542 - Dracula Ambitions

Hello and welcome.

So's my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstar, that's Karen Kilgariff, And here we are podcasting once again.

Here we are.

Those are pretty nails.

I know there are adults nails that I've somehow put on me magnetic. They're like gel X, so they're like not my nails, And suddenly I feel like this and dresses, I feel like, are the trick to making people think you have your shit together.

Yeah, that's right. Boom, are you not pointing things out like this?

I am definitely talking with my hands a lot more pouring things out. But fifteen minutes ago I was eating an uncrustable in the car wash. So yeah, still me didn't get me on my dress. Not so classy that it changes you deep down exactly.

That's good. How are you? I'm good.

I'm still working on the same manicure I had two weeks ago.

R These gel X their gel and they're like press on like ly press on nails.

Oh okay, and you just suddenly feel like an adult. All right.

I'm not that interested in being an adult though.

Looking like when people mistaking you for one, so they treat you differently.

Yeah, but I don't like suddenly I put those on and people are asking me for tax advice. I don't have time like that.

It's what I think, like if I had nice big tits, like would be like if that's like what girls who have nice big tits experience in life, you know.

Like bad news for you? What someone with medium big tits?

Come on, it's not that great. People give you a little they're like a little nicer to you.

Oh, I mean I get into restaurants, I get always get a table.

I never get a table at these A's what a way to look at the world.

Yeah, I've been ripped off with my small breasts.

It's the thing of like people who were pretty when they're kids, You're like, you don't know what real life like since they're faving kids've been pretty.

Yes, you don't know what it's like.

You've never been.

People don't treat you the way they treat everyone else.

You've never had somebody turn around and.

Go, oh you're here, right, oh my god, poor go oh you're here. It's more like that yeah, or go oh you're here.

Or go oh you're here.

Oh, oh you're here. You would to put the accident on the oh you're here. It's scene study with carodin Georgia and you're here scene Andrey.

Okay, I have a true crime podcast, Bone Valley, which wow, hey, I just went for that.

Where does this take place?

Hell?

But that's the podcast's name, and then they have seasons. This season I just started listening to I'd never heard of it is season.

Five called The Devil's Quarry.

The podcast Bone Valley is about wrongful convictions and miscarriage of justice in the US. So The Devil's Quarry season five is about this twelve year old girl who was murdered in the nineteen eighties and just the complete fuck up that happened with this guy going to jail for twenty years and you know all the things you hate about that, but he figures a way to get himself out.

But then there's a psycho who actually probably killed her, who isn't and so it's this kind of awful story, but it's really interesting.

And important to tell.

Yeah, that's great, Highly recommend it. Paul so Lataraf is the host. He was a Rolling Stones contributor.

It's just good.

Rolling Stone the magazine, the magazine, No, the band.

He was in The Rolling Stones.

You said it plural.

It's not.

He's a Rolling Stones contributor. He's like, ooh ooh.

I couldn't even have told you if it was or wasn't right. That's it.

What about you, uh scraping my brain for anything.

You don't have to have anything. We knew we did.

We talked about nails, talked about tits, We're talking about true crime.

This is what ladies care about.

This is what you've come to expect.

And now how to get our bodily autonomy back. No, don't be silly, God damn it. Okay, well let's get into it.

Then. We have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media Correct.

Here are some highlights.

Explosive diarrhea Alert all cats.

Oh Jesus, Oh they're doing it. I love it. That's right.

This week on this podcast will kill you. Our experts, Aaron and Aaron are both doctors and they're putting out an emergency episode to talk about the current cyclospora outbreak. That's right, the explosive diarrhea outbreak that is happening across this nation and it is real. So Aerin and Aaron break down what's happening, what you need to watch out for.

And they list off every single vegetable that you no longer have to eat, have to eat, ellips that you are not.

Allowed to eat.

And then over on Deer Movies, I Love You a Million, Casey revisit the cult classic Romeo Michelle's High School Reunion.

I Gotta watch that again.

Plus Casey shares all the highlights from his recent twentieth high school reunion themed out. Then on Disgraced Land, Jake tells the story of Dolly parts Soga here how the country icon narrowly avoided becoming the tragic heroine of one of our own murder ballads. And then in merch Corner, finally we have some brand new arrivals.

So exciting. Check out the new Call your Dad collection.

Oh pretty, goddamn great, especially tote. Look at this T shirt.

I love it.

You're gonna call your dad.

And then we have a pop socket pop socket and a sticker.

Come on, you guys, something for everyone.

Check that out.

And we also have the MFM Collegiate unisex T shirt. It is so I love that. So it's the red flag unisex. Looks like you go to my favorite murder university with a red flag. I love that one so fucking much.

It's so cute. What size is that? I'm gonna give an evince. This here is a medium amazing.

Both of those are designed by our graphic designer, Vanessa Lilac, who's so talented.

And then also we have this was our tour.

It was like the design templet kind of.

Yeah with the panther, it's really fucking cool. It's designed by Daphnes Savaine. It's inspired by our twenty twenty five tour shirt. So check that out, man, that's so cool.

Yeah, if you have fomo for missing out on the tour in any way, you can still get a piece of that art.

Action.

Yeah, pretty great. Love it.

Head to the exactly Right store dot com to shop for our merch, all of our merch. Now.

So this is a very special episode. This is a themed episode right in honor of our newest limited series podcast release of Royal Swindle.

That's right.

Royal Swindle is the unbelievable true story of two aussy conwomen who charmed British high society. We love a good con in a tale of greed, lies and spoiler alert horses. The first two episodes are available right now wherever you get your podcasts.

Please go check that out.

And to celebrate the kickoff of Royal Swindle, we will now tell each other scam story.

Hell yeah, we love a scammer, we do, and there's just so many. You go first, Okay, have you heard of Roslin, New York? In Long Island?

Long Island, Long Island. I've heard of Long Island.

Okay, So there is a town called Roslin in New York, a long eye. It's on the island's north shore in Nassau County.

Which you've heard of. Past stories that have taken.

Us to Long Island that we've covered have been, of course, the Gilga Beach Killer and the Amityville horror story. But both those took place in towns that are on the south shore and farther out on the island, where the vibe is more maritime and maybe a little more blue collar.

Not today.

Roslin is more of a quintessential New York suburb if you remember the suburban towns in uncut Gems and meet the Fokkers or meet the parents, whatever. That's the kind of place you can picture. So I looked it up, of course, to see what famous people came from Roslin. Michael Crichton, Oh, author Michael Crichton, a man named Arthur Agatstun.

Who was the author of The South Beach Diet.

Oh hell yeah.

And fashion designer Lily Pultzer was born in Roslyn.

New York.

Okay, we're getting the sense here. Yeah, there's a little bit of carb cutting, some affluence. There's some ballet slippers that match the little sundress you're wearing.

Right, has the same action.

There's a lot of doctors and lawyers, the ones that you know, commute to Manhattan. And there's one major reason New York professionals choose to live in these towns, and that is because they have great public schools. And these people are obsessive about their children's education. It's something that you and I don't understand, except I read it in books about how cutthroat getting your children into schools and good schools and public good schools.

Yes, right, And in LA I've had friends that are like, the child is a year and a half and they're already talking about what kindergarten they will do, totally, totally, and then I just internally fall backwards out of the universe.

Same.

