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ID
theft and fraud before the dot
This page considers identity theft and identift fraud
before the digital era, highlighting some major incidents
and issues
It covers -
introduction
As Gilbert & Sullivan lamented in HMS
Pinafore (1878) "things are seldom what they
seem: skim milk masquerades as cream". The history
of identity-related deception before the internet reflects
the willingness of the deceived to believe and diffficulties
in readily determining what's skim milk, what's the genuine
article.
The extent of ID theft/fraud over time is not clear ...
and arguably isn't knowable. The instances that remain
in popular and scholarly memory survive because they relate
to feats of particular audacity or had political significance;
mundane deceptions were frequent but haven't attracted
lasting attention.
As suggested on the preceding page of this profile, a
basic trajectory is evident, from ID theft involving sacred
or royal identity to deception concerning bureaucratic
actors, a shift from blood to uniforms and paper.
gods and monsters
Matthew vii 15 warns of false prophets "who come
to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are
ravening wolves". In the pre-Christian and early
Christian eras it is common to find charismatic figures
such as Simon Magus, Alexander of Abonoteichos or Theudas
who claimed divine or quasi-divine powers. In appropriating
an identity, where better to start than that of God?
Confusion about who is who continued in the Middle Ages.
Gregory of Tours's Historia features an enthusiast
who at the end of the sixth century declared himself to
be Christ, travelling in the neighbourhood of Arles in
company of Mary, performing miracles and gathering followers
until struck dead by a representative of Bishop Aurelius.
False bishops Adelbert and Clement, active in Germany
around the year 744, gained attention for unorthodoxy
(Adelbert told his followers it was unnecessary to confess
their sins because he already read their hearts) and claims
that their authority was confirmed by a miraculous letter
from Jesus Christ that had supposedly fallen from heaven
and been picked up by the Archangel Michael. The letter
was read alound by Pope Zachary at the Council of Rome
in 745 but was apparently unconvincing as the 'bishops'
were subsequently terminated. Franciscan friar James of
Jülich was boiled alive in 1392 after the bad career
move of pretending to be a bishop and falsely ordaining
numerous priests.
Ecclesiastical fraudster Paulus Tigrinus successfully
conned Pope Boniface IX (1389) and Antipope Clement VII
into colluding in his assertion that he was the wandering
Patriarch of Constantinople, lucratively milking minor
potentates such as the Duke of Savoy.
The shape of the historical record, which for example
like television centres on action rather than providing
detailed information about the perceptions of ordinary
people, means that it is difficult to be sure why some
frauds were successful.
One reason is presumably the 'charisma' of the fraudsters.
Another is contemporary expectations that identity was
signified and validated by appearance: if you wore the
right clothing and displayed the appropriate hauteur you
were likely to be who you claimed to be, a case of clothes
making the man.
Anxiety about identity and signifiers was reflected in
a succession of sumptuary laws in most jurisdictions,
seeking to underpin social hierarchies and morality by
regulating the clothing of classes and occupations (eg
prostitutes). Elizabeth I of England for example decreed
that
None
shall wear in his apparel any Cloth of Gold, Cloth of
Silver or cloth mixed with gold or silver, nor any sables,
except Earls, and all of superior degrees, and Viscounts
and Barons in their doublets and sleeveless coats
A
Scottish law of 1433 had more plaintively prohibited provision
of pies to anyone under the rank of baron.
An introduction is provided by Alan Hunt's excellent Governance
of the consuming passions: a history of sumptuary law
(New York: St Martins 1996), superseding Frances Baldwin's
1926 Sumptuary Legislation & Personal Regulation
in England (rpr New York: AMS Press 1994).
great pretenders
Exotic imposters weren't restricted to Western Europe
or the Church. Byzantine politics had been bedevilled
by pretenders such as the Alexis Comnenus who undermined
emperor Isaac Comnenus II. The sudden death of Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1190 saw a slew of false
Fredericks, followed by more imposters in the 1280s following
the death of Frederick II Hohenstaufen (the 'Stupor Mundi'
emperor). The death of Baldwin of Antioch saw appearance
of a false Baldwin in Flanders in 1225.
