The performers were Nicky Arnstein and Fanny Brice
Julius Arnstein, better known as Nicky Arnstein, was born under the name Julius Arndstein in Prussia. When he was a child in the 1890s, he competed in races on a nickel-plated bicycle. He used to use transatlantic ocean liners as his headquarters for card games when he was younger, and he conned many of the more affluent passengers during the bridge and poker games. He also began to develop a reputation as a ladies’ man who was not afraid to take money from both elderly widows and young debutantes. This image followed him wherever he went. After visiting the United States once, he became friends with Arnold Rothstein, who is regarded as one of the most dangerous and influential racketeers and stock manipulators in the country.
Rothstein had already established a reputation as the consummate smooth talker, international scam artist, and gambler when Arnstein first met him. He’d been arrested on both sides of the Atlantic for various types of fraud, the most common of which involved swindling money from women or writing fraudulent checks. These characteristics undoubtedly won Rothstein’s favor. Even though Arnstein was already married, he was able to meet Fanny Brice, one of the most famous performers on the New York stage at the time, thanks to Rothstein’s contacts. Arnstein soon moved in with Brice and began running a variety of cons with Brice’s financial support.
Arnstein was imprisoned in 1915 after being convicted of illegally tapping telephones as part of a stock market fraud scheme. Brice paid him numerous visits, publicly supported him, and may have used her considerable clout in New York to make his two-year incarceration there more bearable. Brice defended himself publicly. Brice’s frequent visits prompted Arnstein’s first wife to sue her for alienation of affection by her husband. Brice had only recently discovered that Arnstein had not yet divorced his first wife. When Arnstein was released from Sing Sing jail in the fall of 1918, his divorce had been finalized, and he and Brice had already married.
In the year 1920, Arnstein and several other people were complicit in the theft of bonds through the use of a scheme in which many Wall Street brokers’ messengers were robbed of their assets. Although it has never been proven that Rothstein was involved in the scheme, Arnstein was apprehended in Washington, DC, with some of the securities.
Arnstein went into hiding for a time before facing the indictment, and he remained in hiding for a time after that, fighting the charges on legal technicalities while Brice paid for his defense. Arnstein was transported to the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth in 1924 after being tried and convicted. Brice filed for divorce from him after he was released from prison in 1927.
Arnstein is portrayed in the film “Funny Girl” as merely a gambler who has a run of bad luck but is otherwise a respectable man. In reality, Arstein was anything but, and he was a con artist and swindler until he was released from Leavenworth. He used more than a half-dozen aliases during his career as a con artist, race fixer, swindler, and cheat, and he successfully conned countless women, including while living in Leavenworth and still married to Fanny Brice.
After Arnold Rothstein was murdered in 1928, Arnstein sold his memoirs but then begged the publisher to allow him to buy them back because he faced death if the memoirs were published. His request was eventually granted by the publisher. The owner of a tabloid newspaper caved and agreed to comply with the request.
These ten historic con artists serve as proof. There is a Sucker Born Every Minute set in Louisburg Square, Boston, around the year 1880, near where Sarah Howe worked as a bank swindler and fortune teller.
Sarah Howe had at least one prior marriage and possibly two prior marriages before marrying Florimund Howe in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1852. Sarah’s job as a fortune teller and clairvoyant allowed her to help support the family financially. Mr. Howe worked as a house painter and also taught dance.
The Howes worked in these occupations and lived in a variety of cities until the American Civil War when he enlisted in the Union Army as a musician. She continued to work as a psychic and fortune teller after her husband was discharged from the army in 1864 and the couple relocated to Boston. She drew the attention of her relatives and neighbors, who petitioned to have her declared insane in 1867.
Sarah was finally diagnosed as having been cured of her mental illness after spending the next two years in an asylum. After returning to Boston with her husband, she resumed her fortune-telling career in 1871, expanding her services to include the interpretation of tarot cards and the creation of horoscopes.
She was practicing medicine in Boston in 1871, specializing in the treatment of women’s health issues. In 1875, she made an interest-free purchase of furniture and then borrowed money from at least six different lenders using the furniture as collateral. She was convicted of one count of fraud and sentenced to one year in prison for her crime. She was eventually released after successfully appealing her conviction.
In the spring of 1879, Sarah announced the establishment of a savings bank, stating that the institution would only accept deposits from single women. Her new business will be called The Ladies’ Deposit Company. In the prospectus she distributed to potential depositors, she mentioned the bank’s affiliation with a Quaker charity, which was funded with $1.5 million. The stated goal of the organization was to assist young women with limited financial resources.
