns out I've just been saying I shit myself.

Yeah.

Kathryn (19:37)

funniest ones. Yeah, no, that's great.

See, but it's why we work well together. You do have a lot of follow-through. Like the American version. Yes.

Gina (19:44)

We do. Thank you. I have a lot of American follow through, yes.

Kathryn (19:51)

That's great. Wow. Thank you s from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for telling me that. I don't think you told me that one. God. Truly. I'll keep this with me until nightfall.

Gina (19:56)

Yeah, well, good morning, you know, welcome to the day.

So Victor is conning

Kathryn (20:05)

Okay.

Gina (20:05)

his way all around America. And eventually he found his way to Kansas City, where he met a woman named Roberta Norrit. She was a classic small-town beauty, and she came from a pretty impoverished background.

In fact, she was almost forced into child labor after her father died, because this was in the era where we would basically turn kids into slaves. But she managed to escape that somehow. And so by the time Victor met her, she was kind of just like scraping by, dreaming of this big wide world that she would never be able to afford to see, when in swoops Count Victor Lustig.

And he tells her that she's beautiful, she's brilliant, he wants to take her far away from here. He'll give her a wonderful life full of riches if only she comes with him. And so it's very understandable why she said yes.

And to his credit, like he was very true to his word. After a brief courtship,

Kathryn (21:05)

wow.

Gina (21:06)

he whisked her away to Paris, started buying her the finest dresses, lavishing her with love and affection, and on November 3rd, 1919, the two were married. At some point,

We believe he came clean to her about how he made his money and like the fact that he wasn't actually at count, but we also think that she just kind of chose to look past it. Kind of like

Kathryn (21:29)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (21:30)

it reminded me a bit of like a breaking bad Skylar White situation,

Kathryn (21:34)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (21:35)

except instead of meth it was diamonds. So it's a little bit more palatable, you know. A little

Kathryn (21:39)

Yeah.

Gina (21:40)

bit more glamorous. Overall, they were happy together, and on February thirteenth, nineteen twenty two,

They welcomed a little girl named Betty Jean.

Kathryn (21:50)

Cute, what a cute name. my god, Betty Jean, that's so cute.

Gina (21:51)

I know. Yeah. I

know. Yeah. It it like it does by all accounts, it seems like Victor really was an extremely doting father. He loved Betty Jean to the ends of the earth and beyond. But out in the world, no one really knew that Victor had a wife and a kid because he didn't want

Kathryn (22:11)

Hm.

Gina (22:12)

them to know. Both because his wife and daughter could get very seriously hurt if an angry Mark found out about them.

But also because he was a man of the twentieth century, and having a wife and a kid got in the way of his charming aristocratic image. Like I don't wanna give the illusion that he was monogamous or feminist in any way, because he wasn't. But in so far as he was willing to be a family man, he was a family man. You know what I mean?

Kathryn (22:43)

yeah, for sure. This is the I feel like we haven't talked about this in a while in any of our episodes, but this is the perfect example of we gotta alter our expectations based on the time frame. Like what was family

Gina (22:58)

Mm. Yeah.

Kathryn (23:00)

man in nineteen ninety is very much not the same as what it is in twenty twenty six.

Gina (23:06)

Yeah.

Like back then his primary role was to be like the bank. Like he was the one who brought all the money into the family. And like he did

Kathryn (23:12)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gina (23:16)

do lots of other things for his daughter to keep her safe. Like he taught her Morse code at a very young age. so

Kathryn (23:23)

my god, fun.

Gina (23:24)

yeah, so that way if she ever needed to communicate with him, or if they were ever confronted by like a cop and they were in a situation where

Kathryn (23:31)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (23:31)

they couldn't speak freely, he could just tap on her and say, like, don't talk.

or I'll take care of it or something like that. He he also sent her to the best schools, bought her the best clothes, that

Kathryn (23:41)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (23:41)

kind of thing. Yeah, all that stuff. And with his growing family came a growing need for money. And so he started getting bolder and bolder with his cons. In May nineteen twenty two, he was in Springfield, Missouri, and he learned about a ranch property that had recently been repossessed. So he went to the bank,

And he introduced himself as Robert Duval, the president of North American Chemists Incorporated from New York City. Yep.

Kathryn (24:11)

Wow.

Gina (24:13)

And he really went the whole nine arts to make himself seem like this big, rich, important businessman. He

was smoking a gold tipped cigarette, he was wearing diamond cufflinks, just trying to exude I have money and I want to spend it.

he said that he wanted to buy this ranch property so that he could build a factory on it. There were a few days of back and forth with the bank until eventually Victor offered $22,000 for the land. Now the property was worthless. The bank manager knew that, but he accepted the offer anyway. And Victor was like, okay, excellent. I will give you $50,000 in liberty bonds for it. Because, according to him, that was the smallest quote bill.

He had was a 50K Liberty Bond.

Kathryn (24:58)

Of course.

Gina (24:58)

Of course. So the deal was that Victor would hand over the Liberty Bonds, which was worth 50K, way more than he agreed to pay for the property, and the bank would give him cash in change. So bank keeps the liberty bonds, Victor keeps the cash, yes. No! Victor faked a heart attack, and he used the ensuing panic to take both the cash and the liberty bonds and book it.

Kathryn (25:24)

my god. Wait, he's such a good con man.

Gina (25:25)

Yep,

He's an ama he was so goddamn good at this. Like prodigious. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (25:30)

Yeah. 'Cause the first con would have been enough. Yeah.

That's wild.

Gina (25:37)

Yeah, yeah. And for Victor, it seems like it was just as much about the money as it was the thrill of knowing he could get away with it. Because over time he gets bolder and bigger and more ostentatious with what he does. Because I think he just genuinely loved it. And he loved

knowing that he could get away with these things. And in this specific case, this is a really good example of him kind of doing a little bit of mental gymnastics to justify his actions.

Because of the whole the property that he was trying to buy was worthless, but the bank was trying to sell it to him anyway, to Victor, according to his daughter, who later like wrote about this, to Victor that was like, All right, well you're trying to screw me over so I don't feel bad about conning you. This is how it comes into play.

Kathryn (26:18)

yeah.

Okay, yeah. I didn't I forgot about that aspect of it. Okay, yeah, that

Gina (26:25)

Mm.

