He was a con artist who became known as "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower."
He was born in 1890, in Bohemia, what is now known as the Czech Republic.
By the time he was 19, he was taking time away from his studies at the University of Paris to gamble in poker, bridge and billiards.
Using his quick wit and his fluency in the Czech, German, English, French and Italian languages,he left school and began committing dozens of petty crimes under countless aliases across Europe.
He managed to "sell" the Eiffel Tower two separate times without getting caught. His lies eventually caught up with him, however, and he died in a Missouri prison.
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