The 19th-Century Con Artist Who Scammed Her Way Into $16.5 Million

In today’s dollars, that is; historians estimate that her spoils back then totaled up at around $630,000. Cassie Chadwick, you thieving maniac! Longform recently reposted “The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance,” a 2012 Smithsonian Magazine story about Cassie, a woman who was born with the name Elizabeth Bigley, and spent much of her childhood tracing her family’s signatures and going into a “peculiar” trance state:

At the age of 13 Betty devised her first scheme, writing a letter saying an uncle had died and left her a small sum of money. This forged notification of inheritance looked authentic enough to dupe a local bank, which issued checks allowing her to spend the money in advance. The checks were genuine, but the accounts nonexistent. After a few months she was arrested and warned to never do it again.

Less than a decade after that, she realized she could get thousands of dollars from banks and stores just by printing up business cards that said “Miss Bigley, Heir to $15,000,” and the story only gets weirder from there. [Smithsonian]