Let’s Not Scam: Cassie Chadwick
It’s real history, as told by some scammer in my inbox and me.
Cassie Chadwick stole anywhere from $600,000 to $10 million in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The discrepancy lies in the humiliation of being conned by a woman. This shame was so great for a rich business man, that many didn’t come forward. I’m inclined to believe the higher number of $10 million because I’ve taken that from a source that wrote a book well documenting her endeavors.
Don’t mistake my admiration for the depth of which she conned conceited wealthy men, for admiration of her acquired wealth and consumerism. Cassie’s story is captivating because of the ability in which she conned these men into lending her money at a time when most women couldn’t even bank. Her lavish, wasteful lifestyle however, is not something I admire.
Her manner in which she obtained the money is unachievable by today’s standards, so I have no qualms about telling this scammer her ways. At the time, paying for goods with promissory notes was common. Even passing fraudulent promissory notes was common. Achieving such great wealth and fooling countless supposedly well educated business men, well that was not common.
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Cassie was brilliant, terrible, but brilliant. She continuously chose lies that were hard to discredit. Here’s a quote from a newspaper of the time, “It takes a smart woman to get any man’s money. How much smarter a woman must be who gets the money of many men.”
It’s hard not to see similarities between Cassie, and today’s Cassie like elite imposter, Anna Sorokin. Perhaps she’d be a good topic to cover sometime too.
Sources:
The Queen of The Con by Thomas Crawl
Cassie Chadwick The Dollop Podcast
Lima Times via Ohio Memory
Cassie Chadwick: The Female Wizard of Finance via Ohio History
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I’m dead that the scammer got mad and said you were a scammer. “Send me $500 because my bank charges fees.”