• Submit A Nut
Newsletter
KnowledgeNuts
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Home
  • Facts
  • Finance
  • Misconceptions
  • Differences
  • Bizarre
  • Other
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Facts
  • Finance
  • Misconceptions
  • Differences
  • Bizarre
  • Other
No Result
View All Result
KnowledgeNuts
No Result
View All Result
Home Facts

The 20th-Century Con Man Who Made Millions Off Sir Francis Drake

The 20th-Century Con Man Who Made Millions Off Sir Francis Drake
208
SHARES
1.6k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
“The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them.” —Theodor Adorno

In A Nutshell

By the time Oscar Hartzell died, he had conned around 80,000 people out of untold millions of dollars, and he did it by claiming that the true heir to the estate of Sir Francis Drake had made him the recipient. He only needed the money to settle the estate, so he sold shares to investors, saying they would reap the rewards later if they helped him out. The rewards never did come, of course, but people continued to send him money even after he was convicted of mail fraud and deemed mentally incompetent.

The Whole Bushel

Related articles

From Loans to Lifestyle: How Bad Credit Can Impact Your Life

Gender and Finances: The Averages in Bank Account Balances

September 14, 2023
Student Financial Aid Beyond Loans

Affordable Student Housing: Your Handbook

September 14, 2023

People have been trying to con other people out of their hard-earned money for as long as we’ve had money to steal, and in the first years of the 20th century, Oscar Hartzell stumbled on a scheme that would earn him millions—all with the help of Sir Francis Drake.

Drake was, of course, the 16th-century explorer who scoured the Americas for lost treasure and reported on the strange, naked, and happy giants he saw along the way.

ADVERTISEMENT

Expedition after expedition, his standards got looser and looser, and Drake eventually amassed a huge fortune. By the time he died in 1596, there were all sorts of rumors that part of his fortune got left to an illegitimate son. He had a wife but no legitimate heirs. It isn’t surprising that a lot of people were coming out of the woodwork to claim they were part of the family.

Fast-forward a few hundred years, and as the story goes, the fortune had been held in trust by the British government until an heir could be found. (It really wasn’t, it had been willed to Drake’s widow and his brother, but that’s beside the point.) By the 1830s, the story was starting to show up on American soil, repeated by earnest-looking men whose hearts were in the right places. They were only trying to find some of Drake’s descendants so they could hand over this fortune to its rightful owners.

Enter two cons, who approached Oscar Hartzell with the claim that they were looking for Drake’s descendants. Hartzell had a run of bad luck, with his attempts at starting his own realty business going failing, his ranch going under, and his campaign for sheriff ending in defeat. When Sudie Whiteaker and Milo Lewis showed up claiming to be selling shares of the inheritance, Hartzell’s mother believed the story and gave the cons her life savings: $6,500.

Hartzell figured out pretty quickly it was a scam, so he tracked the pair down. He wanted in on the con. They formed the Sir Francis Drake Association and switched up the scam a little bit. Until then, the whole thing had concentrated on people with the surname of Drake, for obvious reasons. Hartzell decided that since anyone’s name could have been changed through marriage, everyone was a fair target.

They started finding “contributors,” who were all signing up for a piece of the fortune once the case was settled. Hartzell headed off to England, named himself the Duke of Buckland, and lived the high life with money that kept rolling in.

Article Continued Below

By 1919, the government was on to them, and Hartzell did what any good con would do: He turned on his partners and claimed that he had been hoodwinked just like the contributors and that he was darn well going to find out the truth of the matter. Whiteaker had been claiming her cousin was the Drake heir, and now, he said, he had figured out that she was lying.

Since he got away with this, Hartzell kept going. While he was in England, he claimed, he had tracked down the son of Sir Francis Drake from a third marriage. This Colonel Drexel Drake had transferred all rights to his inheritance to Hartzell, all he needed to do was raise the money to settle with the government. Hartzell started collecting money, supposedly all needed to secure the inheritance.

This literally went on for years, and it wasn’t until 1927 and the financial crisis that investors started getting worried about a return on their investment. Hartzell insisted that he had the inheritance, but moving the money into the States was the problem. There was just so much money that it would crash the country’s economy, and the powers that were wouldn’t let him do that.

