Top 10 Con Artists Ever Lived

1. Frank Abagnale

Frank William Abagnale, Jr. was born in April 27, 1948. He was one of the best con artists ever lived. He was a confidence trickster, check forger and impostor. He has impostored as a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer and many more. Now he is a successful bushiness man running a forging consultancy company  Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company. He has also helped US govt. in check forgery cases.

2. Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava a.k.a Natwarlal

Natwarlal (1912-2009), was noted indian com man for having repeatedly "sold" the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, and the Rashtrapati Bhavan and also the Parliament House of India along with its 545 sitting members. He has tried to escape from jail many times and succeeded in few. And had faked his death once in 1996, however his lawyer announced his death in 2009.


3. Victor Lustig 

Victor Lustig (January 4, 1890 – March 11, 1947), was a french con man, was involved in various scams in various countries, but he is certainly known as "The man who sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice."

4. William Thompson

William Thompson was an american criminal and con artist whose deceptions caused the term "confidence man" to be coined.He was active in Newyork city in 1840s.

5. Charles Ponzi

Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949), was an Italian businessman and con artist in the U.S. an Canada. In !920s he started a scheme which is known as "Ponzi scheme".

6. George C. Parker

George Parker (1870–1936), was American con man infamous for selling, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty. On December 17, 1928 he was sentenced to a life term at Sing Sing Prison.

7. Harry Jelinek

Josef "Harry" Jelinek (1905-1986) was a Czech con artist and publisher of Nazi propaganda, who is reputed to have fraudulently sold the Karlštejn Castle to American industrialists in 1945.

8. Ferdinand Waldo Demara

Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. (December 21, 1921 – June 7, 1982), known as "the Great Impostor", masqueraded as many people from monks to surgeon to prison warden. He was the subject of a movie, The Great Impostor, in which he was played by Tony Curtis. Demara was said to possess a true photographic memory and was widely reputed to have an extraordinary IQ. He was apparently able to memorize necessary techniques from textbooks and worked on two cardinal rules: The burden of proofis on the accuser and When in danger, attack. He described his own motivation as "Rascality, pure rascality".

9. Matt the Knife

Matt the Knife is a formerly american con artist he is a magician, mentalist and a breaker of multitude Guinness World Records. From the ages of approximately 14 through 21, he worked as a con artist, operated a card-cheating ring, a shoplifting ring and a pick-pocketing ring which bilked dozens of casinos, corporations and even at least one Mafia family.

10.  Robert Hendy-Freegard

Robert Hendy-Freegard (1 March 1971) is a British con man who masqueraded as an MI5 agent and scared them of legal issues to con them. On 23 June 2005, after an eight-month trial, Blackfriars Crown Court convicted Robert Hendy-Freegard for two counts of kidnapping, 10 of theft and 8 of deception. On 6 September 2005 he was given a life sentence.

information source: wikipedia