Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  Burning the ballot box

  In the mid 1970s, Guzmán left his post at the university and began to organise an underground revolutionary political group. At the same time, the Communist party in Peru split, with Guzmán heading the group that backed the Chinese form of communism rather than the Soviet. This faction became known as the ‘Shining Path’, named after a slogan of Mariátegui’s: ‘Marxism-Leninism is the shining path of the future’.

  Calling himself Presidente Gonzalo, Guzmán went on to develop his theory of a Maoist revolution in Peru, criticising both US and Soviet imperialism and citing Lenin’s theory that both would collapse in time. His teachings were influential in academic circles, and his followers believed him to be a major Marxist teacher, along with Lenin and Mao.

  During the 1970s, the influence of the Shining Path moved outside the universities, and a guerrilla group was formed, operating in and around Ayacucho. The first major action of the group was to burn ballot boxes during an election at Chuschi, a village outside the city. This was ironic, since these elections were the first to be democratically run for almost a decade. However, the rationale of the Shining Path was that the Peruvian government, whether democratically elected or not, was presiding over a ruined economy in crisis, and that only a radical solution would succeed in freeing the peasantry from their oppression. The group’s aim was to destabilise the country by any means possible so as to create a situation in which the government could be overthrown and replaced with a Marxist regime which – according to Guzmán – could begin the work of radically reorganising the whole of Peruvian society from top to bottom.

  Bloody civil war

  Despite the rhetoric, the Shining Path was in fact a very autocratic organisation that dealt with opposition of any kind by resorting to violence. Anyone who did not agree with Guzmán’s point of view was targeted as an enemy, which included not only the army and the police, but ordinary citizens and peasants who co-operated with the state – even minimally, by such actions as voting in elections – and activists from rival left-wing groups, including the other major Marxist-Leninist group in Peru, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

  Before long, the atrocities perpetrated by the Shining Path had escalated into a full-scale, bloody civil war in Peru. It is now thought that over 70,000 people died as a result of the fighting, over half of them murdered by the Shining Path. However, Guzmán continued to maintain that the Shining Path was promoting ‘a people’s war’, and even went on to proclaim that his group was promoting a ‘higher stage of Marxism’ in which the old order would disappear and a new ‘equilibrium’ would become apparent. The reality was rather different: many witnesses reported acts of terrible vengeance wreaked on ordinary citizens and peasants and their families for ‘collaboration with the state’; and the guerrillas of the Shining Path came to be feared throughout the Andes as brutal murderers, thugs and bandits. Many believe that, had the Shining Path managed to take over power in Peru, their atrocities and massacres would have reached the scale of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Thankfully, however, this situation was prevented by the capture of Guzmán, the group’s leader, in 1992.

  Capture and conviction

  The President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, was determined to root out the insurgents, and ordered the National Directorate against Terrorism (DINCOTE) to act. They began by ordering surveillance of several houses in Lima where terrorists were suspected of hiding. One of these houses was a ballet studio where dance teacher Maritza Garrido Lecca was living. The detectives checked the garbage of the house, noticing that a large amount was being taken out each day, and that it contained empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis. Guzmán was known to suffer from this skin condition. Prompted by this clue, on 12 September, the house was raided, and eight members of the Shining Path, including Guzmán, were found.

  Guzmán’s computer was also found and confiscated. It turned out to contain a mass of incriminating evidence against him, and this later helped to secure his conviction. When it was checked, the computer showed a long list of the Shining Path’s bases, soldiers and weaponry around the entire country. According to Guzmán’s records, in 1990, the organisation had over 20,000 members, and a cache of over 1,000 weapons, including rifles, revolvers and hand grenades.

  Trial and conviction

  Unfortunately, the trial of Guzmán that followed was seen by many as unfair and undemocratic. The government tried to persuade the media and the public that Guzmán was a common criminal, whereas it was well known throughout the country that he was the leader of a political faction. In addition, Guzmán was tried under emergency terrorist legislation. After a trial that lasted only three days, Guzmán was convicted, receiving a sentence of life imprisonment.

  The trial was so hasty that in 2003, an appeal was granted to retry the case, along with that of over 1,000 other prisoners convicted of terrorism. In November 2004, Guzmán was tried again, but the trial was abandoned because he and the members of the Shining Path ignored the judges and gave revolutionary salutes to the international press, also shouting Maoist slogans to the gallery. However, in October 2006, after several more aborted trials, Guzmán was finally sentenced, and received a life sentence, which he continues to serve.

  PART SEVEN: Swindlers and Forgers

  Victor Lustig

  Count Victor Lustig is one of the great criminal masterminds of all time. Operating as a con man in the 1920s and 1930s, he secured his place in history as one of the most audacious swindlers the world has ever known by pulling off an outrageous scam: to sell the Eiffel Tower – which he did not own – to two different buyers. Lustig was a highly intelligent, well-educated man who spoke several languages, and he also had considerable personal charisma; however, he was completely without moral scruples and committed many frauds and swindles, until he was finally arrested and imprisoned.

