The con artist who sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.

Victor Lustig understood something fundamental about successful scams: the mark's ego is your greatest asset. In 1925, he read that the Eiffel Tower was expensive to maintain and forged government documents appointing himself Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He invited six scrap metal dealers to a confidential meeting at the Hotel de Crillon, explaining that the government needed to sell the tower quietly to avoid public outcry.

He selected the most insecure dealer—a man desperate to break into Paris's inner business circles—and suggested that a small bribe would ensure his bid won. The dealer paid both the bribe and the sale price. When he discovered the con, his humiliation was so complete he never went to police. A lesser grifter would have disappeared. Lustig returned to Paris a month later and ran the exact same con on a different set of dealers.

The second mark did report him, forcing Lustig to flee to America, where he proceeded to run a sophisticated counterfeiting operation that lasted years. His career illustrates why the best cons target aspiration rather than greed: the victim isn't just losing money, they're losing their imagined future status. That psychological pain is often too great to admit, even to authorities.

Lustig died in Alcatraz in 1947, but not before allegedly conning Al Capone in a long-con that involved returning Capone's own money to build trust. The scheme behind the scheme.