Kathryn (26:25)

makes sense.

Gina (26:26)

And also with banks, too, the money was fully insured, and so Victor didn't he was fine about it because the bank

Kathryn (26:31)

Mm.

Gina (26:31)

was gonna get their money back anyway. But Victor knew that this kind of con was not a reliable way to get money consistently. It's a pretty high-profile con to commit, the likelihood of banks going to the law was really, really high, and there's only so much property for sale. So he needed a con that he could run over and over again.

That was lucrative, repeatable, and low risk. And thus the Romanian box scam was born.

Victor started telling his victims that he had a machine that could duplicate any currency they put into it.

It was supposed to be something that made the perfect counterfeit, something that could never be caught by the banks. And so he essentially promised his marks the ability to print limitless money.

Kathryn (28:21)

classic. I'm like

Gina (28:22)

huh.

Kathryn (28:23)

I'm just bracing myself for where this is going.

Gina (28:28)

It's a very elaborate scam that he pulled together. And it wasn't the first of its kind. People have been claiming to have, you know, something that can print money since money and printing existed, really. But he made

Kathryn (28:40)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (28:40)

it much easier to believe, both in the story he told about the box, but also the actual mechanism, which we'll talk about in a second. and I do want to speak to the fact that like

This 100% sounds too good to be true. So, like, how the hell did anyone get tricked into believing this? It's because he had an amazing backstory to explain why he had this box in his possession. to summarize it, he would say that this box was actually created by the German government during the war, but the Germans never actually had a chance to use it. And Victor's aristocratic family was tasked.

With keeping it safe. It sounds much more convincing in the way that like he would say it. That was a very brief overview. but it would rely on so

Kathryn (29:25)

I believe you.

Gina (29:26)

it would yeah, it it it relies on that whole like what's the thing where people are more likely to trust an authority figure because he's

Kathryn (29:32)

Yeah.

Gina (29:32)

leveraging like the German government. He's talking about the scientists

Kathryn (29:35)

Mm.

Gina (29:35)

that made it, he's ta you know, people bought it very often. The only catch

He would tell his marks, is that the box took hours to print the counterfeit. As little as six hours and as many as eighteen. Which is a very long time to wait. And it also kind of threw people off the scent of it being a con. Because what kind of con artist would spend 18 hours with their victim? Usually you want things to be as efficient as possible so you can keep the mark distracted. But that wasn't the case this time.

And to further convince his marks, Victor would offer to give them a demonstration of how the box worked. He had had a cabinet maker craft this big wooden box for him, picture like one of those old tiny traveling trunks. That's kind of what it looked like. It was very beautiful.

Kathryn (30:23)

Okay.

Gina (30:24)

And it had two slots on the side. One slot to put in a piece of currency, and then the other slot to put in a piece of blank currency paper that the counterfeit would be printed on.

The box also had a bunch of these, like very impressive looking levers and buttons and fancy cranks and things, and none of them did anything. He only had them added to make the box look super legit, but they were still, they were there, and they looked very real. Victor would start the demonstration by inserting a real $100 bill.

and a blank sheet of currency paper into the box and then he would play around with the various like levers and buttons and handles and things. And then he and his mark would wait together for hours for the machine to work. Eventually Victor would turn a crank and a perfect duplicate of the original bill would come out of the other end. Victor would retrieve the original bill as well and therefore he would appear to have doubled the money. And if the mark questioned

Okay, well if I bring this to a bank, are they gonna know it's a counterfeit? Victor would give them both bills and say, go on over to a bank, go ask a teller to authenticate these bills, and they'll tell you that they're real. And the mark would. They would go to banks together and bank tellers would look at the original and the counterfeit and they would say, Yeah, these are both legit bills that you can use. What the mark didn't know is that Victor had planted a duplicate of the bill into the box ahead of time. Nothing was actually being printed.

And so the bank teller authenticated both bills because they were both real bills. The box didn't actually print anything. Once the mark was convinced, Victor would sell the box to them for tons of money, sometimes as little as $10,000, sometimes as much as $100,000. And this was in like the 1920s. This is an incr staggering amount of money that he pulled in from this. And once

Kathryn (32:11)

my god, yeah, holy crap. Wow.

Gina (32:18)

the purchase was done,

Victor would get out of town as fast as he could. And because of the way he had designed the con, he built himself in hours and hours of time to escape because they would

Kathryn (32:28)

Mm.

Gina (32:29)

the mark would have to wait six to eighteen hours for the box to work again. And so that's the amount of time Victor would have to get away without them realizing, this box doesn't actually work. Eventually they would realize that they had been conned, but by that point, there wasn't anything they could do. They couldn't go to the cops.

Because they would have to admit to the cops that they were trying to make counterfeit money.

Kathryn (32:53)

Wow, this is a great guy.

Gina (32:56)

He's so

good at it, yeah. and by this point as well, Victor was excellent at picking who to con.

He had a knack for who would fall for this kind of thing. He had taken everything that he had learned while he was living on the streets, all of the like sleight of hand stuff, plus all of the wealthy elite confidence tricks that Nicky had taught him on the cruises, plus an affinity for disguise, because

Victor literally carried around with him a trunk full of disguises, so he could turn into anyone at any time. That

Kathryn (33:27)

This is great. This is man, you would be such a great con artist.

Gina (33:31)

is such a compliment. Thank you so much.

Kathryn (33:33)

I'm imagining you with like a little trunk with like socks falling out of

it.

Gina (33:39)

My

stack of fake mustaches, leaving a trail behind me. But he took all of this knowledge that he had gained over decades and he distilled it into his legendary Ten Commandments for Con Men, which was a list of rules to follow when running scams. So I'm gonna give you the list of ten things.

Kathryn (34:00)

Ooh, okay.

Gina (34:02)

Number one, be a patient listener. It is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups.

Number two, never look bored. Three, wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them. Four, let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones. Five, hint at sex talk, but don't follow it up unless the other person shows a strong interest. Six, never discuss illness unless some special concern is shown. Seven.

Never pry into a person's personal circumstances. They will tell you all eventually. Eight, never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious. Side note, in some places where these rules are written, there's a little comment in brackets that was like, this is not necessarily true in the United States. Because people in the US brag a

Kathryn (34:58)

Yeah, that's fair.

