Don’t you just hate to love all those con artists you see on TV and movies? They do
make for great anti-heroes, don’t they? Man: And if you think for 1 second I’m gonna
let your mother talk to me like that, you are f*** crazy, I’m a grown-ass man. But
real-life hustlers and swindlers are a different beast altogether, especially when you fall
for one of their clever schemes yourself. Watch and learn from the masters of deception
as we round up the 9 Greatest Con Artists of the 21st Century.
What’s up, fact-natics! This is Discovery Amuse, serving up your daily dose of the most
outrageous, outlandish, and out-of-this-world fun facts!
Stay tuned for our number 1 pick because that con artist was once even touted as the next
Steve Jobs! Insane, I know!
Woman: Did we just give that boy a million dollars? Are you kidding me?
#9: Billy McFarland
Remember that much-awaited, groundbreaking music festival of 2017 set in the Bahamas,
advertised by the biggest influencers such as Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin and Kendall
Jenner, which quickly turned into the greatest disaster of the 21st century?
I’m talking, of course, about the granddaddy of all epic fails, the Fyre Festival and the
man behind the viral fraud, Billy McFarland.
The luxury music festival, which McFarland co-founded with rapper Ja Rule, was scheduled
to take place in April and May 2017. It was meant to be the ultimate party of the year
set in the pristine beaches of a private island once owned by Pablo Escobar, and where attendees
can expect sumptuous meals, lavish villas, and even play with local pigs! What could
possibly go wrong? Well, let’s just say Murphy’s Law had a field day.
VO: Disaster relief tents and mattresses piled up in the dirt. (jump to 0.36) As for that
gourmet food, here it is, a cheese sandwich in a styrofoam box.
A storm hit the island the day before. Festival goers ended up waiting for hours at the tarmac.
Water pipes broke and splashed water everywhere. And big acts like Blink 182 cancelled last
minute. Worse, hundreds of Bahamian locals ended up not getting paid for all the work
they had put in!
Woman: I was there preparing hundreds and hundreds of meals and I was not able to be
paid. Out of savings, I’m sure I spent more than $50,000.
After dust settled, McFarland admitted that he gravely underestimated the resources needed
to sage such a massive event, especially in a place that didn’t have a water system.
He also admitted that he made misrepresentations to investors, and falsified documents including
bank statements which allowed him to successfully defraud 100 investors out of more than $26
million dollars!
Man: He was creating fake balance sheets, he was creating a fake net worth.
McFarland is currently serving a six-year prison sentence in federal prison for fraud
charges.
Keep watching because our top pick is so ingenious, the whole of Silicon Valley actually fell
for her scam!
#8: Efraim Diveroli
If you’ve seen the 2016 flick War Dogs, then you might be familiar with Efraim Diveroli,
the arms dealer played by Jonah Hill, who duped the US Department of Defense into procuring
old and substandard Chinese-made ammo from his company AEY, Inc.
AEY started small by getting federal contracts which bigger companies didn’t want, until
they slowly earned quite the reputation in the arms dealing industry.
Fast forward to May 2007, together with his partner David Packouz, Diveroli won a $300
million deal with Pentagon to be the ammunition supplier for the war in Afghanistan. However,
unable to source precious AK47s as promised, they eventually resorted to contraband Chinese
arms supplies.
David: We realized that when we actually inspected the ammunition, that it was Chinese. The ammunition
had originally come from China.
The contract with the Army particularly stated that Chinese firearms are not allowed, so
they hired an Albanian businessman to repackage the ammo and remove all the Chinese markings
before shipping them out to Afghanistan.
Obviously, Diveroli didn’t get away with the deception, and at age 23, he pleaded guilty
to conspiracy to defraud the US government in 2008. He was sentenced to 4 years in jail
while Packouz was slapped with 7 months home detention.
#7: Bernie Madoff
Bernie Madoff is a former Wall Street investment advisor who operated the largest Ponzi scheme
in US history – yes even bigger than Charles Ponzi’s himself--that it’s often dubbed
the “scam of the century.”
