Victor Lustig (1890 – 1947)

For the prospective fraudster, nirvana may be the ability to print your own Money whenever you want. Our old friend, Victor Lustig, went one further. He made his money by selling the prospect of being able to print your own money.

Lustig would carry around with him a box of tricks which he called a money-printing machine. When he had piqued someone’s interest he would wheel the small box out and give a demonstration of its capabilities. It would whirl away and eventually a perfect hundred-dollar bill would pop out. The mark would be hooked and be anxious to get their hands on the machine that could print their fortune. Money was no object and Lustig was able to command a price of up to $30,000 for a machine.

“There was only one problem”, confessed Lustig. “The machine is very slow and takes six hours to print a bill”. Sure enough, the machine whirred away and after twelve hours just two more bills had been produced. But the mark soon ran into a bigger problem. Thereafter the money-printing machine only spewed out blank pieces of paper. Of course, sitting in the back of the machine had been three $100 bills and once they had been ejected, there was nothing left. By the time the mark had realised that they had been scammed, Lustig was long since gone. A classic example of where there is greed, there is someone keen to exploit it.

Lustig had the good sense to carry out only a gentle scam on the notorious American gangster, Al Capone. He interested Scarface in an investment and took $50,000 from him. This he put in a deposit box for safe keeping. Two months later he went back to Capone and told him that the deal had fallen through but that he was able to return him his investment. The grateful gangster, impressed by Lustig’s seeming integrity, handed him a tip of $5,000. Naturally, there was never ever any investment and what Lustig wanted to do was extract some money from the gangster without incurring his wrath. His scheme worked perfectly.

But even successful and confident tricksters like Lustig are influenced by the lure of the big one. In 1930 he teamed up with a Nebraskan chemist, Tom Shaw. Shaw’s job was to produce the engraving plates required to produce counterfeit notes. Lustig then developed a group of associates through whom he passed hundreds of thousands of dollars in counterfeit notes into circulation. So successful was Lustig in keeping the lid on his operations, even his associates did not realise that they were handling hot money.

All good things, however, must come to an end and what did for Lustig was the jealousy of his mistress, Billie May. Thinking that he was having an affair with Shaw’s mistress, she made an anonymous call to the police, tipping them off about Lustig’s activities. He was arrested and although his briefcase only contained clothes, expensive (natch), the police found a key in his wallet. This opened a locker in the subway station at Times Square where the detectives found hidden some $51,000 of counterfeit money and the engraving plates.

The day before his trial, Lustig escaped but was recaptured some 27 days later in Pittsburgh. He was sentenced to 20 years in Alcatraz prison and died of pneumonia in 1947. Lustig was a colourful character and the authorities couldn’t quite come to terms with his profession and expertise. They recorded his occupation on his death certificate as an assistant salesman!

Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: America's greatest con man, Billie May, counterfeit money scam in 1930s America, Lustig cons Al Capone, the money-machine scam, Tom Shaw and Victor Lustig, Victor Lustig