3. Rooking a Robber Baron
Lord Gordon-Gordon’s most famous 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. That got Gould’s attention: at the time, he was in a desperate fight with other tycoons to gain control of the Erie Railway.
So Gould 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 disposed of the cash and sold the stock. The fake lord was put on trial in 1873, but the court granted him bail. He promptly fled to Canada.