In the UK Jack Cade, who claimed descent from the Earls
of Mortimer, momentarily gained control of London before
being slain in 1450. The demise of the 'princes in the
tower', attributed to Richard III, was followed by revolts
centred around Lambert Simnel (who claimed in 1486 to
be the Duke of Clarence and crowned in Dublin as Edward
VI) and Perkin Warbeck (who announced himself in 1497
as Richard, Duke of York).
They are profiled in Rebels, Pretenders, & Impostors
(New York: St Martins 2000) by Clive Cheesman & Jonathan
Williams, Ann Wroe's more detailed Perkin: A Story
of Deception (London: Cape 2003), Michael Bennett's
Lambert Simnel & the Battle of Stoke (Stroud:
Alan Sutton 1987) and Ian Arthurson's The Perkin Warbeck
Conspiracy, 1491-1499 (Stroud: Alan Sutton 1993).
Dispute about the demise in Africa of King Sebastian of
Portugal in 1578 saw a succession of four pretenders,
each claiming to be the king.
Problems with succession in Russia after the death of
Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov (1605) saw four pretenders
who claimed to be Ivan's son Dimitri. As Gyula Szvak in
False Tsars (Boulder: East European Monographs
2001) and Maureen Perrie in Pretenders & Popular
Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of
the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
1995) note, 'comebacks' by dead Russian royalty were recurrent,
with multiple false Tsar Peters (following death of Catherine
the Great's husband in the 1762 palace coup) and false
Constantines (assuming the identity of Nicholas I's older
brother Constantine).
The death in a Paris prison of the Dauphin Louis, son
of Louis XVI, resulted in over thirty self-proclaimed
Louis XVIIs, including one who was implausibly black and
frizzy-haired. Ex-forger Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, undeterred
by an inability to speak French, convinced enough true
believers to fund his 'court' in Brussels until 1845.
Recent DNA tests are discussed in Deborah Cadbury's The
Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution, Revenge,
and DNA (New York: St Martins 2002).
Milkmaid Mary Baker (1791-1864) became exotic Princess
Caraboo of Javasu, a career change described in John Wells'
Princess Caraboo: Her True Story (London:
Pan 1994), John Gutch's
1817 Caraboo: A Narrative of a Singular Imposition
Practiced Upon the Benevolence of a Lady Residing in the
Vicinity of Bristol and David Garnett's novel
Princess Caraboo (1936)
Bolshevik execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family
was followed by various imposters claiming to be the Grand
Duchess Anastasia - eg Eugenia Smith and Anna Anderson
in 1922, highlighted in Peter Kurth's Anastasia: The
Riddle of Anna Anderson (New York: Little Brown 1985)
and more recently Georgian Natalya Petrovna Bilikhodze
- or the Tsarevitch, eg Michael Goleniewski and Nikolai
Chebotarev, promoted in Guy Richards' Imperial Agent:
The Goleniewski-Romanov Case (New York: Devin-Adair
1966) and Michael Gray's Blood Relative (London:
Gollancz 1998).
At a less elevated level the Martin Guerre case has formed
the basis of two films, three plays, a musical, an opera,
a novel by Alexandre Dumas - author of royal ID theft
tale The Man In The Iron Mask - and Natalie Zemon
Davis' exemplary The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge:
Harvard Uni Press 1983).
Unpleasant French villager Martin Guerre disappeared after
going off to the wars, returning in 1556 as harder-working,
more popular and more pleasing to his wife (albeit with
smaller-size feet). Property disputes led to claims that
he was an imposter, with litigation resolved in 1560 when
a one-legged man hobbled into the Parlement of Toulouse
claiming that he was the real Martin. That claim was successful:
the penalty for identity fraud in the Guerre was public
execution.
Two centuries later, amid the chaos of the French Revolution,
Anne Buiret claimed to be the Adelaide-Marie de Champignelles,
Marquise de Douhault, supposedly imprisoned by her grasping
relatives from 1786 to 1789. They claimed that she'd died
and been properly buried. The case was not clearly resolved
- the court ruled that she was neither Buiret not the
Marquise - and the claimant's gained attention as a model
of a 'stateless' person ("la femme sans nom")
or the basis for Wilkie Collins' thriller The Woman
In White (1858).
