How A Central Bank Caused One of History’s Biggest Cons
In the summer of 1821, a roguish Scotsman named Gregor MacGregor arrived by boat in London, and initiated arguably the most audacious confidence scam in history. MacGregor had spent much of the previous decade fighting as a soldier of fortune in the Venezuelan War of Independence, where he had manoeuvred his way up the ranks, eventually being promoted to general by Simón Bolívar. At some point during this period, local Central American rulers had granted MacGregor a large tract of land, most of which took the form of uninhabitable, malaria-ridden swamp along the Black River, in modern-day Honduras. Despite the poor economic prospects of his new acquisition, MacGregor was determined that the land should be his ticket to fortune, even if that required unconventional measures.
It was this series of events which led to the ‘founding’ of the non-existent country of Poyais. Upon returning to Britain, MacGregor ingratiated his way into London’s high-society, claiming to be the sovereign prince, or ‘Cazique’, of a newly-formed, British-friendly colony on Central America’s Mosquito coast, supposedly named ‘Poyais’ after the Poyer peoples of that area. In order to convince the British public of the realness of this imaginary country, MacGregor was forced to employ an extremely elaborate series of means, foremost amongst them being the publication of a 355-page guidebook for prospective settlers. This book, likely penned by MacGregor himself, contained a plethora of highly-detailed (and entirely fictitious) descriptions of every aspect of life in Poyais. These included convoluted descriptions of its tricameral parliamentary system and of its commercial and banking systems, distinctly designed uniforms for each regiment of its non-existent armed forces, a fully elaborated honours system, a Poyaisian coat of arms (featuring unicorns), and a national flag.
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