In this episode of the Compendium, we're looking up Cassie Chadwick, the woman who walked so that Anna Delvey could run. Dubbed Carnegie's imaginary heir, Cassie Chadwick's scam is a story of deception, ambition, and the pursuit of wealth at any cost.
We love a female con artist here on The Compendium, and Cassie Chadwick is the original OG Queen of the con. Today, we explore how Cassie convinced a bunch of rich greedy bankers to hand her millions of dollars in hard cold cash that resulted in her becoming an icon of the ages. Cassie's story is a testament to the power of storytelling, the allure of the unattainable, and the lengths to which one might go to secure their place in history.
We give you the Compendium, but if you want more, then check out these great resources:
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Credits:
In this episode of the Compendium, we're looking up Cassie Chadwick, the woman who walked so that Anna Delvey could run. Dubbed Carnegie's imaginary heir, Cassie Chadwick's scam is a story of deception, ambition, and the pursuit of wealth at any cost.
We love a female con artist here on The Compendium, and Cassie Chadwick is the original OG Queen of the con. Today, we explore how Cassie convinced a bunch of rich greedy bankers to hand her millions of dollars in hard cold cash that resulted in her becoming an icon of the ages. Cassie's story is a testament to the power of storytelling, the allure of the unattainable, and the lengths to which one might go to secure their place in history.
We give you the Compendium, but if you want more, then check out these great resources:
Send us a Text Message and get a shout out in Listner Mail!
Connect with Us:
Support the podcast:
Credits:
Kyle Risi: So he was filthy, filthy rich. And Cassie knows All of this because like everyone knows everyone's business So one day he shows up at the brothel and cassie is a little bit taken aback I'm, like oh He's handsome. He's rich and Cassie tells LeRoy that she was actually running a respectable boarding house for women. But Leroy's like, um, They're all naked. Yeah, this is a pretty well known brothel, Cassie. And Cassie's like, um, mmm, busted. And then she immediately faints, fainting. And once she's revived, she says, I would never run such an establishment, and then begs LeRoy to immediately take her from the building, lest anyone think that she was complicit in its operations.
Adam Cox: This is news to me. Get me out of here.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I respect her, going, I didn't know anything about this.
Adam Cox: And then, but what happens if she's like, she's dressed in like a bra and garters?
Kyle Risi: Yes!
Adam Cox: I was just cleaning.
Kyle Risi: Why am I dressed like
Adam Cox: this? She's like,
Kyle Risi: Get this off me! What's happened?
Kyle Risi: welcome to the compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where each week I tell Adam Cox all about a topic I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing. We dive into stories pulled from the darker corners of true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books and the who's who of extraordinary people.
Kyle Risi: We give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. I'm your host this week,
Kyle Risi: Kyle Risi.
Adam Cox: And I'm your co host, Adam Cox.
Kyle Risi: And on today's compendium, we are diving into an assembly of fabricated fortunes and a woman who wove them out of thin air.
Adam Cox: This sounds like, uh, oh, I don't know, a woman who's up to no good.
Kyle Risi: Well, I think that's pretty strongly implied.
Adam Cox: What's she been up to?
Kyle Risi: Well, your guesses are getting worse and worse each week, but then maybe I'm just getting more and more cryptic each week, I don't know. I think.
Adam Cox: Yeah, they're pretty cryptic.
Kyle Risi: So, you know, obviously throughout history there have been some truly brilliant, brilliant con artists.
Kyle Risi: Charming tricksters who have managed to spin a tale so convincing that they have bamboozled the wealthy and the powerful out of fortunes. But few can match the sheer audacity and the scope of cons pulled off by one woman at the turn of the 20th century. Her name. is Cassie Chadwick.
Kyle Risi: Have you heard of that name before?
Adam Cox: Do you know what? I don't think I have. This is, this is gonna be brand new information.
Kyle Risi: Brand new information! New knowledge of fascination and intrigue.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: So well, for years, Cassie posed as the illegitimate daughter of one of the wealthiest industrialists in the world. This was a man called Andrew Carnegie, and she claimed that she was the heir to his multi million dollar fortune.
Kyle Risi: And so, with the entire upper society convinced of this, Cassie was then able to swindle some of the biggest banks and finances out of millions in loans and bonds. Based on the promise of repayment from this imaginary Carnegie Trust Fund that people believed that she would one day inherit. But it was all just a crock of shit.
Adam Cox: I do love a good con artist story.
Kyle Risi: My god, you've got to respect the hustle, especially when it's a woman because time and time again, women are constantly underestimated. And so when they do manage to pull off a swindle, it's usually at the expense of a bunch of unsuspecting rich guys, you know?
Kyle Risi: So today's compendium, I'm going to be telling you the story of the original queen of the con and the woman who ran so that Anna Delvey could walk. And Cassie's story is just so nutso and one to be so admired for her confidence and her utter audacity in setting out to get what she believed she deserved.
Kyle Risi: So I'm really excited about today's episode and I know you don't know too much about it but I think once you hear this story I think you'll just be equally mesmerized by this woman that is one of the first major con artists of modern times I guess.
Adam Cox: I love the Anna Delvey story, so if it's anything like that, then yes, I'm gonna love this.
Kyle Risi: Oh, good. But Before we kick things off, shall we do the whole classic, all the latest things?
Adam Cox: Let's do it.
Kyle Risi: This is a little segment of our show where we catch up on all the week's happenings and share a quick tidbit, strange fact, or laugh at a bit of weird news from the past week. This week, it's my turn to go first.
Adam Cox: Okay, what have you got for us?
Kyle Risi: Okay, so my all the latest things for this week is a bit of news that's just emerged earlier this week. So an Uber driver was actually shot dead and killed, as a result of a telephone scam. Have you heard about this?
Adam Cox: No, I don't think I
Kyle Risi: have. So this 81 year old guy, he gets a call that involves threats and demands by an unknown man who tells him that he needs to pay 12, 000 bucks to get his nephew out of jail. And the 81 year old later tells police that the caller was threatening him and his nephew if he didn't pay the ransom.
Kyle Risi: So over the phone he agrees that he's going to pay the ransom and the caller says that he'll come by the house to collect the money. But the caller doesn't go to the house to collect the money himself. Instead, he hires an Uber driver to collect the ransom. And so the Uber driver arrived at the house and it's just some woman, like just a regular nice woman who has no idea what's going on.
Kyle Risi: So when this Uber driver shows up at the house, the guy ends up shooting her multiple times and killing her. Oh my word. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And the thing is, though, this is a situation where you can really feel bad for both parties who are involved, like this guy has no reason to not believe that this woman knows where his nephew is and that she is pretty much involved with this and then also this other woman is completely unsuspecting walking into this situation where some idiot has rung her up and told her to go and collect some money knowing the risk that she's walking into.
Adam Cox: What are the police saying about this then?
Kyle Risi: Well, the thing is that the guy's been arrested, on charges of murder. And he's facing, literally, Like 15 years to life in prison because of this And it's really scary to think like this is the nature or this is the caliber of these cons that are now emerging.
Adam Cox: Yeah, like how, how can you be prepared for that kind of thing to happen to you?
Kyle Risi: Ah, and you've got to think like when you get to a certain age, you probably are susceptible to a lot of these things, especially if you haven't grown up in this digital age.
Kyle Risi: And I just think God, this could happen easily to like our parents.
Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, like you say, you. I think at our age we're quite, I don't know, savvy when we see these kind of cons. You see certain emails and it's usually from some, I don't know, Nigerian prince that wants to send you a hundred thousand pounds.
Kyle Risi: One day it's gonna be real, man.
Adam Cox: Um, but then even things like Facebook, like there are some very good scammy emails that look legitimate from Facebook. Yeah. But you go in and click and it asks you to put your details in and stuff like that. So, um, And yeah, even like the it from email address. It's very close now.
Adam Cox: So that's it. I'm surprised I haven't been duped.
Kyle Risi: I mean, you probably have been duped. Probably. They haven't just done anything malicious with your information yet, I guess. But this is just tragic that this poor old man and this poor driver has just essentially had their entire lives destroyed.
Kyle Risi: So like, yeah, I'm just watching out for the story. I want to see what happens., keeps his pistols,
Adam Cox: yeah.
Kyle Risi: Yeah. So, yeah, what have you got for us this week?
Adam Cox: So, my latest thing this week is all about daylight robbery.
Kyle Risi: As in been robbed during the day? Yeah,
Adam Cox: exactly. In the public, right in the wide open space, someone was being robbed in possibly one of the best disguises I've ever seen. Um, so this guy, um, was expecting a delivery, um, either from like Amazon or whatever it was. Uh, and they left it on his doorstep. And so when he came home, he couldn't find it. But he had this notification to say something's been delivered.
Adam Cox: And I always thought Amazon or if it's Every or whatever it might be, leaving a parcel on your doorstep, you've got to be quite trustworthy of your neighbours or, the local people in your community, right? Not to Yeah, your immediate
Kyle Risi: neighbours, yeah.
Adam Cox: So what happened is he was like, do you know what I need to find out what happened?
