[WANTED POSTER] LUSTIG, Victor (1890–1947).WANTED FOR GRAND LARCENY. (Spokane), 1926. Pictorial wanted poster bearing the traditional two-view portraits of this notorious con man, here named as “Geo. Schobel,” and listing no less than fifteen aliases, including that which he was perhaps best known by, “The Count” Viktor Lustig. Contemporary police department rubber stamps to recto. 8½ × 5¼". Mounting residue to verso, else very good. See Exemplars, page 134.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest con men of all time, Lustig, Austrian by birth, began his life of crime aboard steamships passing between Europe and America, lightening the wallets of passengers with his smooth demeanor and a variety of cons. The most notable of these was also exceptionally lucrative: the sale of a fraudulent “money boxes,” steamer trunk-sized containers made of mahogany containing apparatus and chemicals—so Lustig claimed—that could apparently print perfect counterfeit duplicates of any piece of paper currency. “The Count” was able to stir up enough interest in these phony machines to sell them to his marks for tens of thousands of dollars.
But Lustig lusted after larger scores, and finally settled on the biggest of them all in 1925, when he sold the Eiffel Tower to a Parisian scrap dealer for a reported $70,000.00. When the fraud went unannounced in the press he tried it again but fled to the United States in fear before consummating a second deal. Once in America permanently, he reverted to the “money box” scam again, fell in with Al Capone for a time, and finally found his true calling by becoming a counterfeiter on a grand scale, printing so many imitation greenbacks (known as “Lustig money”) as to give the Secret Service genuine concern for the stability of the monetary system. Victor Lustig was eventually captured by Federal agents in New York City in 1935. He escaped from a holding cell there while awaiting trial but was apprehended again one month later. He died in Alcatraz Prison in 1947.