This is the story of a swindle that rocked one of Long Island's most prestigious school systems, and as it unraveled, it just got bigger and bigger. It's probably a testament to the quality of the district and its ambitious students that the story was first broken by a student at this school in the school paper. Yes, and It's alumnus later wrote and produced an HBO movie about it called Bad Education, starring Alison Janny and Hugh Jackman, that was.

Based on a true story.

Yeah, and I'll say it's a bit of a stretch, but they're such great actors.

We don't care.

You don't care.

Yeah, this is the story of the Roslyn School District embezzlement scandal. The main sources for the story are an article in New York Magazine by Robert Kolker and reporting from the New York Times and news Day, which is Long Island's local paper. The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes and I watched half of Bad.

Education, but it's it's like they take liberties. It's not even like ret true.

But it is a fun little you know flick okay, who says that my mom.

It's a fun flack how would you know? You didn't watch it?

I watched all of half of it. How there you? How there are.

You that more? Get your big tits out of my face.

Okay, So it's the fall of two thousand and two, remember that, and the school district has been rapidly ascending towards the top of the top public districts in America. For any non American listeners and people who don't have children and don't understand this, American public schools are controlled on three levels.

Lunchtime vibes, reset, cheerleading vibes, and cheerleaders.

So the first is very loosely by the federal government, which can give or withhold some state funding and can create policies that should protect students constitutional rights and rights to education, or create policies that roll back these rights.

Guess which one happens more often number two.

And on the state level, there is much more oversight into the curriculum, policies and standards. The state administras standardized tests, and funding can be awarded or withheld based on these scores.

I think it'd be interesting to have a teacher here right now to tell us their opinion.

It's abysmal.

The poor schools just never get the money. No, they don't matter what the money that they need the most. Yeah, there's a whole fucking episode.

I'm going to stop and lecture you every time I have the opportunity.

Great, I barely graduated high school. However, it's your fault.

The vast majority of school funding comes from local taxes on a district by district basis. This is why if you look at a list of best performing public school districts in America, they will, without fail, be some of the country's richest suburban communities.

So they rich get richer.

Right.

The escalator that they're automatically standing on goes all the way to heaven exactly.

And I was educated at one of those too, so I can't.

Did Janet move You're there like to be at a good school.

Janet wouldn't let us move to la before I graduated because it was a good school, which is like, I appreciate that of her.

Yeah, that's right to keep you there so that you could.

Yeah, I probably would have gotten into more trouble if I had gone into fair FAXI yeah, exactly.

Oh my god, can you imagine being in the city.

I have the most fun. Oh, yeah, appreciate that.

So good schools drive up home prices too, which I hadn't considered, makes obvious sense, making these communities even more inaccessible over time. And I did look at the Red fin like house prices and I didn't see one under.

One point five million.

Wow.

And some of the higher ones were like six million. So it's a.

Fancy area and they're very like. They all look a little sopranos ish.

Yeah, kind of a little new new builds, a little octagonal, maybe your central staircase.

Lots of tile instead of hardwood, you know, right, depresses me. So a large chunk of the credit for the ever improving quality of the Roslin School District is given to the school superintendent, a ten year veteran of the district in his late fifties named Frank Tasson.

And that's who Hugh Jackman plays. I'll show you a real photo of him.

Actually, Oh, there's Frank.

He's making a face that's huge Jackman's character. You can see it.

You can see a little Hugh Jackman in there.

Yeah.

He looks like a great dancer, this man, and proud, so proud.

You know, his shoes are nice. Look at that. How hot.

That cameraman is back here.

Did you kind of suck?

Yeah, it a little bit, looks like Ryan Gosling. He does faking being the cameraman.

Hey are you the cameraman? He looks like Ryan Gosling.

Right in, and then that journalist is like, excuse me, the cameraman's my boyfriend, right, that's why we move and acts like sorry, sorry, sorry guys.

Over the years, Frank has spearheaded ambitious projects, so he is a really good superintendent.

I want to say Super Nintendo.

Because in the Simpsons, I want Super Nintendo Chalmers.

He's the best Super Nintendo Chalmers that anyone's ask But he is really good.

He's spearheaded ambitious projects like elementary school foreign language classes and high school community service requirements, which is pretty great. That makes everyone proud of the district. And the hard stats are always improving too. Every year the school's average SAT scores go up and the list of college acceptances becomes more and more impressive. And Frank spear heads a lot of community outreach as well, involving Roslin's senior citizens in school events to like help do old people things, tell stories probably.

But oftentimes those are plain about children today.

Yes, oftentimes though these events happened shortly before the town budget votes, but like he's still doing it right. Frank is a former English teacher who's still gives public lectures on classic literature. He is beloved. He's also a flashy dresser. Brooks Brothers suits and he.

Drives it seemed like an incredibly flashy dresser. He is sure he drives a Mercedes. He makes around two hundred and fifty thousand a year.

So that was in two thousand and two, so in today's money, seven fifty four sixty.

Six, but close, I always give too lot.

Yeah, I was like, you're never gonna believe this, Like no, no, So he makes, you know, two fifty a year, but he has no kids, So the fact that he spends a lot of money and has nice things seems.

Like it's within his budget.

People don't seem to know a ton about Frank's personal life. He has on his desk an old timey wedding photo like in the movie Bad Education. It looks like it's from the eighties, maybe of a woman in a wedding dress, and he says that was his wife, who tragically died of cancer many years earlier keeps his ring on in the movie.

I don't know if it's true.

People know he lives in Manhattan in a rent stabilized building, so that's more of a reason for them not to question his seems like he's spending a lot.

For one moment, I was like, I wish this story was about how that building got rent stabilized and like how much it costs and who lives there, because that idea that in like modern day even La or New York.

That you could be grandfathered in at some point.

Yeah right, And you're like, oh, I pay fifteen hundred for my three and two.

My old place that we used to record at was like twelve fifty. It's insane. God, I know that's not what this story is.

Sorry, that's next week. That's your story.

So other than this one mystery about his private life, which he doesn't discuss much, Frank is outgoing. He's friendly. This is probably why the school board is inclined to follow his lead. In two thousand and two, when it comes out that his assistant superintendence for business, the person who signs the checks for the district, a woman named Pam Gluckin, has been stealing money from the district. So Alison Janny is who plays her, And here is what she actually looks like, Pam. She looks like a woman you'd see in the office of your.

School, absolutely right, a woman who literally those readers are glued to the end of her nose like that.

And she's always rushing around, and she always smells like coffee and you.

Know, but she knows everyone's name. She knows everyone's mom's name. She's always busy, she knows exactly what's.

Going she knows everyone's name. Yes, she does exactly. They show that in this movie.

So she's well liked. She's outgoing.

She often jokes about how hard she's working and how late she stays. But it seems like it's true. She is kind of like his right hand and knows everything. And while she makes decent money as a high up administrator in a wealthy district, it's maybe a little suspicious with her that she can afford to have three homes, one in Belmore, which is a working class Long Island town, one in Florida, and one in the Hampton's But she also has boats.

She takes lavish vacations. She has fancy cars and nice jewelry, so it's a little more us.

It's just funny to me.

Maybe it's her husband who makes the money, you know, Like but yeah, she could have had a rich hand and credit credit.

She's just really good at paying off her credit card every night.