Adam Cox: I'm going to look on like my security, like doorbell or whatever he has. And he finds what appears to be someone dressed in a trash bag, waddling along up to his door doorstep. And then it, he just this hand comes out and then scoops up the parcel that was left by the delivery driver on his doorstep, underneath the trash bag, and then just waddles off.
Adam Cox: I've got the video right here. Oh
Kyle Risi: no, let me see.
Kyle Risi: Yep, okay, playing, there's a trash bag.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, shuffling along. I mean, oh my word. Yeah, so he's just gone in, swallowed up the uh, the package underneath the bin bag. And now it's just waddling off. I mean, this is obviously a weird way of trying to disguise your identity rather than actually trying to make them believe it was a trash bag, right? I think so, yeah.
Kyle Risi: Okay, because no one's going to be that stupid like, Oh wow, this trash bag stole my package. Do they do that these days? Yeah, what's happening with trash bags these days? Man, did they find out who it was?
Adam Cox: No, the guy ended up posting this online because whilst he's lost, I think it was like 10 or something that he's actually lost.
Adam Cox: So nothing really significant. He was just like, do you know what, I commend you for doing this is actually pretty funny. So he just posted this online, so yeah, you gotta be careful now, if you see a moving trash bag, That's someone out after your stuff.
Kyle Risi: Oh my god, I want to do something similar.
Kyle Risi: Maybe a bush or something, jump into a bush and Just waddle up to, someone's post and nick it.
Adam Cox: Well, do you know what? Because we're on the Facebook group and are where we live. Mm hmm. Why don't we dress up as trash bags and then see if people post it from their ring doorbells or whatever they use. On the Facebook group and it'll be like, yeah, us.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, we could be like, Facebook neighbourhood community group famous. Actually, didn't something really weird happen just round about Christmas?
Kyle Risi: Didn't someone post a video of someone walking around the neighborhood naked. Yeah,
Adam Cox: streaking on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, wasn't it?
Kyle Risi: I don't know but either way, like you're still walking around naked, butt naked. How random!
Kyle Risi: And he wasn't pretty, He
Adam Cox: wasn't
Kyle Risi: pretty. Yeah, it's not like you wanted to see that, right? It was an old man. It makes me question whether or not he had dementia or something.
Adam Cox: I don't know, that makes me sad when you said that.
But anyway. This week, actually, I wanted to bring it up with you.
Kyle Risi: I've been binging Baby Reindeer on Netflix.
Adam Cox: Ah, yes. Have you seen it? I've only seen the first couple episodes, but I've heard a lot about this.
Kyle Risi: Man, it's so bloody good. If you've not seen it, you have to watch it. It is just wicked. When we were in Australia, I just needed a drink. A night to chill and I put this on really randomly and I just binge watched the entire thing in that one evening It's only seven episodes but it's a really heavy series that tells the story of this guy called Donnie, who is this fictionalized version of the writer of the actual show, a guy called Richard Gadd.
Kyle Risi: And one day he serves a woman who walks into his bar, called Martha, who's played by Jessica Gunning, and she is just incredible as an actress.
Adam Cox: She is so good in this role.
Kyle Risi: She is amazing. And so out of compassion, he gives her a free cup of tea, but unknowingly to Donnie at the time, this starts a years long, odyssey that begins with thousands and thousands of harassing emails from Martha that just ends up getting worse and worse over time, and Martha becomes more and more unhinged and violent as The episodes go on and she starts turning her anger onto Donnie's girlfriend and his family and things just Escalate from there. It's just So good and each episode is just so bizarre
Adam Cox: Yeah, no, I've been pretty captivated by it because I just have no idea where it's going Mm hmm. No idea
Adam Cox: So it's a really interesting name for a program because it's obviously quite a dark comedy, but it has baby reindeer. It almost feels like it should be a kids show.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, well, actually, baby reindeer is one of the nicknames that Martha gives him really early on in one of the first episodes.
Kyle Risi: But what's also so good is that amid the harassment and trauma, Donnie. starts to reflect on his past abuses that he suffers and he believes that this abuse has made him like a sticking plaster for a predator like Martha to latch onto him. So he kind of blames himself.
Kyle Risi: So in one of the flashback episodes, you find out how another comedian had groomed and abused Donnie over a series of months using the lure and the promise of Donnie making his kind of big break in the comedy world. Right.
Kyle Risi: What's amazing about the series is that it turns everything that we know about abuse and stalking and grooming and rape all on its head, and we get to kind of experience that disparity in how society looks at these very serious things, when the victim is a bloke.
Kyle Risi: Mm-Hmm. And so it's just gender dynamics at play and does it really, in a really brilliant, surprising way because grooming, stalking, and rape these things happen to guys as well, but we see and handle it in such different ways.
Kyle Risi: So it's a really interesting way that they explore those topics from different perspectives. And yeah. It's, I think it's like critically acclaimed. It's just brilliant.
Adam Cox: Yeah, interestingly, this morning I was reading an article, um, because I'm not all the way through the series yet, but a woman who insists that she is the real life Martha has come out and sort of said like she, people have tracked her down. So I'm assuming Martha isn't her real name.
Kyle Risi: No, I think he's trying to protect her identity.
Adam Cox: Yeah, but people somehow have tracked her down. And they're sending her, like, death threats and all stuff, saying, I'm gonna stalk you. And she's come out and saying, like, well, now I'm the victim, because it feels like the writer's using baby reindeer to stalk her now, in a way.
Adam Cox: And that she's written a show about me. So it's an interesting kind of flip.
Kyle Risi: But the thing is, though, does she deserve anonymity?
Adam Cox: Like, she's a
Kyle Risi: perpetrator. We've come. out of this world of the Me Too movement where these people need to be exposed just because she's a woman and just because he's taken the courtesy to try and protect her identity doesn't mean that she deserves that anonymity.
Kyle Risi: I can't even say that word but you understand what I'm
Adam Cox: saying? I don't know yeah I mean I don't know the extreme lengths she goes through so right now I'm a bit like oh I'm a bit sympathetic but I'm guessing if I watch the rest of the series I probably won't be.
Kyle Risi: Well what is interesting is that he doesn't see her he doesn't paint her as this monster in it even though she is.
Kyle Risi: He does try to depict her in a really sympathetic way because he doesn't see her as this monster. He sees her as someone who's ill. Which is interesting because why does he take that stance? Does he take that stance because as a male he's expected to be strong and like this been unaffecting him mentally. So therefore he's like taking that stance rather than actually leaning into it and looking at her as a monster because that makes him less of a man.
Adam Cox: I don't know, because if it was a man that was stalking him, would he be as sympathetic or is he, is it because of the gender, he's like, well.
Kyle Risi: I don't know.
Kyle Risi: Well, even if it was another man stalking him as well, the way that men, are dealt with by police and authorities is really heavily explored in this as well, because they don't believe him. They're like, Oh, a woman stalking you, like you should be lucky in the kind of way.
Kyle Risi: And the reality is that's what men face all the time.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: Interesting. So you must absolutely watch us on Netflix. Check it out. It's in the top 10. Especially here in the UK. It's just brilliant. I can't wait for you to finish watching it so we can chat about it more. Yes.
Kyle Risi: But that's all my latest things for this week. Shall we get on with the show?
Adam Cox: Let's do it.
Kyle Risi: So Adam, Cassie Chadwick. Where shall we start? How about at the very beginning of her most infamous con?
Adam Cox: Oh, okay. So not when she was at school.
Kyle Risi: No. So it was spring of 1902 when a lawyer named James Dillon had traveled from Cleveland New York City and he was standing in the lobby of a very fancy hotel on the corner of 30th street and 5th Avenue on Lower Manhattan.
Kyle Risi: When a woman brushed past him. James Dillon, obviously being the gentleman that he was, he apologized for being in the way. But as the woman turned to him, he was stunned by the face that was looking back at him. It was the wife of a very good friend of his from Cleveland.
Kyle Risi: Dr. Leroy S. Chadwick. And her name. was Cassie Chadwick, and Cassie was delighted to see a friendly face, especially because she could really do with some help.
Adam Cox: Okay, what has she got herself into?
Kyle Risi: So Cassie was actually on her way to her father's house to pick up a package and asked if he would mind Escorting her up to the Upper East Side So Dylan agrees and they begin making their way up to the Upper East Side of Manhattan And they chat the whole way there until the carriage finally comes to a stop at number 2 East 91th Street and 5th Avenue in front of a huge four story mansion Dylan is literally stunned.
Kyle Risi: Cassie asked Dylan to wait in the carriage she walks up to the front door of the mansion and Dylan just watches on as she is greeted by the butler at the entrance before entering into the house. About 30 minutes later, Cassie then comes out carrying a large brown envelope, she climbs back into the carriage, and Dylan had to ask, Who the hell is your father to be able to afford a mansion like this.
Kyle Risi: So Cassie says she would tell him but he had to promise not to tell anyone So Dylan was like, uh, well duh like sure. I'm just chill man. Who's your dad? so Cassie then tells him that she's actually the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie who at the time was one of the richest men alive . The living equivalent to Andrew Carnegie would be like literally Bill Gates. That's how rich he is. He is one of the richest men, if not the richest men in the world at the time.
