The Grand Witch of Grand Larceny

Before Anna Delvey, there was Cassie Chadwick. The OG scammer. This week’s episode is all about faking it till you make it.

Have a wild tale that needs to be heard? Fill out the form, and you might just hear your story featured on our “Scam, Scam” segment!

Music by DJ Jayo.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I want my money.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

This is Unnigerian Prince, the podcast where we talk about scams from everywhere else. Where are we today?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hmm. I thought you'd never ask. We are in North America. USA baby. Okay, so you're right, but you could be right here. Oh Canada! Yes, Canada. But technically you were also right saying US because a large part of the story happens in America as well.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Okay, cross-border crime and international villain. I do love it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Let's jump right in. In the spring of 1902, James Dillon, a banker from Cleveland, Ohio, found himself standing outside one of the most incredible mansions in New York City. Inside lived Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world at the time. James was stunned. You see, he had in fact ridden over with his friend's wife, who he bumped into earlier in the day. She had asked him to wait on the sidewalk while she went inside alone to speak with her father. Her father? Andrew Carnegie? That's right. After almost 30 minutes, she returned holding an envelope. And James, much like Ugo just did, asked her, Is Andrew Carnegie your father?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Right. Like honestly, this is like finding out on a random Tuesday that your friend's husband is a Bezos.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Exactly. But importantly, the woman told James not to tell anyone that she was Carnegie's daughter because she was illegitimate. She showed him promissory notes and securities worth up to $5 million, signed by Carnegie himself, who promised to continue taking care of her in secret.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Excuse me? Did you say $5 million in 1902?

unknown 2:33

Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

And in today's money, that is over $160 million. James must have gagged in that carriage. He was gagged. By all accounts, he was amazed. But here's the thing: James never saw Carnegie that day. He never actually saw Carnegie and the woman interact, but he did believe her. And even though she told him not to tell anyone, she knew that he would do the exact opposite. In fact, she relied on it. This is the story of Cassie Chadwick, the woman who was verifiably one of the most prolific scammers in history. She duped people, she scammed the government, she defrauded several banks, and she was even directly responsible for the bankruptcy of Citizens National Bank of Oberlin, Ohio. But let's start from the beginning, shall we? On October 10, 1857, a baby girl was born to Daniel and Mary Ann Bigley, a working class family in Eastwood, Ontario, Canada. She would be one of eight children. They named her Elizabeth, but she would go by many other names over the course of her lifetime. Madame Lydia DeVere, Mrs. Lydia Springsteen, Madame Marie LaRosse, Cassie Hoover, and finally Cassie Chadwick.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

That is so crazy. I think I counted at least five different names.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

That's right. Each new identity called for a new name. But for clarity, I will refer to her as Cassie throughout the story. And as I mentioned, Cassie was born into a working class family. No wealth, no power. But Cassie realized early in life that there were ways around minor things like poverty. In her early 20s, she invented an inheritance. She had calling cards printed declaring that she was the heiress to $15,000 and used forged promissory notes to get local shopkeepers to extend her credit, showing them the heiress calling card if any questions were asked. And it worked. For those who don't know, a promissory note is basically a legally binding IOU. And to qualify this, $15,000 at that time would be over $500,000 today.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

So even that early on, she was forging documents and pretending to be rich. And noms, listen, she has ambition. This is a lot.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Exactly. But this is what she knew though, Ugo. She knew that perception is reality. She knew that stories are living things. They tell themselves. All she had to do was flash a promissory note, and all defenses came down. The shopkeepers did not want to risk offending a wealthy woman. They told themselves, oh, she must be good for it. And I bet she wasn't. Mm-hmm. Be a betting woman because she was not. Bear in mind, this crime took place in Ontario, Canada, so not too far from her own hometown. She was ultimately arrested for forgery, but was released on the grounds of insanity.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

I do not think that I've seen insanity be used as a defense for defrauding other people.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

No, this was a crazy crime because everyone knew she wasn't an heiress. So I feel like the judge must have been like, yes, you are crazy. You must be mad indeed. And around 1880, Cassie married a doctor from Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Wallace Springsteen. But that marriage only lasted around 11-12 days. He kicked her out when he learned about her past. Later, she would claim multiple marriages, some real, some invented, to bolster the appearance of stability and social standing.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