There was a happier ending for eminent British army surgeon
Dr James Barry (1792-1865), who a post-mortem examination
revealed to be a woman, one who had given birth to a child.
The Barry case is discussed in Scanty Particulars:
The Scandalous Life & Astonishing Secret of Dr James
Barry, Queen Victoria's Preeminent Military Doctor
(New York: Random 2003) by Rachel Holmes and Impostors:
Six Kinds of Liar (New York: Viking 2000) by
Sarah Burton.
the confidence man
The age of paper money and social volatility produced
adventurers such as French swindler Madame Therese, profiled
in Hilary Spurling's superb La Grande Therese: The
Greatest Scandal of the Century (London: HarperCollins
2000) and Arthur Orton, who claimed to be wealthy UK baronet
Roger Charles Tichborne.
Tichborne had disappeared, presumed drowned off South
America in an 1854 shipwreck. In 1865 his mother was advised
that a man "answering to the description of her son"
was working as a butcher at Wagga Wagga, Australia. Any
resemblamce was tenuous but that man - aka Tom Castro
and Arthur Orton - embarked on litigation to claim the
inheritance, ultimately being convicted in 1874 of perjury.
The case is featured in The Tichborne Trial (London:
Grant Richards 1899) by J B Atlay here
and Robyn Annear's The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable
Story of the Tichborne Claimant (Melbourne: Text
2002).
Thirty years later, as Partha Chatterjee describes in
A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History
of the Kumar of Bhawal (Princeton: Princeton Uni
Press 2002), the ailing Kumar (prince) of a leading Bengali
family supposedly died during a trip to Darjeeling in
1909. His body apparently disappeared, fuelling disagreement
when the Kumar supposedly reappeared in 1921 as a holy
man with an interest in the family estates. Litigation
lasted until an appeal to the Privy Council in 1946.
Most identity crime, of course, involved the departure
of money rather than bodies, something discussed in Karen
Halttunen's Confidence Men & Painted Women: A
Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870
(New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1986), James Cook's The
Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2001) and Timothy Spears'
100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American
Culture (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1995). Confidence
men claimed expertise, formal qualifications, wealth and
family - inspiring anxiety about legitimacy and the recognition
of 'real' experts, underpinning moves towards the bureaucratisation
of knowledge through formal training and certification.
clothes maketh the man?
Signifiers of expertise or authority could, however, be
misread. Two of the more spectacular instances are the
Kopenick and Dreadnought cases.
Ex-crim Wilhelm Voigt, trading on German deference to
anyone in a uniform, bought a second-hand captain's suit
in 1906 and commandeered a detachment of grenadiers. Marching
to Kopenick town hall, he arrested the burgomaster (who
was sent to Berlin military headquarters) and after examining
the municipal accounts departed with 4,000 marks - equivalent
to A$300,000.
Voigt was arrested five days later after getting drunk
on the proceeds; the troops went unpunished because they
had "unquestioningly obeyed the command of an officer".
The exploit features in a 1932 Carl Zuckmayer play and
the 1956 Der Hauptmann von Köpenick film.
In England Virginia Woolf starred as the Emperor of Abyssinia
when a group of friends disguised as potentates and Foreign
Office officials arrived unannounced at Portsmouth naval
base in 1910 and persuaded staff to provide an official
tour of HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's most powerful
warship.
Archibald Belaney (1888-1938), exposed in Lovat Dickson's
Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl
(1974), successfully posed as Ojibwa sage Grey Owl and
produced three best-sellers about life as a member of
the First Nations. Fellow-author Karl May - who'd earlier
been imprisoned for impersonating German secret service
agents and policemen - gained fame for 'wild west' genre
novellas, presented as autobiographical although he didn't
venture west to the English channel. Adoption of a false
persona didn't inhibit sales, which were above 50 million
copies after 1912.
