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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

18. Scamming a Tycoon

The nineteenth century Erie Railroad War. Pintrest

The next – and most famous – victim of a Lord Gordon-Gordon scheme was Gilded Age railroad tycoon and robber baron Jay Gould. After leaving Minnesota in 1872, His Lordship convinced Gould that he controlled over 600,000 shares in the Erie Railway. Gould was in a desperate fight with other tycoons to gain control of the Erie Railway. So he bribed Lord Gordon-Gordon with $200,000 in cash and $1 million in stock to assign him those shares.

By the time Gould realized that he had been hoodwinked, Gordon-Gordon had sold the stock. The fake lord was put on trial in 1873, but he got the court to grant him bail. Once out from behind bars, he promptly skipped bail and went on the lam.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.