That is honestly so crazy. Like this is actually shorter than Kim Kardashian's marriage to Krista Frays. So even her marriages were essentially part of the social architecture for Cotton.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Absolutely. So these marriages and the subsequent social standing they afforded her, they gave her access to networks of professionals, bankers, men of high standing who were crucial to her later scheme.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Honestly, it's so crazy that she was in Cleveland doing all this when she really should have been in DC.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Maybe. I'm sorry, that was so funny. Maybe because in 1889, so somewhere around her early 30s, she was actually sentenced to about nine and a half years in prison in Toledo, Ohio for forgery, but she actually ended up serving only four years. What we also know is that around this time she practiced clairvoyance and fortune telling, first using the name Lydia Scott, and then the name Madame Lydia DeVere. You know, fortune telling is really such an intimate thing when you think about it. If someone is coming to ask you to tell them their future, you're their boon in what is effectively an extremely vulnerable time. Personally, I have never seen a fortune teller, but I can imagine that no one is asking a random stranger to tell them their future if everything in their life is going just fine.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Honestly, that makes sense. It probably also gave her insight into how to read people, right? Sort of like a crash course on human psychology. She would have learned what kinds of things lead to what kinds of reactions from certain people.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Right. And I have to imagine, like, that is a great career path for a grifter. Because if what you predict doesn't come true, right, you just blame it on something the person did wrong. And if what you predict does come true, you've gained a lifelong customer. But either way, you're getting paid. In 1897, Cassie did it again. She married Dr. Leroy Chadwick, a respected Cleveland physician. So now she's respectable, respectable. Respectable as hell. Cassie became Cassie Chadwick, and make no mistake, Dr. Leroy is a serious catch. Okay, she moved into his mansion on Millionaire's Road and set about becoming the high-class wife of a man of his stature. There are a number of theories on this one. Some accounts say that she pretended to be a respectable widow. Others say he never really talked about it because he met her at a brothel while she was working as a sex worker. Others say he didn't really know what she did, she pretended to be a teacher. So we don't know for certain. Most of the research though seems to believe and confirm that Dr. Leroy knew nothing of her past. Like I mentioned before, this man was considered respectable. He had a deep network, and it was through this network that she executed her biggest and most audacious scam. So while on a trip to New York, Cassie bumped into James Dylan, her husband's friend, the man that was the Ohio banker that waited for her outside Carnegie's mansion, and who believed that she was Carnegie's daughter. But that random bumping into him was no accident. Back in Ohio, the banker set up a safe deposit box for all those promissory notes. And of course, the truth about her family leaked. She was able to get million-dollar loans, borrowing against the promissory notes. I mean, this lady got loans from millionaires and major banks, and by most accounts, she received loans north of 10 million US dollars again in the 1900s.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

She must have been living large. Why help me understand? Like, why are they so comfortable giving her these loans? I mean, if she's rich, why would they think she needs loans?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Perfect question. You know the saying the rich get richer?

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

One of the reasons is because financially wealthy people jump through fewer hoops. The more people believe you already have money, the more money they're willing to give you. It's the halo effect that real or perceived wealth provides. But yes, that girl was living large. She apparently had a golden organ and spent $100,000 on dinner parties.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

In 1902, I don't even know what I would spend $100,000 on a dinner party doing today. Listen, money is easy to blow when you're not working for it.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

But all things come to an end, and Cassie's luck ran out in 1904. When Herbert Newton, he was a banker from Boston who had loaned her over $100,000, asked her for repayment. She obviously could not provide it because upon detailed inspection, all her promissory notes were fake. Oh Lord. Super fake! Remember, this was a woman who was previously locked up for forgery. She was true to this, not new to this. The news of these promissory notes being fake reverberated. You have to understand, at least three different banks had loaned her money. Citizens National Bank had loaned her $240,000, which was four times the bank's own capital. What?

unknown 13:06

What?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

It is insane. And news finally got to Carnegie. He made it very clear he did not know this lady. He said he did not know any Mrs. Chadwick of Cleveland, and he had not signed a note in more than 30 years. It was over. Cassie's scam had destroyed the life and reputation of her husband and his daughter. She ruined the finances and careers of several bankers, and she caused the bankruptcy of Citizens National Bank of Oberlin, Ohio. In 1905, Cassie was convicted of conspiracy against the government and conspiracy to defraud a national bank. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but she passed away less than two years later on her birthday, October 10, 1907, having spent only about a year in jail. She was 50 years old.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