'Louis de Rougemont' (1847-1921), aka Louis Grin, gained
fame for journalism about his travels - which apparently
didn't extend much beyonf the Reading Room of the British
Museum. He was exposed after enthusing over the marvellous
"flight of the wombat", implausible given that
wombats are burrowing creatures with the aerodynamic qualities
of a bag of cement.
Across the Atlantic 'Yellow Kid' Weill successfully posed
as a major investor from Chicago, borrowing executive
offices in several banks. His victims wre then invited
to the bank to meet that institution's CEO, duly being
impressed by the surroundings and handing over large amounts
of cash.
Competitor Victor Lustig, described in The Man Who
Sold the Eiffel Tower (Garden City: Doubleday 1961)
by Floyd Miller, forged French government stationery and
invited six scrap metal dealers to a confidential meeting
at the Hotel Crillon, where he introduced himself as the
Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Posts &
Telegraphs and sought bids for the Eiffel Tower. One dealer
provided several hundred thousand francs payment in advance,
along with the customary bribe. Lustig was caught when
he sought extra sweeteners.
Contemporary Serge Stavisky, like Madame Therese, decided
that it was simpler to start his own bank, claiming authorisation
from the French government and a wealth that was in fact
based on ponzi-style marketing of bonds. His career is
examined in Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic
of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2002) by Paul
Jankowski.
Cassie Chadwick (1857-1907) pretended to be the illegitimate
daughter of steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, something that
resulted in banks competing to lend her money - a total
of US$10 million over eight years. Her scam was reinforced
when she forged securities in Garnegie's name.
Ferdinand Demara (1921-1982) - who described his motivation
as "rascality, pure rascality" - variously assumed
the identity of real or fictitious civil engineers, police,
psychologists, lawyers, monks (Benedictine and Cistercian),
scientists and teachers. His career as an identity thief
peaked when he stole the ID of Canadian navy surgeon Joseph
Cyr during the Korean War, supposedly successfully undertaking
surgery.
Christopher Rocancourt, active around 2000, swindled the
rich and the famous by pretending to a Rockefeller heir,
a movie producer, a global financier, the son of Sophia
Loren or the nephew of Dino De Laurentis.
For insights into more contemporary scamming see Frank
Abagnale's Catch Me if You Can (New York: Broadway
Books 2000) with Stan Redding and The Art of the Steal
(New York: Broadway 2001).
id-crime in literature
As
we've suggested in discussing authenticity in a separate
profile on this site, themes of imposture, appropriation
and identity have been a rich source for literature.
Two major works are Thomas Mann's The Confessions
of Felix Krull: Confidence Man (1954) and Herman
Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
(1857). Mark Twain's The Prince & the Pauper:
A Tale for Young People of All Ages (1881), Rafael
Sabatini's The Lost King (1937), Wilkie Collins'
Armadale (1866), Patricia Highsmith's The
Talented Mr Ripley (1955), Frederick Forsyth's The
Day of the Jackal (1971), Ian Fleming's Moonraker
(1955) or Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda
(1894) offer more romantic accounts. There is a mordant
view in Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1947) and
Simon Leys' superb The Death of Napoleon (1986).
For academic perspectives see Gary Lindberg's The
Confidence-Man in American Literature (New York:
Oxford Uni Press 1982) and Susan Kuhlmann's Knave,
Fool, Genius: The Confidence Man as He Appears in Nineteenth-Century
American Fiction (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina
Press 1973).
Recent authorial shape-shifting is evident in controversies
over Helen Darville/Demidenko's
unlovely The Hand That Signed the Paper (1994)
- discussed in Andrew Reimer's The Demidenko Affair
(North Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1996) and Robert Manne's
The Culture of Forgetting: Helen Demidenko & the
Holocaust (Melbourne: Text 1996) - and Binjamin Wilkomirski's
supposed Holocaust memoir, considered in A Life in
Pieces: the Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski
(New York: Norton 2002) by Blake Eskin and The
Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in Biographical Truth
(New York: Schocken 2001) by Stefan Maechler. They're
an unpleasant echo of George Psalmanazar's imposture,
discussed here.
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