Fraud Facts

A man secretly outsourced his programming job to China. He filled his work day watching cat videos, surfing Reddit and Facebook. Before being caught and fired, he made hundreds of thousands.

In 1997, a 23-year-old French con artist convinced a Texas family he was their missing teenage son — despite having brown eyes instead of blue, a heavy French accent, and being a completely different person. He lived with them for months before a private investigator uncovered the truth.

Al Pacino didn't sign his own checks. His accountant did. By his 70s, his $50 million fortune was gone. He was unknowingly paying for 16 cars, 23 cellphones, and a $400,000-per-year landscaper at a house he never lived in. The accountant got seven and a half years in prison. Pacino had to take roles in movies he openly disliked — including Jack and Jill — just to pay the bills.

In 1925, con man Victor Lustig forged government documents, posed as a ministry official, and convinced six scrap metal dealers that the French government was secretly selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap. He "sold" it to the highest bidder. The victim was so humiliated he never went to police. So Lustig went back to Paris and sold it a second time.