Would you get a medical exam from an 18-year-old named Dr. Love?
Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Gooooood Mythical Morning! - If you have seen the movie...
..."Catch Me If You Can" starring Oscar-winner Leonardo....
- ...DiCapri-o-o-o-o-o-o... - Ooh.
...then you know about Frank Abagnale, notorious imposter who passed...
- ...himself off as a physician... - Yes.
...a pilot, and an attorney. He was none of those things, yet he ranked -- racked
up -- he ranked and racked up millions of dollars until Tom Hanks caught him...
- ...and put him in jail. - Mm, that Tom Hanks. But, you know...
...Frank was not the only imposter. In fact, we've got some that we think...
- ...may have done a better job than Frank. - Yes. Let's get right to them.
You may have seen this picture floating around the Internet. This is 18-year-old
Malachi Love-Robinson. And I know what you're thinking: "Look at this studious...
- ...teen. He is obviously a physician. - Definitely.
- He is a doctor. He has a white lab coat. - Mhm.
He has a stethoscope draped over his neck.
- He has a faux-hawk. - And he has his hand nestled...
...underneath his chin. So he has to be a doctor, right?"
- Definitely. Of course. - Well, that's what the doctors at...
...St. Mary's Medical Center in Palm Beach, Florida, also thought.
January of last year, he pretended to be a doctor. He is not a doctor.
- Oh! - But he pretended to be a gynecologist.
- Oh. - And he wandered the hallways wearing...
...his white lab coat and shadowing... - Dr. Love.
...doctors. And he did introduce himself as Dr. Love-Robinson for a whole month!
Well, adding the Robinson helps a little bit.
- "I'm Dr Love- (under breath) Robinson... - (laughing)
- ...your gynecologist for the day." - Oh, my.
The staff finally caught on, reported him to police. He was arrested but not...
...charged, and the local news affiliate WPBF allowed him to defend his actions.
No, ma'am. I requested... to shadow... some... physicians.
- (both chuckling) Uh-huh. - Next thing I know... cops were there.
- (Malachi) (inaudible) Have no idea. - Yeah, nothin'.
I didn't operate. I didn't reach in someone's uterus (laughing).
I didn't snatch up a baby. I didn't do any of that.
I don't know. I think I might be convinced that he is a doctor. He said he didn't
snatch any babies out of a uterus, and doctors definitely wouldn't do that, so.
- Well, unless it's a c-section. - Oh, okay. Yes.
And it's like a mild snatching of the baby...
- Okay. Mild snatching - ...from the uterus. There's a part...
...two to this story. He did not hang up his lab coat. He went on to found...
...the New Birth New Life Medical Center & Urgent Care, LLC, where he credits...
- ...himself as being not only... - Legit.
...a Ph.D., but president, CEO, and founder. And according to the website,
he practices "phototherapy, food and air therapy."
- Hold on - he practices food? I'm goin'! - He practices food therapy.
- I'm interested. - And air therapy. get you some of that.
The police, again, they catch on, and they decide to perform a little operation...
- ...of their own: a sting operation! - Oh. Oh!
- And undercover agent gets an exam. - What kind of exam?
I don't know i he got food or air therapy. I don't know.
- No uteruses involved. - No, nothing was snatched from this...
- ...guy's uterus. He was then... - (crew offscreen laughing)
...arrested and booked for practicing medicine without a license.
And as recently as this past March, he was charged again for taking $34,000 in car
payments and paying that with credit information from his client.
Well, a doctor's gotta have a nice car. Okay, in 1988, Princeton University
received an admissions application from Alexi Indris-Santana that included some
above-average SAT scores, some newspaper clippings for track meets that he had won,
showing that he was an incredible runner.
- Okay. - And also a letter explaining his...
...backstory, which was he grew up as a self-taught orphan, lived in the Grand
Canyon, where he raised sheep, read philosophy books, and slept under the...
- ...stars with his horse, Good Enough. - "Good Enough!"