Or bad, we don't know, or really bad.

But my thing is, why can't people just not spend the money just for a little.

Totally keep it on the low profile.

Just go to CVS and treat yourself once a month.

Listen to us tell you how to cheat.

Like, like I knew when I was nineteen, if I stole clothes from the Melrose clothing store I was working at, don't wear them to work.

Yes, you know, and pick your one thing and then go for three years. But like, yeah, at least cover your tracks in some way.

But that I do.

It's like, hey, you want to go try my ski? Dude, let's go out this right again.

They're like, more, come over, I'm having a party at my Hampton's house. Disclaimer I never stole any clothes from the Melrose.

Disclaimer I never stole twenty dollars from my cafe job and justified it by saying everyone's mean to me.

Never happened, and statute of limitations.

Can't prove it. Yep, didn't happen.

Yeah, it's a little suspicious, but no one really bats an eye at this because a lot of Rosalind families have homes in other locations.

They don't ask questions.

That said, it's still a shock to everyone when the board realizes that Pam has been using a district credit card make personal purchases trackable, so trackable, but she's the one who does the tracking or like the approving.

Yeah, so two sets of eyes.

It seems like I'm sure she started slow and then knew she was never going to get caught and just kind of went, you're all in at that point, whether for ten dollars or a million dollars, you're going to get fired and get it, get caught, so you might as well.

Do the million.

So then you're like, we're going on vacation.

Totally.

That just makes me think of the early days when you and I were sharing like American Express cards, and then if I would do the thing where suddenly I don't have my card on me and I would just text you and be like I just bought eighty dollars worth of flipliner at CVS, just so you know, before when we were still handling it.

I know, so Gad, I believed you every time.

Well, it's true. I know.

That's why it's a good thing. I believed you. I know it is, or I'd be like a six.

You'd text me like I just spent six twenty five at Chipotle and I didn't have my card, so.

Us darker, Yes, like, okay, did it all. They don't have to pay it back.

I know, but it's but it's also that kind of thing where I think that at least we always had that. Yeah, we're just like, you're not gonna steal money me totally, that's not.

How you are. Yeah, that's like very important in a partnership.

Here comes the big reveal. Actually, wait, I do owe you. Didn't you give me one hundred dollars in cash one time?

Recently? I gave you.

Twenty dollars because I didn't have a five and said you have probably done this for me many times in the past.

We're even.

So we're even, we're absolutely even. You heard it here, folks.

That is provable, Okay, district credit card one of those credit card purchases. Finally, raises the alarm because someone used it to buy a bunch of renovation supplies at a few home depots around Long Island outside of Roslin.

The clerk, okay, here's the snitch.

Clerk at a home depot in a town called Selden, which is about thirty five miles east of Roslin. And everyone knows everyone in Long Island. It seems like you're not gonna get away with shit. People know whose kids you are, people know whose cousin you are. Like where you're supposed to be, where you're not supposed to be.

Oh, yeah, you remember Vicky Ernst, one of the producers on our TV shows. Yeah, Vicki's from Long Island, right, and she knows every single person on her block. And anytime she sees anybody like, it's about community.

Right, gossip, good, bad, everything.

You're in it, you're in it for life.

So basically, the snitch, I'm not putting him down. Good for him, this person, this person isn't call him snitch.

Is that what you're saying? Well, I don't know, You're right.

He recognized the person who is using the credit card as Pam's son, and.

She's like, that's weird.

He is a contractor, But why was he buying supplies for the Roslin School district on their card but not at the home people owned Roslin in a different town. And why did those supplies get delivered to a home in the Hampton's and not to the Roslin School Red Flag, red Flae. Yeah, and like the son's being lazy at this point in the movie, she like beats the shit out of him for doing that.

It's very Hell's and Jenny's so good, She's so good.

So this clerk contacts the school board and tells them what happened. When the school's auditor finishes his work, just looking into it, he finds that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars have been stolen in today's money.

Two hundred and fifty and this was two thousand and three.

Two thousand and two and two.

You want to know how much the other one was, Oh, it was the same, It was the same amount. Sixty six, Okay, so today's money about four sixty six. The board convenes in a meeting with Frank our guy to figure out the next steps. They're all just so pissed off and upset, and he surprises all of them by saying, we shouldn't turn her in, we shouldn't go to the DA, we shouldn't press charges. Let's not raise the alarms. Instead, let's let her resign quietly and will inform the state licensing board so they revoke her school administration licenses. He doesn't want to totally throw the book at her. He points out that if Pam is prosecuted, the district will have to keep paying her until the case is settled, and

possibly more importantly, it'll make the disc look really bad when it becomes a huge news story. It will make the school budget harder to pass. But if she resigns and promises to pay back the money, the district will take less of a financial hit, or really no hit at all if she pays it back. Basically, they want to avoid scandal. They look really good. They also were like, if colleges see Roslin School District on applications and know that it is like a tarnish school, it's going to affect that. Yeah, and they don't want that to happen.

They've worked so hard. It's only two hundre fifty thousand dollars.

Let's let her go.

Yeah makes sense, I mean, and that is the kind of definition these days feels like of corruption in that way, because that's exactly what happened with doctor death, where it's like, we can't the insurance won't bring this against these doctors because it's so small and it ends everything, And it's like that kind of thinking of like how bad is a thing to be a career ender or a reputation.

You don't hurting and killing people would be the limit. But guess what it's not ever, it's no money.

It's money.

So the board takes Frank up on this idea, and Pam plays ball and she goes quietly. About a year and a half pass without incident, and in that time period, Roslin has been ranked by Wall Street Journal as the sixth best school district in the nation, which in today's best school districts something they know and then two exactly and the parents, school board, and administration they're so thrilled about this, basically like Brent can't do anything wrong to them.

Every Rosalind homeowner is also thrilled, since more demand for the school system means higher home prices. Everyone's happy with him.

It's all frothing. But the camera cuts back to that wedding picture on his desk for me.

Right then it all comes crashing down, you're right. In February of two thousand and four, an anonymous letter is sent to the members of the school board, some school administrators, the district attorney, and several local newspapers. So we never find out who sent.

This letter, but they send it to everybody, everybody.

It claims that Pam Gluckin had stolen much more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars that the school's auditor had initially reported, which some of these people didn't know about that at all, and that Frank both knew about it and had embezzled funds himself. The letter says, quote, we believe that doctor Frank Tossone participated in this embezzlement scandal so as to support his lavish lifestyle. With the help of miss Gluckin, he submitted his personal credit card statements, bills for personal vacations and trips, and various household bills and included them in the cover up end. Quote I just realized I don't have my glasses on there.

Now you can read You're like the sinking of the Titanic.

Oh shit, this is blank, So it gets sent to all these people. But Frank gets a lucky break because one of the letters is returned to sender. But for some reason, whoever sent the letter used the district office as its return address, so he got a hold of a copy of it, meaning, I wonder, it's probably someone in that school who sent it in the first place, right, like a teacher or someone else in the office.

Right, because they I would need to maybe access that mail slot if there was mail back, right.

Like, why would they put it back there? Exactly?

