Every Day Is Special: fraud

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July 5 - Happy Birthday, P.T. Barnum

Posted on July 5, 2021

This is an update of my post published on July 5, 2010:

Born on this day in 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum grew up to be what some call a great showman—and what others call a shameless huckster.

He opened a circus he billed as “the Greatest Show on Earth,” and he presented what was then called a "freak show," exhibiting such “curiosities” as little people (folks with dwarfism), conjoined twins, albinos, giants, and other non-freaks who happened to have unusual conditions.

Barnum included in his show exhibits like "the Feejee Mermaid," which was supposed to be the mummified body of a mermaid, but was really the torso and head of a baby monkey attached to a large fish tail, and covered with paper maché.

Barnum used “hype” to entertain people – and, with fakes such as the “Feejee Mermaid,” one would say to fool people—but he was honest that his performances were "humbug" (lies or trickery). He was not fond of people using humbug and claiming that it was real, true, and honest!

Barnum felt so strongly about this, he used his knowledge of trickery to debunk people who ripped others off. Mediums claimed to speak to the dead, but, Barnum said, exploited grieving people who would pay almost any amount of money to speak with their loved ones again. Barnum helped to reveal the tricks used...And he even served as an expert witness on "humbuggery" (!) in a trial of William Mumler, who claimed he could take photos of "spirits" - aka dead people. Apparently he proved to all that Mumler was a fraud when he showed a photo of himself with Lincoln - a photo a photographer made without reference to spirits!

(Above) Mumler took a photo of Mary Todd Lincoln, and it
convinced her that her dearly departed husband Abe Lincoln
was still watching over her.

At the trial, P.T. Barnum presented this photo of himself with
Lincoln supposedly watching over HIM!

Apparently Mumler was acquitted because Barnum's proof didn't rise to legal-level proof that Mumler's spirit photos were fraudulent - but Mumler's spirit-photo business and his reputation never recovered.

P.T. Barnum Said...

“There's a sucker born every minute.”

And:

Also on this date:

Algeria's Independence Day

Dendrochronology pioneer Andrew Douglass's birthday

Anniversary of the recording of Elvis's first single

Independence Day in Venezuela

Ommegang Pageant in Belgium

Tynwald Day on the Isle of Man

Saints Cyril and Methodius Day in Czechia and Slovakia

Independence Day in Cape Verde

Birthday of soccer great Megan Rapinoe

Earth at aphelion

(Date varies)

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May 6 - Hitler Diaries Faked!

Posted on May 6, 2017

Sixty volumes of writing - dated diary entries - written by one of the most monstrous humans of all time!

Adolph Hitler's diaries were purchased by a German magazine for millions of Deutsche Marks (the equivalent of millions of euros or dollars today), and the serialization rights were sold to several news organizations.

Aaaaannd, on this date in 1983, it was announced that the diaries were NOT written by Hitler, after all. They were fakes.

Wow!

An East German man named Konrad Kujau, who had a history of petty crime and small-time cons, realized that people's interest in Nazi leaders and Hitler himself could result in some nice earnings for a not-so-honest man. He sold some genuine Nazi memorabilia that he had access to, but he got way more money by faking some details that seemed to indicate that the items had belonged to famous Nazis.

Kujau even began to forge paintings by Hitler.

After practicing for a month or so the old German Gothic lettering that Adolph Hitler used, Kujau began to forge Hitler letters, notes, and poems. Finally, in the mid- to late-1970s, Kujau moved on to diaries.

The first "Hitler" diary that Kujau forged was written in a cheap East German notebook. He used some Gothic press-on letters manufactured in Hong Kong to create gold initials on the cover of the notebook - but, unfortunately, he used the letters FH instead of AH, by mistake! He used a black ribbon from a genuine SS document as one of those ribbon-bookmarks, gluing it onto the notebook using a German army wax seal. And he bought black and blue ink and mixed them, adding a bit of water to create a faded sort of ink for the diaries. To age the book, Kujau used the classic techniques: sprinkling the pages with tea and beating the diary against a hard surface to make it look older and well-worn.

It doesn't sound all that expert, does it? Kujau used some very basic forgery techniques, many of which I used as a kid when I was trying to make cool-looking pirate treasure maps! And the mistake with the gold initial letters is of course very amateurish!!

And yet several historians, handwriting experts, and document authenticators were, at least at first, impressed, and several declared the diary - and the others Kujau later created - to be genuine!

How could that be?

Here are some reasons for the mistaken authentications:

At first, the magazine editors who were ready to purchase the diaries wanted to keep them top secret until they were ready to announce their scoop. So they only gave authenticators a tiny amount of material to study and didn't tell them what the material was claimed to be.

