Talk about scams . . . how about this one?

Nothing helps a fraudster more than a big name. Edward Chancellor, in his fine history of financial speculation Devil Take The Hindmost, records how His Highness Gregor, cacique of Poyais, a small territory on the border of present-day Nicaragua, arrived in London to encourage emigration and float a £600,000 loan. The issue was a great success, thanks in part to the services of the notable financier Sir John Perring, a former lord mayor of London.

Yet the country was fictitious and the emigrants found on arrival that the “capital” was a collection of mud huts surrounded by swamps and threatening Indians. For his part, the cacique – whose real name was Sir Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish adventurer and renegade general from Simón Bolívar’s army – fled to France with the bond issue proceeds.