You know what? That was "Good Enough" for Princeton to receive him, accept him...
- Really. - ...and give him $20,000 scholarship.
Now, he defers enrollment for one year, and we'll get back to exactly why he...
- ...did that in a second. - How do you teach yourself to be...
- ...and orphan? Oh. - Well, (whispering) he made it up, Link.
It's not true. Good Enough doesn't exist. So then he goes on -- we'll get back to
why he deferred enrollment for a year -- he goes to Princeton. Two years.
Great student. Almost all As. He's an incredible track star. He's gonna lead
them to the championship. And then he's at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet in 1991
and a guy from Yale on the other team sees him and says, "I recognize that guy
from my high school in California. You know, he was exposed as being a...
- ...26-year-old." - As a high school student.
- Yes. While he was in high school. - So how old was he in college?
Well, it turns out that Alexi was actually 31-year-old James Hogue, an ex-con...
- ...from Kansas City. The story is... - (Link) Ooh!
...absolutely incredible. In his 20s, he wanted to get into Stanford. He was...
- ...an Ivy League man. You know? - Okay, yeah.
But he had to get a high school diploma, so he goes and enrolls at the Palo Alto
high school as Jay Mitchell Huntsman, which happened to be the identity
of a dead infant. He did not impersonate a dead infant. He just used the name.
- Okay. It's easier. - That wouldn't have worked.
He got caught. He flees to Colorado where he acts like a Stanford professor.
Don't know why he's doing that in Colorado. But then he gets caught, so
he goes on to start stealing stuff, so then he is jailed. Now, while he is in
jail for stealing stuff, he applies to Princeton.
- That's when he wrote the horse letter? - Writes the Good Enough horse letter...
- (laughing) - ...gets accepted, and then has to...
...defer enrollment for one year because he's still in jail!
- Yep, you gotta get out. - He goes to Princeton, does his...
...thing, gets caught there, goes back to jail, and then he's basically in and out
of jail for different things: impersonating people, other crimes,
including going back to Princeton and just hanging out on campus as
Jim McArthur. So, he is...
Sounds like the type of guy who'd like to hang out.
He went back to prison again, but in 2012, he got out on probation. So if you're at
Princeton and there's a 56-year-old man on the track team who's just incredible...
- Cheer loudly. - ...it's probably this guy.
Or, you know what? Just let him do his thing!
- Yeah! - He just wants to be a track star at...
- ...Princeton! Who doesn't? - Allow me to present to you one of...
...the smoothest tricksters who ever lived: this guy, Victor Lustic.
A little background on him: he was born in 1890 in what was then Czechoslovakia.
- Dude had 45 now-known aliases. - Okay.
He mastered five languages. He was arrested 50 times in the U.S. for various
cons. But his biggest con, the biggest one, maybe one of the biggest ones of
all time, happened in Paris in 1925 when he sold the Eiffel Tower.
- (raspily) No, he didn't! - Yes. He sold on of the most...
...iconic structures on the face of the planet. And this is how he did it.
Listen. They were having trouble maintaining The Eiffel Tower in...
- ...the early 20s. It was an issue. - Yeah. I recall.
So he saw this as an opportunity. He impersonated the deputy director
general of the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs.
- Okay. That's a great position. - You're a fan of that office, I've heard.
- Yes. - He invited six metal dealers to a...
...meeting at a fancy hotel, okay? And then he put them all in a limo
and wines and dines them, takes them to the Eiffel Tower, gives them a tour
of the thing, and then he's like, "All right, boys. Which one of you
wants to pay up to scrap this piece of junk?"
- I get it. - And the whole time, he's sizing them...
...up to figure out which one is the most gullible and his mark ended up being
Andre Poisson, and insecure businessman who desperately wanted to be in...
- ...the big leagues. Now, I know a... - Mhm.
...little French, and I know that "poisson" means fish.
- Fish, yeah. - So I don't know why he didn't smell...