  The mysterious bohemian

  Little is known about Lustig’s early life, except that he was born in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, on 4 January, 1890. His first encounter with the law was at the age of nineteen when he got into a fight with a man over a woman that they were both courting. In the process, the man brutally knifed him, so that the young suitor was left for the rest of his days with a huge scar that ran along the side of his face from his ear to his eye. In his later career as a con man, this scar would prove to be something of a handicap, making Lustig very easy to identify in police parades – of which, as it turned out, there were to be many.

  As a young man, Lustig left home and settled in Paris, a city that at the time offered many opportunities for a bright young man without too many moral qualms about how he would earn his living. Despite his humble origins, Lustig became a popular figure in high society, a witty, intelligent companion who was much admired by women. He spoke five languages fluently, dressed well and had a great deal of charm. He was also adept at playing cards, and eventually began to earn his living as a professional gambler.

  Lustig found work on the luxury ocean liners plying their way between Paris and New York, and in the process befriended some of the richest and most powerful socialites in both countries. For a while he earned a good living as a gambler, but this lucrative career was halted by by the outbreak of World War I, when liners like the ones he was working on were commissioned for war service; suddenly, pleasure cruises, along with other luxuries and fripperies of fin de siècle Paris, had become a thing of the past.

  Birth of a con man

  Ever resourceful, Lustig decided to leave war-torn Europe and head for the United States, so as to find other ways of making a living. Once there, he began to look into the property market, and in 1922, bought a tumbledown farm in Missouri. For this, he paid the bank Liberty bonds, which were a type of savings bond sold in the United States at the time to support the Allies in the war. These bonds could be used for making payments and redeemed for their original value plus interest. The bank was surprised to find Lustig making this offer, since the house w
as almost valueless, and to encourage him to make the purchase it offered to cash an extra ten thousand dollars’ worth of bonds for him.

  During the transaction, Lustig managed to switch envelopes of money and bonds in such a way that he made off with both. The bank pursued him, but when it caught up with him, he used his personal charm to convince the authorities that there had been a mistake, so the bank did not prosecute him. Moreover, he kept the ten thousand dollars that he had stolen.

  Encouraged by the success of his new life of crime, Lustig moved his operations to Canada, where he went on to commit more frauds. One of these was a complex scam that involved stealing the wallet of a banker, Linus Merton, and then returning it to him, saying that he had found it in the street. Having gained the wealthy man’s confidence, he now enacted the next stage of the plan. Lustig revealed a scheme of his to the banker, saying that he had devised a way of earning money by gambling on the horses. This involved a time delay whereby he had an accomplice intercept information coming by telegraph wire to the bookmakers, so that he could place a large sum of money on the horse that he had been told had won.

  The banker was intrigued by this scheme, and his greed got the better of him. He gave Lustig 30,000 pounds to place a bet on the horse that was – so he thought – sure to win the race. Lustig assured him that his accomplice, whom he claimed was his cousin, would intercept the wire before it came into the bookmakers’, so that the bet could be placed accurately. Unfortunately for Merton, however, the whole tale that Lustig had told him turned out to be a pack of lies. There was no cousin, no intercepted telegraph wire and no bet. Instead, Lustig absconded with the money and was never seen again.

  Selling the Eiffel Tower

  Further encouraged by the success of this escapade, for which he was never arrested, Lustig now turned his attention and imagination to the city where his good fortune had first begun – Paris. The idea for a new scam came to him as he was reading an article in a French newspaper about the Eiffel Tower.

  According to the article, the famous landmark of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, was becoming extremely dilapidated. It was so expensive to maintain that the authorities were thinking of tearing it down. This news inspired Lustig: he would contact several scrap iron companies, posing as a government official, and ask them to put in bids for the job of demolishing it. He would then ask whichever of the businessmen seemed the most gullible for a bribe to secure the contract. Having done this, he would pocket the money and disappear. The plan had the added attraction that whoever had offered to bribe him would be in trouble, which would distract attention from finding the perpetrator of the crime.

  So as to give his scam maximum credibility, Lustig sent letters on official-looking writing paper to the heads of several scrap iron companies. He then arranged a meeting with all of them at the same time, at the plush Hotel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde. The choice of venue was designed to reassure the businessmen that this was a bona fide meeting, since many high level government officials used the hotel for their business transactions.

  The scam in action

  The directors duly assembled, and Lustig appeared, playing the role of government official with gusto. He even made up a title for himself: Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He told the assembled company that the government had, with regret, decided that the Eiffel Tower was now too expensive to maintain and had decided to sell it for scrap. He pointed out that the Tower had originally been built as a temporary structure as an engineering display for the Paris Exposition in 1889. He even took the group on a tour around the tower, showing them the many problems with its upkeep and pointing out how badly it needed to be repaired. He told the men that they would have to bid for the contract to destroy it, but that the whole affair should be conducted in the greatest secrecy, because it was a very controversial, potentially unpopular decision that would have to be broken to the French public with tact at a later date.