Adam Cox: But she is an illegitimate daughter and therefore that's why no one really knows about her.
Kyle Risi: Correct. And first Dylan doesn't believe it, but then Cassie opens up the envelope that she left the house with and she shows him two promissory notes.
Kyle Risi: One for 250, 000 and one for 500, 000 and they're both signed by Andrew Carnegie. As well as five million dollars worth of securities in that envelope. So we're talking all timely money, right? We're talking millions and millions of dollars here. Just in this envelope, in the form of promissory notes, in a carriage, in Upper Manhattan.
So she tells Dylan that he her dad Andrew Carnegie would give her large sums of money Out of a sense of responsibility for her and that she actually had tons of similar notes at home and when he dies She was set to inherit millions.
Kyle Risi: So cassie is not just rich. She's like rich rich man so dylan is like obviously flabbergasted and Even though he promised not to tell anyone this was without a doubt The hottest gossip that he had ever heard in his entire life and there was no way That he was going to be keeping this to himself and as soon as dylan made it back to cleveland The word of cassie's parentage spread like a house fire across cleveland's upper society And Cassie's plan had worked perfectly. Because Cassie Chadwick was of course, not actually the daughter of Andrew Carnegie, and her name wasn't even Cassie Chadwick.
Adam Cox: What's her name?
Kyle Risi: Well, we're
Adam Cox: going
Kyle Risi: to find out. So her real name was Elizabeth Betty
Adam Cox: Bingle. Betty Bingle? I see why she changed her name. It doesn't have the same ring.
Kyle Risi: So she had seven brothers and sisters and as a child she lost her hearing in one ear which resulted in her having a speech impediment.
Kyle Risi: So as a result, she started speaking less and less as a child and became really withdrawn and introverted. And at school, she was known as like the weird kid, not only because obviously she rarely spoke, but also because she would spend lots of her time just staring into space in like a trans like state, like, ha ha ha ha ha, like, just being a bit weird.
Kyle Risi: And when she'd come out of it, she'd like, look really disorientated and people were like, Ew, stay away from her. She wasn't a popular kid at school. No, she wasn't. And as a child, as a way to escape from her current identity, Betty would invent all these different personalities based on people that she believed others would like.
Kyle Risi: And she was known to go sometimes by different names like, Lylee or Lizzie. And her sister is on record as saying that she had half a dozen different aliases just growing up. So she would just flip between these different. Has she got bipolar by any chance? Um, I think if she does, it's probably undiagnosed. I don't think we really know based on when this was set. This is like 1800s so probably not.
Adam Cox: It gives me the inclination that maybe there's something at play there
Kyle Risi: But sometimes you just want to escape especially when you've been bullied a lot right and you want to be That person that you think people will like.
Kyle Risi: But also growing up Betty would spend a lot of time practicing famous people signatures And this actually led to Betty's first con. So one day her parents received a letter from an attorney in london ontario So that's canada and betty took the envelope that the letter came in and she saved up her allowance and she bought really expensive letterhead paper and she sent herself a letter from the same attorney informing herself that she would soon receive 18, 000 in inheritance which adjusted for inflation would have been around about half a million dollars at the time You Yeah, huge amount and she's only like really young at this point So next she drew up a bunch of calling cards that read miss Bingley heiress to 18, 000.
Kyle Risi: So basically calling cards at the time were really popular in the eastern United States in the kind of the upper class society Basically people would often leave them at their friend's house whenever they would visit and people would then display their collection of calling cards to other people.
Kyle Risi: It was like literally the equivalent of bragging about the number of Instagram followers you have to date. And of course the more calling cards you had would then signify that you had a wide circle of friends. And what was written on them, like this message. Was kind of a big brag to have, right? A calling card from an heiress.
Kyle Risi: So now with her officially looking letter and these calling cards she would use this to prove to shopkeepers that she was kind of pretty much good for the money when she would go do some shopping.
Kyle Risi: So she would write these checks for more than the amount of the shopping that she wanted to buy and And the shopkeepers would then give her the difference in cash. So it's like essentially cash back Obviously the checks were fraudulent But shopkeepers wouldn't find this out until much much later on when they cashed the check and then it bounced. But this is her way of kind of like buying a few things and then getting a bit of money extra on top of it Using her reputation as this heiress of eighteen thousand dollars, as kind of collateral or to prove that she's good for the money, right?
Kyle Risi: So eventually she does get busted but none of the shopkeepers want to press charges against her. They even let her keep some of the purchases that she's made and historians think that this might be because of like her age at the time.
Kyle Risi: She was just 13 remember. Some also think that they just don't want to draw attention to the fact that they were duped by a kid. I
Adam Cox: think it's that.
Kyle Risi: You reckon?
Adam Cox: Yeah because if you've been stolen it doesn't matter who buy you want that money back right?
Kyle Risi: Correct but at the same time I also think that In that period of time, if you're 13 years old, you go into the gallows.
Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? I don't know if they had rights for young kids or they were that lenient. I don't know. .
Kyle Risi: So after this, a few years later, her father dies and her sister Alice agrees to let Betty live with them while their mother settles their father's affairs. So Betty moves to Ontario in Cleveland to live with her sister Alice and her new husband until Betty was able to kind of secure a job and find her own place to live.
Kyle Risi: But while Alice and her husband are away on a trip to Canada, Betty just goes through all of their belongings, Paintings, silverware, candlesticks, and she takes notes of all the value of all of their items, And she goes and uses this as collateral to secure a loan from the bank and finally when her sister comes back from the trip they discover that she's remortgaged All of their furniture under the name of Mrs. Alice B. Basito.
Adam Cox: So, how, how old is she at this point then?
Kyle Risi: Maybe 16.
Adam Cox: So she was able to do this, she tallied up all their belongings.
Adam Cox: Yeah. To get Conniving little B. And she didn't have to give those belongings away, she just had to prove that she had this.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it, so I guess she just had a note of everything that was in her sister's house and she impersonated her sister and then just re mortgaged it. All of their furniture.
Adam Cox: Wow. I know. Security back then was pretty lousy. I know!
Kyle Risi: It's so easy to just pull off a con!
Adam Cox: I know, I'm gonna go to the bank and say that I've got 10 million pounds. That I'm just gonna say yeah.
Kyle Risi: Well you'll need a calling card. Yeah. Miss Adam Cox. Heiress to 30 million dollars. I can do that. And you'll like, flitter your eyelids.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, I could do that. Of cleavage, you know. Yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry. Look at my boobs.
Adam Cox: So her sister's gotta be mad, when she finds out.
Kyle Risi: Oh, she's pissed, so she immediately kicks her out. But they don't pursue any charges against her. Why are people so nice to her?
Adam Cox: Yeah, it feels like, oh, you did bad, just get out the house, but we won't do anything else.
Adam Cox: Yeah, we're not
Kyle Risi: gonna, like, report you to the police, or chuck you in jail. I guess that's your sister as well, but, like, come on. And is she gonna let her keep the money?
Adam Cox: Well, actually, Alice ends up paying off most of the debt. Oh, okay.
Kyle Risi: So I don't know, either her sister is filthy rich, and this is inconsequential to her.
Kyle Risi: Which
Adam Cox: is just an inconvenience.
Kyle Risi: Or, like, she just really loves her sister, man. I mean, I don't love my sister that much. I'd throw my sister under a bus. Hi, Laura. So, Betty is, of course, unremorseful. She moves to another neighborhood, and she starts working on her next scam.
Kyle Risi: She starts going by the name Lydia, and While she's under this new identity, she meets a man called Dr. Wallace S. Springsteen, who almost immediately falls in love with her, which is really surprising, because people apparently describe her as really plain with like a tight, unsmiling mouth and she had apparently this really big nest of brown hair with these really super, super intense eyes like
Kyle Risi: scary, scary eyes.
Adam Cox: Staring into the soul of men.
Kyle Risi: Exactly. So it's her eyes that people tend to remember the most about her. And one news article described her as the lady of the hypnotic eye. And at the time, like, spiritualism was really in vogue. And there was this really super irrational fear of, being hypnotized, unsuspectedly. And people feared that Cassie or Lydia was actually going around hypnotizing people against her will just by looking at them.
Adam Cox: Wow.
Kyle Risi: I know, but honestly, when you see pictures of her, to me she just looks fine. Maybe my standards are a lot lower, I don't know. But, she looks fine. She looks
Adam Cox: nice.
Kyle Risi: She looks, yeah, she's okay. As far as a girl goes. I don't know.
Adam Cox: Far as
Kyle Risi: far from the boobs.
Adam Cox: I imagine if this was a couple of hundred years ago, they probably would have thought she was a witch. Has she been burned at the stake?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, possibly. Yeah, but, um,
Adam Cox: yeah, yeah. It
Kyle Risi: says she's
Adam Cox: got creepy hypnotic powers. Yeah, lady
Kyle Risi: of the hypnotic eye.