So it winds up on Frank's stask. He freaks out, launches into a preamptive strike. He calls a meeting with the representatives from every part of the school staff and the PTA to present the letter and say that the allegations are not true, but that he's going to call back the auditor to go through the finances and clear it all up. He's going to look through every single little thing. At first, people go along with this and praise him for being so forthcoming. But at the end of the month, an editor for the school newspaper, so a student, the senior girl, yes name Rebecca Rombaum, which I could use that name in good health.

It's so cool.

She gets a copy of the letter somehow and writes an article in the school paper about it.

This is one of she's like, yeah, sitting down, Kirk Kirk, revenge is mine.

Yeah, I mean, and I looked her up and I'm like, she'd better be like a famous journalist now. And I don't know if she might for a school district. I can't tell what she does, but she lay as low.

She's a genius and just out there amongst the people.

It runs in the paper's March issue. In the article, she gets a quote from Frank explaining why he didn't come forward with the allegations against Pam when the first she's fucking going for it.

She's kind of on the record. Yeah, and she was wearing a wire when she asked this question.

Right, He says, quote, I think their reputation at the school district was at stake end quote, and that's why he didn't come forward. Rebecca later writes to The New York Times that the student response to the article was underwhelming, because of course it is. They don't give a shit about school paper. Did you ever read your school paper?

We didn't have one, but guess you did. You just didn't know it was no one was aware.

But also just that kind of thing of like to have lived as the girl that always thought she was doing like justice and like fighting the good fight, and then turning around and no one's ever behind you.

You're just like mm hmm, Okay, that sounds right, yeah, she says quote.

During school that day, I watched for reactions to the story, but the students as a whole were not as receptive as I had expected. We don't have formal circulation numbers, but by the number of papers still lying around school at the end of the day, I would say that our April Fool's Day issue was much more widely read because the kids don't give a shit about a fucking.

They see embezzlement and they're like, that's adult problem totally. That's like we don't balance the budget.

Yeah, my day's going fine.

But I think if we had written the headline more of like, do you still want that pizza shape like a square? Well, guess what the embezzlement issue is. That's tay to get away from you.

That's right, and this is no April Fools.

There was interest, however, at the next Board of Education meeting because at least a few issues of that newspaper had made it home to parents, so the parents were interested in the embezzlement.

It turns around it's Walter Cronkite is reading this student newspaper.

Yeah, he's the day we go.

It's only after this meeting with the Board of Education and after Rebecca's article that News Day, Long Island's local paper picks up the story, and that's when everything starts to fall apart for Brink. Over the next few months, the DA, the schools have been stration, and Newsday are all combing through the school's expenses and running every last receipt down, and very quickly, two things become apparent. Pam had stolen far more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and there's just no denying that Frank had also stolen money and was involved. Investigators find multiple kinds of questionable expenses.

There are real payments to vendors, but the amounts these vendors were billed and received is far less than had been documented, Meaning they're like, we've paid this vendor five hundred dollars and the vendors like, we only asked for two hundred and we only got two hundred dollars, you know what I mean? Yeah, boot pocket the rest beep, Let's go to Red Lobster exactly. There are a linemens that have never been questioned before, but now look very suspicious once they start actually looking. The district had paid for two trips to London. Okay, And here's what we were talking about, like bee, chill and don't be flashy.

On the concord.

Just that first class, first class is amazing. It's amazing, plain old.

One trans insanely expensive.

One trip on the Concorde for it was twenty grand and another was thirty grand.

Bro because she had to get there fast.

I think it's him.

Oh that's what he did.

Yeah, good lord, Yeah, like Pallo or pla.

Have you never been to Las Vegas if.

You've never liked And the district had paid for multiple trips to Las Vegas, so good job, some for actual conferences and some seemingly just for fun. And he'd like, bring a bunch of the school board members. So I don't think we're aware of what was happening. He had used over fifty six thousand dollars in school money to pay for treatments. Out of Manhattan weight loss clinic.

Oh, just don't do that.

Not when the South Beach dives right there.

Exactly.

Come on, in today's money, fifty six thousand, a little more would have been more than do you want a three one hundred thousand. Someday we're gonna get it again him in ten years, we're both gonna do it again. Well, this is going on. Frank just keeps going out of town while they're looking into it. He's just like, I'm out this week, I'm out this.

Week, I'm out this week. He's sprained my ankle.

Exactly, I sprained my everything.

He he spends March in April going to Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, then California, Florida, and Vegas again. Every time a new weird charge is found, Frank isn't around to explain or discuss it.

Then there are.

Sketchy charges from companies that appear to not exist or be very very sketchy. So in early June, a school administrator realizes that over the years, the school has paid close to eight hundred thousand dollars to a company called word Power, which purports to make pamphlets. So eight hundred thousand on.

Those real good pamphlets though, nice stock, real shiny and slick.

Yeah, yeah, those ones. In today's money, that would be one point five million. This is a lot of money for pamphlets, scamphlets, that's right. Sorry, this latte is not helping me. Yeah, I was coke that I'm drinking, that I'm snorting. But the weirder thing is that the company is headquartered. This pamphlet company is headquartered from an apartment in Manhattan, Frank's address. The company's CEO is listed as a man named Steven, and it becomes clear over the course of the investigation that he and Frank lived together at the same time and right around the same point in the investigations, investigators noticed that Frank had purchased a house in Las Vegas with another man, this one a good bit younger than him. This man investigators also noticed

that Frank had sent multiple FedEx shipments on the district's account, meaning like you just went and printed up a FedEx, which we've all stolen a fucking stamp or two from work.

It's like the FedEx account at work is the place where you can get a little liberal. You can take some liberties because it's already going out. It's all business.

But now they know what address it was sent to.

Yeah, if you hadn't done that, they wouldn't have been able to track the address.

And didn't they use the money to buy the house in Vegas?

I don't know about that, but probably, like it's all in the mix, yeah, exactly. So he sent multiple fed Ex shipments to this address in Las Vegas.

It's never uncovered what.

Was in these shipments. God, I wish I could see. Seems like the working hypothesis is that it might have.

Been just cash, just a ton of posting in cash.

And he's like in the movie, it's not true, but they show the younger man as an ex student of Frank's who's also an exotic dancer. I think that part was correct at some point, but it's not true. So he could have been like laundering cash Las Vegas. There's no better place. Yes, everyone just remember that.

And the idea that you just like fill up a box with some band totally go for it totally.

So now it's apparent that Frank has been in romantic relationships with men. That's the thing that he had been keeping from everyone. And Roslind's a pretty liberal town. So people are mostly a little sad that Frank felt that he had to hide his sexuality. But at the same time, it's two thousand and four and a high ranking, openly gay school administrator is not common, and I'm sure some parents would have clutched their pearls.

Oh yeah.

Frank will later say that he and Steven, his partner who lives at his Manhattan house, had an open relationship. Steven knew about the other man in Las Vegas, like, he wasn't being deceitful in that sense.

Do you believe that I do?

Yeah? Why not? I I don't know. I don't hate him, right, he.

Made some really stupid decisions and trapped himself, and we've all made stupid decisions and luckily we've gotten away with a lot of them.

Yeah, I mean, it would be a much more infuriating story if he was stealing from kids from low income areas. Right, But it's just like you're basically skimming the cream off of the cream of the crowd.