  The long arm of the law

  The directors agreed not to discuss the project with their families or colleagues and went home at the end of the day. The next day, Lustig chose his victim: a rather nervous man whose name was Andre Poisson. He contacted Poisson to ask for a bribe, so that Poisson’s company could secure the contract. Having collected the money, Lustig then absconded, leaving the hapless Poisson to explain himself to his employers and the police.

  As he had hoped, Lustig got away scot free with the scam. Poisson realised he had been made a fool of and was too embarrassed to call the police. Thus, Lustig was never pursued for the crime. Instead, he went to Austria, where he lodged in the best hotels and dining at the finest restaurants, before his money ran out and he decided to try his luck again.

  Foolishly, as it turned out, Lustig went back to Paris and performed exactly the same fraud once again. This time, however, his victim went straight to the police. Lustig managed to escape to North America, where he continued to act as a con man until he was finally locked up. Even then, he managed to escape from prison, but was recaptured and sent to the high security prison at Alcatraz, where he died in 1947.

  Elmyr de Hory

  Elmyr de Hory was one of the most talented art forgers of the twentieth century, whose paintings have now become valuable in their own right. Before he died, he claimed to have painted over 1,000 forgeries and sold them internationally. His forgeries of masters such as Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani deceived some of the most respected experts in the art world, and at one time he made a great deal of money. However, when the forgeries were discovered, he was forced to go on the run, pursued by the FBI and Interpol.

  A concentration camp survivor who had learned to paint forgeries to earn a living because he could not sell his own work, de Hory had been deeply scarred by his early experiences. In later life, when his forgeries were discovered and he became a wanted man, living in constant fear of capture, his mental health broke down. He committed suicide in 1976.

  Prison nightmare

  De Hory was a Hungarian Jew, born Elmyr Dory-Boutin into a wealthy family. His father, an Austro-Hungarian ambassador, was a highly successful man, and the family lived a comfortable, privileged life; however, there was little emotional warmth in the family, and Elmyr’s parents left the care of their son to servants and governesses, so that he seldom saw them.

  At the age of sixteen, Elmyr’s parents divorced, and he moved to Budapest, where he began to move in bohemian circles and became aware that he was a homosexual. Two years later, he enrolled at the Akademie Heinmann in Munich, excelling at his studies as a classical painter. He then went to Paris to continue his studies at the Académie la Grande Chaumière under the painter Fernand Léger, and afterwards, returned to Hungary with the intention of making his living as an artist.

  However, it was then that events took a turn for the worse. In Hungary, he was involved in a sexual relationship with a man suspected by the government of being a spy. As a result, he was thrown in jail in a remote part of the Carpathian Mountains. The conditions in the jail were abysmal, but de Hory found that he could gain small privileges by using his skill of painting. He painted a portrait of a senior camp officer and was rewarded for his labours, but life in the prison was still desperately harsh.

  By the time Elmyr was released, World War II had broken out, and the Nazis had invaded Hungary. As a Jew and a homosexual, he became a target for Nazi persecution, and it was not long before he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Here he was brutally beaten and had to be sent to hospital to recover. Although one of his legs was broken, he nevertheless managed to make a daring escape from the hospital, making his way back to his parents’ house in Hungary. However, when he got there, he found that another disaster had taken place: both his parents were dead, and the estate had been confiscated by the Nazis.

  De Hory was left penniless but, ever resourceful, he escaped from Hungary to France. Here he was forced to find new ways of making a living, and thus tried his hand at forgery. His kn
owledge of art history and skill as a classical painter helped him to produce beautiful works that fooled even the sharpest art collector’s eye, and in this way, he began to earn a good living make a new life for himself in his adopted country. He even created a history for his paintings, telling buyers that they had been in his parents’ collection before the Nazi occupation of Hungary.

  Double-dealing

  De Hory’s first forgery was a Picasso, which he sold in 1946. From then on, he began to make substantial sums of money from his paintings. He found a partner in crime, Jacques Chamberlin, who agreed to operate as his dealer, and went on to become a rich man. He and Chamberlin travelled around Europe selling the forgeries and living in luxury. But this successful period of de Hory’s life was not to last. Unbeknown to him, Chamberlin was double-dealing, keeping large sums of money for himself rather than sharing the profits. When de Hory found this out, the pair parted company on hostile terms.

  De Hory then went on a visit the United States, and decided that there was a promising market for his line of work there. He now had a wide repertoire of styles to draw on, and had forged paintings by such masters as Matisse, Renoir and Modigliani. He also began to work in oils, expanding the range of his works – and the profits from them. To avoid recognition, he traded under a variety of names, including Louis Cassou, Elmyr Herzog, Elmyr Hoffman and Joseph Dory. At the same time, he tried to sell his own works, hoping that he could go straight and make a living as an honest painter; however, he soon found that there was no market in the United States for original paintings by an unknown Hungarian.