Kyle Risi: But anyway, she meets Dr. Springsteen, who was a 40 year old widowed physician from San Francisco. He proposes and soon after they get married in December of 1883 Also, just to add, the thing that seals the deal for Wallace Springsteen at this moment in time, the reason why he proposes, is that he believes that she is the heiress to a large Irish estate.
Kyle Risi: So she's going about telling people that she is still, after all these years, that she's rich, and she's an heiress, and she's got a huge fortune waiting for her.
Adam Cox: And all the proof that she's got is just these stupid calling cards. I don't know if she even has
Kyle Risi: that anymore. God knows how she's proving it now. Hypnotizing people I don't
Adam Cox: know. Yeah, I just feel like she should be able to, back up, I don't know, some of this. Okay, you need to have, at least nice dresses. Or some nice jewelry.
Kyle Risi: She probably has all that like she's got to walk the walk, right? You've got to talk the talk and
Adam Cox: definitely talk the talk.
Kyle Risi: And if you kind of keep up appearances Fake it till you make it like some of the greatest con artists out They've done exactly the same thing and adelvie did the same thing fake it till you make it Uh, elizabeth holmes did the same thing right fake it till you make it so I guess maybe that's what she's doing if you embody that personality if you embody that persona Yeah Yeah, then people will believe it I guess
Kyle Risi: so at their wedding though She refuses to pose for any photographs, but one reporter does manage to get one picture of her and when that photograph circulates She is soon recognized as the con artist that several shop owners had been looking for after she was Bound to be checked kiting if you will so they start coming by looking for their money and dr Sprinsteen is outraged.
Kyle Risi: He immediately files for divorce. Pays off all of her debts, and I guess because he was just afraid of like, how her debts would affect him, personally, potentially. And then he just takes off, and that's it.
Adam Cox: And she just escaped prison, or anything like that, all this time, she keeps getting by, by this goodwill, or people not wanting to look stupid.
Kyle Risi: She's just lucky. Or, again, it's the hypnotic eye, or the hypnotic breasts, I don't know!
Adam Cox: Yeah, maybe she does have magical powers.
Kyle Risi: I mean, it is the height of spiritualism at this point. So it takes three months for their divorce to become legal. And by the end, Betty is richer than she was when she entered the marriage. And this is because she went around to a bunch of lawyers saying that her husband had promised her a 6, 000 sum and asked each of the lawyers for a loan until she could get that money. And then she just bounced.
Adam Cox: That's so bold of her.
Kyle Risi: I know, I'm surprised that not many people, like it seems so easy. Yeah. Because you don't have to show any bank accounts or anything like that and I'm surprised more people weren't doing
Adam Cox: this. Yeah, like I know there's not CCTV around or there's probably not the same communication if she's moving towns to disappear. But still Yeah.
Kyle Risi: I wonder if it was more of a case that people just didn't know how to do it. Do you know what I mean? Like how, how to go to these different lawyers asking for all the money. I don't know. It's weird.
Adam Cox: And maybe people just didn't expect just a young woman to be able to pull this off.
Kyle Risi: God forbid! This is what makes the story so brilliant is that the fact that she is a woman. This is why I love a female con story. Women are always underestimated. Yeah, but actually, they're conniving. after this Betty decides that she needs a change and she moves to Erie which is just further up the coast of Cleveland and she reinvents herself from Lydia Springsteen into Madame Maisie Rosa and she moves in and out of different boarding houses and she tells people she was the niece of a famous Civil War general and that she had suffered from Uh, like a mysterious illness where her gums would often bleed.
Kyle Risi: Sounds like the bitch has got gingivitis.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it's like, um, I just
Kyle Risi: haven't been cleaning my teeth. Yeah, maybe clean your teeth and they'll be fine. But anyway, people end up feeling sorry for her. So based on this, she would then ask for a loan so that she could get back to Cleveland to kind of like pay for some kind of medical intervention. Basically, the bitch invented GoFundMe.
Adam Cox: She should have patented that.
Kyle Risi: She should have. Later, obviously, when they would write asking for her to repay the money from the loans she would send them letters saying that she had died.
Adam Cox: What? What? But not only that. Not from herself, I'm assuming. I have now died.
Kyle Risi: Nobody's here. Yeah, so she would write back saying that she died and she even included like a lovely eulogy. For herself, that she had obviously written. eulogy anywhere, but I just know it would have been amazing. So next she becomes Madame La Rose and she is a clairvoyant.
Adam Cox: Why is she going with like the French kind of style now?
Adam Cox: Madame.
Kyle Risi: I don't know. I guess it's sexy. Maybe the French accent gets people all worked up.
Adam Cox: Yeah. It sounds more wealthy, I guess. Madame.
Kyle Risi: Madame. So she opens up a shop in Cleveland where she would obviously provide, psychic services as a clairvoyant. And it's during this time where she would end up marrying two of her clients. The first one was a farmer that didn't last long. It's not really important. But the second. was a businessman named C. L. Hoover and together they have a son called Emile and who is sent to be raised by her parents in Canada and in 1888 Hoover pops his clogs and he leaves his entire estate to Cassie. It's a whopping 50, 000. So
Adam Cox: finally she's actually rich.
Kyle Risi: She's actually got some money. I mean it's only 50, 000 but I guess, oh to be fair, 18, 000 fortune when she was a kid was like worth like, Yeah,
Adam Cox: so she must be on a couple of mil now, right?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, so I guess he was quite wealthy. So after that, she then decides that she needs another change and she moves to Toledo, where she becomes Madame Lydia DeVere. Also, she's a clairvoyant. And her house was described as being magnificently furnished. She told people various stories about where she got her fortune from, and these stories ranged from things like she was the niece of Ulysses S. Grant, who was of course the US president in that era. Or, that she was the daughter of a British general. So, she just spouts a lot of nonsense. you've got to keep track of who you're telling what, right? Yeah,
Adam Cox: and especially if she's like telling them concurrently. I'll be like, Oh, what did I tell you? Am I an heir or am I a widow? Or am I like, what is it?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, this is where a lot of these things fall down. It's where people start losing track of what they tell people. I know.
Adam Cox: Well, you're like on like the sixth or seventh name now. And I'm like, what was it? I know, right?
Kyle Risi: So just need to remember that her name is Cassie Chadwick. That's the name that's important. Or Betty. Or Betty Bigley, Betty Elizabeth Bigley. So round about this time she's about 30 years old and one of her clients was a man named Joseph Lam who had paid her 10, 000 to be his financial advisor.
Kyle Risi: And he was also madly in love with her. And after all of this kicked off he would later claim that she actually hypnotized him and that's why he gave her the money. But it gets worse because like they fall down a bit of a rabbit hole. So Lam was described as being a very nice guy. He was 42 years old. He had a wife, he had five kids, and he was also the manager of the United States Express company in Toledo. Now, Lydia started asking him to loan her money, which became kind of like a frequent thing.
Kyle Risi: And. He only did this because he was led to believe that she had this kind of annual income from kind of her late wealthy husband in England So he believed that she was good for the money and he would give her the loans and then she would pay back the Money and then she'd build up some trust and then she'd ask for another loan.
Adam Cox: Guess if she's got this like really nice house all this nice furniture. Exactly.
Kyle Risi: Yeah. Why would you not believe it?
Kyle Risi: So she would ask him to loan her money to Tyler over until she got her next annual payment And then she would pay him back. Lydia then started to give him forged promissory notes Uh for cash totaling up to forty thousand dollars All bearing the forged signature of Richard Brown of the firm Cleveland Browning Company in Youngstown.
Kyle Risi: And because Lamb was well known and well trusted across Toledo. They would often just cash these promissory notes no questions, no problem, no issue.
Adam Cox: This is just a fancy IOU note.
Kyle Risi: Essentially, that's a check. That's what the check is, right?
Kyle Risi: That's what 10 is. Yeah,
Adam Cox: I guess so. Whoever came up with this was stupid, but anyway.
Kyle Risi: But it wasn't long before the bank in Cleveland noticed similarities between the promissory notes that Lam had been cashing on behalf of Cassie against others that were known forgeries. And so this kicked off an investigation and soon both Betty and Lam were arrested and both went to trial on multiple charges of forgery.
Kyle Risi: So she's been busted, wow. Lamb's defense was that he'd cached the forged promissory notes, but he only did it because Lydia DeVere had hypnotized him. And get this, it worked because the jury acquitted him of all charges, but he did lose his job though.
Adam Cox: That's a crazy that people, well, like you say, it's a different time and that's what people believed. But that does seem like everyone's get out of jail card right now. She hypnotized me.
Kyle Risi: I wonder where that came from. Was it just one person's account and then people just ran with it? I don't know. I guess so. Because when you look at pictures of her, she just looks fine.
Adam Cox: And I think people just think, that voids any kind of responsibility that they had any control.
Kyle Risi: So he loses his job and he just ends up spending the rest of his life making brooms and selling them door to door before. dying of a heart attack just a few years later.
Adam Cox: Oh, so she kind of screwed up his life. He lost
Kyle Risi: everything because
Kyle Risi: convicted and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison where she continued faking her clairvoyant powers in prison. So legend has it that she told the warden that he was going to lose $5,000 in a business deal and then later die from cancer. And according to sources, both of those things actually happened. So maybe she was dabbling in the dark arts for real.