This story, Noms, was a historical doozy. Like it's it's kind of tragic that she passed away when she did, because she would have had a time in the roaring 20s. Honestly, but even like what you said earlier about her scam being four times the capital of the bank, like that is what was happening at that bank. That is crazy. It is actually really crazy. But I think overall the story reminds me of um Anna Delvey.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Exactly, exactly. When I first okay, so when I first stumbled on this story, my instinct was to say Cassie was able to do this so well because it was before the information age. That kind of thing would never happen today. But that's actually not true to your point. Like if you consider Anna Delvey who successfully scammed people and banks, by the way, by pretending to be an heiress, and I think her scam was as recent as 2017. The formula is always the same. It's like you said in that last episode, different stories, same scheme.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

She seems so easily able to get men in particular to do whatever it is that she wanted, which I mean is not surprising. Do we know what she looks like?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Incredible question and facts. Actually, we we do. So there are tons of photos and descriptions. So most newspapers describe her as plain-faced shade. I know, I know, but they do express this exasperation of like, how could this simple-looking woman who didn't appear to have any sort of like allure or charm scam so many men? But I'll tell you this: I've looked at, you know, a ton of her photos over the course of these, you know, of the research for this episode, and she does have these dull eyes that I personally find kind of charming. And it's so funny because when she was in jail on charges of forgery back when she was Madame de Ver, the prisoners famously said that she made them do whatever she wanted by hypnotizing them with her eyes.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Maybe that's why you find her eyes charming. You're being hypnotized into very much giving Juju from the grave.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I definitely do think that lady hypnotized me to telling the story. Juju from the grave is crazy. But no, on the more serious note. Cassie's final and most devastating scam only worked. Ugo because nobody ever asked Carnegie about her. Nobody ever did. And some people said, oh, they didn't want to embarrass him. If she was indeed his illegitimate daughter, right? Other people said, we don't want to anger one of the richest men in the world by implying that his signed promissory notes are not enough for us to secure a loan. So Cassie's story is like really the epitome of trust but verify. If somebody is legitimate, taking a reasonable amount of time to verify their credentials should not offend them. In fact, if it were a bank, it would impress them, right? Cassie's grift was a cultivated image and the awareness that wealth begets wealth. Modern banking systems have implemented processes like KYC, which is know your customer, to limit the scale of this type of scamming. But of course, people still slip through. Remember, as systems get better, scammers get better.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Scam scam. Scam scam. Okay, nums. Let me tell you about a scam that actually happened to a classmate of mine in grad school. And as it turns out, it's one that affects international students all over the world.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Girl, you know I was an international student, so I am very much sad.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Right, and so was I, but in the UK, of course. Okay, so just to set the scene a bit here, international students are often prime targets for scams. A lot of them, you know, are living abroad for the first time, very far from family, and they're often navigating very complicated immigration systems, and they can have larger amounts of money in their account for things like tuition, housing, living expenses, and that combination makes scammers very, very interested. So the quick story I want to tell you today happened back in 2018, and I'll use an anonymous name, so let's just call her Jessica. Now, Jessica was an international student in the UK from India, and one evening she and a few of us were walking back to campus after lunch, and you know, we were just chatting, laughing, talking about professors or whatever. And then Jessica gets a phone call and answers it. And at first, everything seems normal. We're still all walking and chatting as she's on the phone, but then all of a sudden, you can literally see her face change. She slows down and then eventually she stops walking. And so naturally, we all stop and ask if she's okay. But then she puts the phone on mute and then tells us the caller says they're from the UK Home Office, which for our listeners is the department that's responsible for things like immigration and passports and border security. And the person on the other line is saying that, oh, there's a problem with her visa and that she needs to fix it immediately, otherwise, she's going to be deported to India.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Oh no, poor girl. Wait, let me guess, it was not actually the UK Home Office.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