Gina (35:00)

lot. 9. Never be untidy. And 10.

Never get drunk.

Kathryn (35:07)

Yeah, I could not ever be a con artist ever. I don't think there was a single role in there that I would like successfully be able to accomplish.

Gina (35:16)

Ha ha.

Kathryn (35:20)

Not a single one.

Gina (35:20)

See, that's we had such

opposite 'cause when I read this list I was like, that sounds a lot like dating.

Kathryn (35:29)

This is just what I do in public.

Gina (35:33)

feel like I do have to say that is a joke. Tom does know who I am.

Kathryn (35:38)

that's so funny. I mean, honestly,

Gina (35:40)

yeah.

Kathryn (35:41)

it kind of does like early dating, I will say. Like that whole like

Gina (35:44)

Barrier like first day.

Kathryn (35:47)

one to five date period where no one's like comfortable being themselves yet.

yeah. Yeah.

Gina (35:53)

And to be fair, like

we don't know for sure when he wrote these or even if he's the one who wrote these, but they're often attributed to

Kathryn (35:58)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Gina (36:00)

him, and it's way too fun of a thing for me to not say. I love it so much. Now

Kathryn (36:04)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (36:06)

at some point during this particular phase of Victor's life, he started cheating on his wife. He was probably cheating on her the entire time, to be honest, but we know for sure that he was cheating at this point.

Because one of the people that he tried to sell this magical money box to was named Billie Mae Schneibel. And she was a brothel owner and a madam who did very, very well for herself. She was very wealthy. And when Victor pulled the

box, the money box con on her, she tracked him down to a completely different city, to a specific hotel room, and then confronted him about it.

No one had ever managed to do this before, to track him down so effectively. And Victor was so impressed by this that he gave all of her money back and the two became lovers and partners in crime for the rest of his criminal career.

Kathryn (36:59)

my god.

Gina (37:00)

Uh-huh.

Kathryn (37:01)

When did this happen? What year would this have been?

Gina (37:03)

This would have been

nine early nineteen twenties before nineteen twenty five.

Kathryn (37:09)

it's like pre Bonnie and Clyde.

I want a follow up episode on her. I want to know more about Billy Mae.

Gina (37:16)

She's interesting.

She's interesting. And she does come back. And there's a lot about her that

Kathryn (37:20)

Okay.

Gina (37:20)

we're not gonna have a whole ton of time to get into. But one thing I find really interesting about her, and one of the reasons why they worked so well together as partners in crime, is Victor would later say that there was no one more talented on Earth at picking out a mark than a madam at a brothel. They make their money

Kathryn (37:39)

I believe that.

Gina (37:40)

knowing who it is easy to like con and get money from.

Kathryn (37:42)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (37:43)

And so they had this kind of like symbiotic relationship where he would go to brothels all the time, not to hook up with prostitutes, but to find men to con. And Billy would like point these guys out to him. You know what I mean? And so it was like she got money

Kathryn (37:58)

Yeah.

Gina (37:58)

because the dudes were at the brothel, and then he got money because he was conning them. And it was this-I don't know, very interesting. She's a very powerful character, and we won't have as much time as I'd like to talk about her, but she's freaking scary. And she was

insanely

Kathryn (38:12)

Mm.

Gina (38:13)

wealthy. This chick had so much money for a woman in the twenties. It was insane.

Kathryn (38:17)

Yeah, women with money in that era and other eras around then, just like I always have so many questions.

Gina (38:26)

yeah. Same. but yes, they became lovers, and with this new infatuation taking up so much of his time, Roberta kind of fell by the wayside. She was lonely, she was neglected, and in nineteen twenty five she actually filed for divorce and married another guy. But within a year, Roberta divorced the other dude and remarried Victor.

Kathryn (38:50)

What?

Gina (38:51)

Yeah, very dramatic.

Kathryn (38:52)

The fuck? Roberta?

Gina (38:55)

No. Well, their relationship is described as one where they both kind of had like a gravitational pull towards each other. Like

Kathryn (39:04)

Mm.

Gina (39:05)

Roberto was so angry at him, but she still loved him, you know? And like he kept screwing her

Kathryn (39:10)

I get that.

Gina (39:11)

over, but he still loved her. And I don't know, it was a very toxic marriage relationship.

Kathryn (39:18)

I need to know everyone's zodiac signs.

Gina (39:22)

I don't know Robert well, I didn't at the

Kathryn (39:23)

I'm curious.

Gina (39:24)

fr Okay, okay. I'll find out.

Kathryn (39:26)

Wait, so w

when was Victor's birthday? Did you say it? that's right. No,

Gina (39:30)

It was the fourth of July. Is that Leo? Is that Leo by that point? Or is that cancer?

Kathryn (39:34)

that's cancer.

Surprising.

Gina (39:37)

He also could have lied about the day because it this is another interesting fact about Victor.

Kathryn (39:40)

Yeah, that's true.

Gina (39:44)

there's no we know that he existed because we have all these stories about him and we you know, there's records of his adult life. There's no

Kathryn (39:51)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (39:51)

evidence that he was ever actually born. Like we don't know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so we could have lied about his birthday.

Kathryn (39:55)

Hmm, interesting. I guess yeah, that time

period is muddy. if he wasn't rich. You know.

Gina (40:05)

Yeah, and

the area that he lived in too. I mean, those records would have had to have survived two world wars, which is tricky.

Kathryn (40:10)

True. Yeah.

Okay, that's fair. Wow.

Gina (40:13)

Yeah.

Kathryn (40:14)

I wanna I'm trying to guess what Billy is.

Gina (40:17)

She gives me Gemini energy.

Kathryn (40:19)

I was gonna say Sag. Sagittarius. Yeah. I could see

Gina (40:21)

Ooh, okay, okay, I could see that. I could see that. Yeah.

Kathryn (40:24)

Gemini too.

Gina (40:25)

About Roberta.

Kathryn (40:26)

Man, I don't know. I was gonna say I hate to say it, but I definitely am getting Libra from Roberta. Like I would get that. Yeah.

Gina (40:27)

I'm getting air signs from all of these. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Yeah.

Yep. Well Yeah, anyway, I have nothing else to say about

Kathryn (40:45)

Yeah, please continue. That was such a tangent.

