Arthur Ferguson

The Scot Arthur Ferguson (1883 - 1938) is a contemporary and precursor of the swindler who sold the Eiffel Tower, Victor Lustig. Native of Glasgow, where he had been actor, he had taken his retirement and was with London when he makes the meeting, in 1923, of a native American of the Iowa. According to its dires, it would not have premeditated to swindle the naive one that it would have simply seen admiring the statue of the admiral Nelson located at Trafalgar Square. Improvising, Ferguson told that all the statues (then only those of the admiral and lions surrounding the fountain) were going to be sold with the biddings. The American declaring itself interested, Ferguson ventured the price of: 6000 pounds sterling, indicating that, by a fortunate coincidence, it was in the confidence because it was precisely that which the British government had responsible for this sale having to be done under strict conditions of confidentiality.

The Americans were going to become the best customers of the former actor become swindler. He praised himself thereafter to have succeeded in selling to them Big Ben (thousand books), to have boxed an installment of the double for Buckingham Palace then, for a sum which he did not remember any more, the Eiffel tower of Paris.

Freedom costs him its freedom

Encouraged by the facility with which he managed to convince of the Americans, he emigrated towards the United States and obtained in 1925 an important rent of a stockbreeder texan for the hiring of the White House to Washington (he had promised a 99 years to him lease but the first year of hiring was to be regulated by advance). The same year, it made the error be caught some more with an American, but with Australian of Sydney. This last, met in New York, was initially persuaded that to release the entry of the port, the Statue of Freedom, Auguste Bartholdi, should be sold. The Australian one tried to join together the sum, was made take in photograph with Ferguson in front of the monument, but taken suspicions, it ends up going to the police force. Ferguson was judged quickly. Released in 1930, he died in Los Angeles in 1938.

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