10 Audacious Scams That Actually Worked

ten audacious scams that actually worked number ten the sag Iguchi scam you don't have to spend much time on the internet to know that you probably should reply to any nigerian prince often you untold riches but apparently no one gave Nelson Sega Gucci that piece of advice Sakaguchi our director at the Brazilian bank Noroeste received an email in August 1997 from Nigerian con artist Emmanuel noir de pretending he was the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Neruda our sanguchito invest 10 million dollars into a new airport at Abuja probably much to know what a surprise Sakaguchi whatever the money almost immediately knowing a good mark when he saw one no what I kept asking for more and more cash when the fraud was eventually discovered in December of that year Sakaguchi thrown a staggering 242 million dollars of bank funds into the fake airport that was to thit's of the bank's assets going directly to a criminal noir day was never successfully tried for his grand scam though he is currently on trial for murder number 9 magic water if a bus driver with no scientific background whatsoever came up to and claimed he could turn water into gasoline you'd probably be a little skeptical but apparently the Chinese government wouldn't in 1983 Wang Hong Chang started boasting that he had invented a magic liquid for if you spring it a few drops on a liter of water could turn that water into a fuel as combustible as petrol word quickly spread about this miraculous invention and in 1993 the chinese government decided to invest between private investment and government grants hong sheng successfully raised 37 million dollars for the project yeah a bus driver managed to take tens of millions of dollars with one bold-faced lie of course hong sheng was eventually found out in 1995 he refused the government request to see his liquid in action only a few years later in 1998 he was finally arrested and given a 10-year prison sentence for fraud number eight red mercury scamming governments and bureaucrats is one thing but it takes confidence of a whole other level to go out there and rip off Isis in late 2015 news broke that Isis had tried to buy an unknown amount of red mercury this legendary super weapon has the ability to make nuclear weapons as powerful as the one at her Russia and as small as sandwich bags Oh also it doesn't exist yes the morons are Isis were just the latest group to be tricked into buying this fictional substance which in the past has been sold to the Soviet Union and al-qaeda little did these buyers know that they were merely buying regular mercury mixed with red food dye which suffice to say in military terms does absolutely nothing Isis bought their red mercury from an arms dealer could Abu Omar and even though we don't know how much they spent in total we do know that the terror group was willing to pay up to four million dollars per unit number seven hitler's diaries though most of us aren't exactly fans you have to admit that adolf hitler was one of the most influential people of the 20th century so when a man named GERD Heidemann claimed to have found the secret diaries of shorty Matt - face it's no real surprise that the German lifestyle magazine Stern left at the opportunity Stern's editors were apparently convinced that the diaries were real mainly because of how many there were and how personal they seemed in one entry for instance Hitler complained that Eva Braun was getting fed up of his flatulence of course they were fake after the magazine hadn't over six million dollars for them the diaries were discovered to be forgeries GERD and the actual forger of the Diaries conrad cacao were imprisoned for four and a half years but perhaps most importantly stern never recouped the money number six wine fraud from 2004 to 2012 conman rudy colonel when bought midrange bottles of wine from selected vendors then he'd pour them into bottles with the fake logos of much more pricey wines the world of top class wine has always had more money than sense and this simple con coupled with Rudy's lavish and bombastic approach to life convinced many in the wine world that he was an eccentric millionaire with extraordinary access to some of the world's most expensive vintages the quote-unquote vintages started selling handsomely in 2006 Rudy sold twenty four million dollars worth of wine at one bidding that beat the previous world record by ten million dollars eventually Rudy's mysterious origins and his seemingly limitless supply of top-shelf wines very suspicions in my sway 12 the FBI raided Colonel ones home and found his secret bottling area Rudy was given 10 years in prison but for years his con was shockingly successful number five the og confidence man this scam certainly isn't the most cunning or devious on the list but when it lacks in preparation it makes up for in pure confidence starting in 1848 conman William Thompson would simply walk up to rich New Yorkers and charm them then when he'd won them over he'd just asked you to get borrow their pocket watch for the day claiming that he'd give it back