To make money you need time, talent, work and dedication. Ei well some people chose to look for shortcuts and finding their fortune via all kinds of illegal tricks, but some went even further making some scams absolutely stupid, but somehow worked, at least a period.
Scamming someone isn’t all that easy I must admit but the scams I’m about to reveal to you are the most outrageous and rather easy, with huuge winnings to their cause. Want some new car? No problem, you could teach your cat to burgle in to people homes and steal jewelries.
Scamming usually requires a complicated scheme between numerous people that dizzy the beholder of the target money in such a way he willingly gets rid of it and redistribute the placing of da money. “Shoow me da money. Show me da money!” Yah. Geez how stupid can someone be.
Instead the following schemes I’m about to reveal to you are done by singular persons that succeeded in their quest rather stupid and easy, making you wonder how stupid people can really be, if they were stupid in normal cases, lemme entertain you with the real stupidity someone can show. It’s not that hard to be stupid. Just let your imagination go and others will be handling the rest.
Skipping the chatty stupid mood and get going with straight to number eight:
8. Geraldine Elisabeth Carmichael
In the 70’s America, the oil was a very much extinct resource, the gas shortage has overwhelmed the country and throughout all that madness appears Geraldine Elisabeth Carmichael with the perfect solution.
She announced that she is the widow to an NASA engineer and that he invented the ideal car, a 3 wheel automobile named The Dale that can go 100 km with 3 litters of gas, costs nearly under 2000 dollars and it’s build with a revolutionary material that would support an impact with a wall at 80 Km/h with no deterioration whatsoever.
For the wonder-car there were made callings from all America gathering rapidly $3 Millions before even presenting a prototype and the car that seemed too good to be true, it was in fact too good to be true in the meaning that it didn’t even exist and Elizabeth had invented the whole story.
It’s rather bizarre that everybody had been trusting Elizabeth, probably she didn’t really believed how easy is to become a millionaire. Of course at some point the clients wanted their cars, and those wouldn’t come.
The three hangars rented for the assumed construction were checked out and it was been discovered that they are completely empty.
Meanwhile Elizabeth ran already and changed her identity but some years later she was caught and it was constituted that her lies were much bigger that it was initially believed. Not only she wasn’t the wife of a NASA engineer, not only she didn’t build any car but she wasn’t even a woman.
Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael was in fact Gerry Dean Michael a crook seek by the authorities that disguised himself as a woman for starting a new life. We must applaud him a little for the creativity in choosing the name. Before he was called Gerry Dean Michael, and as a woman he took the name CAR-Michael. Nice…
7. George McGregor
Along the time there were lotsa people selling bad stuff or even inexistent. Anyhow, to sell piece by piece a country that was inexistent it’s something that’s one of a kind. George McGregor it was a colonel that fought in the South America during the freeing war for Venezuela.
When he came back he began to tell everybody that he was made prince in a little country in South America called Poias. Of course it wasn’t true. This country it didn’t existed nowhere on the map, but with all that George McGregor began to sell obligations, currency, land, work rights and mostly anything he could sell from his imaginary country.
He opened various Embassies on England’s territory, he wrote a Constitution for his invented country and as well a book, some kind of a guide to the future colonists in which he said the country is full of cropping land, natural resources and cheap force of labor. When the first round of 200 colonists embarked on the ship and sailed to the inexistent island, George understood that it was time to flee from England so he ran.
Of course the colonists ship never found a country called Poias and came back to England but the so called prince of Poias already ran in France where he started again his activity selling obligations and land in his fairy country. After a while he was caught and arrested for a short period. After he was freed he continued to pretend he was a prince, even he advanced becoming now a president and he continued trying selling land for colonists but already nobody would take him serious.
6. Somebody
The maximum price that was permitted for an Apple application is $1000 and precisely that amount was the price for the application named “I am rich”, an application that does not do anything.
After you paid $1000 you get the application that has a shiny jewelry on the screen and a text that brags about how rich are you. The application does not pretend to do more. The declared purpose of it is:” To show your friends how rich are you”.
This application was in the store for 24 hours until Apple removed it and in the meanwhile 8 people bought it. Eight people spent $1000 for an application that does not do a thing and that doesn’t say it does something. The creator did easily $8000 from an application which he created in a few hours and till this day he doesn’t understand why the application was removed from the store cause in the end he didn’t broke any rule.
We tend to give him the upper hand and taking money from wealthy people capable of giving $1000 for nothing is not necessarily a scam but rather a just redistribution of the wealth.
5. Fox Sisters
Their story it began April 1st 1848 when they wanted to do a prank to a neighbor. They pretended hearing some weird noise in the house of which they believed they were ghosts. The skeptical neighbor came to hear the noises and he was shocked when he realized that indeed the noise was truly strange and they were communicating with him in the most wondrous ways.