Gina (40:46)

Because

Victor immediately abandons both women and he goes to Paris. He still has relationships with them. He just like fucks off overseas for a while.

he goes to Paris, he's kind of starts like lounging around the city. He knew that he wanted to go to Paris to pull a con, but he didn't know what yet. He was just gonna kinda let the city speak to him. And he was sitting at a cafe one day.

When he just so happened to see a newspaper article about how maintaining the Eiffel Tower was becoming a massive pain in the ass. By this point, the Eiffel Tower was about 35, 36 years old, and it was left over from the

1889 World's Fair in Paris. And this is really weird to think about, but a lot of Parisians, and specifically the art community in Paris, hated the Eiffel Tower.

Like they were very, very

Kathryn (41:39)

I f

Gina (41:39)

against it.

Kathryn (41:40)

I feel like that's still true. I feel like if you talk to a French person about the Eiffel Tower, they're like, ugh.

Gina (41:47)

I've never talked to a French person about the Eiffel Tower.

Kathryn (41:50)

Yeah,

I've seen well now it's because of like the light it's just like a tourist destination. You

Gina (41:54)

Yeah, that's fair.

Kathryn (41:55)

know, they're just like, Ugh, that's not real Paris. You have to go to la la la for real Paris. Yeah.

Gina (42:00)

Yeah. And that's what

a lot of them were saying back then too, because it was this

Kathryn (42:04)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (42:05)

kind I mean, it it's all made of metal, and so it was seen as this like gross in like glorification art piece of the industrial revolution and it was, I don't know compared to, the stunning architect like the Bellepoque

Kathryn (42:19)

Yeah.

Gina (42:20)

Paris.

you know, that kind of thing. It was night and day artistically, like in how it looks. So I do kind of get it.

Kathryn (42:25)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (42:25)

It's just weird to think about it as someone who has the the Eiffel Tower is beautiful. You know, that's just what you always think.

Kathryn (42:32)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (42:34)

so anyway, this this newspaper article was this editorial about how Eiffel Tower sucks. A lot of people think it's an eyesore, not worth the money of in maintenance, blah blah blah. And it gave Victor a light bulb moment. And after a bit of prep work

He rented a suite at a very fancy hotel, and he invited a group of scrap metal dealers to a super secret meeting there. These scrap metal dealers, you know, all these businessmen show up, and Victor introduced himself as the Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. So someone who would have had enough power to run meetings like this, but not necessarily someone whose name you would know.

And he said that the French government had decided to sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap. And that as a group of reputable scrap metal dealers, they were each invited to bid on the medal, basically. Like how much will you pay us for us to give you the medal from the Eiffel Tower? And he launched into this big, long, apparently very, very good speech about the whole thing. And as Victor was talking, he was watching all of the businessmen in the room.

To see who would make the best mark. He was studying their reactions, their body language, keeping in mind what he knew about each of the men's backgrounds and their current challenges in business. And he decided that one of the men, a guy named Andre Poisson, would be the perfect victim. Andre had a lot of money, but he was new money, so he had something to prove, and he desperately wanted to improve his profile as a businessman in Paris.

And how better to do that than be the man who bought the Eiffel Tower. So Victor invited Andre to a meeting. After the men submitted their bids, Victor was like, okay, Andre, you and me have a special little secret meeting now. And he told Andre, in fancier words, hey, if you really want the Eiffel Tower, I'm open to bribes. Like you can bribe me for it and I'll probably accept it. And Andre very much

Kathryn (44:40)

That's wild.

Gina (44:41)

did want.

The Eiffel Tower. And so he handed over 70,000 francs to Victor. Now, today, based on my math, that would be well over a million dollars, almost one and a half million dollars. And to my British friends, that would be almost a million pounds. Victor t

Kathryn (44:58)

Jesus.

Gina (44:59)

yeah. Victor took the bribe money and ran. And for weeks he hid out in Austria.

Keeping an eye on the newspapers, just waiting for some kind of like, Andre Poisson, prestigious businessman, con, blah blah blah, you know, manhunt, yeah. Nothing. Radio silence from Paris. Because Victor had rightly assumed that Andre would be way too embarrassed to go to the police and admit

Kathryn (45:26)

Mm.

Gina (45:27)

that he'd made a bad business deal. I know! Crazy!

Kathryn (45:29)

My God, God, that's what sorry. I just like

That's something that this is gonna feel like a stretch, but bear with me. Phil and I were watching a true crime documentary last night, and just one of the detectives I was just so incredibly impressed with because he was just noticing things that when like you see the footage again, you can see it, but I would never in a

Trillion years. And I'm good at knowing when people are lying to me, I think, relatively. But like that's such a unique skill to like be able to discern people's, you know, motives and the way they'll react and like blah blah blah blah blah. That I'm just like, God, how do you learn that? That's so cool.

Gina (46:17)

I know, and it speaks to like just how good, like I know I keep saying it, but he was so

Kathryn (46:21)

Yeah.

Gina (46:22)

it's why he's considered the greatest con man of all time, because he could get away with things like this. Yeah. So later

Kathryn (46:25)

I can definitely see that. Yeah. Wild.

Gina (46:29)

that year, Victor returned to Paris and he performed the same exact con all over again. He did the whole thing again. This

Kathryn (46:37)

God.

Gina (46:38)

time he did not do a great job picking his mark, though.

Kathryn (46:42)

Mm.

Gina (46:42)

The mark asked a few too many questions, got

A little bit too close to figuring out what was really going on, and so Victor actually wound up running away before the con was complete, and he went back to America to avoid getting arrested or anything like that. And that's another thing about Victor. This dude just like flits all over

the world whenever he wants to. And it's a big reason why he was so hard to catch, because he was in so many different jurisdictions and so many different countries. So

Kathryn (47:12)

Yeah.

Gina (47:13)

By the late 1920s, he's back in America just in time for the Great Depression to hit. Suddenly everyone was losing money, which meant that Victor's target market dried up very, very fast, because all of a sudden no one had money to buy national monuments or money making boxes. And with that came kind of a fall from grace.

