This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today, he reads books you know, it's Chris Joel!
I'm fading fast!
Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan!
Well, I've brought a tanker of clotted cream, but the pump's broke.
The bounciest man on the Internet, Matt Gray!
'Ello YouTube!
Bloody 'ell.
In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point, and a ding [DING].
And there's a prize for particularly good answers, which is...
And today we are talking about Victor Lustig.
On French 'Top Gear', how do they announce the Stig's won?
Victor Le Stig!
Ayy!
Can I get a vote from the gentlemen here? Is that a 'golf clap' or is that a 'biscuits'?
--That's not a biscuit. --It's not a biscuit.
It's not a biscuit. It's really not a biscuit.
Oh, I'll take that, that's fine.
Aww! I was kind of hoping that it was some lusty gentleman.
Victor Lust-ig!
Oohrg!
Lusty isn't right, but he certainly had the interesting life.
Vivacious was he?
Sorry, are you telling me someone called Victor Lustig, had an 'interesting life'?
Yeah.
I think with a name like that, doesn't it come with the card?
Oh, he had many types of cards printed up for him. for many sorts of dealings.
Was he a spy?
Ooh, no. More towards the dark end of those arts.
Was he a spy at night?
--No --With Patrick Moore?
Impersonator?
Impersonator...is not quite close enough.
I need to hear something a little bit more dastardly.
Was he a cad and a philanderer?
Con man?
Con man! [DING] Is exactly the words I wanted to hear.
Hence why he'd got the business cards for many identities.
Many of the identities, many particular jobs.
He was one of the most successful con artists of all time.
Hang on a minute! Is this the bloke what sold the Eiffel Tower?
[DING]
Well he's won!
I say, everybody else, go home!
He's the bloke who sold the Eiffel Tower, isn't he? Yeah, that's it.
Yes. You are missing a key word off the end of that sentence.
Multiple times?
Twice! [DING]
Yes, absolutely right. Victor Lustig is the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice.
Had it worn through the bottom?
It had worn all... I'll give you a point.
No..Get...
--I'm making a cobblers joke here. --Get out!
Get out!
Sold?... Soled!... Argh!
Lift it up one side. Hammer it on... Give it a bit of a buff as well, yeah.
I mean what...
What kind of grip do you want on the bottom of the Eiffel Tower? You gonna be walking on ice?
The thing is, I'm still giving you a point. [DING]
1925, it was disused, run down, probably going to be demolished.
It was basically done for, like...
It was like the Millennium Dome. It was put up as a temporary thing as part of an exhibition.
To show that the French could put a giant penis into the sky or something like that.
Which let's face it, is what towers are. They are 'I've got a bigger one that you!'
It was a temporary thing then, wasn't it.
So everyone expected it would be taken down and used for valuable... I don't know,
patisserie space or something like that.
Yes. What were they actually... if they took down the Eiffel Tower, what were they selling?
Scrap!
Blackpool!
Get yer Blackpool spares here!
Mayor of Blackpool, as I imagine there still is or was, stands up, full regalia.
"It has come to my attention, there is a tower larger than the tower we have on the promenade.
"It has come on the market. I have secured it at a reasonable price.''
"Doesn't have a ballroom!"
"Does not have a ballroom. Or a circus." Which I'm always disappointed, isn't actually at the top.
'cos I thought that would be a great idea.
I wanna see an elephant on a beach ball, going round the top of Blackpool Tower.
On the glass floor?
Yeah, that would be great entertainment, that would be.
Or the lift'll open and loads of clowns'll come out.
You're absolutely right. They would have sold it for scrap. [DING]
How do you go about selling the Eiffel Tower?
You approach someone, very quietly, who you know is a) an idiot and b) has a lot of money.
And you say...
"Thingy Jones was looking at this. I think you'd want this."
You're getting a point again, Matt. [DING]
Because he invited six scrap metal dealers to the same meeting. And quietly said,
"I'm from the French government. Here is the business cards and stationery I've had printed up.
"Who would like to buy the Eiffel Tower for scrap?"
"You don't want Michel getting this. You can have it. You can make your mint."
Michel the scrap dealer.
Some bloke from Rotherham turns up with his wagon.
"I can ge' it all on for yer. Lowest bid."
OK. You tell me a burly French name.
Jacques!
Ah! It's true.
Ah, ****.
He put all six of them in a rented limousine.
Toured them round and worked out which one was most enthusiastic and gullible.
Can anyone guess
what the name of the dealer he selected was? And this is not as difficult as you might think.
Michel!
--Yeah, w... --Jacques?
Andre. The last name is just a French word you learn in school.
--For a... --Gare!
Bonjour?
Er, something you might eat with chips.
Frites?
Moules?
Cheval?
Cheval?... that's horse.
Horse and chips.
Mmmm!
La plage.
What? That's the beach!