The samples of Hitler's handwriting given to handwriting experts to compare with the diary were - unknown to the magazine editors - ALSO forgeries penned by Kujau. So, when the experts said, "Yep, this was written by the same person who wrote these other items," they were entirely correct. But that person was not Hitler!

The magazine editors were so concerned with obtaining the scoop that they didn't purchase the diaries in an open and above-board way. They had no receipts, and they allowed their representative to deal with Kujau without naming him.

The magazine editors trusted the wrong guy to be their representative; Gerd Heidemann was so obsessed about Nazi and Hitler stuff that he couldn't be reasonable, let alone properly skeptical, about the possibility that the diaries weren't what they were said to be.

Also, Heidemann was pretty darned dishonest. He took advantage of the no-receipts purchases to keep a big cut of his employers' money. Not knowing the Kujau's diaries were frauds, he himself defrauded Kujau (and his employers)!

The first historian to study the diaries was very impressed by the authentications that had already been done (but incorrectly, as explained above). Also, the historian was told some outright lies - that the paper had been analyzed and found to be pre-WWII, that the magazine's sources knew the identity of the person who had saved the documents for decades, and so on. The historian saw some differences between what was written in the diaries and what was already "known" about Hitler, and yet he was so overwhelmed by the supposed expert authentications that he declared the diaries genuine and announced that we would have to rethink some of what we thought about Hitler. The historian was also overwhelmed by the number of diaries - he asked who would bother to fake SIXTY diaries when six or even one would do!

The next historian to inspect the diaries was impressed by the first historian's stamp of approval, and he too was overwhelmed by the sheer number of pages. Who on earth would bother to forge hundreds or thousands of pages, he wondered.

But other historians were skeptical, and the first two historians began to doubt the diaries' authenticity as well. When they brought up their doubts, the publishers and editors who had sunk so much money and time into the project seemed unable to hear the doubts.

Some of the publishers didn't even hear about the growing doubts of experts - it was one of those situations in which everybody thinks someone else is going to give a report - and so nobody does.

There was what is called a "bunker" mentality - when evidence was presented to the magazine editors that the diaries must be fake, the editors tried to explain away the evidence and think of an alternate explanation for the discrepancies. You know, an explanation that would allow them to keep their "scoop."

Finally, a forensic authentication process was done - which should have been the first step, right? - and multiple experts concluded that, not only were the diaries fakes, they weren't even GOOD fakes!

Also on this date:

Đurđevdan

Anniversary of the Hindenburg explosion

No Homework Day

National Nurses Day

Anniversary of the world's first postage stamp

Martin Z. Mollusk Day
(First Saturday in May)

National Scrapbooking Day

(First Saturday in May)

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April 13 – A Pulitzer Is Won! (soon to be lost)

Posted on April 13, 2016

There has probably always been lying and cheating, and there will probably always be lying and cheating. But we should all strive to minimize them – and we should certainly not reward them!

Today's post is about a big lie.

A woman named Janet Cooke told some small lies about herself when she

applied for a job as a Washington Post reporter – and she didn't get caught (for a while, at least).

Like other journalists, Cooke researched and wrote various stories about true events for the newspaper.

In September of 1980, she wrote a really upsetting article about a heroin addict who was just eight years old!

She titled the story “Jimmy's World.”

Many readers were moved and demanded that something to be done to help Jimmy. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, organized a police search for the boy. No Jimmy turned up, and readers were clamoring for someone to find the boy and help him! Finally, Barry explained that Jimmy had been found and was receiving treatment.

Not long after that, it was announced that Jimmy had died.

Tragic, right?

Cooke's assistant managing editor submitted “Jimmy's World” for consideration for the most prestigious award in newspaper journalism, the Pulitzer Prize. And on this date in 1981, Cooke won!

Trouble is – it was a big lie!

Cooke made up the story about Jimmy. She didn't change the name to protect the innocent – she made the whole thing up. She didn't meet an 8-year-old heroin addict at all!

You may ask, “What about what the mayor said?”

Another lie! He was under public pressure to find Jimmy, to help Jimmy. Since they couldn't find him, he lied and said that they had – and then he lied again, saying that Jimmy had died, to cover up his first lie.

Naturally, Janet Cooke resigned. She returned the Pulitzer Prize (it was later awarded to another journalist). The editors of the Post apologized publicly.

Cooke had the Pulitzer just two days. But what bugs me about this story is that she still managed to profit from her lies, even after she was “outed” as a liar – another reporter and Cooke were able to sell the film rights to the story about the fraudulent article for $1.6!!

By the way...