Well you know what, And they kind of hint at this in the show, where you know, like all the parents of the students that he's helping to succeed in their lives and get into good college and have good careers and get paid. Well, are making so much fucking money? They have so much money. Yeah, meanwhile, he's being paid two fifty a year, and eventually that doesn't seem like it's fair to him, right, so he just starts skimming, starts taking a little where it's like they won't even miss it because they're so fucking wealthy. Like, I get how that mindset could happen to someone.

Yeah, Well, it's easy to rationalize things like that because all you have to do is say I'm being ripped off, and then you can do kind of anything you want.

It's how dare you that rationalizes it. And then suddenly how dare you?

Builds you a bridge to free money in Las Vegas?

Amen? Amen.

So, when all these revelations finally come out in early June of two thousand and four, Frank resigns. When all is said and done, it appears that between Frank and Pam there's like six people total who end up kind of being implicated in this, including Frank and Pam, Around eleven point two million dollars has been stolen from.

The school district.

Fucking a today's money eleven point two. I'm gonna go ahead and stick that right into the area of one hundred and eighty five thousand.

Twenty million. You just went the wrong way, I'd to say.

As I was talking, I started to panic and I forgot what the base number was.

Twenty million.

Yeah, them, there's so much pressure.

I know. I hate it. I hate it, but we got to give them what they love.

We got to this is what people come here for, that's right.

So almost twenty million. Fuck, they just fucking went for it. And my sister has to buy crans every year herself.

Right exactly.

Yeah, and this makes it the largest embezzlement from a school district in American history.

So if you're gonna go.

Big kids, go to Vegas.

In all, six people, including a son and a niece of Pam Gluckin and the domestic partner of Frank Tissone, plead guilty in connection with the thefts from the Roslin schools. They're actually the maximum they could have received was fifteen to twenty years for that god, But in two thousand and six, Frank Whop pleads guilty to stealing about two point two million is sentenced to four to twelve years in prison. He's released for good behavior in twenty ten.

Due to a loophole in the New York State pension law. He still collects one hundred and seventy three thousand, four hundred and ninety five dollars and four cents a year.

Holy shit. Uh huh, So he basically is still fully employed with a great.

Job and hopefully still his rent control department. Oh dude, and he'll get that money.

For the rest of his life.

Loopholes, he does repay the district the entire two point two million.

Oh wow. Yeah, which you know it's more than that though. There's no way they.

Got it that close, right, Yeah, yeah, all the money that they couldn't track down. I'm sure it's millions and millions more. Pam Gluckham admits to stealing four point three million and is sentenced to three to nine years in prison. She ends up serving five. As of twenty and eleven, she had repaid about half the money she had stolen.

I can't track her down at all. I saw one article that said she passed away in twenty seventeen, another that she worked in Manhattan somewhere. If she's still alive, she's probably paid back more since twenty and eleven, but I can't track her down. In the years since, all over Long Island school districts have had a much harder time getting residents to pass their budgets. Not Surprisingly, while towns used to faithfully vote yes on school budgets year after year, voters have been less likely to do so in the aftermath of the scandal. After all, the school district now seems to do just fine using significantly less than it's allotted funds. So if someone not skimming off the top, they don't need as much money. Yeah, and

they're calling it the Rosalin effect.

Well, and also, can't we just take that and put it back down into where it is truly and desperately needed, right.

You'd hope one would.

The author of the anonymous letter that led to Frank's undoing has never been identified. And that is the story of the Roslin School embezzlement scandal.

Wow, well done, thank you. Yeah, I've never heard of that. I never saw that.

That education.

I just really the idea of just like when you get away with something a little bit, and then you keep going to the point where you're handing out cards and doing all those things like.

Multiple members of her family had like annex or whatever cards.

It's just you're living in a fantasy world totally, and then it ends totally.

If you want to watch Hugh Jackman make out with a really cute twink, definitely watch that.

Education.

Okay, So mine begins in nineteen oh two.

Oh, you know when that was nineteen oh two.

Turn it's centrue oh and in New York City, so it's the Gilded Age. There's a well dressed woman in her forties sitting in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Manhattan. She scans the ritzy crowd until she sees the man she's looking for. He's a lawyer and also a dear friend of her husband's from back home in Cleveland, Ohio.

His name is James Dylan. The woman pretends she doesn't see James sitting there alone, but as she walks past him, she brushes up against his arm. He looks up. He's pleasantly surprised by seeing a familiar face. Oh, it's the lady from back home, my friend's wife. He asks her what she's doing in New York. She explains that she's here for a private family matter and she cannot speak anymore on the topic. Please, but this, Yes, you may not ask many more questions, but can I have a ride in your carriage to my father's house?

Okay?

So he was like, of course. They set off in his carriage and they arrive at a towering Fifth Avenue mansion. James watches as she hops out of the carriage, knocks on the mansion's front door, and goes inside.

He's shocked.

Of course, the woman's husband has never let on that his wife comes from so much money, so he waits there for her, which made me laugh when I realized that was what was happening. So she goes in does her business. When she comes back out about a half an hour later, she's carrying a large envelope under her arm.

She gets back into the carriage, she reminds James this is a private family matter and she cannot tell him anything that's going on. Got it, touts, I can't show you what's in this envelope. Ask but then she lets it slip. Okay, she suddenly says, listen, the reason I'm here on this family business is because I am the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Oh shit, and I've just gone into his house and collected this envelope, which is all the paperwork proving that he has given me a small fortune. Take a little peaky poo at this, calm down and she shows him. Okay, And of course James is shocked, but he totally buys it. And he's not the only one who does the story. This woman will tell about this inheritance and who she is is

so convincing that she fools almost everyone around her and it enables her to live like an heiress for years and years. She's the embodiment of the very Gilded Age value that appearances are everything. She's one of the America's most prolific con artists, known best by her alias Cassie Chadwick. This is the story of Elizabeth Bigley, the Queen of Ohio.

Hell Yeah.

The sources used for today's story or the book The Impostor Heiress by Annie Reid and a twenty twelve Smithsonian Magazine article by Abbot Kaylor entitled The High Priestess Fraudulent Finance, and the rest are in our show notes. So this all begins in eighteen fifty seven in Ontario, Canada, with the birth of a little girl named Elizabeth Bigley. She comes from a hard working salt of the earth household in a very small town in Ontario. Her father works for the railroad, her mother's a homemaker for the family's eight children, and according to writer Annie Reid, quote, the big Lea's passed without much comment in their quiet corner of Ontario until Elizabeth came along.

Oh shit, what's she's doing?

She got the glass over her head. Even as a little girl, Elizabeth becomes known for getting fixated on things, particularly the very pretty dresses and jewelry that she sees the ladies in town wear, and over time those fixations become obsessions. Elizabeth will do anything she can to get what she wants. When she's twenty one years old, she goes into a local barber shop. She asks to have all of her hair cut off, and then to have a fake mustache made of that hair. So, then journalist Danny Reid writes, quote, Elizabeth walked out of the shop a mustachioed young man. It had become obvious to her that the way to get what she wanted was money, and the best way to get money was to be a man end quote shit, right, So that same day, Elizabeth,

with her short hair and her mustache, takes a watch she'd recently pilford off an unsuspecting man down to the local pawn shop, where she attempts to pawn it under an invented male name. But her disguise isn't convincing enough.

Bake mustaches, it's never going to look legit.