to them tomorrow obviously Thomson never returned the possessions but it didn't stop people believing him eventually word of his audacious scams spread around and Thompson became nicknamed the confidence man yep this guy was so ballsy he's where we get the term conman from Thompson was eventually arrested and jailed for an unknown amount of time but that wasn't until Thompson had already raked in over two hundred thousand watches from gullible strangers number four the Eifel scrapped our pretending you own the Eiffel Tower in order to sell for scrap metal is already pretty audacious but you have to have nerves of steel to do it twice in 1925 konma and Victor Lustig met six scrap metal dealers in Paris there he claimed to be working on behalf of a bankrupt French government one that was poor enough to sell off the Eiffel Tower as scrap metal five of the dealers refused but Andre Prasad fell for the scam and paid what seemed like the bargain price of 250,000 francs about a million dollars for the 7000 tons of scrap metal Lustig took the money and fled the country by the time Poisson realized he'd been had he decided it was too embarrassing to report the blunder and kept quiet pushing his luck to the limit Lustig returned a month later selling the tower to a different scrap dealer this time however he was reported but still managed to evade capture number three oil detection until 1969 Aldo Bona solely was a failed inventor with a water desalination device that didn't work but in the 1970s he met belgian count and pan-european communists Alain Davila gasps together they wanted to investigate if they could find a device that would find water underground again the project failed but to keep funding coming in to villa gas claim the device could find a hidden subterranean oil using gravitational waves excited by the news the French semi government controlled oil company e.l.f invested millions into the ridiculous project it wasn't until 1976 that the oil company and the public realized they'd been hoodwinked all future payments were stopped but e.l.f had already thrown a hundred and fifty million dollars at the project what's more neither davila gas nor bono solely were ever punished in fact Bonner solely moved to Italy where somehow he had the balls to unsuccessfully try the same scam again on the Italian government number two casino cash in in 2011 for con men walked into a casino and began a con job so elaborate even the judge the trial praised its high-end technology in a move right out of an oceans movie the three Frenchman and wall Italian waltz into lit pores casino in Cannes there they proceeded to win eighty six thousand dollars at poker needless to say it wasn't just good luck the four were wearing expensive infrared lenses worth two thousand four hundred dollars each these lenses allowed the swindlers to see invisible ink which two bribed staff members had used to mark pre-agreed cards the con man one big and walked away with their winnings however the Italian Stefano and Pelini aroused suspicions after folding twice with high hands still it would all have been ok if an pelini had just settled with his winnings but weeks later he returned for a second round I was arrested on exit he was jailed for two years and his connection helped the police track down two more of the gang number one Prince of PA we've seen some pretty brazen con jobs in this video but Noah the scam can live up to the one pulled by Gregor McGregor a 19th century Scott who swindled of rich of Britain and France are combined three point six billion dollars in 1821 the former sailor decided to use his experience the dupe investors into believing he discovered a new country off the coast of Honduras Hoyas announcing himself as a new cos eke or Prince of players he told them that the island could sustain three maize harvests a year and that the rivers were lined with gold what's more he promised he would tell them the islands coordinates well for a fee of course after taking a combined 1.3 million dollars from his clients equivalent to 3.6 billion dollars today mcgregor sent of 250 rubes in a ship without him 200 of them died on the pointless voyage while mcgregor fled to france to corn even more investors so that was ten audacious scams that actually worked what con job were you most surprised worked to be miss any ridiculous scams off the list let us know in the comments below and if you want more crime content be sure to check out ten insane bank heists that actually worked playing now

Channel: Alltime10s

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Keywords: alltime10s, alltime 10s, allltime tens, scams, audacious scams, biggest scams, common scams, internet scams, phishing, phishing emails, scam emails, heists, crome, biggest cons, con artists, fraud, buggest fraud, greatest fraud, fraudsters, Sakaguchi Scam, Magic Water scam, red mercury, red mercury scam, hitlers diaries, Rudy Kurniawan, William Thompson, Prince of Poyais, scams that work, scams that worked, scams that make money, funniest scams

Id: W-w-etajMCQ

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 04 2018