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Notable Impostors.

Notable Impostors.

著者： Popular Culture and Religion.
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Notable Impostors.
Notable impostors are real-life historical figures and con artists who achieved infamy by assuming fake identities, orchestrating elaborate hoaxes, or successfully impersonating professionals, royalty, and heirs to deceive society.
A breakdown of history's most famous impostors includes:
- Ferdinand Waldo Demara ("The Great Impostor"): An American serial impostor who successfully masqueraded as a civil engineer, a monk, a sheriff's deputy, and a trauma surgeon—successfully performing major surgeries during the Korean War without any medical training.
- Frank Abagnale Jr.: Before his 21st birthday, he famously forged $2.5 million in bad checks while successfully impersonating a Pan Am airline pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His life inspired the film Catch Me If You Can.
- Anna Anderson: The most prominent of several women who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II. She captivated the world and fought legal battles for decades, but her claims were thoroughly debunked by DNA testing in the 1990s.
- Victor Lustig: A master con artist who pulled off one of history's boldest scams by successfully "selling" the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal to a wealthy Parisian dealer in 1925, and later scamming the notorious mobster Al Capone.
- Cassie Chadwick: A Canadian-American con artist who convinced major banks in the early 1900s that she was the illegitimate daughter and secret heiress of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, successfully securing over $2 million in fraudulent loans.
- Princess Caraboo: In 1817, a mysterious woman speaking an indecipherable language appeared in Bristol, England, claiming to be a royal from the island of Javasu. She was later exposed as a local cobbler's daughter named Mary Baker.
- Christian Gerhartsreiter: A German-born con artist who spent decades in high society under various aliases, most notably as "Clark Rockefeller," deceiving Wall Street executives and the public until his true identity and a past murder were revealed.
Would you like to explore the intricate stories, the psychology, or the ultimate downfalls of any of these specific historical impostors?
Copyright Popular Culture and Religion. ノンフィクション犯罪 世界 社会科学
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  • 35 - Frederick Emerson Peters.

    35 - Frederick Emerson Peters.
    2026/06/28
    Frederick Emerson Peters.
    Frederick Emerson Peters (September 28, 1885 – July 25, 1959) was an American impostor who wrote bad checks masquerading as scholars and famous people. In an age before mass communication, few store owners bothered to ID check writers. He was born in West Salem, Ohio.

    Background.
    Peters began his career of passing phony checks around 1902 when he presented himself as Theodore Roosevelt II, the son of the US president. He used fraudulent checks for his purchases, writing them to round numbers just a couple of dollars above the price of the purchase. Many of the fooled businesses were still impressed and even framed the checks as mementos.
    Peters was eventually arrested in 1915 and sentenced to ten years in prison. He took charge of the prison library and used it to study various subjects to further his plans.
    When he was released he took a role of antique expert "R.A. Coleman" of the American Peace Society. He visited antique shops ostensibly to buy items for museum collections and again rounded off checks for his "commission". As "J.J. Morton", he bought books for universities. By 1948 he amassed around 130 aliases.
    Over the following years he impersonated real people like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Booth Tarkington and Gifford Pinchot II. He was also jailed many times, but always returned to his old activities later. Further research would be needed to clarify if he was the same Frederick Emerson Peters who on July 2, 1951, became the 22nd Ten Most Wanted Fugitive listed by the FBI, and who was then arrested by two FBI agents when they recognized him in a Washington, D.C. hotel lobby on January 15, 1952.
    When asked why he kept returning to crime, Peters gave a classic response: "It would require the rock-like will of the Sphynx to resist such temptation." When he was found dead in 1959, he had five checks on his pockets - all of them written for different names. Peters died on July 25, 1959, at a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut of a cerebral hemorrhage.


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    2 分
  • 34 - Paul Palaiologos Tagaris.

    34 - Paul Palaiologos Tagaris.
    2026/06/28
    Paul Palaiologos Tagaris. Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1320/1340 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a somewhat dubious connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. He fled his marriage as a teenager and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he traveled widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine and Hungary to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France. During his long and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he repented and confessed his sins before a synod in 1394. Early life and family. The main source on Paul's life is the document of his confession before the patriarchal synod in Constantinople, which is undated, but included among documents of the years 1394–1395. It was published in modern times by Franz Ritter von Miklosich and Joseph Muller (eds.), Acta et Diplomata Græca medii ævi sacra et profana, Vol. II, Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitanæ, Vienna 1860. The confession is complemented by an account of his visit to Paris in 1390, written by a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Denis and included in the anonymous Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422. Paul Tagaris was apparently a scion of the Tagaris family, a lineage which first appears in the early 14th century. His father is unnamed, but is described by Paul as a valiant and famous soldier, so that he is possibly identifiable either with the megas stratopedarches Manuel Tagaris, or with the latter's son, George Tagaris. Paul Tagaris claimed to be related to the ruling imperial dynasty of the Palaiologoi and adopted the surname for himself. Manuel Tagaris was indeed married to Theodora Asanina Palaiologina, daughter of Ivan Asen III of Bulgaria, and niece of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, but even if Paul was Manuel's son, Theodora was, according to the Byzantinist Donald Nicol, "almost certainly not the mother of Paul". According to Nicol, Tagaris was probably born in the 1320s, while other modern sources like the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit put it later, around the year 1340. His parents arranged his marriage at the age of 14 or 15, but soon he abandoned his wife and left Constantinople to become a monk in Palestine. After a while he returned to Constantinople, where he quickly became embroiled in scandal: he claimed that an icon in his possession had miraculous properties, and made money out of gullible believers. This affair scandalized his family, but Patriarch Kallistos I declined to take action against him. It was not until the patriarch went on a visit to Serbia in July 1363 that his locum tenens, the hieromonk Dorotheos, confiscated the icon and forced Paul to return to Palestine. Career in the East. In Palestine, Paul was able to secure his ordination as a deacon by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Lazaros, who took him under his protection (c. 1364). Shortly after, Lazaros left for Constantinople, and his locum tenens Damianos brought charges against Paul, who was forced to abandon Jerusalem for Antioch. In Antioch, Paul once again managed to befriend an influential figure, the newly elected (1368) Patriarch Michael, who not only ordained him a priest, but eventually made him patriarchal exarch and administrator of the Patriarchate's affairs. It was not long before Paul began abusing his authority: he sacked serving bishops and put their sees up for sale, threatening to report those who complained to the Turkish authorities. Soon he claimed the title of Patriarch of Jerusalem for himself and began to ordain bishops, even in territories subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1370, he went to Iconium and then to Persia and Georgia, where, according to his own recollection, he adjudicated a dispute among three rival claimants of the throne, finding in favour of the highest bidder. No such dispute is recorded in Georgian sources at this time. At this point, again according to his own account, he felt remorse and considered returning to Constantinople, where he would give the fortune he had amassed to the poor, but he was forestalled by the Bishop of Tyre and Sidon, who found him and delivered an offer by the Patriarch of Antioch to name him bishop of Taurezion (an unidentified location, suggested as being either in the Taurus Mountains or in the Tauric peninsula, i.e. the Crimea). Paul accepted, and was ...
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    15 分
  • 33 - Arthur Orton.