It's just all like weird and sitting there, and also it's like her first day trying to do this. Essentially, the clerk immediately calls the police. They take her into custody. Elizabeth is Eventually her father has to go down and get her from the police station and they take a long walk of shame home together, with her still wearing her little mustache and dressed like a man. Legally, it seems she only gets a slap on the wrist for this, though.

Do you have pictures of her?

Uh? Yes, so here's Elizabeth in the classic turn of the century portrait sense Okay, thank you. That's the name she later is known by, which is Cassie L.

Chadwick.

You know when someone has a middle initial.

Like that that they use it regularly? What about them?

They're a fraudster?

Okay?

For sure, they're trying to pass a bad check on to you. Okay, heads up. So a few months after all of this happens, Elizabeth walks into a general store and grabs a bunch of stuff. She grabs combs and ribbons and fabrics, anything she can get her hands on. She takes it all up to the clerk. The clerk tells her it's going to be about two hundred and fifty dollars, and Elizabeth goes through her purse and hands the man a card identifying her as quote an heiress to eighteen thousand dollars. You can just make a card that's says, go ahead and read this.

I'm gonna want one of those, right please. It's like sending your kid to the market with cigarettes. My mom's just I can have that. My mom says, I'm worth eighteen thousand dollars.

Hey, I'm selling my son at back of Marlborough lightes. So basically, her quoting that she is an heiress to eighteen thousand dollars in today's money would mean how much money is she going to get?

Two hundred and thirty six, it's a little bit higher, three hundred and thirty one.

It's six hundred thousand in today's money. The assumption here Maren is pointing this out that the two hundred and fifty dollars is already scaled to today's money, because if she went and did that and it was two hundred and fifty dollars in turn of the century money, that would be she would have bought eight thousand dollars worth of.

Stuff, which like hard to do, yeah back then.

So don't think it's that okay, But anyway, after she explains her inheritance is gummed up in the legal system at the moment and she doesn't have access to it right now, but she's going to She would like to pay with a promisory note, and that's basically a formal ioeu. She hands a promisory note over that appears to be signed by a wealthy farmer from the area. It's unclear how much this is worth, but it's more than the two hundred and fifty dollars bill that she's just wrung up.

And of course, as you may have suspected, this promisory note is fake. Elizabeth created the card out of high end card stock, opted for a tasteful typeface, and forged the signature of that farmer that is on it. There is no eighteen thousand dollars inheritance. I'm sorry to tell you your heart. I know I hate to be the one that basically is the quote that's meant to ease the clerk's mind, convince him she's good for the money.

This is an erow where it would not be unusual to accept a promissory note as payment and give the difference back to the customer, kind of like cashing someone's check. And that's the scam, and that's what this clerk does. And by the time he actually tries to cash the promisory note, either they're not sure, either down at the bank or directly with the farmer that his name is on it. Elizabeth is long gone and all her ribbons and combs are gone.

To it's giving me paper moon vibes. Yes, exactly, paper Moon.

Just hold yourself over until you out of town.

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

I got to see that movie again.

It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

So she gets away with it, and of course then is emboldened to try it again in nearby towns. But just one year later, in eighteen seventy nine, she's twenty two years old. She gets caught, she gets arrested, and when this case goes to trial, the jury seems very sympathetic. So this is that kind of thing where it's just like, she looked right, she sounded right, she was a charmer, she was probably a sociopath. Ye, she was good at doing this and conceitful. Yeah, good for her. No, well, it's just that she had the charm, which is something I like where it's just like she clearly told people stories either they wanted to hear it, she was good at doing it right, and there is the kind of magnetism to those people.

And sometimes the stories that made the other person feel good about themselves. Yeah, in a way that made them not questionable.

I can't tell anyone, I'm going to tell you, like all that kind of stuff. So the jury's on her side. They see her as troubled basically, but not a hardened crimin. So in the end, she's found not guilty by reason of insanity and she's released back to her parents.

Wow, they're like, crazy bitch, get the fuck out of here, just go home.

Hey, you crazy bitch, Right, this is.

Fun, you crazy bitch. It's not your birthday for a month, stop it. So now it's the early eighteen eighties. Elizabeth is in her mid twenties and she decides she's getting out of Canada for Cleveland, Ohio. Sure you know Glamour's Cleveland o'high step up out of Ontario, straight to Cleveland. Her older sister, Alice lives in Cleveland with her wealthy businessman husband and his name is Standish Milton York.

Wow.

So she gets to move right into that house. They live in an affluent part of town. The house is gorgeously decorated. There's expensive furniture and decor everywhere. Elizabeth basically gets set up for a new life, and she is supposed to be there working toward an honest living and starting over. But that's not our girl. That's not what Elizabeth does. She starts using fake names to take out loans on her sister's belongings.

Girl, she sty she can't stop, she can't help herself. She's a swindler, true swindler. Yeah now maybe.

When lenders show up at the apartment demanding the payment, Elizabeth leaves. Elizabeth leaves town, and she leaves her sister high and dry. Allison standish have to pick up the pieces after she basically sells their house out from under them.

Oh my god, don't burn the bridges that you're already on, that are closest to you, that are stable burn other bridges.

That's that one.

These types of people love the close burns because that's where all like they, that's where all the excitement is. Are they going to find out that we're sitting at a dining room table I already sold.

Oh my god.

Okay, So she's now on the streets, running away in need of cash. So she actually turns to a profession that has long been a haven for con artists. Not everybody, of course, but some, and that is the art of fortune. She bills herself as a clairvoyant named Madame la de Vere or de Vere, and she begins to steadily attract a middle class clientele. In her day to day life, she calls herself Lydia Bigley. She tells people she's an Irish heiress, which that's a contradiction in terms right there.

Unless it's Guinness, there's no fucking way. So this is the identity she's using. In eighteen eighty two, when she visits a local doctor named Wallace Springsteen, who, like most people, finds her incredibly charming. We don't know how holy is. What we do know is he was a Civil War veteran, which would put him Maren says her hunches. He's in his early forties while Elizabeth is still in her mid twenties.

Doctor Springsteen, undeterred by the fact that she's much younger and a patient of his, begins to pursue Elizabeth, who's now going by Lydia the Fortune Teller. The two have a whirlwind romance because of course, every early twenty year old's love an old doctor to just hang out with.

Well, sweep them off their feet, but don't hurt your back.

No, no easy, easy, watch out for the gout. She manages to conceal her dark past until the ink is dry on their marriage certificate. But then she makes one very sloppy move, and that is agreeing to have a wedding announcement. They always want the credit, okay, so, and it's complete with a photograph, and it's published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Okay.

And now all the lenders that know Elizabeth's face that she scammed in the past and evaded, including her furious sister Alice. They all come out of the woodwork right to the Springsteen's door, demanding the doctor pay off his wife's debts.

So many rookie mistakes, starting with not leaving Cleveland.

Yeah, you can't have all of it. You can't be there as the proud young couple and get away with all the scams.

That's so weird. I thought she would do that.

Yeah. So, of course, finding out about his wife's debts stuns Doctor Springsteen. He immediately files for divorce. The relationship is over twelve days after the wedding.

Oh, he went for it.

Yeah, he has to pay her debt. As her husband, he is responsible.

Shut.

Yes, and to the point where he actually writes a notice for a Cleveland area newspaper saying, quote, I hereby forbid any person from trusting or harboring my wife, as I will pay no bills of her contracting after this date.