That's where you eat them.
What the hell do you eat with chips?
Piscine?
That's not the right word! That's a swimming pool!
Poisson?
Poisson! Have a point. [DING]
Andre Poisson.
Andre Piscine.
"Bonjour, je suis Andrew Swimming-Pool!"
You OK there Gary?
You've killed him!
Oh my God, I wondered why I couldn't get served.
"Le piscine! Le piscine, s'il vous plaît!"
I'm sorry, France.
Andre Poisson.
Did indeed... not Andre Piscine.
Andre Poisson was absolutely all for it.
Someone close to him, nearly killed it off.
His wife? [DING]
--Yes. Poisson's wife... --Oh right!
..thought something was suspicious.
Clever! Clever there.
The deal was too quick, the deal was too secret.
Well I imagine the big thing that probably attracted her attention: there wasn't a 'For Sale' sign
on the side of the Eiffel Tower.
Yes.
It wasn't in the news...
So how do you deal with that? How does a con artist deal with nearly being rumbled?
By conning her.
Did he woo her?
What? Like a ghost?
Woo-oo-oo!
Sorry.
I dunno?
"I am ze ghost of Monsieur Eiffel, and I want you to buy my tower!"
Did he tie her to the top?
--And get a big... --And twirl his moustache!
And run a train up the side of the Eiffel tower.
Have an airship approach very slowly.
--No? --No... no.
Paid her?
He confessed.
With an entirely fake confession
saying he was a government minister trying to to this on the cheap and get a bribe.
Ohhh!
What did that mean that Lustig got?
Er? A smaller cut?
Quite the opposite.
A bigger cut?
Have a point [DING]
He got... he got the money...
"What colour is a red fire engine?"
Lustig got the money for the Eiffel Tower
and the bribe.
Ah! Good work, sir!
Took a train to Vienna, with a suitcase full of cash.
Ohh! That's the way to do it. None of your cheques here.
Inter-war France: how else are you going to do that? You're gonna have a suitcase full of cash.
And you are going to be able to get out of town without anyone spotting you.
Which is, of course, the least suspicious way of paying anyone,
is to hand over a briefcase full of millions of francs, while he goes
"well thank you very much. I'll just get on this immediately waiting train next to me, in first class..."
--"Here's the keys." --"Here's the keys to the..."
"To my garage!"
"Tow-er! 'Cos towers need keys. You must remember that."
Yes.
"And, erm, the plans are inside. Toodles!"
Lights cigar with newly minted note.
So what happened next?
Well I imagine he turned up with his gas cutter,
started sawing away the bottom leg and someone ticked him off?
Er, no! No.
Did he check with the government?
Erm...
Does he sound like the kind of guy who would do a lot of due diligence at this point?
After he had already bought it, having not done any due diligence.
--Suddenly... --Now's the time!
Well, what would you do
if you've been conned into giving someone an enormous amount of money?
I would...not...admit it?
Point! [DING]
Nothing happened.
Poisson was too humiliated, he did not go to the police.
It's like going round saying, "I'm a ****ing idiot!"
Yeah.
"Well, this apparently credulous man came to me, said he wanted me to buy this major national structure
"for a ludicrously low sum."
"Said 'Don't ask any questions'..."
--"Told me to not ask any questions, so I didn't!" --"I just didn't!"
"And I gave him a bribe as well!"
"Oh! I threw him a bung. And he got on a train. And he could be anywhere now!
"You must do something about this!"
So where was Lustig a month later?
Was he still in Paris?
Selling it again?
You can both have a point. [DING][DING].
You're absolutely right. He had six more scrap dealers, in a conference room, in Paris.
Pulling the exact same con a second time.
He didn't go for the hat trick did he?
No he didn't. He wasn't able to.
--He got nicked? --He got caught?
Not quite. He managed to evade arrest.
But one of the scrap dealers found him and bray'd his knees in?
--One of the scrap dealers... --One of them knows the other one.
No. I'll give Chris the point [DING]. One of the scrap dealers went to the police
with the counterfeit contract and worked out what had happened.
Managed to skip the town and evade arrest again.
Mmm. Yep.
Which is the story of the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice.
But there are a whole load of other cons in here that he did.
What was his money printing machine?
A machine that printed money.
Wrong.
A person?
No. I mean, it's a machine.
That didn't print money.
--Have a point. [DING] --It printed bad fakes, and he sold that to other people
who wanted to run the con.
Yeah, absolutely right. Have another point [DING]
--Hey! --for that one. That's absolutely right.
So he probably had a machine that spat out actual notes,
sold you the machine and it just did photocopies, or something.
It was a box.
And how long did the box take to print a $100 note?
As long as it takes for a man to slide a $100 bill through from the other side.
--You're... --Some sort of Turing test.
As long as it takes to leave the town.
I was going to say, as long as it takes to take the train to Vienna. Again.