The sisters became well known for their ability to communicate with the spirits and slowly they became national celebrities. They went from town to town to prove their ability to communicate with the spirits from across the wall. These were asking the sprits and those were replying back with those weird noises, offering the spectators answers from the after-life as well as messages from deceased from passed relatives.
The Fox sisters alongside others have slowly but steady created a religion called spiritualism. They became superstars in that world and had millions of fans that were absolutely convinced they can communicate with the spirits and they would’ve paid any amount to see that and of course they have paid that amount.
In the end one of the sisters held up a conference in the Academy of Music in New York. There in front of thousands of people she held up the speech and starting with apologies for the scam. She said that all was a lie and it held much too longer. She took off her shoes, she put her foot on a chair and shown off to people the ability to knock on to floor with her toes creating the well-known noises which the spirits were communicating with them.
In that moment a whole room of believers in spiritualism, devoted people that lived and died for their believing discovered that what they had most valuable in this world was actually a fraud and there were only three girls that knocked on the floor with their toes. It may seem odd that a whole country followed their beliefs by a so simple trick. Probably that today this wouldn’t be so easily happening.
4. SuperValu
SuperValu is one of the biggest supermarkets chains in America that was a victim of a fraud as easy as may sound as efficient it was. At some point the company received two emails from two suppliers that notified that they have changed their bank accounts and that from now on the payments should be made in other accounts.
The people from SuperValu haven’t even hesitated and sent their payments in those accounts didn’t noticing that the E-mails weren’t written by the suppliers, but by a guy. A guy that pretended that he is someone else, he sent two E-mails and everybody believed him with no hesitation.
In an incredible way SuperValu made payments for like $10 Million in the fake accounts until someone figured out that something is wrong. See how a simple man could trick a huge corporation and extract millions of dollars.
3. Mike Warnkey
Is a Christian comedian, meaning he makes stand-up comedies in America for devoted Christians. This kinda show is a whole industry extremely competitive and Mike Warnkey is in top. How he ended there is a fascinating story.
He pretended that when he was in the army he was kidnapped by a group of Satanists. These have brainwashed him until he became on his own a Satanist and till the end he became the leader of the whole cult. He tells about his experience in the Devil’s church, of human sacrifices, depraved orgies, drugs, parties, rituals, incantations and many many more.
The story has ended when finally he discovered Jesus and he reformed. He even wrote a book about his adventures which became bestseller from which Mike Warnkey became a celebrity in America as well the no.1 authority in Satanism from the whole America.
He showed off in Oprah show, at Larry Kim and he was a special adviser for the police for the cases that were related with the Satanism. Of course this whole past never existed, he being as we call it a looser in his youth. They interviewed hundreds of friends of him, and all of them have said he was lying.
What is extremely bizarre is that nobody had thought of checking the truth of his statements not after 20 years. For nearly two decades Mike Warnkey was the no.1 authority in Satanism based on ballz and nothing more. Even more, it was discovered that he was beating constantly his wife. Not that would change the story, but anyway.
2. Barbara Erni
Was born in 1743 in Lichtenstein and it was the daughter of two homeless peeps. Soon she realized that living on the streets is hard and that she must find a way to make money and her solution was extremely ingenious. She travelled the whole country with a big chest in which she said he had a treasure.
When she stopped at inns and hotels or wherever she spent the night she asked for her chest to be put in the most secure place in the house which in most cases was a room full of other valuable goods. In the morning when they went to open the room they saw that the chest as well as the rest had disappeared.
Of course she was totally wrecked by that happenings and left the location full of indignation. The secret behind this little trick is a dwarf. In the chest was a dwarf, her accomplice who during the night went out and stole everything he could put his hands on. Pretty ingenious but after tens of this kinds of tricks, Barbara Henri was caught and convicted to death been the last person in the history being executed in Lichtenstein. They don’t know what happened with the dwarf.
1. Sir Roger Tichborne
Was a rich man from a wealthy family in Victorian England. In one of his journeys his ship sank and as it may seem he and all the passengers died. His mother didn’t want to accept the idea that his son was dead and had heard a rumor that her son succeeded in arriving in Australia. Maybe he did only want to get rid of her…
He made an intense publicity in the Australian newspapers trying to find her son and till the end she had found him, or at least she thought. An Australian butcher had seized the opportunity and having the resemblance with the rich son and went off to England where he pretended that he is Roger Tichborne.
The mother had accepted him from the first time even though this Roger was with like 100kg much bigger and had a powerful Australian accent. Slowly but steady he had integrated himself among the relatives and he was part of one of the richest families in England for a few years until the protective mother had passed away…
In that moment when the inheritance discussion had begun, there followed a series of law suits against the butcher and till the end he was excluded from the family even though some historians aren’t all that convinced if he wasn’t the real deal excluding his belly and his accent.