Wow.

So it's so bad he has to go to the press and be like, no more. Yeah, holy shit, we don't have the amount, but it's basically that period of time. Yeah, she can really churn it up when she wants to, So basically him publishing this letter cancels Elizabeth's ability to swindle people in the Cleveland area, so she picks up and heads over to eerie, Pennsylvania, a place you love.

She moves into a boarding house under the name Maizie Bagley and she's.

The last name.

Girl.

I know you're attached to it, but like Biglely is the real name. Yeah.

So she's just doing little things things here and there, okay, sot. And soon after she arrives as Mazy, she starts hanging out in common spaces in this place where she got her apartment or her you know, her room, and starts coughing and hacking uncontrollably, sometimes so violently that she coughs up blood. What's happening is that she tells the borders she's very sick, she's in need of immediate medical care and needs to go back home to Cleveland. Everyone's so concerned with her that they pull their money and these are just people renting rooms, and they buy her the ticket to get back to Cleveland so she can get that.

It's a vintage kickstarter Exactly what are they called?

It's a vintage Kickstarter from a person who is not coughing up blood. What she's doing is going to her room and picking at her gums until when she coughs, blood comes out, because she basically like picks out her gums.

I mean it's smart. That is convincing, Like how can she be lying there's blood?

Yes?

And also get her the fuck out of here because she has consumption, so she's going to make us all sick. So they do that, and then she's like, on the train, thanks so so much, I'll pay you back when I get home.

She's waving her bloody handkerchief at them. Goodbye.

Ry. Two weeks later, a letter comes to the boarding house with the shocking and sudden news that Maizie is dead. So say goodbye to that twenty five cents that broke you. For the next few years, Elizabeth Laislow and sticks around Cleveland, presuming work as a fortune teller, now under the name Madame LaRose. She's always changing it. She marries one of her regular clients, great idea. They quickly divorce. In the late eighteen eighties, she marries for a third time to another client.

What does she go, I see you marrying a fortune teller who's sitting in front of you. Mm hmmm.

And then she just starts doing all the shoulder work. Her third husband that's also a client, dies not long after they get married, and she inherits part of his estate. She takes up money, and she does what you and or I would do. She moves to Toledo, adopting the excellent fake name Florida Blythe and Florida continues her fortune telling work. Intoledo, she forges a particularly important relationship with a client named Joseph Lamb and later a reporter named Abbot kaylor Will write quote, Joseph seemed willing to do any favor that she asked. He, along with numerous other victims, would later claim that she had hypnotic powers. A popular concept at the turn of the twentieth century, people believed

that hypnotism was an acceptable explanation for adultery, runaway teenagers, and the increasingly common occurrence of young shop girls fleeing with strange men they met on trains.

End quote. I wish it was true.

It'd be fun just being able to hypnotize people. Yeah, come on this train with me. Among the favors that Elizabeth asks of Joseph or that he cashed some of her world famous promissory notes down at the bank, and again these look totally legit. They have signatures from Cleveland businessmen, they're printed on the nice card stock. They're totally fake, and Joseph is able to cash them anyway. So Elizabeth ends up with this round of fake promisory notes making around forty grand Holy shit in today's.

Money, I'm gonna go eight hundred and twenty six.

One point five million times.

Yeah.

The bank quickly catches on that the notes are fake. The two are caught, but the authorities know it's Elizabeth that's behind all of this. She's convicted on forgery charges and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. But even behind bars, Elizabeth continues to claim she's a clairvoyant. When she does a reading for the warden, she tells him that he's a going to lose thousands of dollars in a bad business deal, and b he's going to die of cancer. I'm sorry, I'm laughing, but I'm so sorry I'm laughing. But it's actually so daring of her to be like, and you're going to die of cancer.

Totally both of those things happen, No because of her, though, Yeah, she wills them to happen. No, no, no, she just like there's people who think she actually was maybe a lot clairvoyant, and that's why she went into that business. Maybe there's some truth to that. Either way, that gives her a little more credence. And she's also spending her time writing letters lobbying for her parole and citing her good behavior while she's been incarcerated. Somehow her powers of persuasion secure her release in eighteen ninety three, only a few years into her prison term.

She hypnotizes the parole board somehow.

Yeah, she hypnotizes the then governor William McKinley, who will go on to serve as our twenty fifth president. I do that, I mean a port. Now she's thirty six years old, she's out of prison. She's heading back to Cleveland. Yeah, and she adopts the new name Cassie Hoover. She quickly finds a fourth husband. He's also a doctor. He's much older than the last one. He's recently widowed. He's very rich, and his name is Leroy Chadwick. Let's take a look.

We have a picture of doctor Leroy Chadwick. Okay, look at me. This is a little sleepy.

He's sleepy.

He's so tired of his life lying all the time.

He's got her mustache on.

That'd be amazing if she made herself a big, old bushy mustache. Yeah, okay, that's what he loves her for. So his friends are stunned when he shows up with a new wife because she seems to have appeared out of mid air or thin air, came in a blue he started up high.

What that's why they're that's crazy crazy.

He doesn't want to talk to his friends about how he met Cassie.

Sure, that's always a good sign.

That's always great when you're like, how'd you guys meet?

I don't want to disco look at my envelope?

Can you give me a ride to my dad's house? He just has the explanation, this simple explanation, that she helped comfort the symptoms of his rheumatism by giving him therapeutic back massages.

No big deal, that, no big sow vincent I met.

Just constant naturally. Rumors spread they met in a brothel and that she was the madam. Oh good for her right. Cassie aka Elizabeth does not give a shit because she has just married into serious wealth. Her neighbors now include a Rockefeller, a US senator, and other rich elites, and she now gets to spend her husband's money with abandon. So, while living as Cassie Elizabeth buys piles of clothes and jewels, she actually buys a nine thousand dollars pipe organ in today's holy shit, in time today's money, it would.

Be four hundred and fifty thousand, close three hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

But all of this spending comes to a breaking point. Leroy lets his wife know he will be raining in her spending.

That's again like, don't go fucking crazy right to a point where people are like suspicion.

Yeah, if it's the turn of the century, how about you get a pipe organ that's worth like one hundred dollars.

Can you even play the pipe organ?

Yeah?

What's your pipe organ obsessions?

A pipe organ?

Turn it off, it's too loud. It's like done that. She has Dracula ambitions. Okay, So basically this is where the story started. It's nineteen oh two. Cassie's forty something. She doesn't like that her spending has now been limited. She's going to take the matters into her own hands, as she likes to do so. She has just left the Carnegie mansion with her big envelope under her arm and getting back into her husband's friend's carriage, telling him she can't tell him anything, then telling him literally everything, And when she shows him what's in that envelope, James sees, and as a lawyer, he witnesses seeing two promissory notes.

One is for a quarter of a million dollars, which today would be worth how many million? Twenty two million, nine point seven million, okay, but still basically I'm worth ten million dollars here. The other is for a million dollars, which is nineteen million in today's and they're both signed by Andrew Carnegie. And then she also shows him more paperwork, purportedly showing proof of the stocks and bonds she's been gifted by her rich father. Her stocks and bonds are valued around five million dollars, which would be one hundred and ninety four million dollars today.

Holy shit, that's really going for.

It, she really is. I'm sorry to tell you it's all fake.

What she forged? All of it?

