The Top 10 Fraudsters You’ve Never Heard of...
| While notorious con man Bernie Madoff spends the rest of his days pondering his Ponzi scheme in a federal prison, DoTellAll pondered some of the other fraudsters that you probably never heard about. Here’s a list of the top 10: Also on DoTellAll.com "Top 10 Fraudsters of All Time!" |
| 1. Richard Whitney (1930) – Unlike Eli Whitney, the wildly successful creator of the cotton gin, Richard Whitney’s settled into a life of embezzlement. After he became the president of the New York Stock Exchange in 1930, he enjoyed a very successful and lavish life. However, he wasn’t as great of an investor as he thought, and started taking considerable business losses. To cover his mistakes, he decided to embezzle money from the New York Stock Exchange’s Gratuity Fund, the New York Yacht Club and ripped off about $800,000 worth of bonds from his father-in-law. When Whitney was escorted to prison after his conviction in 1938, 6,000 people showed up to watch him get taken away.
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 | 2. John Spano (1997) – Like most average American males, John Spano’s dream was to own a professional sports team. Unlike most average Americans, Spano actually tried to purchase a team with money he didn’t have. Spano fraudulently purchased the New York Islanders hockey team in 1997, claiming he was worth over $200 million from a fake inheritance. Using fake bank statements, he conned previous owner John Pickett into selling his 90 percent stake in the team. The situation turned out to be a complete fraud, leaving New Yorkers scratching their heads. Spano’s plan should’ve been exposed from the start, though, when he decided to falsely purchase the futile New York Islanders over the much more successful New York Rangers. If you’re going to falsely purchase a hockey team, shouldn’t you go for it all? |
| 3. Colleen McCabe (1995) – This nun and headmistress was known as a disciplinarian to students that walked through the doors of the St. John Rigby School in London. To the police, however, she was known as a criminal. McCabe, while serving as the headmistress of the St. John Rigby School, embezzled over £500.000 for personal items including extravagant clothes and jewelry and even personal vacations. How did she achieve this? By firing teachers, using the students as her cleaning crew and even shutting off the school’s heating system.
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5. Martin Frankel (2002) – Martin Frankel thought he had it made. He had $200 million, a girlfriend and a hotel room in Hamburg, Germany…before the German police knocked on the door and took him away in handcuffs. Frankel ran one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, embezzling money through insurance companies that he owned. It’s estimated that he stole anywhere from $200 million to $3 billon from investors.
6. Ramon Baez Figueroa (2003) – While Bernie Madoff was draining money from investors, he certainly didn’t ruin the American economy. The same cannot be said for Ramon Baez Figueroa. In 2003, Figueroa nearly single-handedly caused a banking crisis in the Dominican Republic. Through his Banco Intercontinental, he embezzled nearly $2.2 Billion, which is roughly 2/3 of the entire country’s national budget. Due to the bank collapse, the country saw inflation and poverty rise and the peso was forced to be lowered in value. |  |
 | 7. Charles Dawson (1912) – Dawson, a British archaeologist, made one of the biggest archaeological discoveries in history, or so he claimed. He announced he had found the missing link, or what he called the ‘Piltdown man,’ between humans and primates, all but confirming Darwin’s theory of evolution (much to the chagrin of the state of Kansas). Dawson managed to keep his fraud a secret for over 40 years, though, as he wasn’t exposed as a fraudster until 1953. |
8. John Stonehouse (1974) – As the last Postmaster General of the United Kingdom, Stonehouse was well known for his role. After he left his post, he attempted to establish several companies, each of which was met with financial difficulty. Instead of securing a normal job, he just decided to do some creative accounting. After his fraud was discovered, Stonehouse did what any self-respecting person would do and faked his own death. Unfortunately for Stonehouse, he was discovered, by accident when Australian police mistook him for another man wanted for murder.
| 9. Gregor MacGregor (1820)– Call him Charles Ponzi before Ponzi even existed. This Scottish con-man landed in London in the early 1800’s, claiming he had become the prince of a place called Poyais, an undiscovered land. He immediately began selling pieces of property in his new island, claiming the land needed settlers. What these settlers did not know was that MacGregor was not a prince, and Poyais was did not exist. When people started trying to get passports to a fake country, MacGregor was outed and arrested. MacGregor’s creativity was shocking, though, given the fact that his parents couldn’t come up with a first name for him that differed from his last name.
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10. Kenneth Taves (2001) – Kenneth Taves made his money in one of the most lucrative online industries; pornography. Unfortunately, the people that “signed up” for his service had no idea. Taves’ online business, NetFill, gave users access to a variety of pornographic websites for a small fee. In the late 1990’s, Taves ended up having over 900,000 users sign up and utilize his services using their credit cards. Those users had no idea idea that they had signed up for the service. In Taves’ defense, though, he thought he could get away with it, because these people would be too embarrassed to admit that he’d falsely registered them for pornographic web service.