You're going to get. He was actually on a boat at this point. So he [DING] was...
He was plying the transatlantic ferries.
So as they were sort-of coming into New York, he would
confess to someone, oh, he had this money printing machine.
And it printed a $100 bill but it took about six hours to do it.
How? How can any machine take six hours to print something...
Because it was ages ago.
Really intricate, really intricate. It's got to do everything.
And slowly, over six hours, a $100 bill comes out of this machine.
And another one starts to come out.
And he says, "It takes so long. You know, I'm looking to sell it."
It's just the two actual $100 bills, isn't it?
Yes. It's spitting out two $100 dollar bills, then a load of blank paper, by the time he's left.
Oh for god's sake. People!
"Oh, it's run out of ink. I'll sell you some of that."
Was his surname Hewlett-Packard, by any chance?
What? Printing the ink out?
Yeah.
I'll flog you the ink for a ridiculously large fee.
There was also the black dollar scam. Or the money wash scam.
Does anyone know how that works?
Is that like invisible ink?
Quite the opposite.
Is it like visible ink?
I keep giving points for really obvious things here.
Was it invisible, this?
Yes, Matt, have a point(!) [DING]
I'm loving this binary points thing here. Yeah.
He just drew another Eiffel Tower on something and tried to sell that to someone.
Oh, was he trying to give you notes that had been spoiled in the mint or something?
That's it [DING]. It's a trunk full of completely painted over money. Completely dyed money.
Yeah.
With the idea that they will sell you this, and the chemicals to clean it, for a fraction of its cost.
And they will demonstrate it on the few $100 notes, that they've already...
to a batch they've done in those chemicals.
-- And it will work. -- And the rest is...
And the rest, you're absolutely right, have a point. [DING] The rest of it is just completely... paper.
Or they need more funds for more of the chemical fluid, which is quite expensive.
Yes.
Once again like, printing.
Place I used to work, a while back, someone tried... not something similar, like a con.
They lived abroad and wanted to pay for some services. So she sent us a photocopy
of two £5 notes.
As if that would pay for it.
That's... Is that a scam? Or is that just...
Just like, if you could do that... You wouldn't need money, would you?
You would need a fiver.
I felt like sending her back a photocopy, or a drawing of 20p change.
Yes, he was also part of a counterfeiting ring, just printed fake money
which is a heck of a lot easier in the 1930s.
He was arrested in 1935 by federal agents. Who gave him away?
After all this operational security. After all this...
--His wife! --I was gonna say his wife.
His mistress. [DING]
Arrghhh!
Yes, he had similar dealings with romance as he did with business.
He was carrying on with multiple women and one of them got jealous and gave him away.
Was it the Statue of Liberty?
Yes, promptly arrested. They opened his suitcase, they found...?
Money!
No, just some expensive clothing. And a key.
Key took them to a locker. They opened the locker. What was in the locker?
--Money! --Narnia!
Mr Tumnus... with money!
A fake Mr. Tumnus.
But if you wash him, he's actually just two $100 bills in a box.
No, you are absolutely right, counterfeit money. [DING]
$51,000 worth of counterfeit money, which was more than enough to convict him.
Well that's because you wouldn't get a $51,000 bill, for a start.
Just a single note!
"5, 1, 0, 0, 0..."
"I'll sell you this for 50 grand, mate!"
Only he would have notes that were dry wipe.
Arrested. Taken to trial, pled guilty. What happened the day before his trial though?
He ran away?
--Yes! He managed to escape. --I was gonna say...
Have a point [DING]
It turned out his guilty plea...was a fake.
They washed it. It said "Not guilty. I'm on the train to Vienna...
"Again!"
And they said the man in court was actually some cardboard cut out of him.
That just flops forward at the end.
"How did he do this?!"
He managed to escape the Federal House of Detention.
--Which is either a prison or some real... --Brothel.
Yeah, really good night club, I was going for.
Or a very strict school.
And he skipped...he skipped town. He took a train, presumably, to Pittsburgh.
And they caught him.
Nearly four weeks later.
But!
Yeah sadly, it ends with him in Alcatraz, catching pneumonia.
--But what... --Oh!
--Wasn't really pneumonia. --Which he tried to sell to the other inmates.
What was listed on his death certificate as his occupation?
Was it just the dollar sign?
Git!
Banker?
You know what, I'm going to give you the point. It was apprentice salesman.
Yes. [DING]
That's pretty much it.
Alternative gag: estate agent.
Accurate.
So congratulations, at the end of that, Matt, you win this week's show.
Yay!
Congratulations, you win a Formula One champion's steel water boiler.
It's Sebastian Vettel's metal kettle.
Good. I need a brew.
With that, we say thank you to Chris Joel.
Gary Brannan.
Matt Gray
I've been Tom Scott and we'll see you next time.
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