That's correct. But the person on the phone apparently sounded very professional and knew some of her personal information. And honestly, I actually suspect that they even browsed her LinkedIn profile. It's so scary. Right. And so at this point, because they know some things about her, she's thinking, Oh my goodness, this is the actual home office. I actually can't remember exactly what they said was the issue with her visa or what document she might have been missing, but they told her that she needed to pay a certain amount in order to fix the issue. Now, this didn't immediately raise alarm bells for Jessica because she is already at this point very padded and she's actually beginning to cry. And she tells them that she needs to call her parents first. But the person on the phone tells her, you know, if you hang up, you will be deported.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

What do you mean I can't hang up my own phone? It's like, okay, what if the service cuts out or if the internet like stops working? Like, are they actually serious? You and I are on the same page because I will click that phone. You see that big red button?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

I am clicking it. Absolutely. Like, if we still had flip phones, clap.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Close psychic.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

But honestly, this is where the urgency really kicks in. You have deportation threats, you have money demands, and now she's being told she's not allowed to hang up the call. And so, long story short, a few of us begin immediately Googling because that's what millennials do. We by instinct go to Google. Within minutes, we realize this is almost certainly a scam. We tell her to hang up. And thank God she actually listens to us because at this point, she was already trying to figure out how she was going to send money from her mobile banking app. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

You guys actually saved her. Could you imagine if you guys were not there?

SPEAKER_02 22:48

It was such a scary experience, and it wasn't even happening to me. And the wild part is that this is not uncommon in the UK. Scammers regularly pose as the home office, the police, or embassy officials. They claim that there's an issue with their visa and demand a fine, often anywhere between 1500 to 6,500 pounds, to avoid deportation. And as you talked about in the last episode with Con Edison, they spoof phone numbers so the calls look legitimate, like they are actually coming from a government agency. And this happens in the US too. International students here are often being targeted by scammers and impersonating ICE, USCIS, or the Department of Homeland Security, threatening immediate visa cancellation and deportation unless payment is made, usually through gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or even Venmo and Cash App payments.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

It's like if the home office or like USCIS told me to go and collect gift cards for them, I genuinely think I'll bust out laughing. Like, okay, why do you, as I don't know, the immigration arms of the UK government need a gift card from me? Like, what is going on?

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Honestly, I feel like we need to dedicate an episode sometime to just the scams around gift cards because it's still a thing and they are going after the elderly in droves. Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

You know what I wonder? I wonder, like, so with the rise in deportations, increased presence of ICE right across the US, I wonder if these types of scams have increased even more.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

In a US context, I can see why you would say that. Spoof's numbers look real. Personal data is easier to get, the scams just feel more convincing.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I think a good place to go would be like, what should international students actually know or do if they're in this situation?

SPEAKER_02 25:13

So there are a few things that I think they should do. So, first, please know that the government office, whether it be the UK Home Office, ICE, DHS, or whoever, will never ever, ever call to demand money or threaten deportation over the phone or request payment through modes like gift cards or apps like Venmo. Girl, one thing about deportation, they will come straight to your door and pack you up out of here. There is no courtesy phone call. That's very crazy.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

That is very crazy. They do not give you time to run away. Come on, they're not calling you.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

I see those British TV shows about deportation and they are knocking down the door.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Extremely aggressively. They will fly through your window. Don't you worry about that.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

And the second thing that comes to mind is to always, always, always hang up. Nothing will happen if you just take a moment to verify what is going on. Once you hang up, contact the university's international student's office or reach out to a government agency only through their official channels listed on their website. And third, never pay these fines over the phone, especially not through apps like Venmore or Cash App. Only pay fees and fines of any kind through official government websites or through, you know, your university's official channels. And lastly, please never provide bank details, passwords, or passport information to unknown callers that you have not independently verified.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

That's great. You know, I scammers are actually so lucky they didn't call me in undergrad. I was stressed out, I was working. But I was just too busy for such nonsense. I would have actually given them a full-blown tongue lashing. Send you money for what? I'm going to the club. Why would I give you the money I need for the club? Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Thank you for joining us today. If you have a local scam from anywhere in the world that happened to you, your parents, your in-laws, or even that girl at work that you really don't like, you know the one. Whether the scam was just an attempt or if it was successful, we will love to hear about it and maybe even read it out loud in the segment. Please send it to us at info at unnigerianprints.com. See you next time in another country.