Adam Cox: But then sometimes if someone like says something's going to happen to you, you make it kind of fit your reality a little bit.
Adam Cox: Oh like,
Kyle Risi: it's like a, uh, what do you call it?
Kyle Risi: It's like a self fulfilling prophecy, I guess.
Adam Cox: Yeah,
Kyle Risi: uh, and the thing is though, the, what we have to remember about the story as well is that it's really old. So it's been retold and retold so many different times. So when actually researching the story, it was difficult to kind of wade through some of the urban legends, because it's such an old story, but it's really entertaining and still cements itself as kind of the first true, Female con artist story.
Kyle Risi: Do you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And the thing is they say that when she was in prison She was super charismatic and she ended up making a lot of friends who all started a letter writing campaign to the parole board, saying that she was like a model inmate.
Kyle Risi: And so in 1893, after just serving three and a half years, they authorise her to be released.
Adam Cox: I've never heard that ever happen, that the inmates have then gone, Oh no, you should free this person. Like, you're the people
Kyle Risi: we shouldn't trust!
Adam Cox: Yeah!
Kyle Risi: No, so she, she did make some friends with the, uh, The wardens. So it was them who was kind of writing the letters as well. So it was coming from some trusted sources.
Adam Cox: I would like a take on her time in prison, but done in Orange is the New Black. I think that would be like, I don't know, a period prison drama.
Kyle Risi: A period, period prison drama. Are we allowed to say that? I don't know.
Kyle Risi: But of course, in order to secure her release, she had to first line up some work and miraculously, Lydia DeVere had a letter from her sister, a woman called Alice, stating that she had agreed to give her some employment. Right. So obviously the letter was faked, right?
Adam Cox: Just another fake letter for her. Just
Kyle Risi: another fake letter. So Madame Lydia DeVere was no more. She goes back to Cleveland as Cassie L. Hoover. And she was still a clairvoyant. She opens up a brothel.
Adam Cox: What does any woman do at this point in her life? Open up a brothel.
Kyle Risi: Mid life crisis. So this is where she meets her next husband who is a wealthy widower named Dr. Leroy Chadwick. Ah, okay. This is where she gets her name. So, he had just moved to Cleveland and he was in the process of building a huge mansion.
Kyle Risi: So he was filthy, filthy rich. And Cassie knows All of this because like everyone knows everyone's business So one day unexpectedly he shows up at the brothel and cassie is a little bit taken aback I'm, like oh He's handsome. He's rich and Cassie tells LeRoy that she was actually running a respectable boarding house for women. But Leroy's like, um, They're all naked. Yeah, this is a pretty well known brothel, Cassie. And Cassie's like, um, mmm, busted. And then she immediately faints, fainting. And once she's revived, she says, I would never run such an establishment, and then begs LeRoy to immediately take her from the building, lest anyone think that she was complicit in its operations.
Adam Cox: This is news to me. Get me out of here.
Kyle Risi: So she's a manipulative little shrew, but I I don't know why they haven't made a film about this.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I respect her, going, I didn't know anything about this. What?! This is
Kyle Risi: brand new information!
Adam Cox: And then, but what happens if she's like, she's dressed in like a bra and garters?
Kyle Risi: Yes!
Adam Cox: I was just cleaning.
Kyle Risi: Why am I dressed like
Adam Cox: this? She's like,
Kyle Risi: Get this off me! What's happened?
Kyle Risi: So of course, they get married. Right. And Cassie officially becomes Cassie Chadwick. Now Cassie and Leroy actually had to get married twice because when they got married the first time Leroy Chadwick had his name misspelt on the marriage license and it's unclear if he'd done this by accident or on purpose like to give himself like an easy way out.
Kyle Risi: I get out
Adam Cox: just I guess thinking like
Kyle Risi: can I trust her? But they get married again this time Cassie makes very sure That he spelled his name correctly. And this, by the way, is just hilarious to me because, on Cassie's side of the marriage certificate, it was just full of lies, including lies about her age, like her birthplace, her parentage.
Kyle Risi: At this time, she was 39, but she was claiming that she was 33 years old.
Adam Cox: Wow. Well, yeah, I think people can pass for five years younger.
Kyle Risi: So Cassie had now made into upper high society due to obviously married in Dr. Leroy and they lived in one of the most exclusive parts of Cleveland where their neighbors were like relatives of the Rockefellers and US senators and even one of them was Abraham Lincoln's private secretaries Cassie immediately starts redecorating the mansion.
Kyle Risi: So she basically is given carte blanche to do whatever the fuck she pleases by her husband, which is a huge mistake because she immediately begins spending huge amounts of money all over the place she starts spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on jewelry as well. And she also buys a 9, 000 pipe organ.
Adam Cox: What's a pipe organ? You don't know what a pipe organ is. It's like, in the church? Like,
Kyle Risi: da na na naaaa! Okay, I just stumbled checking. Yeah, 9, 000 bucks, that's all time money as well.
Adam Cox: Yeah, how big is it? It's huge, it's absolutely massive. Can
Kyle Risi: she even play?
Kyle Risi: I think her husband can play, I don't know if she can play. And of course all of her clothes are all custom made from New York. Her furniture is all imported from Europe. So after two years of marriage, so she's redecorated this beautiful house.
Kyle Risi: They've been living there for two years. Everything's custom made. Everything's from all over the world on Christmas Eve while they're attending a party, Cassie arranges for a ton of moving men and decorators to roll up to the house and unbeknownst to her husband, she has the entire mansion redecorated in one day. Evening. Brand new furniture, new accessories, everything gold, new Persian rugs, hand painted chairs, walnut cabinets. All this happens in just a few hours. And all in all, it costs her, all timely money, 250, 000.
Adam Cox: Does he even have this much money? He's pretty rich. That's still a lot. And wow, that's a big turnaround. I mean, that's probably better than 60 minute makeover.
Kyle Risi: Man, exactly. And it's a mansion as well. Yeah. I mean, that's some. Money gets ya. It gets your speed, it gets your quality, gets you like whatever you fucking want. Yeah, yeah But even though Cassie was of course moving in the upper circles of society No one really accepted her.
Kyle Risi: People often made fun of her for lacking any class Because like she was quite garish in the way that she presented to the world And so again, just like in her childhood, she was seen as an outsider, so I can imagine that desire to be someone different and please is all kind of just coming flooding back to her. I get it, I
Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess so. I can understand why she'd want to do this, but if I was her husband, I'd be like, you spent how much on this?
Kyle Risi: But he doesn't seem to flinch. Like, he'd probably be annoyed, he'd be like, Mmm, Cassie.
Adam Cox: Oh, you've done it again.
Kyle Risi: Done it again. We went out for dinner, you've redecorated the mansion. I wish you'd run these things by me. Yeah.
Adam Cox: What if they go away for like a weekend? Oh God. There's a whole new like, floor added.
Kyle Risi: Yeah. Uh, darling, let's go out. No!
Kyle Risi: But so like, because she's feeling like this outsider or not being really accepted, she starts working really hard to try and impress people and again she does it in the only way that she knows how. So she goes to a piano store and she buys eight grand pianos and she just gifts them to people. Like imagine just like there being a knock at your door you think oh it's Tesco's is here and then you knock and then like the neighbor Laura's bought us a grand piano.
Adam Cox: I'd rather have the money, thanks Laura.
Kyle Risi: Where were you going to put the grand piano? She also once bought 56 diamond rings and just gave them out as gifts as well. So she's a bit of a spendaholic.
Adam Cox: Yeah, but I'm just wondering what's happening to this bank account.
Kyle Risi: God knows. It must be running out because I mean, what motivates her for her next con, right?
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: But Cassie hadn't really even got started with her biggest con yet. When she was 44 years old, like obviously her looks were starting to fade, but there were other weaknesses that she felt that she could try and exploit. And that was of course the insatiable greed instilled by the capitalist gilded age.
Kyle Risi: The fact that women even more so back then were constantly being underestimated So I think it's a good time to take a quick break and when we get back We will have arrived at the early spring morning where cassie has a seemingly chance encounter with our little friend James Dillon who discovers the biggest bit of gossip that he has ever heard in his entire life that kicks off Cassie's greatest con.
Adam Cox: Ooh this better be a quick break.
Kyle Risi: So Adam, Cassie, she's 44. didn't mention this before the break, but Cassie's marriage to Dr. Leroy Chadwick is starting to wane a little bit, right? Is he
Adam Cox: getting a bit pissed that she keeps spending the money?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's like, like, I want to go out, but I don't want to come back to a whole new house. So There are rumours that they've been living separately for quite some time and now that her looks are fading You've got to forgive a girl for kind of wanting to kind of take measures to ensure her future is secure You know what I mean?
Kyle Risi: And this brings us to Cassie's little run in with James Dillon on a trip to New York where she accidentally bumps into an old friend of her husband's, of course James Dillon, and Asks him to escort her up to her father's mansion here. Dylan watches her go into the house Returning 30 minutes later to tell him that she's the illegitimate daughter of andrew carnegie showing him promissory notes To prove it and bam her plan is now set into motion.
