12. The Fake Lord Who Used Deceit to Bilk a Gilded Age Tycoon Out of a Fortune
Lord Gordon-Gordon was not a lord. Instead, he was a successful nineteenth-century British con artist who used deceit to bilk the unwary wealthy out of large sums of money. His real name and identity are unknown, but he first appears in the record in 1868, when he posed as “Lord Glencairn” in an attempt to secure an estate in Scotland. He did not get the estate, but he did get £25,000 from some London jewelers, then fled to America. He ended up in Minnesota, where he posed as Lord Gordon-Gordon, and convinced the Northern Pacific Railway that he wanted to buy a huge tract of land to settle tenants from his over-populated Scottish estates. The Northern Pacific’s land commissioner spent about $45,000 to court and secure the Scottish Lord as a client, in the belief that he would invest millions in return.
The Northern Pacific Railway scam was just an appetizer. Lord Gordon-Gordon’s next victim was Gilded Age railroad tycoon and robber baron Jay Gould. In 1872, His Lordship convinced Gould that he controlled over 600,000 shares in the Erie Railway. At the time, Gould was in a desperate fight with other tycoons to gain control of the Erie Railway. So he bribed Lord Gordon-Gordon with $200,000 in cash and $1 million in stock to assign him those shares. By the time Gould realized that he had been conned, Gordon-Gordon had sold the stock. The fake lord was put on trial in 1873, but the court granted him bail. He promptly fled to Canada.