Grifting is a popular term for describing attempts to earn a free lunch. Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but stories of grifter provide a fascinating read.
In 2009, a sleepy provincial Italian town was the scene of one of the strangest-ever financial crimes. Two Japanese men en route to Switzerland were found by Italian police to have $134 billion in bearer bonds in a false-bottomed suitcase.
The meteoric rise in the price of Bitcoin has inspired enterprising criminals from Russia to Malaysia, to steal electricity to mine crypto.
With big money as the common denominator, TV Game Shows are popular with audiences, advertisers and production companies. But money inevitably inspires mischief, so here are the greatest Game Shows scandals, cheaters and hustlers.
What is rent-seeking? There’s a strict textbook definition of socially unproductive economic activity and a broader sense of just milking the system. The truth is somewhere in between, where Covid contract VIP lanes meet secondary ticket markets.
If you’re a fan of financial crime podcasts or money-heist style Netflix Series, here are five of the strangest financial scams you’ve never heard of. From a Metaverse Ponzi, to $134.5bn hidden in a false-bottomed suitcase.
Titanic Thompson, the man who’d bet on anything, is one of America’s greatest hustlers. A pro-level golfer, he preferred gambling, staging bizarre proposition bets, winning and losing millions; he died penniless, leaving five dead men in his wake.
