Download or read book Death of a Con Man written by G. R. Williamson and published by Indian Head Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The undisputed king of the confidence men of the Old West, Jefferson Randolph Smith II (Soapy Smith) ruled criminal gangs in Colorado and Alaska. No other scoundrel could match Soapy Smith’s utter audacity and unrelenting pursuit of skinning a sucker. He was a genius at running a scam, at organizing a gang of confederates, and at paying off authorities. He had the inherent ability to look a man in the eye and lie like every word was etched in stone.  But, on July 8 1898, Soapy was killed in a shootout in Skagway, Alaska. At the time, newspapers attributed a man, Frank Reid, with putting the fatal bullet through Soapy’s heart. Now, 100 years later, historical research has shown that was not the case. Death of a Con Man is a concise, accurate account of the truth behind the myth. Entertaining, as well as informative, the story of the most notorious con man is told with many vintage photographs

Download or read book Death of a Con Man written by G. R. Williamson and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death of a Con Man -Soapy Smith's Demise in 1898No other scoundrel could match "Soapy" Smith's utter audacity and unrelenting pursuit of skinning a sucker. Jefferson Randolph Smith II was a genius at running a scam, at organizing a gang of confederates, and at paying off authorities. Smith presented himself as a man of wisdom, a philosopher, a philanthropist, a supporter of law and order, and above all else, an American patriot. He had the inherent ability to look a man in the eye and lie like every word was etched in stone. But, on July 8 1898, Soapy was killed in a shootout in Skagway, Alaska. At the time, newspapers attributed a man, Frank Reid, with putting the fatal bullet through Soapy's heart. Now, 100 years later, historical research has shown that was not the case. Death of a Con Man is a concise, accurate account of the truth behind the myth.Entertaining, as well as informative, the story of the most notorious con man is told with many vintage photographs and illustrations.

Download or read book Death of a Conman written by Josephine Bell and published by John Curley & Assoc. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Death of a Con Man written by Josephine Bell and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Con Man written by Ed McBain and published by 87th Precinct. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a young woman's body is fished out of the 87th Precinct's river, a street-wise detective is on the clock to find the con man who killed her before he strikes again. "McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet...even those we thought we already knew." --New York Times Book Review "Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain's grand, ongoing accomplishment." --Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book Playing Dead written by Elizabeth Greenwood and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A darkly comic inquiry into how to fake your own death, the disappearance industry, and the lengths to which people will go to be reborn. Is it still possible to fake your own death in the twenty-first century? With six figures of student loan debt, Elizabeth Greenwood was tempted to find out."--

Download or read book The Man in the Rockefeller Suit written by Mark Seal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man. The story of Clark Rockefeller is a stranger-than-fiction twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man-because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. At seventeen, obsessed with getting to America, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents and his journey of deception began. Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts-culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a Rockefeller. The imposter charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions-working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection-until his marriage ended and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a connection to the bizarre disappearance of a California couple in the mid-1980s. The story of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is a probing and cinematic exploration of an audacious imposer-and a man determined to live the American dream by any means necessary.

Download or read book Provenance written by Laney Salisbury and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries-many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices. Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history. The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day. Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.

Download or read book Death of a Con Man written by Doris Bell (Collier) Ball and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Mind of a Con Man written by Leland Benton and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manipulation – The Mind of a Con Man is a book you have ever read before but it is a book you should read! I am going to take you on an adventure into the human mind and show you not only why con men do what they do but why you do the things you do too. It is a unique book describing con man games, con man tricks, con man traits, con man terms, manipulation, emotional manipulator, deception & lies. It is an eye-opening expose taking you into the mind of con men and discovering why they do what they do. This book leaves no stone unturned as it delves deeply into the subject matter. It first describes the Type 1 con men, who are individuals who work hard at the deceptive profession but then it goes even further into Type 2 con men, which you come into contact daily through friends, family, co-workers ,etc that attempt to manipulate you into doing something. This book will fascinate you and you will see yourself within its pages as you learn all about deceptive people, the ways they operate, their tricks, their games and much more. Written by one of the nation's leading behavioral scientists, Dr. Leland Benton is the author of over two dozen self-help books and nonfiction behavioral science texts. He is a best-selling Amazon author with over 200-books published on Amazon alone. You need to read this book.

Download or read book Yellow Kid Weil written by J.R. Weil and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters: welcome to the world of confidence men. You'll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid and cry for the marks who lost it all to his ingenuity—$8,000,000 by some estimations. Fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, even a money-making machine—all were tools of the trade for the Kid and his associates: the Swede, the Butterine Kid, the Harmony Kid, Fats Levine, and others. The Sting (1973), starring Paul Newman and based largely on the story of the Yellow Kid, is entertaining, but is no match for the real deal.

