Reading Conman who sold Eiffel Tower 1

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1    a conman

2    a fool

3 a tender

4    a bid

5    a scrap merchant

6    a bribe

7    gullibie

8    fraud

Conman who sold the Eiffel Tower

twice! - reading

Reading

1 Look at the title of the text opposite. How do you imagine this was possible?

.. 2 The following words all appear in the text. Match each one with its correct definition on the right. Then think again about your answer to the guestion in Exercise 1.

a)    a silly or stupid person

b)    someone who buys and sells materiał which has been used and finished with but which may still have some value

c)    dishonest behaviour which is intended to deceive people, often in order to gain

money

d)    easily tricked or persuaded to believe something

e)    a gift or favour you give someone in a position of power in order to influence or persuade them to do something

f)    a statement of the price you would charge for doing a job or providing goods

g)    someone who cheats people by telling them things that are not true

h)    an offer to pay a certain price for something that is being sold

Conman who sold the Eiffel Tower - twice!

If there is indeed a fool born every. minutę, for every fool there seems to be a conman ready to make him a little wiser¹.    1

Two of the most extraordinary conmen of all time were Count Victor Lustig, an Austrian who worked in the French Ministry of Works, and Daniel Collins, a small-time American criminal. Together they managed to sell the Eiffel Tower - not once, but twice.

The count set about arranging the deal by booking a room in a Paris hotel in the spring of 1925 and uwiting² five businessmen to meet him there. When they arrived, he swore them to secrecy³, then told them that the Eiffel Tower was in a dangerous⁴ condition and would have to be pulled down. He asked for tenders for the scrap metal contained in the famous landmark. The count explained⁵ the hotel meeting and the need for secrecy by saying that his ministry wanted to avoid⁶ any public anger over the demolition of such a weli-loved national monument.

Within the week, all bids were in and the count accepted that of scrap merchant, Andre Poisson. The deal was madę, and a banker’s draft was handed over at a finał meeting at which the count introduced⁷ his ‘secretary’, Collins. Then the con-men played their best card. They asked Poisson for a bribe to help the deal go smoothly⁸ through official channels. The dealer agreed willingly, and gave the money in cash. If he had ever had any suspicions⁹, they were now put to rest. After all, a demand for a bribe meant that tire two men must be from the ministry.

Lustig and Collins were out of the country within 24 hours. But they only stayed abroad long enough to realise that the outcry they had expected to follow their fraud had not happened. Poisson was so ashamed at being taken in that he never reported them to tire police.

The count and his partner returned to Paris and repeated¹⁰ the trick. They sold the Eiffel Tower all over again to another gullibie scrap merchant. This time the man did go to the police, and the conmen ąuickly left the country. They were never brought to justice, and they never revealed just how much money they had got away with.

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