How could anyone do this even once, but one man actually did it twice, his name was Victor Lustig
He was a great conman, what was his skill? It was that he was one of the greatest salesmen the world has ever seen.
What was it that made him so special, interesting, or just mad? Well, of course, he was all these things but to sell it twice says he was also a great salesman. I mean what a nerve, having sold it once, to go and do it again!
Of course, it was inevitable that he became known as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower …twice!
As you can guess it wasn’t the only con he succeeded in.
To tell you more
He came from Hostinné, Bohemia, which in those days was part of the Austria-Hungary Empire.
At school he was an outstandingly gifted student but that proved to be the source of his troubles. You see when he left school, he decided that with his education and fluency with languages he was fully equipped for life as a con man.
How did he learn?
He learnt his trade on trans-Atlantic ocean liners posing as a music producer looking for investment for a non-existent Broadway production.
Then in the wake of World War I he went to the USA and became well known to their law officers for the many scams he committed. For example, once he conned a bank into giving him money for some bonds in a repossessed property. Then he successfully escaped with both the money and the bonds!
The sale of the Eiffel Tower
In 1925, Lustig was in Paris and realised that the Eiffel Tower was looking badly dilapidated, it looked tatty and like an expensive relic leftover from the 1889 Exposition. He realised that this gave him an opportunity that he decided to take. He pretended that he was a government official who had responsibility to arrange for a company to tear down the tower and take it away as scrap.
He set up a private meeting with a group of scrap metal dealers to whom he explained that the city wanted to scrap the Eiffel Tower in private so there wasn’t a political row until afterwards. He explained that they would be selling it to the highest bidder. One dealer believed him and put down a hefty deposit. He went away happy while Lustig left for Austria with the money. He then chose to wait in safety until the dealer contacted the government department to agree when he was going to dismantle the tower, this was when the dealer then realized he had been duped. Now this guy was so embarrassed he didn’t want others to think he was an easy mark; therefore, he didn’t tell anyone, he just kept quiet about it.
All the while Lustig was in Austria waiting for the balloon to go up, and it didn’t! As a result, he started to think that if he had got away with it once, could he sell it again? His decided to try it again, which he did.
He returned to Paris and followed the same procedure, got a second victim, but when this victim realised what was happening, he didn’t keep quiet about it and went to the authorities.
This time Lustig fled Paris rather quickly!
Isn’t History Fun?
10 questions to discuss:
- What were some of the key traits that made Victor Lustig a successful conman?
- How did Lustig’s background and education contribute to his ability to deceive people?
- Can you describe one of the scams Victor Lustig pulled off besides selling the Eiffel Tower?
- What tactics did Lustig employ to convince his victims to trust him?
- How did Lustig manage to escape consequences for his fraudulent activities, particularly in the United States?
- What was the significance of Lustig’s choice to target the Eiffel Tower for his scam?
- Could you explain the process Lustig used to sell the Eiffel Tower twice?
- How did Lustig’s previous success with the Eiffel Tower scam influence his decision to attempt it again?
- What were the reactions of Lustig’s victims after they discovered they had been duped?
- What ultimately led to Lustig’s downfall in his second attempt to sell the Eiffel Tower?
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