...anything fishy, because he should have. You can't be selling no Eiffel Tower.
- I don't think that's how it works, Link. - Poisson! Poisson! Poisson!
I don't think that's how you get your last name.
Poisson bought it, literally. Hook, line, and sinker. We're estimating around...
- ...$100,000 in that time's money... - At the time.
...that he paid. Lustic took off, goes to America. Then a month later, he comes...
- ...back and tries the same scheme again... - Well, it worked!
- ...but this time he gets caught. - Oh.
He ends up in Alcatraz for 20 years, where he dies of pneumonia.
But if someone wants to sell you the Eiffel Tower, just a point of reference,
it's 435 billion euros to the French economy.
- Oh, that's a good deal. - So if they're asking for less than that...
- ...you know it's a scam. - Okay, so no list of imposters would...
...be complete without the amazing pop-vocal duo Milli Vanilli.
- (Link) Yes! - (Rhett) Now, for those of you who...
...don't remember, back in the 80s these guys burst onto the scene: two
good-lookin' dudes with long, braided hair and very tight pants...
- Yes. - ...singing a song.
(unison) ♪ (Girl, you know it's true) ♪
♪ (Ooh, ooh, ooh! I love you) ♪
- It was amazing! I loved it so much. - I had that tape.
- Everything about them was incredible. - Oh, yeah!
- Best new artist Grammy, 1990. - Yes.
And then, later that year, they're doing a performance that MTV happens to
be recording and their worst nightmare comes true. He's a clip.
(music repeating the same section)
Okay, so basically happened there is ♪ (Girl, you know it's) ♪
- ♪ (Girl, you know) ♪ began to skip. - True! True! Give me the true!
And then one of them ran off the stage, because it turns out Milli Vanilli was
just two German models lip syncing some stuff that other people were singing.
And people lip sync performances all the time, but...
- Their own stuff. - ...it wasn't their voice the cassette...
- ...at the time. - And these guys weren't even good.
They had this German accent, and this American singing voice, and they weren't
that great at it. So after this -- I mean, this was huge. I remember when this
happened. They had to give the Grammy back. It turns out this music producer,
Frank Farian, was behind this whole thing. Things kind of went downhill for one
of the guys, Rob, who ended up dying of a drug overdose, but Fab ended up
continuing to sing Milli Vanilli songs for years, using his own voice, which was...
- ...not as good as the original voice. - Mm.
But, actually, you know, to be honest, thinking about this got us thinking
about ourselves.
I think it's time for us to make a confession.
Yeah, um... we'll just tell you. Listen. The voices that you have come to
know and love are not our own.
(Rhett's voice) Hey. We're the real Rhett & Link. I'm Chase and I'm the...
- ...voice of Rhett. - (Link's voice) And I'm Mike, and I'm...
...the voice of Link. Now you finally know the truth.
(fake, warbly voice) Thanks for liking and commenting and sharing this video...
- ...with your friends and family. - (raspy voice) You know what time it is.
- Hi, I'm Rhett. - And I'm Ryan.
(unison) And we're from Thousand Oaks, California. And it's time to spin...
- ...The Wheel of Mythicality! - There's this new, exciting website...
...called facebook.com, and we have joined it.
- Yeah, we're on dat. - And we make video over there that...
- ...are only on that. - Yeah!
- So go and check it out. - Click it and like it. Click through...
...to Good Mythical More. Click that "i." We're gonna play a video game,
Div kick Addition Edition. It's a fighting game!
(Rhett) "Link loses control of his voice!" Hmm!
(high voice) Well, this is (low voice) ironic. Oop.
(low voice) Well, this is (high voice) ironiiiiiiic!
- (laughing) - Well, this is (very high voice) ironic!
- It keeps going (even higher) higher! - Wow. It seems like...
...you lost control of your voice. Wow. - I can't control it!
(high-pitched screech)
[Captioned by Kevin: GMM Captioning Team]