Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

A starving ex-convict finds all doors closed to him until he buys a
second-hand military uniform in turn-of-the-century Prussia. A homely
French maid is duped out of a fortune by her own father, but she turns
this perturbing paternal lesson into a scheme that allows her to defraud
every major banker in 19th-century Paris. The black-sheep son of a noble
British banking family is sent to live as a remittance man in China, but
his talent for deceit gains him a fortune as well as a knighthood from
the King of Great Britain. A 13th-century Venetian merchant named Marco
writes a book about an imaginary trip to China and becomes one of the
most famous “explorers” in history.

This is Andreas Schroeder’s third book of true tales about outrageous
con artists from around the world. Many of these scams are so
far-fetched that it is hard to believe that people in their right minds
actually fell for them. Fortunately, Schroeder provides sources for all
his chapters. Unfortunately, it is hard not to lose all respect for the
human species when one realizes that there really are people as morally
warped as these swindlers or as sadly gullible as their dupes.

Schroeder’s prose manages to remain crisp, even chatty, while
explaining extremely complicated financial shell games. Furthermore, the
author claims that there are so many con artists in the world, he still
has material for at least a dozen more books like this one. Let’s hope
he’s not deceiving us.