Madoff started his Wall Street career in the early 1960’s and eventually formed Madoff
Securities, a business that became one of the biggest brokerage and wealth management
firms in the US. By 1990’s, his firm was processing 10% to 15% of all trading orders
for the New York Stock Exchange.
His M.O. was textbook Ponzi – he attracted potential investors with huge returns from
a legitimate business activity while using funds from more recent investors to pay off
the earlier investors.
Bernie: The advisory, it’s a fraud. There are no investments. I made them up.
In 2008, his scheme fell apart when his investors started cashing out. Madoff wasn’t able
to cover the requested withdrawals amounting to around $7 billion!
Bernie: It was a temporary thing, and because of the success I had and the money I’ve
made for people, I just sort of felt that it would be a temporary situation and acceptable.
On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison after pleading guilty
to 11 federal felonies.
#6: Samuel Israel
The worst thing about Ponzi schemes is that the average person gets defrauded out of their
meager life savings by earning their trust that their investment will yield massive returns.
And another con man who operated a huge Ponzi scheme is Samuel Israel III.
In 1996, Israel founded his company, the Bayou Hedge Fund Group. Until the early 2000s, he
raised $450 million from unsuspecting investors. As any classic Ponzi scheme goes, instead
of investing this money, he appropriated these funds for personal use. When he was slowly
having difficulty keeping up with investor withdrawals, he created a dummy accounting
firm which he quote-unquote “hired” to audit his hedge fund company in order to keep
up appearances and attract more investors.
In 2005, Israel was convicted of fraud and was later sentenced to 20 years in prison,
and ordered to forfeit $300 million after pleading guilty.
However, in June of 2008, on the date he was supposed to turn himself in, he faked his
death by an alleged suicide. He was eventually tracked down a month later and arrested by
authorities. This resulted in his prison sentence being extended by two more years.
#5: Christophe Rocancourt
French impostor Christophe Rocancourt was born in poverty to a prostitute mother and
an alcoholic father. As soon as he turned 18, he ran away to Paris where his series
of criminal activities started – from petty theft and small fraud, to forgery. Then, after
a failed robbery in Geneva, Switzerland, he fled to Hollywood at age 24 where he eventually
became a fraudster to the stars, or as he’d prefer to call it, a “confidence man.”
Rocancourt: Actor, I think I’ve been a great actor. I don’t think you can be a good con
man you know, have some acting lesson.
In the land built on make-believe, Rocancourt banked on his good looks and persuasive charm
to create his multiple identities. Among them were a movie producer, a relative of various
celebrities such as actress Sophia Loren and designer Oscar de la Renta, and an heir of
the Rockefeller business family. He ven convinced Jean-Claude Van Damme to produce his movie!
He jumped bail several times for various arrests starting in the late 90’s. In 2003, he was
sentenced to serve three years and three months in prison along with a fine of 9 mil.
In 2005, he returned to Paris after serving his sentence. But being a conman by heart,
he got back to his old ways and defrauded French filmmaker Catherine Breillat out of
roughly $850,000, which led to his 2012 imprisonment.
In an interview, Rocancourt claimed that he netted at least $40 million in total from
all his fraudulent schemes.
#4: Raffaello Follieri Italian born Raffaello Follieri moved to New
York in 2003 at the age of 25, and there, he founded the Follieri Group which he used
to sell the Catholic Church’s unwanted properties. He lured potential real estate investors by
presenting himself as having a direct line to the Vatican!
Raffaello: I had relation like anybody that is a private company that wants to go to the
different dioceses in the United States and make an offer to buy real estate from them
was.
I think there’s a special place in hell for people who use the Church to con other
people, don’t you think?
Man: I’ll see you in hell, Bill Munny.
He reportedly scammed former US President Bill Clinton and his billionaire friend, Ronald
Burkle out of a $50 million investment. And like a true-blue con artist, Follieri instead
funneled the investments into his lavish lifestyle – luxury hotel residences, private jets,
yacht parties, all while dating Hollywood star Anne Hathaway.