The Ladies Deposit Company was initially able to offer interest on deposits at a rate of 2% per week, which was later increased to 8% per month. This was possible because the fund provided funding for the company. Over several months, the Ladies Deposit Company received consistent deposits. Following that, some women revealed that they had borrowed money from male acquaintances at a 6% interest rate to deposit it with the Ladies Deposit Company at an 8% interest rate.
The Ladies Deposit Company was investigated by the Boston Daily Advertiser and other publications, and it was later discovered that there was no Quaker fund. This information became available after the investigation had begun. The company had a half million dollars in deposits in 1880, but very little cash on hand.
This was discovered after media reports triggered a stampede of depositors demanding their money, revealing that the company had very little cash on hand. Sarah was found guilty on four charges in November 1880, one of which was theft by deception because there was no charity involved in the founding or funding of the Ladies Deposit Company. Sarah was convicted on all four counts. It’s almost unbelievable that some depositors continued to back Sarah even after their money was lost and she was proven to be dishonest.
Sarah immediately established the Women’s Bank after being set free in 1884. This operation operated like the bogus Ladies Deposit Company, and Sarah fled Boston in 1887 with around $50,000 in deposits to avoid prosecution. She established several other institutions similar to the Women’s Bank, took deposits, and fled before returning to Boston, where she was arrested again pending her trial for the Women’s Bank fraud. The charges against Sarah were dropped, and she was released after the prosecution was unable to produce any witnesses willing to admit in open court that they had been duped by a well-known con artist. Sarah lived in Boston until she died in 1892, but she did not continue her banking career and instead returned to her previous occupation as a fortune teller.
Victor Lustig and Al Capone were both involved
The birthplace of Victor Lustig in the Austro-Hungarian Empire corresponds to an area that is now within the Czech Republic. First, he drew the attention of authorities by practicing his trade on transatlantic steamships, as did many other con artists of the time. Within the trappings of wealth and luxury, these vessels allowed a level of trust to be built between the con artist and the mark. This is how he, like many other con artists of the time, drew the attention of authorities.
Lustig was well aware that greed was a trait shared by many wealthy people, and to capitalize on it, he used a strategy known as a money box. Lustig presented his mark with a box that resembled a stack of $100 bills.
Lustig would print a $100 bill with the box, then allow the mark to study the bill while complaining that the box’s one remaining flaw was its sluggishness. Lustig would print the money after demonstrating how the box worked. Despite the fact thatEven though each bill took approximately six hours to produce,
Lustig claims that the box would continue to print bills for as long as it was turned on. Lustig appears to be on the verge of abandoning efforts to improve the box and the mark, recognizing that if left on, the box could print $400 per day and would offer to buy it if it was still available. Lustig would usually sell the box for a five-figure sum, and the transaction would take place either the night before the ship arrived at the port or the next morning.
The box would stop “printing” after printing one or two more hundred dollar bills because those were the only ones Lustig had used to prime the box when he first started using it. Lustig had loaded the box with five hundred dollar bills. He had already disembarked the ship and was lost in the bustle of the port at that point.
Lustig was able to pull off more elaborate scams in Europe, including selling the Eiffel Tower to a group of investors who planned to demolish it and sell the scrap metal. Lustig pretended to be a corrupt government official to these investors, leading them to believe that in exchange for a bribe, he could secure the contract to demolish the tower. Lustig was able to obtain the proceeds of the illegal transaction as well as a large bribe through the same con in this manner.
Lustig then went to the United States, where he took part in several less serious schemes to make money during the Great Depression. He did this while attempting to keep a low profile because French authorities were on the lookout for him. While in Chicago, Lustig devised the scheme to defraud Al Capone.
He devised a scheme in which he persuaded Capone to invest $50,000 in shares in a transaction in which both Capone and Lustig would profit handsomely. Lustig only kept Capone’s money for a few weeks before approaching the mobster and informing him that the deal had fallen through. He then gave the mobster the entire $50,000 he had been holding back for him.
When Lustig informed Capone that the mobster had not lost any money, but he had, Capone offered the con artist $5,000 to compensate for his time and expenses. Lustig turned down the offer. Even though Lustig was walking away with Capone’s money, he was able to keep an ally in Chicago thanks to his phony expression of gratitude.
Lustig was apprehended a few years later in possession of counterfeit money as well as the plates used to make it. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and spent the majority of that time in Alcatraz. At one point, both he and Al Capone were imprisoned. He died of pneumonia while being held in a federal prison in 1947.