By this point in his career, Victor was fabulously wealthy, and he was used to enjoying that money and also spending that money. He had a wife and a child to care for, he had a mistress to maintain, and he also had that gambling addiction that he still needed to feed. So he was forced back into small-time cons that he hadn't needed to run for years. Like he started pulling gambling scams again, that kind of thing. Things that he thought were beneath him.

And so he was always keeping an eye out for something bigger and better. And in 1930, he decided to get into professional counterfeiting. He recruited a man named William Watts, who he was kind of a bit of a dweeby guy from what I read about William Watts. but he was a master counterfeiter. He was incredibly good at making counterfeit money. And together, William Watts and Victor agreed to work together.

With William making the counterfeit bills and Victor selling them. One thing I found really interesting about their operation, that it's it's a little bit Julia Tefana coded, not gonna lie, is that they intentionally

Kathryn (48:50)

okay.

Gina (48:51)

made both good counterfeit bills and bad counterfeit bills. The bad ones were like quick, rush job, very sloppy, obvious errors, but

They could make money from it really, really fast. They were handy when they needed quick cash. And they also made really, really good counterfeit bills as well. These ones took a lot longer to make, but they're described as like the Mona Lisa of counterfeit dollar bills. They were incredibly difficult to catch, which meant that Victor could sell them for a lot of money. For example, he would sell counterfeit $100 bills for $30 apiece.

And I compare it to Julia Tefana because in her poisoning operation, she worked both the upper and the lower class. And this was kind of a

Kathryn (49:38)

Mm.

Gina (49:39)

similar thing. Like you didn't need a ton of money to afford the really bad ones, but also it created two different income streams for Victor and William. One was quick and easy, the other was slower but more profitable. And it also acted as kind of a distraction for law enforcement because it kept them focused on the bills that were very obviously fake.

Kathryn (50:02)

Mm.

Gina (50:03)

And this is where we see Victor's kind of bravado coming into play again. Because when people were counterfeiting back then, it was really common to counterfeit like the l the smaller bills, like ones, tens, fives, because it was seen as less risky. banks were not as critical of them. However, Victor decided he wanted to make counterfeit hundred dollar bills because the government and bank tellers were more likely to check and see if they were authentic. And he wanted to prove

Yeah, we can make counterfeits that good that even the professionals can't tell if they're fake or not. And the distraction with the whole like multiple income streams, the fact that it was a hundred-dollar bill, you know, all of it worked. And over the next five years, William and Victor managed to print millions of dollars. At the height of their operation, up to half of all of the counterfeit money in America came from them.

Kathryn (50:58)

Wow. That's a lot.

Gina (51:00)

So very much. but I also don't actually know how big the counterfeit business is in America. It made me wonder, like, what's the market cap on that?

Kathryn (51:08)

Yeah, that's a good qu I mean, I feel like it used to be like quite big.

why our money has

changed so much. Cause like it was

Gina (51:16)

That's a good point.

Kathryn (51:17)

like a legit problem.

Gina (51:19)

That's a good point. And that brings up another interesting thing about like the timing of all of this because during prohibition, people got very used to committing crimes. because everyone was committing crimes to bootleg or to buy alcohol or whatever.

So it was easier for Victor to start like an illegal operation and also to even like run the money box scam because people were already more likely to be okay with it. Because what's one more little crime when I'm already committing moonshining crimes, you know what I mean?

Kathryn (51:46)

Yeah.

Gina (51:46)

Yeah, so this brought Victor tremendous wealth, but it also injected tons and tons of money into the already struggling American economy that the feds could not account for. And so eventually this started attracting attention because there was so much excess counterfeit money in circulation that it literally became a threat to America's economic stability. I know.

Kathryn (52:14)

Great.

Gina (52:16)

So the feds put together a little squad to figure out who was behind it. And fun fact, this is how the Secret Service was founded. Not necessarily because of Victor,

but the Secret Service started out as a body that would work against counterfeiting. And it was not until later that protection of the president was also added to their remit.

Kathryn (52:37)

That's a w I did not know that.

Gina (52:39)

Is it not outrageous? Fun fact though I know.

Kathryn (52:43)

Also very American, a whole task force

to protect cash over

Gina (52:49)

I know.

Kathryn (52:49)

or before we decide to protect the people in charge. Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (52:53)

you the money people. Yeah, protect the president too. Whatever.

Kathryn (52:58)

We'll throw them in there.

Gina (53:01)

So

these guys are are starting to put together, you know, their corkboard and their red string trying to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, in 1931, Victor got arrested for something or other. because he wasn't just doing the counterfeit stuff. Like he was also running other cons on the side. He was still doing the money box thing. And he got arrested for some con while he was in Texas. And while he was in jail, he got to talking with the sheriff.

Turns out the sheriff had been skimming off the top of taxpayer money to the tune of $30,000. And when the sheriff told Victor about this, Victor was basically like, Ha, that's all. I've made more money than that in a single day, buddy. Tell you

what, take this key from my pocket, go to the railroad station, the key unlocks a locker there, bring back what you find inside. It was, of course, the Romanian money box.

Kathryn (53:58)

my god.

Gina (53:59)

The sheriff

wound up getting scammed to the tune of twenty-five thousand dollars, which pretty much doubled the hole that he was in. And before he realized that he had been scammed, he let Victor walk free. Because that was part of the deal that Victor made. Victor was like, I'll give you

Kathryn (54:14)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (54:15)

this box that prints money for twenty-five grand, let me walk free, and you will be like out of debt. I will be free. Both of us walk away happy. Ha. Sheriff obviously found out once Victor was gone that he had been had.

And he wound up chasing Victor all the way to Chicago. And he confronted Victor. It was very dramatic. Victor was having dinner at the Drake Hotel and the sheriff,

Kathryn (54:39)

my god.

Gina (54:39)

yeah, like walked in and like pointed a gun at him and was like, What the hell? You know, he probably said something more impressive, but what the F are you doing?

Kathryn (54:46)

What the F? Girl, what?

Gina (54:49)

Put down the Pinot Noir. did you know that this episode comes out on National Pinot Noir Day?

Kathryn (54:56)

I didn't. my god, I love Pinot Noir. Wow.

Gina (54:58)

Does, yes. Well, the sheriff didn't

know either because he interrupted Victor in the middle of his delicious wines. And basically, Victor was like, you know, you got me. Don't worry about it. I'll give you all your money back. And he gave the sheriff fifty thousand dollars in cash. Of course, when the sheriff tried to spend this money, he was arrested for trying to pass counterfeit bills.

