15 Infamous Con Artists Who Fooled America, Ranked

In 2017, Billy McFarland promised an elite music festival in the Bahamas featuring luxury villas and world-class cuisine. Attendees instead found wet mattresses and cheese sandwiches, leading to his six-year federal prison term.

Operating during the 1920s Harding administration, Gaston Means forged evidence and took bribes. In 1932, he swindled a wealthy heiress out of 104,000 dollars by claiming he could recover the kidnapped Lindbergh baby.

Known as the Baron of Arizona, Reavis forged ancient Spanish land grants throughout the 1880s. He claimed ownership of twelve million acres across Arizona and New Mexico before federal investigators proved his documents fake.

As president of the New York Stock Exchange, Whitney symbolized elite financial rectitude during the Great Depression. Behind the scenes, he pilfered millions from client trust funds and the exchange widows fund to sustain bad trades.

During the 1920s, Brinkley amassed vast wealth by marketing goat testicle implants as a cure for male impotence. He built one of the earliest high-power border radio stations to broadcast medical advice without a legitimate license.

Joseph Weil spent six decades orchestrating elaborate confidence schemes, swindling victims out of eight million dollars. He famously remarked that his targets always possessed an inner desire to get something for nothing.

Before public outrage over drug price hikes, Martin Shkreli operated a shell game between his hedge funds and biotechnology companies. A federal jury convicted him in 2017 for defrauding MSMB Capital investors out of millions.

Posing as Anna Delvey, Sorokin convinced Manhattan banks, boutique hotels, and wealthy socialites that she owned a sixty million dollar trust fund. Her counterfeit wire transfers and unpaid luxury bills unraveled in a 2019 trial.

Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont, a boiler room brokerage that aggressively pushed manipulated penny stocks onto eager buyers. His aggressive market schemes cost retail investors roughly two hundred million dollars during the 1990s.

Holmes promised that Theranos could run hundreds of blood tests from a single finger prick. In reality, proprietary devices failed repeatedly while secret third-party machines processed patient samples, leading to an eleven-year sentence.

Possessing photographic memory, Demara assumed dozens of false identities without credentials. During the Korean War, he served aboard a Canadian warship as a surgeon, performing successful operations before exposure.

During the 1960s, teenage Frank Abagnale cashed millions of dollars in forged checks while impersonating an airline pilot, pediatrician, and attorney. His flamboyant evasions inspired the popular Hollywood film Catch Me If You Can.

Barnum monetized curiosity with sensational hoaxes, including the Feejee Mermaid and the fabricated nurse of George Washington. He turned exaggerated public spectacle into a thriving business, legitimizing modern promotional hype.

In 1920, Ponzi promised investors fifty percent returns in forty-five days through international reply coupons. He paid earlier investors using new capital, taking in fifteen million dollars before his pyramid collapsed in eight months.

Former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff built the largest Ponzi scheme in history, fabricating steady returns for decades across thousands of client accounts. His fraud finally collapsed during the 2008 financial crash, totaling 65 billion dollars.