For sale: one used tower
The prefect of police read the bill of sale on official
government stationery again while the scrap metal dealer fumed.
”
You paid this man 25,000 francs for the Eiffel Tower so you
could tear it down and sell it for scrap?
”
”
Yes, yes; it’s all there. I now believe it was a fraud. I want
my money back and I want him arrested!
”
For sale: one used tower
The prefect of police read the bill of sale on official government stationery again while the scrap metal dealer fumed.
“You paid this man 25,000 francs for the Eiffel Tower so you could tear it down and sell it for scrap?”
“Yes, yes; it’s all there. I now believe it was a fraud. I want my money back and I want him arrested!”
Meanwhile, in Vienna on that pleasant summer day in 1925, Victor Lustig was enjoying the good life from the sale’s proceeds. If he seemed pleased, he had reason. A few months earlier he had previously sold the tower to a scrap metal dealer named Andre Poisson (an apt name for a victim: Poisson translates into “fish”).
Lustig was born in Czechoslovakia in 1890. He was a charming man who spoke five languages, had 45 known aliases, and a scar across his face inflicted by the boyfriend of a woman to whom Lustig had been a bit too attentive.
He became proficient in billiards, and at poker by which he lived well by plying his skill against millionaires on Trans-Atlantic cruises.
When World War I curtailed the cruises and his income, Lustig turned to confidence games. He read in a Paris newspaper that the Eiffel Tower’s upkeep was becoming almost prohibitive, and a bell sounded.
He had a counterfeiter friend devise government stationery for a fictitious bureau, then sent letters to five major scrap iron dealers. They responded to his invitation for a meeting at the Crillon Hotel.
Swearing them to secrecy, Lustig asked each to submit a bid for razing of the tower. “If this were known before the dismantling, it would upset the public.” They all submitted bids, but Lustig already had sized up Poisson.
In a private conversation, Lustig dropped hints that a “gift” could influence the award. Poisson bit and paid 25,000 francs and a sizeable bribe. When he realized he had been duped he was too humiliated to inform the police.
After the second sale, the wily Czech bounced across the Atlantic. In Chicago, “Count” Lustig arranged a meeting with Al Capone and let him in on a secret stock deal. Capone gave him $50,000 to invest. Two months later, he told Capone that he had been swindled and lost everything, “but I borrowed enough to repay you.” He handed Capone the $50,000, which had been in a safe deposit box the entire time. Capone said, “You’re a square-shooter. Take this,” and peeled off $5,000 for Lustig.
Next he sold money boxes, which could duplicate a $1,000 bill every six hours, thus giving him a six-hour lead when it was learned that the only $1,000 bill it yielded was the one Lustig had secretly inserted before the demonstration.
Authorities finally caught up with him, and the last years of his life were spent at Alcatraz. Even there, many of the biggest criminals in the country were in awe of the man who had sold the Eiffel Tower – twice.