When she knocked on the front door.

How'd she get in?

She basically said, Hello, I'm a very rich lady and I would like to hire my own lady's maid. Can I talk to the head of your household to talk about how I could find help from my rich households? They're like, come on in, ma'am. She stays in for as long as she can. She talks to the head of their housekeeping for as long as she possibly can to make it seem realistic shit, and then comes back outside.

I would love to there just be like she went.

Oh the fuck, I got some privies to empty.

Yeah, I got to just scrub down a surface. Elizabeth is betting on the fact that James will not be able to keep this juicy secret under wrap, of course, which is just such a brilliant This is what I do love about scams. You're betting on the behavior that everybody exhibits totally, because who among us, yeah doesn't immediately when someone is like, welease have to tell you, so please don't tell anyone, yeah, or I'm just like, I won't except for my sister, right, and have four other people exactly.

So she's right.

As soon as James gets back to Ohio, he blabs to everyone in their social circle that Cassie's real father is Andrew Carnegie, that she's the illegitimate child, she's actually loaded. The news makes its way all throughout Cleveland's most elite circles.

Remember, she's like, remember.

When y'all hated me because I was up in the air, and now you're sacking TONI in.

Remember the balloon jealousy you felt toward me, and look at me now. But here's the thing. All that gossip does not reach her husband. If he was traveling throughout Europe, he got sick, he's been laid up, he's just been stuck over there.

It's probably rude to talk about something like that too to someone, you know what I mean, Like, you're not supposed to talk about money.

The parentage is like shameful in those days.

Right's supposed to be shameful.

So you don't bring that up casually.

Not to the husband, no, because that's basically you're talking about that. You're judging her right, and that essentially the point of all of it is, Wow, look how rich she is. So you're not supposed to be saying that stuff. So it's the perfect setup. The rumor mill is a buzz. Elizabeth, of course, plays Coy. The story is believable enough that she is able to secure massive loans from a handful of banks just based on who they think her father is.

The loans are never less than ten thousand dollars, which is almost four hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and the largest is reportedly eight hundred thousand dollars thirty one million dollars today.

Oh my gosh, I went for it.

Yeah, that's all remarkable considering at the time most women could not get a bank loan by themselves at all. Right, and she's doing it all on these cards. She keeps passing everybody wo with men's signature on them. Wow, much like the little mustachio that she got herself. She's like, how do I use the men to make that money?

Wow?

So she's getting away with which essentially is a pre Ponzi Ponzi scheme because she pays off the last loan after she secures the next one, and of course lives insanely extravagantly, which then convinces the people in Cleveland she is who she says she is. Her husband Leroy does not catch on. He's old and rich, and I guess sick and so Elizabeth essentially buys ninety eight thousand dollars worth of jewels in one go shit three point six million today. So she just goes hell of shopping. Oh my god, pearls that are valued at forty thousand dollars which would be one point four million today, and enough clothes to fill dozens of closets.

I want to look at it.

For Christmas nineteen oh three, she gives all her friends pianos. Honey, yep, everybody gets a piano.

Everybody gets a piano, and.

The pianos are worth thousands of dollars.

So I'm doing this year great.

And required lessons right after school.

Everybody exactly right gets a piano.

This year, and we want to hear hot cross buns by Valentine's learn or we're taking it back. So by nineteen oh five, everything is spiraling, spiraling out of control, and when we get to free pianos and pipe organ area, it's just like there's no one's there's no breaks. Elizabeth's spending is too exorbitant. She's no longer repaying any debts.

That ruins the Ponzi scheme. Her lenders are drowning. Leroy Finally puts two and two together, he files for divorce. Elizabeth, who is now fifty years old, flees to New York, knowing she's in too deep. When she's tracked down by police, they reportedly find a money belt around her waist holding around one hundred thousand dollars, which would be three point eight million dollars.

Where she's staying, Like what hotel like the plaza or whatever?

What would be there?

I know, I mean, right, yeah, it's not the fucking holiday in China Town.

I guarantee you that.

It's high on the west side. She is indicted on forgery and conspiracy charges for defrauding a national bank. That would be the Citizens National Bank in Oberlin, Ohio, which declares bankruptcy as a direct result of this scheme. Wow, and because Oberlin is a college town, right, it financially devastates countless students who use that bank. It's super fucked up.

Their trial is a huge sensation. Of course, it's covered globally in newspapers. Andrew Carnegie himself attends the trial.

It's like, yep, that's my daughter, oops, dad.

And he eventually gets a chance to look the promissory notes have his quote signature on them, and he notices typos throughout the documents, and he says, quote, if anybody had seen this paper and they really believed that I had drawn it up and signed it, I could hardly have been flattered. And oh yeah, so you did some shit work and everyone believed that I was going along with that. Carnegie winds up making donations to some of Elizabeth's victims, including fully reimbursing the Oberlin students who lost all their money at that bank. Wow, and just for their trouble. He endows enough money to Oberlin College for the school to build a new library.

What a mention.

In the end, Elizabeth Bigley is found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison, and immediately her health begins to decline, which is kind of like when the magic finally goes away. It's like the churn and the excitement and everything, and then once it's over, it's over. She basically ends up dying a year later after what's described in old reports as a quote total nervous collapse, but was more likely a heart attack. She's fifty one years old at the time, which kind of upset me when I heard that historians aren't exactly sure how much money Elizabeth Bigley defrauded from her victims and never repaid, but as Cassie Chadwick alone, it's estimated to be around six hundred and thirty thousand dollars, which is more than twenty

three million dollars in today's money.

Should I mean go big Y.

Yeah, she really did go back to Toledo or whatever, yeah, Ontario. Ontario historians say that it's likely an even higher amount because many of her male victims probably would not want to admit that they had been scammed so intensely by a fortune teller or just a cute young twenty five year old or on Madam prob just a woman at all. Today, Elizabeth remains one of the most prolific on artists in all of American history. Writer Quincy Balias reports for Ohio History Connection that quote, female fraudsters like Anasorican and Elizabeth Holmes currently dominate the news, but neither perfected the art of the grift to the extent that Cassie did. She truly earned the title of the world's greatest woman swindler.

End quote. And that's the story of Elizabeth Bigley, the Scamming Queen. Of Ohio.

Amazing. Wow, what was she like? Who would you cast as her?

Well, for something that intense, I would do like a Holly Hunter type of person where you suddenly are like, wait, why am I?

I can't I'm transfixed and unassuming too.

Yes, but like the intense Yeah Holly Hunter in raising Arizona.

I guess right, yes.

Where you're suddenly doing what she needs you to do because she needs that baby high.

And you want to help her.

Yeah, yeah, I got to.

Oh, thank you?

I mean hey, that's our tribute to Royal Swindle. Please listen to our newest podcast.

Listen, subscribe, like, leave a review. I don't know what are kids doing these days?

Love share, It's a Blanchard House joint. You're going to love this podcast.

That's right, And thank you for listening to this podcast. Do all those things to this podcast too if you feel like it.

I mean, we have a podcast.

Yeah, feeling too, Stay sex and don't get murdered?

Gybye Elvis, do you want to cookie?

Ah? This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Our researchers are Maeron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.

Com and follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

And when you're there, hit the double thumb up in the remind Me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.

Goodbye,

542 - Dracula Ambitions

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin