The term con artist or conman comes from one of American historys earliest scammers, a man by the name of William Thompson. In 1849, Thompson was arrested in New York City for a slew of successful scams during which he duped unassuming passersby on the street into lending him their valuables before vanishing with them.Thompson was consequently known among local authorities as the confidence man, which was eventually shortened to con man. But Thompson was hardly alone in his clever grifts. According to historian Karen Halttunen, approximately 10 percent of all criminals in New York City in the 1860s were con artists.Nearly all confidence men or scam artists are charming. Take Victor Lustig, for example. This conman managed to sell the Eiffel Tower and allegedly even swindled notorious mobster Al Capone. He was fittingly dubbed the Count by authorities because he was so debonair. Beyond the smooth talkers, there are also those conmen who play on peoples biases like Anna Sorokin, who cheated her way into the ranks of New York Citys elite by pretending to be a rich heiress named Anna Delvey. The scam artists former friends, nearly all of them wealthy socialites, alleged that she had convinced them to loan her cash for lavish vacations abroad only to never be repaid.Indeed, conning is not a thing of the past. In todays internet age, scams exist in the form of spam emails and catfishing campaigns.And while cognitive scientists argue that most people today are more cautious, con artists still manage to find ways to evade the best lie detectors, leaving even the keenest people to be conned.Charles Ponzi, The Most Notorious Conman In U.S. HistoryLeslie Jones/Boston Public LibraryThis conman and investment fraudster from the early 20th century was the namesake of the term Ponzi scheme.Today, the term Ponzi scheme is used to describe an illegitimate operation. But the term actually came from the real-life Charles Ponzi, whose $15 million investment scheme claimed to turn the average American working man into a multimillionaire overnight.But really, the scheme only worked to turn Ponzi himself into a multimillionaire overnight. Charles Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who first came to the U.S. in 1903. Like most immigrants who came to America, Ponzi was looking for economic opportunity. The conman worked all kinds of odd jobs to make ends meet until he secured a job at Bank Zarossi, which served mostly Italian immigrants in Montreal, Canada.But when the bank went bankrupt, Ponzi found himself out of a job. As a result, he began dabbling in check forgery and illegal smuggling, which landed him in prison. But after his release, Ponzi was struck with inspiration. Thanks to a letter from a business correspondent in Spain, the ambitious hustler was introduced to the international postal coupon system.I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes. And those hopes never left me.Charles PonziPonzi exploited the system by buying massive quantities of postal coupons from countries with weak economies and redeeming them in countries with stronger ones. He operated his scheme under his invented Securities Exchange Company.The scam artist trained sales agents to pitch potential investors, telling them that they would receive double their money plus interest back within 45 days. The sales agents pulled in 10 percent commissions for every investor they managed to bring in while subagents pulled in five percent. Leslie Jones/Boston Public LibraryPonzi, pictured with his gold-handled cane, heads to court in 1920 to defend himself.Charles Ponzis scheme grew as investors eagerly dumped money into his business. He took the payments from sales agents and investors directly and, instead of using them to ship the stamp coupons, simply pocketed them himself. Then, he gave portions of the money to pay off previous investors, creating an infinite cycle of non-profitable investments.His scam secured over 40,000 investors, making him a millionaire in less than six months. An article published by the Boston Post on July 24, 1920, estimated that his net worth was around $8.5 million. He had a 12-bedroom mansion, multiple cars, house staff, and a gold-handled cane.News of Ponzis wealth and the false claim that he was making others as wealthy as he was attracted more investors. But it also invited scrutiny from federal investigators. In the end, it was Ponzis publicist, William McMasters, who revealed his fraudulent scheme and reported him to authorities. The conman served three and a half years in federal prison for his scam. After he was paroled in 1925, he was sentenced to nine years in state prison on additional fraud charges. But his unmasking did little to motivate his remorse. Charles Ponzi described his scam as the best show ever staged on their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! He subsequently tried to escape from prison multiple times. After he was released from jail in 1934, Ponzi was deported back to Italy where he died in a charity hospital in 1949 with just $75 to his name. But his name and the scheme he founded live on in infamy.Sylvia Browne, The Psychic Scam Artist Who Profited Off Of Grieving ParentsSteve SnowdenBefore her death in 2013, Sylvia Browne built an empire as a psychic detective.When it comes to conmen, few are more predatory than the self-proclaimed psychic named Sylvia Browne. Dubbed Americas most controversial psychic, she made her fortune selling false hope to the parents of missing children.Born Sylvia Shoemaker on Oct. 19, 1936, in Kansas, Missouri, Browne claimed that her psychic abilities began when she was a toddler. In 1974, the scam artist founded The Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research.A few years later, she opened the Society of Novus Spiritus, where she trained ministers to help spread her ideas about God to their followers. Browne also taught hypnosis through her eponymous training center.Browne raked in money by charging customers $850 to ask her questions about their lives over the telephone for half an hour. She claimed she could look centuries into the past and talk to the dead and alledged that her psychic abilities had helped the FBI to solve many crimes.Sylvia Browne shot to fame after she landed a regular guest spot on The Montel Williams Show, where she gave parents whose children had gone missing premonitions or information on their whereabouts. Sometimes, she would tell the parents that their child was dead. One of her most notorious readings was of Opal Jo Jennings, a six-year-old girl who was kidnapped by a stranger from her grandparents Texas yard in 1999.Shes not dead, the scam artist told Jennings grandparents on Montel. But what bothers me now Ive never heard of this before but she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro. So she was taken and put on some kind of a boat or a plane and taken into white slavery.But Brownes reading proved false when Jennings body was found buried somewhere in Fort Worth, Texas. Pathologists concluded that the girl had been killed and buried the same day that she was kidnapped. Psychic debunker James Randi speaks about Brownes scheme with journalist Anderson Cooper.Brownes mention of the Japanese town of Kukouro, shouldve been the first clue that her reading was all a con, as a quick Google search would show that the place doesnt exist.An exhaustive examination of Brownes 115 public predictions about missing children concluded that 25 were wrong and the other 90 remain unsolved. In 1992, Browne was indicted on several charges of investment fraud and grand theft. She pled no contest to the sale of security without a permit, which is a felony, and was slapped with 200 hours of community service. Browne remained popular despite her numerous false readings and went on to publish over 50 books, 22 of which were New York Times best sellers. Most of her multimillion-dollar fortune has come from her pricey phone readings and the $700 consultations she offered to grieving parents. She has recently received renewed interest as in 2008, she predicted a pandemic that sounds much like COVID-19. Brown wrote that around the year 2020, the world would be plagued by a pneumonia-like illness.Browne ran her psychic empire until her death in 2013 at the age of 77. Ironically, her own death was another misreading: in 2003, she told Larry King that she would live until she was 88. The post 9 Of Historys Most Infamous Con Artists And The Scams They Almost Got Away With appeared first on All That's Interesting.