    33 - Arthur Orton.
    2026/06/28
    Arthur Orton. Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898) was an English man who has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian society in the 1860s and 1870s. The son of a London butcher, Orton went to sea as a boy, spent a year in Chile, and worked as a butcher and stockman for squatters in Australia in the middle-to-late 1850s. In 1866 Thomas Castro, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in Australia, claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the heir to the Tichborne estates and baronetcy who had been declared lost at sea in 1854. During the protracted court proceedings that followed Castro's claim, evidence was produced that Castro might in fact be Arthur Orton, attempting to secure the Tichborne fortunes by imposture. The verdict of the jury in Regina versus Castro (1873–74) was that Castro was not Roger Tichborne, and that he was Arthur Orton. He was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for perjury. After his release he lived in great poverty, still insisting that he was Tichborne. In 1895 he confessed to being Orton, but about one year later he retracted his confession. He died in 1898; the Tichborne family allowed a coffin plate bearing the names "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin, not because his claim had been conceded, but because "[n]o legal means of preventing such an outrage existed". Commentators have generally concurred with the court's verdict that the Claimant was Orton, but some 20th-century analysts have raised uncertainties about this accepted view, and have suggested that, although the Orton identity remains the most likely, a lingering doubt persists. Biography. Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores. In November 1852 he sailed for Tasmania aboard the Middleton and arrived at Hobart in May 1853. There, Orton worked for several butchers. There is some evidence he was a heavy drinker; and for minor trade malpractices, he appeared before magistrates. The Hobart Mercury of 1 Aug 1855 reports on the case of 'Fane v. Orton' in the Mayor's Court in which the City Surveyor brought a charge of 'offering for sale...unwholesome meat, unfit for human food' against 'Arthur Orton, butcher, Macquarie-street' to which Orton pleaded guilty. In October 1855, Orton appeared on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences brought by Frederick Dight, after Orton had been a witness against Dight in an earlier Supreme Court trial, but the case was dismissed. From 1855 to the mid-1860s there is little detail about his life, but he appears to have pursued gold prospecting, mail-running and pastoral station-hand work, with a suggestion of bushranging and even murder. Orton left Hobart as a passenger on schooner Eclipse on 16 November 1855 bound for Port Albert on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria. He worked for some time on squatters 'runs' in the district. While employed at one he was said to have written 'on a fly-leaf of one of the station novels' and this was later offered as evidence that Orton did not have the education that would have been expected of Tichborne: "This day i have received a letter from Donald MacDonald. With the Seal Broken. i Arthur Orton here make a vow on this Book. Although not a Bible. It bear a cross, That i am a man of Bone Blood and flesh. That i will find out the Man if Possible. That broke the said Seal. And that i will punish him according to the laws of, My Countrie. Sined Arthur Orton. Dargo. 11 March 1858". In May 1856, he appears in a subscription list, donating £2, for 'the Patriotic Fund from the Upper District of Gippsland' as a stockman and 'one of the men' of 'Mewburn Park'. In April 1859, a letter to the editor of the 'Gippsland Guardian' mentions Orton, 'who was in charge of the Dargo station', and recounts Orton's testimony in relation to 'the mysterious disappearance of William Henry Clare alias Ballaarat Harry, and Thomas Took'. Orton's letters to England while he was in Hobart showed he was fond of dogs and children and affectionate towards his girlfriend in Wapping. However a personal notice in a Hobart newspaper from May 1856 – 'If this should meet the eye of Arthur Orton, formerly of 69, Wapping, London, by applying on board the "Irene", he will hear of his friends.' – after he had departed for Victoria raises the question of when the correspondence may have ended. Tichborne claimant. In August 1865 advertisements appeared in Australian newspapers asking for information about the fate of Roger Charles Tichborne (born 1829), who had been on a vessel, Bella, which had disappeared at sea off the coast of South America in 1854. This advertisement had been inserted by Lady Tichborne, the missing man's mother, who believed her son was still alive. Roger Tichborne had, however, been presumed dead by the courts and his younger...
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    11 分
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