Kathryn (55:25)

my

god, I feel like I'm watching a cartoon.

Gina (55:28)

that you know, that's why at the beginning

Kathryn (55:29)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (55:30)

I brought up the thing where the Milwaukee Journal said he was like a storybook character. Because he very much

Kathryn (55:33)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Gina (55:35)

was. It's like these zany harebrained schemes, you almost can't believe they actually happened, but they totally did. So,

Kathryn (55:43)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (55:43)

anyway, the thing with the sheriff, it's kind of a funny little side story, but the feds did hear about it because that 50 grand that the sheriff got, it was all counterfeit hundred dollar bills. And by that point, Secret Service was onto the fact.

That someone was making counterfeit hundreds. So it piqued their interest. Around this time, Victor started yet another affair, this time with the famous singer and actress Ruth Edding. His wife found out about it, his

mistress Billy May found out about it, and understandably, neither of them were too pleased. Roberta got another divorce, and Billy May got revenge.

She called the feds to tip them off that Victor used her apartment in New York as kind of like a pseudo headquarters. And so they bugged her apartment and they started watching and waiting for Victor to show up. And on May 10th, 1935, they got what they were looking for. Victor called to say that he was on his way and he would be there within an hour.

When Victor appeared, there was a little bit of a chase briefly, but ultimately they did get him and they arrested him on charges of counterfeiting. While he was in custody, Victor was actually tricked into confessing, which was kind of funny. Yeah, he made his career on tricking

Kathryn (57:02)

my god. Yeah.

Gina (57:04)

people and he wound up getting tricked. They had basically told him, like, look, we're not here to punish you, we're here to stop the counterfeiting.

So anything you can do to help us with that, you know, you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours. And so Victor helped them get their hands on some of the equipment that they used and also some of the counterfeit cash. And when he handed this stuff over, he was like, I can get you even more if you treat me right. And the police were like, Nope, you're going to jail. And they sent him to jail. And he, Victor never got over this betrayal. He was so

Kathryn (57:39)

Yeah.

Gina (57:39)

furious about it.

Kathryn (57:42)

I love

the use of the word betrayal because like I could see him it's like they're the feds, dude. Like, what the hell?

Gina (57:49)

You're shocked that the police lied to you. I mean, I

Kathryn (57:51)

Yeah, yeah.

Gina (57:53)

I know it was the 30s, but come on.

Kathryn (57:55)

Right.

Gina (57:56)

But it didn't last long because the day before his trial, Victor escaped. He made a jailbreak.

Kathryn (58:02)

Stop. my god.

Gina (58:05)

He had been in jail by this point for three months and 22 days in the Manhattan Detention Complex, aka The Tombs.

The Tombs was a building in the middle of New York City, and at that point it had a reputation for being inescapable. No one had ever

Kathryn (58:23)

Mm.

Gina (58:23)

managed to do it. But it turns out all it took was a pair of pliers, a rag, and a forty-six-foot rope made out of bed sheets.

Kathryn (58:33)

You know damn

well that he knew the reputation of it being unbreakotable and he was like, Fuck you, watch this. Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (58:40)

I'm gonna do it and then did it within three months. Crazy banana,

yeah. So Victor had the pliers smuggled in a while earlier and he used them to cut through the wire mesh outside of his window because he was on the third floor.

then he then used the rope from the bed sheets to lower himself out of the window and then onto, you know, the the street.

And while passers by looked up and were like, what the hell is that dude like doing up there dangling from a building? He took a rag out of his pocket and pretended to be a window cleaner.

Kathryn (59:12)

My god.

Gina (59:14)

And everyone was just like, all right, carried on with their day. Law enforcement

Kathryn (59:17)

That's so smart. So smart.

Gina (59:21)

was completely panicked by this. Not only had Victor escaped an unescapable prison, but he had also completely disappeared. And this was a guy who was professionally hard to catch. All hope seemed lost until the Federal House of Detention in New York received an anonymous tip.

Led to Victor's location. Victor's daughter Betty would later say that she thought the anonymous tipper was her new stepdad because her mom had remarried

Kathryn (59:48)

Mm.

Gina (59:49)

and her stepdad was like very jealous of Victor because Roberta, you know, still kind of had a thing for him. Victor had all this money,

Kathryn (59:56)

Yeah.

Gina (59:56)

so yeah, this dude was like, fuck you, go back to prison, basically. Anyway,

Kathryn (1:00:01)

Mm.

Gina (1:00:01)

they managed to apprehend Victor just 27 days after his escape.

His trial began on december fourth, nineteen thirty five, and apparently it did not last very long because in the middle of court proceedings, Victor got really bored, and so he just interrupted the court and was like, I'm guilty. I did it, like, let's wrap this up.

Kathryn (1:00:25)

See, okay, this is the first

moment in this episode where I was like, yeah, I could do that. That'd be me.

Gina (1:00:30)

No believe me.

Kathryn (1:00:32)

I can the finally something I can relate to.

Gina (1:00:38)

I love the impatience of it. I think it's so funny.

I could I could totally see you doing that. Yeah. Alright, so I did it. What now? What now?

Kathryn (1:00:40)

Yeah, let's cut the shit. Like just move on. Let's go. What's next? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Gina (1:00:48)

So on December 9th, 1935, he was sentenced to 15 years on Alcatraz Island. Plus, yeah, mm-hmm.

Kathryn (1:00:56)

my god. Yikes.

Gina (1:00:58)

Plus an additional five years for his earlier escape from custody.

Kathryn (1:01:04)

my goodness.

Gina (1:01:05)

He did not enjoy Alcatraz very much at all. But he did do his incarceration there from the age of 46. And in the twelfth year of his sentence, he did pass away at the age of 57 while being treated at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, the same place where he

Kathryn (1:01:25)

Mm.

Gina (1:01:26)

had scammed that bank manager so many years earlier.

Kathryn (1:01:29)

Wow.

Gina (1:01:29)

And that's the story of Victor Lustig.

Kathryn (1:01:34)

It's wild.

Gina (1:01:36)

So what did you think? Was that a fun con man story? Yay, Okay.

