For Sale

For Sale: The Eiffel Tower... When it comes to deception and trickery, there was no man better at it than Victor Lustig. He really was the king of the confidence men. With forty-five known aliases, the mastery of five different languages, and nearly fifty arrests in the United States alone, Lustig could swindle even the brightest of marks. Lustig was born back in 1890 in Czechoslovakia to your basic middle class background. At the age of …

… counterfeiting scheme. In the middle of the trial, Lustig interrupted the proceedings and mumbled a guilty plea. Both Lustig and Watts were sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Lustig, however, received and additional five years for his escape and was sent to Alcatraz to serve out his sentence. On March 9, 1947, Lustig contracted pneumonia and died thirty-six hours later at the age of fifty-seven years. His death certificate listed his occupation as a salesman.