Barely a day goes by in 2025 without an email or a phone call from someone whose sole aim is to trick you into handing over your personal details or money.
The most famous one is the man in Nigeria claiming to know a distant relative who’s mysteriously left a vast fortune to you.
But there are a great many more, and they’re growing increasingly sophisticated.
However, frauds and scams are not a new thing.
In fact, the concept of conning people dates back hundreds of years.
Here are some extraordinary historic scams.
The South Sea Bubble (1720)
The early 18th century saw one of the most infamous economic bubbles in history.
The South Sea Company was formed in 1711.
It was granted a monopoly on trade in the South Seas in exchange for managing Britain’s national debt.
The company’s stock prices soared based on rumors of vast wealth overseas, despite minimal actual trade or profits.
When investors realized the truth, the bubble burst.
This led to catastrophic financial losses and a massive hit to the economy of Britain.
The Diamond Necklace Affair (1785)
This scandal was a plan by Jeanne de la Motte and her husband to procure an expensive diamond necklace.
The necklace was originally intended for Marie Antoinette.
By convincing the Cardinal de Rohan Marie Antoinette wished him to purchase the necklace on her behalf, they managed to secure the item under false pretenses.
The scam was uncovered when they attempted to sell the diamonds
This led to a public scandal that tarnished the reputation of the French monarchy.
The outrage was such that it is seen as fueling the fires of the French Revolution.
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Gregor MacGregor and Poyais Scheme
This is a famous and well-documented historical scam from the 1820s.
MacGregor sold land and riches in a fictional Central American territory called “Poyais” to British and French investors and settlers.
The land was completely uninhabitable and the scheme left many ruined and stranded.
Read more here.
The Eiffel Tower Sale (1925)
In one of the most audacious cons of the 20th century, Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower – Twice.
Posing as a government official, Lustig invited six scrap metal dealers to a confidential meeting where he convinced them the tower was being sold for scrap.
He asked for bribes for the right to secure the deal, disappearing with the money before the buyers realized they had been duped.
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The Match King Fraud (1930)
Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish businessman known as “The Match King,” built a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of matches.
His company, Kreuger & Toll, supposedly backed by legitimate matchstick production, was in fact propped up by forged collateral and fake assets.
Kreuger’s deceit unravelled during the Great Depression, leading to his suicide and revealing losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, a huge sum at the time.
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The Great Wine Fraud (1940s-1970s)
For decades, Rudy Kurniawan, dubbed the “wine world’s Bernie Madoff,” conned wine enthusiasts, including millionaires and celebrities, into purchasing counterfeit vintage wine.
Kurniawan mixed younger wines to mimic the taste of rare vintages, re-bottling them in old bottles with forged labels.
His scheme was eventually exposed when experts noticed discrepancies in the labels and wine color, leading to his arrest and conviction.