Kathryn (1:01:39)

I think so. Yeah.

He didn't hurt anyone that I feel bad for other than the women. But like

every woman was getting hurt in nineteen, whatever the hell. Like yeah. No. That

Gina (1:01:52)

Yeah. I don't think they made husbands very well back then.

Kathryn (1:01:58)

was all just very expected. That was the least shocking part of the story.

Gina (1:02:02)

Yeah, yeah.

Kathryn (1:02:03)

Yeah,

that's wild. I w you really hit me with the Alcatraz there at the end. That's wild. We'll definitely

Gina (1:02:07)

I know.

Kathryn (1:02:08)

do an episode on the Alcatraz someday. I'm like, that's wild. I wonder if he's the part of like the tour. I wonder I'm sh I wonder if he

Gina (1:02:16)

I know you can

go to his cell because I read there's a book called I think it's maybe you did, because he was a

Kathryn (1:02:19)

Okay. I wonder if we did. My mom and I went there.

Gina (1:02:25)

he was a very big deal.

Kathryn (1:02:27)

Yeah. Okay. I'm just trying to imagine because I took pictures of all not all of them, of like 'cause they have like the guy's pictures and then their story and why they're there and a lot of them are very

Gina (1:02:38)

Mm.

Kathryn (1:02:38)

violent. but then there were some lesser whatever. So I'm wondering if I do know about this guy and just in one eye out the other.

Gina (1:02:49)

Yeah, we d we didn't have a ton of time to talk about his time at Alcatraz. But it is really interesting. And we don't know a whole ton about it, but

Kathryn (1:02:55)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (1:02:56)

one thing we do have is like the books that he borrowed from the library. And he read like

a bunch of weird th like I think he read two books on the mechanics of engines or like aircraft engines

Kathryn (1:03:09)

Mm.

Gina (1:03:09)

or something like that. Like stuff that makes you think surely he was planning some kind of

Kathryn (1:03:14)

for sure.

Gina (1:03:15)

escape, something or other.

Kathryn (1:03:17)

I bet. That had to be a constant thing. Like he

Gina (1:03:19)

had to have been.

Kathryn (1:03:21)

was never gonna be willing to just be locked away.

Gina (1:03:25)

A hundred percent agree. Yeah, he hated being a prisoner. It was

Kathryn (1:03:30)

Mm-hmm.

Gina (1:03:31)

he wrote a lot of very angry letters.

Kathryn (1:03:33)

that's interesting. Well we'll we'll do an Alcatraz episode someday and we'll revisit him. We'll see what his time at Alcatraz was like. We can do that. Well, that

Gina (1:03:42)

Yes, please.

Kathryn (1:03:43)

was fascinating. That was a feel good. I am gonna bring the mood down a little bit for my scare on top.

Gina (1:03:49)

Okay. What do you got?

Kathryn (1:03:53)

So are you familiar with the legend of Sara Sarita?

Gina (1:03:58)

No

Kathryn (1:03:59)

Okay, so it's very dark, but let me explain myself. So while I was at work

One day I stumbled upon this book called Ghoulish Games.

Gina (1:04:11)

Ooh.

Kathryn (1:04:12)

And it is an entire book filled with like paranormal games, basically. Like it's got Bloody

Gina (1:04:18)

my god.

Kathryn (1:04:19)

Mary in here, it's got Candyman, and it has a little like I don't know if all of them do, but many of them have a little write-up about the legend behind where the game came from. And I was flipping through it.

It's by Amanda Whitman. plug that because it's very good. I love this little thing. I got it as just a fun little, that'd be cute on the bookshelf, like around Halloween, blah blah blah blah blah. But then I was reading through it and I was like, man, this is actually really cute, like fun. This seems like something that we can actually use. So I was flipping through and I found this legend of Sara Sarita. And I'm going to read you.

The urban legend, like the background of the story. But then I thought maybe we could play real quick if you're interested. And I

Gina (1:05:06)

Okay, sweet. I'm down. Yeah.

Kathryn (1:05:08)

will say, just as a little caveat, it has a little fear factor. It measures how scary the game is with a little skull and crossbones.

Gina (1:05:15)

okay.

Kathryn (1:05:17)

And I have to say, man, Amanda, you are very brave. Cause I think all of these should be a five. And this is like one, two. I was reading it at

Gina (1:05:26)

Ha ha ha.

Kathryn (1:05:27)

night before bed one night, and I was like,

Terrified. I had to stop. I was like, I don't want to do any of these, but this one I think

Gina (1:05:31)

Ha ha ha

Kathryn (1:05:33)

is the most approachable. Okay, so I'm gonna read it real quick and then we'll go over gameplay. The Legend of Sara Sarita This divination game is said to have originated in Mexico, where it is called El Juega de Sara Sarita and it's associated with a grisly urban legend. Sara and Sarita were identical twins who often wore similar clothes and hairstyles, making it difficult to tell them apart.

For their 10th birthday, the girls were gifted necklaces that had coins as the pendants. Sara always wore her necklace heads up, and Sarita wore hers tails up. One fateful day, the girls stayed after school for band practice. When it was canceled unexpectedly, they decided to walk home rather than wait for the late bus. The school's creepy janitor kept staring at them and they wanted to get away from him. Before they left school, Sara stopped to use the bathroom.

I'm not gonna keep reading. Basically, this janitor murders them both. And he,

Gina (1:06:34)

Okay.

Kathryn (1:06:36)

I will say again, this is an urban legend, but still very, very sad. It is said that he took their necklaces as his like murder trophy or whatever. It

Gina (1:06:46)

Ugh. All right.

Kathryn (1:06:48)

says, Since the janitor took the necklaces as a trophy, coins are used to communicate with Sara and Sarita's spirits. These

act as an offering to summon the girls who spend their afterlife trying to track down their missing necklaces. So it is said that if you like use a coin, you can get them to come speak with you because they think that you have the coin from their necklace. Which scares me

because I'm like, I don't want them to think I have their necklace. It wasn't me who did it. I feel like that's like opening a can of worms. But we're

Gina (1:07:23)

Yeah.

Kathryn (1:07:23)

gonna open the can of worms here today.

Gina (1:07:27)

I will say, as soon

as you started reading the story, your video froze.

