Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion
By Tori Telfer
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
A thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of history’s notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous scams—by the acclaimed author of Lady Killers.
From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst.
In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette.
In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy—or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter.
In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these “artists” are still conning.
Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?
Tori Telfer
Tori Telfer is the author of Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History and the host of the podcasts Criminal Broads, Why Women Kill: Truth, Lies, and Labels (CBS All Access), and Red Flags (Investigation Discovery). She lives in New York City with her husband and son.
Read more from Tori Telfer
Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Confident Women
Related ebooks
The Adventures of a Victorian Con Woman: The Life and Crimes of Mrs Gordon Baillie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lawbreaking Ladies: 50 Tales of Daring, Defiant, and Dangerous Women from History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gatecrasher: How I Helped the Rich Become Famous and Ruin the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5America's Femme Fatale: The Story of Serial Killer Belle Gunness Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As If!: The Oral History of Clueless as told by Amy Heckerling and the Cast and Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Smash, Smash, Smash: The True Story of Kai the Hitchhiker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Confessions of a Serial Alibi Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Con Artists & Hoaxes For You
A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Obsessed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tool Box Killer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Sucky Love Story: Overcoming Unhappily Ever After Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curious Case of Lori Vallow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cold War Spy Pocket Manual: The official field-manuals for spycraft, espionage and counter-intelligence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Hoaxes & Mistakes That Fooled Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manhattan Cult Story: My Unbelievable True Story of Sex, Crimes, Chaos, and Survival Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Practice to Deceive Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Serial Killers Volume 1: 6 Horrific Serial Killers’ True Crime Stories: Six Bloody Fantasies, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Son of Seven Mothers: A True Story by a 'Cult Survivor' Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Cults: Cabals, Corruption, and Charismatic Leaders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGet Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, an Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Spy in Plain Sight: The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen—America's Most Damaging Russian Spy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cleveland Kidnappings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cold Cases: A True Crime Collection Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Before He Wakes: A True Story of Money, Marriage, Sex and Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Starting Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Confident Women
22 ratings0 reviews