Romanian box
Do you know what a "Romanian box" is? This is a typewriter that does not print money, but only deftly imitates this process until the bills pre-tucked into it run out. The name of the unit was given by the nationality of its author. However, it would be much more correct to call the box "Czech", because the long and bright life of the invention was provided by a Czech named Victor Lustig. The virtuoso swindler earned at least a million dollars on the "Romanian boxes" …
All the "master" needed was to find a suitable swindler, put a wad of dollars in the machine and demonstrate the serviceability of the machine for printing counterfeit bills. When the money in the machine ran out and the buyer discovered that he had been cheated, Victor was already far away …
And the reaper and the shvets, and the gamer
The ingenious swindler, famous for his scams both in the Old and New World, was born in 1890 in the Czech Republic. Observing his parents, who, working tirelessly, had to deny themselves in many ways, he realized early on: such a life was not for him. Therefore, having a good education behind him, Victor preferred to make money playing poker and bridge. Dusty job, but you won't get far with kings and jacks. Lustig decided to look for other uses for his many talents.
Prior to the outbreak of World War I, Victor specialized in organizing fraudulent lotteries on transatlantic cruises. And in 1922, having mastered five languages and a mastery in psychology, he moved to the USA. The knowledge gained allowed Lustig to earn tens of thousands of dollars in just a couple of years. Changing pseudonyms like gloves and masterly forging documents, he cleverly rubbed himself into people's trust, committing crime after crime. In the United States alone, he was arrested 50 times, but he was always released for lack of evidence.
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Connoisseur of Human Souls
In May 1925, in search of adventure, Victor arrived in Paris, where he came across an article, the essence of which boiled down to the following: the famous Eiffel Tower is pretty dilapidated and in need of major repairs that require a lot of money. A grandiose plan immediately ripened in Lustig's head …
The fraudster drew up a fake credential, in which he introduced himself as deputy head of the Ministry of Post and Telegraph, after which he sent official letters to six dealers of vtorchermet.
On the appointed day, Lustig invited the businessmen to an expensive hotel and told them a heartbreaking story. They say that the costs of the tower are enormous, and therefore the government decided to demolish it and sell it for scrap at a closed auction. And in order to avoid the outrage of the public, who had time to fall in love with this landmark of Paris, the intention was not advertised. And therefore Lustig asked the dealers to keep the information they received secret.
Four days later, the businessmen submitted their auction bids for the Eiffel Tower. However, Lustig didn’t care who paid the highest price: an expert on human souls, he had already chosen a victim - a businessman named Andre Poisson. It was to him that Lustig sold the right to dispose of the tower, after which he fled to Vienna with a suitcase of cash.
Poisson, as Victor expected, hid the fact of deception, not wanting to look like a donkey. And the fraudster after a while returned to Paris and … once again sold the tower according to the same scheme. However, luck left him: the deceived businessman reported to the police, the story was leaked to the press. Lustig had to urgently leave Europe and flee to the United States.
Victor Lustig committed many more daring scams, each time managing to get out of the water dry. But in December 1935 he was arrested. He received 15 years in prison for counterfeiting money. Lustig's residence was Alcatraz prison near San Francisco, where he died of pneumonia in March 1947.
Edition: Archives of the 20th century №1, Julia Agafonova