In October 2008, Follieri pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges and was sentenced
to a 4 ½-year prison term. And as expected, her whirlwind romance with The Devil Wears
Prada actress turned to nada.
Anne: Thank you for your time.
#3: Robert Hendy-Freegard
Imagine a secret agent coming up to you and saying he has intel that your life is in danger.
Would you believe him?
This scammer’s victims certainly did. Starting in the 1990’s and stretching well into the
early 2000’s that was the M.O. of one of the most convincing liars the police have
ever seen.
A former barman and ex-car salesman, Robert Hendy-Freegard fooled his victims into thinking
that he was an undercover agent for MI5 or the Scotland Yard, working against the IRA.
He took their money and property, demanded they cut off contact with their family and
made them go through loyalty tests. When his victims disobeyed, he threatened their lives.
Over a span of a decade, Freegard defrauded victims out of hundreds of thousands of British
pounds. He was eventually apprehended in a sting operation set up by the FBI in Heathrow
Airport. He served a measly 9 years in prison after winning two cases on appeal.
#2: Rudy Kurniawan
Billions of dollars circulate in the wine industry year after year. And that is a fact
Rudy Kurniawan took advantage of, rather brilliantly.
Rudy Kurniawan was born in Indonesia and flew to the US on a student visa in 1998. In 2003,
he stayed in the country as an illegal alien and was able to start buying and selling large
amounts of rare wines, thanks to his highly developed palate. By 2006, he was reportedly
spending as much as $1 million a month in auctions.
Man: He knew how to develop that persona that would give him credibility in the very fine
wine world which then allowed him to sell extraordinarily large quantities of wine.
Eventually Kurniawan found himself to be the toast of the wine world, who’s able to auction
off rare and expensive French Burgundy wines, one of which netted an astounding $24.7 million.
Woman: It’s expensive because it’s rare, but it also is, to anybody who really knows
wine, the best wine in the world.
However, starting 2007, representatives from wine companies were informing auction houses
that Kurniawan’s bottles were actually… fake. The wine forger was bottling mixed cheap
wines and counterfeiting wine labels in his basement!
He was arrested by the FBI in 2012 and was found guilty of numerous fraud charges. He
eventually went down in history as the first person ever to be convicted of wine fraud.
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#1: Elizabeth Holmes
The promise of tech company Theranos was as brilliant as it is simple.
Elizabeth: We’ve made it possible to run comprehensive laboratory tests from a tiny
sample or a few drops of blood that could be taken from a finger.
That’s right, from cholesterol to cancer, Theranos can yield a diagnosis just with a
pin prick. And the woman behind this revolutionary company was Elizabeth Holmes.
After dropping out from her chemical engineering degree in Stanford in 2004, she used her tuition
money to fund her blood-testing start-up that aimed to make the process simpler, faster
and more accessible to people.
Being a master at marketing, Holmes—who worshipped Steve Jobs and even emulated his
signature black turtleneck--- was able to raise over $700 million from venture capitalists,
resulting in the company’s $10 billion valuation. She was even named, at one point, the world’s
youngest self-made billionaire.
However, in October of 2015, it all came crashing down when Wall Street Journal investigative
journalist John Carreyrou started questioning the validity and efficacy of Theranos’ technology.
It was found that the company’s devices yielded inaccurate results and the results
they were publishing were gathered from traditional blood testing procedures instead of their
own machine.
John: One of the things they did was they diluted the small droplets of blood to make
the volume bigger to accommodate these commercial machines.
Apart from the fraudulent claims, Theranos was also hounded with allegations of mismanagement
and corruption. In 2018, Holmes was charged with massive fraud by the SEC, and Theranos
was later shut down.
So, which of these fraudsters made your blood boil? Let us know in the comments section
below.
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Now let’s discover some inventions that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Don’t
miss our round up of the 9 Biggest Product Flops!
‘Til then, stay vigilant, fact-natics! And see you in the next video!