Kyle Risi: So what had she actually been doing in Andrew Carnegie's house for those 30 minutes that she was away? I was
Adam Cox: wondering this, like,
Kyle Risi: how was she allowed in? So I'm gonna tell you.
Adam Cox: Okay.
Kyle Risi: So when Cassie got out of the carriage and she rang the doorbell, she ended up speaking to the housekeeper under the guise of wanting to check a reference for a maid named Hilda Schmidt that she was looking to hire.
Kyle Risi: So the housekeeper said that she'd obviously never heard of someone By that name because of course Linda Schmidt was entirely made up by Cassie But Cassie drags the conversation out as long as she can saying, are you sure? Like giving her like a detailed description of Hilda. Like she's blonde, she's yay high, no sense of personal space, kind of smells like chicken. Looks like a potato.
Adam Cox: Did she really say that?
Kyle Risi: No, that's a quote from Friends.
Adam Cox: Oh, I didn't know that.
Kyle Risi: That's when Rachel says, uh, that's my grammy! Yeah. Kind of looks like a potato. Spuds! So finally. When she felt like enough time had passed, Cassie apologizes for the inconvenience, she thanks the housekeeper for her time, then she leaves, taking out like that brown envelope from her coat with the forged promissory notes.
So everything had gone exactly as she had planned. And on Cassie's part, choosing Andrew Carnegie as her fake father was actually super smart move because he was known to be this very strange, very private, very obviously rich kind of like. historical magnate. So because of his reputation, no one was going to go up to him outright and ask him if he had fathered An illegitimate daughter 44 years ago.
Kyle Risi: Sure. Like no one's checking that shit, man. Yeah So andrew carnegie's secrets of nature is what made her scam work flawlessly And within a few weeks of her trip to new york the entire city of cleveland believed that dr Leroy chadwick was actually married to the daughter of andrew carnegie And that she wasn't just rich, she was fucking rich rich.
Adam Cox: So does this make, her husband go Okay, maybe we should make another go of things.
Kyle Risi: Well, the thing is though there is speculation that a husband might have been in on this. Oh so how does this get her?
Kyle Risi: so Cassie starts using this belief that she was Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter to her advantage and she starts taking out several loans across a bunch of different banks, repaying the first loan with the money that she gets from the second loan and so on and so forth. She decides that her base of operations was going to be the Wade Park Bank, where a man named Andrew Carnegie.
Kyle Risi: Erie Reynolds was the director of the bank. Now Cassie's plan was to first try and convince Erie Reynolds that the envelope of Caledonian Railway bonds that she'd brought back from New York, signed by Carnegie, worth five million dollars, was in fact real. And the thing is though, it was an easy sell, of course, thanks to Dylan, because he'd already heard the rumor circulating around that she was in fact the illegitimate daughter of the famous steel magnet Andrew Carnegie.
Kyle Risi: He also knew her husband was already a wealthy man, and he'd also seen Cassie depositing and withdrawing huge sums of money over the years anyway. So it wasn't like it was some random, off the street coming into the bank claiming to be the holder of like five million dollars worth of bonds.
Kyle Risi: So he's really easily convinced by the authenticity of the bonds. And because he is convinced they then have a conversation about where these bonds are going to be stored.
Kyle Risi: And he then agrees to store the bonds at his bank. Right, okay. Which is a big deal. It's like, it's the same as, treat these bonds as cash. It's the equivalent of cash. Why would a bank manager not want you to deposit your 1, 000, 000 with his bank?
Adam Cox: Yeah, and I guess she's like a VIP customer, you want them on board.
Kyle Risi: Exactly. So then Erie writes out a receipt for the transaction. However, the receipt doesn't typically have the actual value of the bonds on them. It's just not something that's done But this was going to be really important to cassie that the value appeared on the receipt So she convinces erie to include the value saying that in the event that she dies She wanted her heirs to know exactly how much was entrusted to them.
Kyle Risi: So now Cassie has this receipt from an official director of a bank and through his connections within the banking circle Other bankers now also knew that she wasn't just rich. She was rich rich. She was rich rich So next cassie starts jumping from bank to bank She's taken out small loans using the receipt as proof that she obviously had five million dollars worth of bonds locked up in another local bank and first the first bank That she went to was the citizens national bank where she spoke to the president who was a guy called charles t Beckwith at first she took out several small loans around five thousand dollars and the largest like seventy five thousand All of which she would pay back almost immediately when they were due Which further just end up gaining that trust so you can see what she's doing, right?
Kyle Risi: She's presenting as a rich person. She She has got some wealth, right? And she is gaining this trust by taking out these small loans showing that she's able to pay back the money on time that she's not defaulting on these loans And it then just becomes a BAU as normal, right? It's like when she then finally asked for a larger sum It's not that large anymore because oh previously she took out a loan for 75 000 And yes, that's a big amount
Adam Cox: But she paid it back fine So she can then get yeah more and more money a hundred
Kyle Risi: thousand dollars To them. It's not a huge amount of money even though it is serious amounts of money. Yeah, so this is how she's doing it She's kind of stepping up in tears in layers This is steps
Adam Cox: had anyone done this up until this point or she one of the
Kyle Risi: I am just shocked that no one has I?
Kyle Risi: Would totally be all over that like a rash man But maybe people just didn't have the know how. Maybe they just didn't know. Maybe she was a pioneer of her time.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: Crazy.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it's very, she's a criminal, but it's very smart.
Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. But the thing is though, there were things that she would do to try and impress them and convince them that she was the real deal. She would often tell people that she had this gift of being able to tell at a glance of how much a jewel was worth. And it wasn't really a lie because, she'd bought so much jewellery over the years and she was so obsessed with it that she actually could tell the value of a jewel.
Kyle Risi: In fact, once she had bought so much jewellery in Europe that customs actually suspected her of being a smuggler. It does make me question where that jewellery was. I mean, we've covered different smugglers and where they put their goods.
Adam Cox: Where they put their goods.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: Mm, yeah, good point. I think it's where you put the goods that makes someone think you're a smuggler or not. If it's just in your luggage, maybe not.
Adam Cox: Yeah. But
Kyle Risi: if it's up your butt, then smuggler.
Adam Cox: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. There's no valid reason. To have jewellery up your bum, unless you're smugly.
Kyle Risi: It depends what kind of jewellery, right?
Kyle Risi: If it's a jabby kind, no. If it's the smooth, rounded kind. If it's pearls, ah. Butt pearls. Moving on.
Kyle Risi: So yeah, she convinced people that she could tell the value of a jewel, and so Beckwith was really impressed. And he did trust her, so up until now, She had demonstrated to him that she was just good for the money in every aspect, in every way possible.
Kyle Risi: So over the months they end up getting closer and Cassie tells Beckwith that her dad, Mr. Carnegie, Is going to be transferring the money that's currently being held at Erie Reynolds Bank and he wants to transfer that money over to Beckwith's Bank. Cassie wants Beckwith to be the new trustee.
Kyle Risi: And as a reward, she'll give him a fee of $10,000 with a bonus of $40,000 every year. And of course, this is a huge deal for Beckwith. So Beckwith is eager to obviously please her so he's bending over backwards to give her all the loans that she wants which she's always paid back.
Kyle Risi: So there's no issue there, right? So he's extending her line of credit to keep her happy But cassie wants more than the limit the bank is willing to offer her so Beckwith loans her the maximum allowed which is 240, 000 plus to make up the difference he loans her 102, 000 again all timely money from his own personal savings. Wow.
Kyle Risi: So to put this sum into perspective for you this is a total of four times the capital stock of the bank. This means that if she defaults on this loan This bank is going bankrupt.
Adam Cox: And so whilst I'm like thinking, oh yeah, she's quite clever and everything, this is going to then hit like your regular Joe, or regular people, because they're not going to be able to withdraw their money, right?
Kyle Risi: Exactly. That's exactly what ends up happening. And surprisingly, someone comes to the rescue, which we'll talk about in just a second.
Adam Cox: Is it Carnegie?
Kyle Risi: Oh, you've got a good instinct for this so Beckwith doesn't consult with the board of directors and he just goes ahead and issues the loan in secret and Because he's obviously, again, like I said, totally convinced that Cassie would come through on everything that she's promised because up until this point she has done every single time.
Kyle Risi: But of course, she doesn't. And Beckwith waits, and he waits, and he waits, and he never receives the transfer for the bonds from Erie's bank over to his bank. And he never receives any payments against any of the money that he's just loaned her. He's given her the biggest loan of his life, and more than the capital of the bank, and she pays nothing back.
Adam Cox: And I can't believe he's used his own money as well. I know, I bet
Kyle Risi: he feels
Adam Cox: so stupid. I can just imagine him like, sitting there cause Yeah, how would he be waiting? I guess waiting for her, someone to come into the bank? I mean,
Kyle Risi: he's chasing her, like every time he chases her up, she's just filled with excuses. Every time he drops by to visit, she just had another reason why she couldn't pay or make the transfer. She told him that her estate was being handled by two lawyers in New York, who she said paid her 750, 000 a year from her estate. But because the money was split into two payments, she just needed to wait for that money to come in. And then once that money did come in, then she'd be able to make the payments.