By 1928, government officials were actively trying to stop him, and Hartzell was elevated to the status of a working-class hero fighting the good fight against an oppressive government. Now, even more people were sending him money to fight his legal case. In the last half of 1931, he got more than $250,000 via American Express alone.

In January 1933, the US government had the evidence they needed to extradite Hartzell and bring him back from England. His trial resulted in a 10-year sentence and a $2,000 fine on a conviction of mail fraud.

You might think that would be enough to stop the whole thing. But many of his contributors believed that he was still the real deal, and Hartzell began ranting about an international conspiracy to keep the Drake fortune out of the hands of its rightful owners.

By the time he died in 1943—ruled mentally incompetent—he had swindled around 80,000 people out of millions.

Show Me The Proof

Featured image credit: Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Handbook of Frauds, Scams, and Swindles: Failures of Ethics in Leadership, edited by Serge Matulich, David M. Currie
Encyclopedia of Deception, edited by Timothy R. Levine
The Milwaukee Journal: “21 Are Freed in Drake Trial”

Post Views: 1,037
Share83Tweet52
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

From Loans to Lifestyle: How Bad Credit Can Impact Your Life

Gender and Finances: The Averages in Bank Account Balances

by Knowledge Nuts
September 14, 2023
0

  Managing money can be a daunting task, regardless of who you are. Did you know that there is often...

Student Financial Aid Beyond Loans

Affordable Student Housing: Your Handbook

by Knowledge Nuts
September 14, 2023
0

Finding affordable student housing can be a daunting task for many. The "Affordable Student Housing: Your Handbook" is here to...

Your Mortgage Hack for Financial Freedom

Your Mortgage Hack for Financial Freedom

by Knowledge Nuts
September 8, 2023
0

Mortgage payments can feel like a burden that lasts forever. Did you know however, that it's possible to pay down...

An Easy Financial Aid Roadmap for College Funding

An Easy Financial Aid Roadmap for College Funding

by Knowledge Nuts
August 10, 2023
0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1266t2ee7CY Heading to college is exciting, but figuring out how to fund it can be overwhelming. With "NavigatingFinancial Aid: Your...

Medicare’s Grocery Allowance: How to Know if You Qualify

Medicare’s Grocery Allowance: How to Know if You Qualify

by Lauren Ashley
July 18, 2023
0

If you're on Medicare, did you know there could be extra monthly money in your pocket? It's true! You may...

Load More
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

Nurturing Financial Smarts in Children: 5 Key Tips

Nurturing Financial Smarts in Children: 5 Key Tips

September 21, 2023
Discover the 10 Must-Read Books for Saving and Investing

Discover the 10 Must-Read Books for Saving and Investing

September 20, 2023
Budget-Friendly Meals for Single Parents

Budget-Friendly Meals for Single Parents

September 20, 2023

KnowledgeNuts.com: Your go-to source for insightful information and financial guidance. Explore, learn, and empower your future with us.

Categories
  • Artist
  • Artwork
  • Attitude
  • Bizarre
  • Business
  • Creative Insight
  • Design
  • Differences
  • Facts
  • Finance
  • Forgotten
  • Forgotten Horrors
  • Innovation
  • Inspiration
  • Learning
  • Listicles
  • Market
  • Misconceptions
  • Other
  • Personal Finance Tips
  • Places
  • Thinking
  • Uncategorized
Tags
aid bad credit Business car insurance cash flow credit debt difference disability Education family Finance finances Financial Aid food government assistance Health healthcare help history home home loans housing how to make money how to save insurance Invest Japan jobs loan loans make money Misconceptions Money myths personal finance quick cash saving money savings side hustle side hustles student student aid Superstitions taxes
Newsletter
[mc4wp_form]
  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Mobile Privacy Policy
  • Mobile Terms & Conditions
  • SMS Opt-in

© KnowledgeNuts.com – A Division of Media Comms Networking.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Facts
  • Misconceptions
  • Differences
  • Finance
  • Bizarre

© 2023 KnowledgeNuts.com