Download or read book Who Killed the Candy Lady written by James Ylisela and published by Agate Digital. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deep dive that “has brought together all the evidence” in the fascinating cold case of a millionaire widow, the Chicago horse mafia, and murder (Daily Mail). Thirty-five years ago, Helen Brach walked out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and vanished without a trace. By all accounts, the sixty-five-year-old heiress to the E.J. Brach & Sons candy fortune was in good health. But shortly after her leaving the clinic the details of Helen Brach’s life—and presumed death—moved from fact to speculation, and they have been shrouded in mystery ever since. Who Killed the Candy Lady?: Unwrapping the Unsolved Murder of Helen Brach is the true and complete story of Helen Vorhees Brach’s mysterious disappearance and unsolved murder, as told by veteran Chicago journalist Jim Ylisela. This book will reveal the sordid facts behind the case and the seedy underbelly of Chicago’s notorious crime world. Drawing from never-seen documents, interviews, and insiders’ perspectives of prosecutors, horse thieves, and candy heiresses alike, Who Killed the Candy Lady? is a true-to-life whodunnit. This is a fascinating and entertaining tale, and after finishing it readers will be unable to stop themselves from jumping to their own conclusions. Written with the straightforward precision and sly wit of a longtime Chicago writer immersed in the case’s details, Who Killed the Candy Lady? is the ultimate guide to this unsolved murder mystery. “It only took me a day to read this book because I could not put it down . . . A fantastic writer and great storyteller.” —Nerd Problems

Download or read book Death of a Con Man written by Josephine Bell and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Setting out to clear a colleague's name at the hospital, Dr. Frost finds himself involved in sordid small time intrigue and sudden savage violence.

Download or read book The King of Confidence written by Miles Harvey and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "unputdownable" (Dave Eggers, National Book award finalist) story of the most infamous American con man you've never heard of: James Strang, self-proclaimed divine king of earth, heaven, and an island in Lake Michigan, "perfect for fans of The Devil in the White City" (Kirkus) A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the Midland Authors Annual Literary Award A Michigan Notable Book A CrimeReads Best True Crime Book of the Year "A masterpiece." —Nathaniel Philbrick In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country. The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.

Download or read book Veritas written by Ariel Sabar and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author comes the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the scandal that shook Harvard. In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star religion professor at Harvard, announced a breathtaking discovery just steps from the Vatican: she’d found an ancient scrap of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene “my wife.” The mysterious manuscript, which King provocatively titled “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” had the power to topple the Roman Catholic Church. It threatened not just the all-male priesthood, but centuries of sacred teachings on marriage, sex, and women’s leadership, much of it premised on the hallowed tradition of a celibate Jesus. Award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar covered King’s announcement in Rome but left with a question that no one seemed able to answer: Where in the world did this history-making papyrus come from? Sabar’s dogged sleuthing led from the halls of Harvard Divinity School to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before landing on the trail of a Florida man with an unbelievable past. Could a motorcycle-riding pornographer with a fake Egyptology degree and a prophetess wife have set in motion one of the greatest hoaxes of the century? A propulsive tale laced with twists and trapdoors, Veritas is an exhilarating, globe-straddling detective story about an Ivy League historian and a college dropout—and how they worked together to pass off an audacious forgery as a long-lost piece of the Bible.

Download or read book Insured for Murder written by Robin Yocum and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All the ingredients of a first-rate thriller stand out in this investigative report by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky, who reveal a sinister and deadly con game that was three years in the making: a murder, an insurance scam with a multi-million dollar payoff, a playboy businessman, a sinister stun-gun-toting neurologist, false identities, and an international manhunt. On the morning of April 16, 1988, the emergency squad was called to the office of Dr. Richard P. Boggs, a respected neurologist in Glendale, California. On the floor of the examining room was the body of Melvin E. Hanson, the vice president of the Just Sweats athletic clothing store chain, based in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he had collapsed and died of heart failure during a routine examination. Early next morning, Hanson''s business partner and the company president, John B. Hawkins, arrived from Columbus and had the body unceremoniously cremated. The coroner ruled that Hanson died of natural causes, so there was nothing to be investigated, and the Glendale police did not pursue the case further. But this wasn''t just another unfortunate death. There was something very, very wrong here. The body lying on the floor was not Hanson''s. The corpse was an anonymous double who had been murdered in a scheme to fraudulently collect on Hanson''s life insurance policy.

Download or read book Call Me Commander written by Jeff Testerman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-02 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Call Me Commander examines how John Donald Cody was able to swindle tens of millions of dollars in donations from the largest fraudulent nonprofits for veterans in history"--