Adam Cox: Wow, she really is the original Anna Delvey in this sense.
Adam Cox: Because she was always like that going, Oh, my money's been tied up. Or I'll send you a wire.
Kyle Risi: I'll send you a wire.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, I just love Anna Delvey.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I can't believe the audacity of this woman, but
Kyle Risi: The audacity is there. It's brilliant. So Beckwith tries to get in contact with the lawyer in New York. But he can't locate him He begins to suspect that maybe just maybe the lawyer doesn't exist.
Adam Cox: Hmm I wonder how long it took him to come to that conclusion
Kyle Risi: So he is pissed so he goes to see Cassie along with two of the directors from the bank when he gets there Cassie just so happens to be To be being visited by her attorney a guy called Edmund Powers who convinces Beckwith that all the arrangements Had been complete and the loan was ready to be repaid and that the money would arrive the following day
Adam Cox: Wow,
Kyle Risi: so the two directors that were with obviously Beckwith they're like Thank fuck, but Beckwith wasn't buying the story because of course he's just gone through like the last year or so with no money That long?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, a long time. Like it'd almost been two years, I believe, at this point.
Adam Cox: And this guy that came in to, corroborate her story.
Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. Who is he exactly? That's the thing. Like, who was he? Because we don't hear about him anymore. And he certainly was not the lawyer.
Adam Cox: So he's an actor for hire.
Kyle Risi: Mm hmm.
Kyle Risi: Mm. So can you just imagine the stress that this poor guy Beckwith must be under, like remember this loan was not approved by the bank and on top of this he had loaned 102, 000 of his own personal savings. I would literally be dying and to go through that for two years?
Adam Cox: Yeah and how is the bank operating like if they've loaned out all that money?
Kyle Risi: Well exactly like also defaulting on this loan literally means that the bank is going to go bankrupt so they currently don't really know. They haven't done an audit yet to evaluate how much capital they've got in the bank That must be looming because there's been two years.
Kyle Risi: So beckwith is just like, you know what cassie? There's no way i'm going back to cleveland without their money in my hands. So he stays the night and of course the next morning He's met with another excuse about why of course the payment is delayed this time The excuse was that the Pittsburgh bank holding power of attorney was withholding the release of the money and there was nothing that could be done About it.
Kyle Risi: Oops. Sorry
Adam Cox: I can't believe they think, oh, he's just gonna buy this, but I guess she's just gotta keep trying. Well, she clearly
Kyle Risi: doesn't buy it, because that's the thing, I wonder why no one pursued any legal charges up to this point. That's the crazy thing about it. It has been two years and she's not made any payments.
Adam Cox: I guess it sounds like she has got, I don't know, enough evidence or goodwill or whatever that she can persuade people with. Up until this point possibly but why he wouldn't have pressed charges or maybe he's like if I do that I will never get the money.
Kyle Risi: That's a really interesting point because it's probably like a moment of realization If you go to the police that's you realizing you're not going to get the money He's still living in hope because he's got so much at stake own personal savings He's going to lose his job. The bank's going to go bankrupt and loads of people are going to lose their money, right?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, so there's probably a hope that he's living on you just gotta believe that she's gonna pay, otherwise, essentially, it's the end of the world for you. So then, all of a sudden, Cassie starts paying down the loan with cheques. But of course, every single one of those cheques bounce, and it's at this time that Beckwith knows that Cassie Chadwick is a fraud. Yeah, so literally after two years, he starts spreading the word about her. But still she never pays any money back Eventually the bank is unable to balance his books and they discover of course that it was because of this unauthorized loan And it was beckwith who approved it.
Kyle Risi: So naturally he is arrested for violating banking laws and A few months later, he dies after refusing to eat. So he goes on a hunger strike because he's like, it's not my, it's not my fault. Like I was duped. And they're like, sorry, you're the person who issued the loan. You're the one that goes to jail.
Kyle Risi: And he goes on a hunger strike and he ends up dying because he's a depressed and he just can't believe that he is just essentially ruined. Thousands and thousands of people's lives. These are students. These are regular working people that rely on that bank
Adam Cox: I'm guessing he couldn't have used the hypnosis excuse. Maybe that's fell out of fashion at this point
Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably yeah, we're gonna buy that. It was the lady of the hypnotic eye
Kyle Risi: another bank that loaned cassie money Citizen's National Bank was about to go under, and because they too had loaned Cassie money, they get scared that there might be other banks who hadn't received their loan payments in full, so they file a lawsuit against her in order to get in front of the queue, so that if any bailiffs go around to collect any collateral, they'll be the first in line.
Kyle Risi: And so a lawsuit is filed, other people start putting Cassie Chadwick together with Madame Lydia DeVere, the clairvoyant who's kind of spent time in jail for fraud, and then just everyone loses their mind. And this becomes the biggest story. on the east coast of America at the time.
Adam Cox: I can imagine just linking them or this Cassie Chadwick back to all these people in the past. Yeah. And they were going, hey, I was cubed. It wasn't a hypnotic eyes. She did. She generally did steal from me.
Kyle Risi: But yeah, that's what happens. They start to link things together. And it's one of the biggest stories at the time.
Adam Cox: What age is she? Because she sounds like she's been doing this for 20, 30 odd years.
Kyle Risi: So she's like in her 40s now, maybe coming close to 50. And I mean, the. The thinking is that she's doing all this to kind of, like, secure a bit of security for herself in light of her and her husband's separation that I think they're still trying to keep under wraps.
Adam Cox: The thing is that, she's, accrued so much money from when she had that other husband and things like that, if she just didn't spend as much, she probably would have enough money.
Kyle Risi: When it comes to these types of people, who are this motivated to do these types of things, It's never enough. She probably just wants more. Yeah, okay.
Kyle Risi: So word gets back to Andrew Carnegie that this woman has been going around claiming to be his illegitimate daughter and he just thinks the whole thing is fucking hilarious and when people ask him if he's gonna go ahead and Prosecute her he's like no like wouldn't you be proud of the fact that your name was good enough to be used as collateral for A loan of up to 1. 25 million dollars Cassie Chadwick has shown that my credit rating is A1, just by my name alone. Isn't that just
Adam Cox: amazing? But then I don't know if other relatives are going to trust your name again. Or like people at the bank, if someone comes to the bank and goes like, Oh, I'm a, I'm a Carnegie.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. So like, Oh, Mr. Carnegie, we're going to need to know if you have any other illegitimate kids at all. Just anyone, just give us a list. Give us a family tree. Yeah.
Kyle Risi: In the light of all of this, Andrew Carnegie does end up helping some of the customers after the bank does collapse. In particular like students and citizens that just couldn't afford to lose their money. So I guess that kind of restores my faith in grotesquely rich billionaires.
Kyle Risi: You wouldn't see Elon Musk doing something like that would you?
Adam Cox: I don't think so. I mean he was offered to help world poverty wasn't he? And he was like nah. Yeah exactly, he was like yeah
Kyle Risi: you could solve world hunger with Sixty billion dollars or something and someone's like, okay, pay up and he was like, nah,
Adam Cox: nah,
Kyle Risi: nah, I don't want to do that.
Adam Cox: But, yeah, that is good of him to be able to like do that at least hopefully he helped out most of the people, although clearly not what's his name? I don't think he helps
Kyle Risi: out everyone, but I think he just helped out the ones that could really do with the help,
Kyle Risi: but ultimately what people don't realize is that cassie was only successful Because she played a numbers game. There were far more bankers that refused to loan her money that actually did so
Adam Cox: Oh, right. So, she kind of stacked a high. She like tried to get as much money as she could. Maybe only 10 percent of what she did offer.
Kyle Risi: So I guess that's a lesson for everyone, right? Like you look at some of these people who are hugely successful, even if it's a con, but it's because they're casting the net. Constantly, right?
Adam Cox: Yeah, you don't you you try try and try again until you succeed. Yeah, it's like any business or until you get arrested
Kyle Risi: so her whole scam just hinged on just one person saying yes Which when they did only act to legitimize her claims from there, it just cascaded like a domino. And so it was Erie Reynolds who was the person to legitimize this entire thing by giving her that little receipt with that value on it.
Adam Cox: It's snowballed. Yeah.
Kyle Risi: So as word spread about Cassie, people were like more impressed than angry. Like I said, it was one of the biggest stories at the time. And the fact that she'd managed to pull this off, the press just had a field day with that because the story was selling thousands of papers, so much so that there would be a crowd of people that would gather daily outside her lawyer's office on Wall Street in the hopes to just get a glimpse of her, that's how famous this woman was.
Kyle Risi: She was constantly having to find new ways to avoid the crowds, and one time it's on record that when she was trying to leave her lawyer's office, she had to escape out of a rear window on the seventh floor of the building and then she had to climb down a fire escape onto an extension roof and then walk along a ledge of the roof until she was able to re enter through a window in the opposing building.
