Many fraudsters are opportunists simply looking to make some fast money. Others are dedicated criminals who keep up their deception for years. Sometimes they will even work as part of a group to extend their reach while making themselves more difficult to trace.
Here are four famous fraudsters who have been the subjects of extensive media coverage, books, films, television shows, podcasts, and more.
Bernie Madoff
Bernie Madoff was a fraudster from the professional category. He was an American stockbroker who founded an investment firm in the 1960s. However, in 2009, the wealth management branch of his company was exposed as the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He solicited investment money and then used it to pay his previous investors.
For a fraud that cost nearly $65 billion in losses, Madoff was sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2021.
Anna Sorokin
Fraudster Anna Sorokin was a smooth-talking con artist originally from Russia. While visiting New York in 2013, she changed her name to Anna Delvey and convinced people she was the wealthy heiress to an art foundation. This included forging checks, wire transfers, and other financial documents to make her fake enterprise seem legitimate. She then tricked banks, real estate agents, hotels, and New York’s cultural elites into funding her lavish lifestyle.
Her fraud is estimated to have caused over $275,000 in losses. She was caught in 2017, and sentenced to 4-12 years in prison in 2019.
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes was another fraudster from the professional category. An American entrepreneur, she founded a biotechnology company called Theranos in 2003. The company attracted investors and government funding with its claims of inventing techniques for drastically reducing the amount of blood required for blood tests.
Eventually, journalists and regulators began to question the credibility of Theranos’s claims. Their investigations led to Holmes being arrested in 2018. In 2022, Holmes was sentenced to over 11 years in prison for wire fraud.
Frank Abagnale Jr.
Frank Abagnale Jr. was an American impersonator type fraudster. In his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can (which was adapted into a movie in 2002), he claims to have defrauded individuals, small businesses, and even large corporations by impersonating several different types of professionals over his career. These include a lawyer, a federal investigator, a doctor, and an airline pilot.
To this day, there is still debate over which stories of Abagnale’s criminal exploits are accurate, and which ones he exaggerated or entirely fabricated.