Kathryn (1:07:30)

No, don't

say that because that just gave me chills. Should I not do this? I don't wanna do this. That

Gina (1:07:35)

I think we have to do it.

Kathryn (1:07:38)

literally just gave me chills. Okay. just keep an eye on my background for me. Really?

Gina (1:07:41)

You're still frozen. I ca

I yeah, I can't see I can't keep an eye out.

Kathryn (1:07:48)

I hate this. Should we not play this game? Is this our scary on top?

Gina (1:07:53)

I really

okay, can you tell me how the game is played?

Kathryn (1:07:56)

Yes. And then do you wanna play it real quick?

Gina (1:07:58)

Yeah, I can find a coin.

Kathryn (1:08:00)

Okay. So the setup says to communicate with Sara and Sarita, two pl no, two players. It's a two player game. I forgot that's why I picked it.

Gina (1:08:08)

I only have one of me so far.

Kathryn (1:08:10)

Yeah.

Gina (1:08:11)

you're back.

Kathryn (1:08:14)

Cinnamon literally just put her paw on the penny and the moment she did that, I came back. This feels magical somehow.

Gina (1:08:20)

I think we have to play.

Kathryn (1:08:21)

Okay. All right, fine. Okay.

It says, to communicate with Sara and Sarita, two players should sit facing each other. So far so good. Each holding a coin in their hands. The coins need to be facing heads up at the start of the game.

okay, this I remember, I'm like slowly remembering why I thought this would be a go-do. And I chose part of this one because we have the option. Well, I shouldn't say we have the option. We give them the option to say no, they don't want to play with us. And I'm kind of hoping

Gina (1:08:50)

Mm.

Kathryn (1:08:51)

that happens. So it says, in unison, players call out Sara Sarita, can we play a game with you? Once the question is asked.

We throw the coins over our shoulders to get a response. And like due to logistics, you can just like gently toss and maybe like catch it. I don't know. I don't know what your office chairs.

Gina (1:09:10)

Okay. I'll j I'll see what happens.

Kathryn (1:09:13)

Yeah, just do whatever you need to do. blah blah blah. The answer can be determined by how the coins land. If we both get heads, if there's two heads, that answer is yes. If there's two tails, the answer is no, they don't want to play.

If we get one of each heads and tails, it means maybe. We can only move forward if the answer is yes, two heads. So if we

Gina (1:09:37)

Respect.

Kathryn (1:09:38)

see even, yeah, I know, I love that. so if we see a tails immediate no, and we'll just say thank you for your time, goodbye, blah, blah, blah.

you may ask as many questions as you like. If she if they say yes, you may ask as many questions as you like using the same heads and tails response.

So we have to ask like yes and no questions. Whenever we're

Gina (1:09:58)

Ooh, okay.

Kathryn (1:09:59)

ready to end the game, we just say, Sara Sarita, the time has come. Can we leave the game? This is part that scares me. They're allowed to say no.

Gina (1:10:09)

What if we

Kathryn (1:10:10)

Yeah.

Gina (1:10:10)

have to go and we're just stuck in the game forever? this a Jumanji situation?

Kathryn (1:10:13)

Then we're stuck

then we're stuck in the game forever, which I hope doesn't happen because I really have to go to the bathroom.

Gina (1:10:19)

Ha ha ha

Kathryn (1:10:21)

but we can if if we do not receive a yes, we just keep asking until they say no. Or yes. Yeah, whatever. Until we can close the game.

Gina (1:10:32)

Okay.

Kathryn (1:10:32)

We can't change any of the rules. it is said that they are generally benevolent.

But like if we are disrespectful or don't follow the rules, they can be known to be I'm gonna say mean, but like it's not mean they just will be upset that we don't respect their boundaries. And that's okay and well within their rights. Okay.

Gina (1:10:52)

Understandable. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (1:10:55)

we must close it out when we're done. Otherwise, we have officially invited them into our homes. And by not closing things out.

We are not respecting the rules and they may be angry and we will not know peace until the game is closed. So

Gina (1:11:14)

Chill, scary on top

Kathryn (1:11:18)

Okay, ready? Count a three.

Gina (1:11:19)

Yep. Yep.

Kathryn (1:11:21)

One, two, three. Sara Sarita, can we play a game with you?

Gina (1:11:23)

Sara Sarita, can we play a game with you?

Kathryn (1:11:30)

that rolled right onto the ground. Hold on, let me see what it is.

Gina (1:11:33)

I got a tails.

Kathryn (1:11:35)

Okay, cool. Then we're not playing I don't even wanna so did I. Okay, so did I. Yeah. Okay.

Gina (1:11:37)

No worries. I'm a little bit relieved. Okay, so nope. No game.

Kathryn (1:11:42)

so we do still have to close it out.

Gina (1:11:46)

Okay.

Kathryn (1:11:46)

Wait, I don't know if we do we have to close it out if we

It says, close it out by saying, Sara Sarita, the time has come. Can we leave the game? If you do not receive a yes the first time, keep asking. So I don't know, because we're not playing the game, so I don't know if we have.

Close it, right?

Gina (1:12:02)

Is it rude to ask

just in case? Just because I I do want to know peace?

Kathryn (1:12:07)

Let's just say Sara Sarita

Gina (1:12:10)

We're done. Smell you later.

Kathryn (1:12:12)

Let's just yeah, let's just say Sara Sarita, we're not gonna play the game with you. Don't worry.

Gina (1:12:17)

Okay.

Kathryn (1:12:21)

Okay. One, two, three. Sara Sarita we're not gonna play the game with you. Don't worry.

Gina (1:12:25)

Sara Sarita we're not gonna play the game with you. Don't worry.

Kathryn (1:12:33)

yeah, okay, cool.

If you get haunted, just let me know and we'll close it out differently.

Gina (1:12:37)

Okay. Okay, cool.

Kathryn (1:12:39)

All right. Well.

That was it. That's the scary on top. If you all decide to play Sara Sarita with your friend, let us know how it goes. and if you have any other stories you want to share with us, feel free to send them over to iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com Also, please leave us a rating or review wherever you listen. That really helps us out. And don't forget to join us over on Patreon. And until next time, little spoons, keep it cool.

Gina (1:13:06)

Keep it creepy.