Kyle Risi: That is quite a dramatic escape.
Kyle Risi: For someone who's like in their 50s, man. Yeah, pretty good going. Another time she got in a high speed carriage chase through New York trying to, High speed carriage chase? I don't know.
Adam Cox: I didn't even think that was a thing.
Adam Cox: I know right? But I love it.
Kyle Risi: So apparently she was trying to escape reporters and secret service agents who were assigned to watch her. And even though Cassie was arrested and charged with aiding and abetting a bank official in misappropriating funds.
Kyle Risi: Now that's key, right? She was aiding and abetting a bank official. In misappropriating funds, which means that she's not the perpetrator in this. Instead, she was being charged as an accomplice to Beckworth instead of the other way around. That is
Adam Cox: wild to say, like, she's the one that instigated this.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's crazy. So considering what she's done. She's still getting just a slap on the wrist.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it's if he hadn't, it's his fault, he's the one that signed it off. Yeah, he should have signed it
Kyle Risi: off.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: So, I think it's a good time to take another quick break, and when we get back, I will tell you what happens after Cassie Chadwick is arrested, and what she has in store.
Adam Cox: She must get away with it. We'll
Kyle Risi: see.
Kyle Risi: So Adam, Cassie has just been arrested. Not as a perpetrator, but as an accomplice to Beckwith's crimes. Which is just completely mad to me.
Kyle Risi: She is immediately sent to jail. And it's on record that apparently she knew this day was coming because before she was arrested, she was using her son Emile as a mule to transport a bunch of her cash and jewelry to kind of Ohio.
Adam Cox: What, to get out of the Just
Kyle Risi: get out of the country and to because you don't want that to be taken away from you, right?
Adam Cox: Yeah, So she, if she does get out, if she,
Adam Cox: and she's got a grand piano somewhere. Can you imagine smuggling a grand piano down your trousers as a nine year old boy? It's crazy, man.
Adam Cox: I don't think that's even possible.
Adam Cox: So Cassie's bail is set so high that she can't afford it, so she has to stay in jail. But she tells everyone that wasn't true, and that actually she chose not to post bail, because she It was the only way that she could escape from all the annoying crowds and reporters desperate to get a glimpse of her.
Adam Cox: She was saving face. So she is really leaning into this now, right? She loves this.
Adam Cox: Everyone wants a piece
Adam Cox: of me. Everyone wants me, I am a cat! So as for her husband, obviously Dr. Chadwick, well, actually he didn't give a shit at all. He had pissed off to Europe, just kind of like bouncing from place to place. And he didn't care that she'd been arrested, not one bit. And I guess he was in a way, glad to just be away from her.
Adam Cox: I guess their relationship had deteriorated over the years. There were reports, obviously, that they'd been separated for several years, so Cassie was just out there hustling because I guess her future was just uncertain, I guess.
Adam Cox: Could she not lay claim, and I don't know what the laws were back then, because of women's rights probably weren't as great, but could she not lay claim to any of his fortune if they divorced? Or get half of
Adam Cox: It's a good question. I guess she must get something, right?
Adam Cox: And it sounds like she's a person that wants to support herself. She doesn't want to rely on other people.
Adam Cox: No. No. It's an interesting case. She's an interesting person. according to some people, like Dr. Chadwick apparently knew about Cassie's shenanigans this whole time. People even speculated that he was directly involved, so much so that he is eventually indicted along with Cassie on forgery charges which results in their entire house being seized And everything being sold at auction with all of their belongings So he does get busted really and a lot of people do genuinely believe even though that he denies it Up until obviously the day he dies that he was involved this entire time.
Adam Cox: I guess could he yeah, there's two ways of looking at it. One, he wasn't involved whatsoever and he obviously came, he suffered alongside her. Or, he's what, said, almost employed her to kind of go off and Do these things and maybe he'll get a cut of the money. Is that what people were suspecting
Adam Cox: yeah, So the people who bought cassie's house and obviously many of their things they turn The house into a museum for people to come and see it because that's how massive and famous she was at this time And like it was chocoblock after they opened and the story was so widely popular across the usa And what makes me die is that the new owners even convinced.
Adam Cox: Dr. Chadwick To come to the museum and play the organ twice a day for two hours while people just wandered around his house. So, I guess he was either doing it for the fame, or he was just really broke as fuck.
Adam Cox: Yeah, why else would you do that?
Adam Cox: I reckon it's more the fame because otherwise there's no amount of money that, I, someone could give me if it was facing people that know that you had been involved in some kind of hustle. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That'd be just embarrassing.
Adam Cox: So he didn't go to prison then?
Adam Cox: Just lost his money? As far as the way he got indicted, I don't know whether or not he went to prison or not.
Adam Cox: So Cassie eventually goes to trial in March of 1905, and by the time they had stacked 15 separate charges against her. So Cassie also had to testify in a bankruptcy court where they were trying to recover whatever money they could from her.
Adam Cox: In court, it came out that a lot of these places that she was getting smaller loans from, she was using her jewellery as collateral and because the store is so huge, they were then able to sell that jewellery for way more than it was initially worth, so they all ended up profiting from the story and her scam anyway, or the kind of the smaller guys.
Adam Cox: It's still unclear how much money she was making. She actually managed to steal over the years, but some people estimate that it must have been around about 16 million dollars that's adjusted for inflation. That's a huge amount of money.
Adam Cox: That's an impressive amount of money. That's a good haul.
Adam Cox: I thought you said a good haul.
Adam Cox: That's
Adam Cox: a good haul. A good haul of money. Good
Adam Cox: haul of money.
Adam Cox: And also Andrew Carnegie, he actually attended her trial as well. He later said that the whole thing could have just been avoided if just someone, just anyone had just bothered to ask him if he had an illegitimate daughter. And none of this would have happened. No one would have lost any money. So eventually Cassie is found guilty on seven of the 15 charges and she is sentenced to 10 years.
Adam Cox: So she was sent to serve a sentence at Ohio. Penitentiary in Columbus, but the feds, they wanted to put her in a federal prison because they were worried that Ohio was going to pardon her just like what they did in her first stint in prison, they were worried that maybe she would infiltrate the guards again, write a few fake letters and then get let out.
Adam Cox: I mean, I'd be worried, yeah.
But the courts in Ohio were like, lol, no, we've got this, it's fine, we're not gonna let her out this time, we've learned from our mistakes. Us again.
Adam Cox: No, so in prison, Cassie was in and out of prison hospital quite a lot and a lot of people thought that she was trying to claim ill as a way of getting out they figured it was just another con and we know this because one of the doctors that was treating her in prison Talked to the newspapers about this because even after she went to prison people were still deeply interested in the story So like people like constantly trying to kind of how's she getting on?
Adam Cox: What's she doing? How'd she like? Is she being good? Whatever And stories would routinely appear in the papers time and time again, but two weeks after that article came out from that doctor, Cassie died, and she died on her 50th birthday. Oh,
Adam Cox: wow. What, um, what of?
Adam Cox: I don't know, just my hysteria?
Adam Cox: Or just, I guess, some medical issue?
Adam Cox: Yeah. So they just didn't take her seriously. She kept saying like, there's something up. I'm not feeling very well, but I guess it's kind of like the boy who's cried wolf, I guess, or you've been so devious over the years that people just don't trust you anymore.
Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, that's fair enough, because she's deceived so many people.
Adam Cox: Uh, unless it's obvious that, you know, like, an arm's falling off or something.
Adam Cox: Oh my god, my arm. No, you're fine. Go back to your cell. But it's on the floor. Just pick it up and go back to your cell. There's nothing wrong with you. Yeah. But yeah, that's the story of Cassie Chadwick, the Queen of the Con.
Adam Cox: Wow.
Adam Cox: Wow, she had quite an elaborate, Life maybe not a long life, but she certainly lived life.
Adam Cox: That's true She certainly did and she went out and she got what she thought that she deserved and she is the woman who ran so that people like Anna Delvey could walk.
Adam Cox: Yeah, and That's exactly what we're covering next week.
Adam Cox: Ah Another good criminal con artist.
Adam Cox: I just thought I'd lay the groundwork for For Next con artist, you know. I love a female con artist.
Adam Cox: Like con season. I think you should do one as well.
Adam Cox: Well, I am looking into one, so there might be one coming up about another con artist.
Adam Cox: Ooh, are you allowed to tell us, or does it have to remain a secret?
Adam Cox: I'm just gonna say, roll next sweaters. It's a tease of who it is.
Adam Cox: Oh, good. Uh, should outro? Yeah, let's do it.
Adam Cox: So that's another episode of the compendium podcast in the bag If you've enjoyed today's episode then be sure to hit that follow button right in the app that you're listening to us right now It really helps us more than we can articulate You can also schedule new episodes to download automatically and if you haven't done so already then leave us a little review your feedback Only helps us get better.
Adam Cox: Don't forget that we release every tuesday and until then remember in the world of cassie chadwick You Ensure your fortune is built on truth, not tales taught enough to bank on. See you next time.
Adam Cox: See ya.