This is so great. Gilbert King has put up a very well-written post at the Smithsonian site which recalls Hall of Fame con man Victor Lustig. Counterfeiters, confidence men and impostors are just like you and I, except they have more initiative. An excerpt:

“Secret Service agents finally had one of the world’s greatest imposters, wanted throughout Europe as well as in the United States. He’d amassed a fortune in schemes that were so grand and outlandish, few thought any of his victims could ever be so gullible. He’d sold the Eiffel Tower to a French scrap-metal dealer. He’d sold a ‘money box’ to countless greedy victims who believed that Lustig’s contraption was capable of printing perfectly replicated $100 bills. (Police noted that some ‘smart’ New York gamblers had paid $46,000 for one.) He had even duped some of the wealthiest and most dangerous mobsters—men like Al Capone, who never knew he’d been swindled.

Now the authorities were eager to question him about all of these activities, plus his possible role in several recent murders in New York and the shooting of Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond, who was staying in a hotel room down the hall from Lustig’s on the night he was attacked.

‘Count,’ one of the Secret Service agents said, ‘you’re the smoothest con man that ever lived.'” (Thanks Browser.)