Deception serves a curious purpose in human history. You can lie to ruin someone, you can lie to get out of trouble, and you can even lie to be kind. Lies are told because sometimes they are easy, and lies are told because sometimes they are incredibly complex and therefore seem more believable. All of us have probably been lied to many times without even realizing it. But some people take it a little further. They don’t just tell lies; they live them. And some of these lies are incredibly successful, at least for a while.
10. The Grey Owl is a fake Indian conservationist.
A man named Grey Owl was a conservationist who is said to have saved Canadian beaver from extinction He wrote books, lectured, and spoke about the dangerous impact man was having on the world. He sought to convince others that they needed to live in balance with nature, rather than destroy it. All in all, a noble cause for this mysterious half-Apache, half-Scottish man who was a total fraud.
Grey Owl is born. Archibald Stansfeld Belaney was born in Hastings, East Sussex , England. He was entirely British and not a Native American at all. However, he played the role and lived most of his life in Canada. His hair was braided with feathers and he wore traditional native clothing, right down to his moccasins.
As a child, Belaney was fascinated by Native stories, so he moved to Canada at age 17 around 1905. He married an Ojibwa woman, learned the language, and then created a fake persona as a half-white, half-Apache. He later married women and learned skills from other Native Canadians.
He wrote books on conservation that became so popular that he was invited to lecture around the country and Europe, even to Buckingham Palace. It was only after his death that his wife revealed his true identity.
Ironically, this revelation has tarnished the legacy of a man who was actually a great conservationist and did a lot to help the environment and native species, despite lying about himself the whole time.
9. Rachel Dolezal infamously pretended to be black
In 2015, the internet was gripped by the drama of a woman named Rachel Dolezal. She was the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP until some people began questioning her credentials. Not her high school education, of course. They questioned her race. And as it turns out, they were right. Dolezal was born to white parents and is white. But she chose to live as an African American, and that’s how she chose to present herself to the world.
Dolezal drew attention to her situation by reporting various baseless hate crimes that she said had been committed against her. While investigating these allegations, reporters began to find holes in her biography, particularly regarding her family. She claimed that the African-American man seen in the photos was her father, and that adopted brother was actually her son, but her biological parents Both were white, and her own childhood photographs showed her as a light-skinned blonde. Her mother indicated that Dolezal used her artistic abilities to make herself look black.
It is noteworthy that after the truth came out and she was dragged for being insensitive to the plight and history of Black America and essentially engaging in Blackface, she did not apologize. In fact, she maintained her position and says she still identifies himself as Black .
8. Stefan the Small pretended to be Tsar Peter III
In 1766, a man named Šepan Mali arrived in Montenegro. He came from nowhere, and he had no past that anyone had written down for history to preserve. He was apparently an herbalist and a skilled healer, but his greatest claim to fame was that he told everyone he was Tsar Peter III. This was important because he didn't seem Russian, but more importantly, Tsar Peter III was dead. in 1762 .
As the story goes, he sought refuge from his enemies. Apparently, he never called himself a king, at least not publicly. Instead, rumors began to spread, which he refused to deny, even hinting that they might be true, until it seemed like everyone knew the story.
Ironically, no one could have predicted that meeting in Montenegro proclaimed him ruler , and after that he ruled the country for six whole years. Russians even sent ambassadors, to overthrow him, who ended up backing him as leader after the fact because he seemed pretty good at the job. His reign only ended when Ottoman troops bribed a servant to kill him.
7. Lenny Bruce pretended to be gay to get out of the army
If you've ever seen the series M*A*S*H about a military hospital during the Korean War, you'll probably remember the character Corporal Maxwell Klinger. Klinger wore women's clothing all the time, the idea being that they were trying to get him kicked out of the army under Section 8. The joke on the show was that he pretended to be mentally ill, which would have been grounds for a medical and honorable discharge, but no one bought it, so he just did his duties in drag. The character was partly inspired by real-life comedian Lenny Bruce.
Although some sources claim that Bruce " pretended to be a transvestite ", which allowed him to receive an honorable discharge from the army, is not entirely true. The cross-dressing story seems to be supported by the character in M*A*S*H and perhaps represents a sanitized look at what Bruce actually did. According to the letters , which Bruce wrote, he wasn't pretending to be a transvestite, he was pretending to be gay.
To get an honorable discharge, he had to be unfit for duty, but not in a dishonorable way. So he told doctors he had gay tendencies. His letter indicates that he told them he was struggling with these feelings and that he absolutely did not want them, but that they had come unbidden. He said he had kissed other soldiers, but had never had sex, even though he wanted to. In essence, he presented it as a misfortune that he was begging for help to overcome. And they agreed , giving him an honorable discharge, which they believed could "cure" him.
6. Tanya Head pretended to be a 9/11 survivor
Some scams seem more sophisticated than others, and that's the case with Tania Head, the former president of the Network World Trade Center survivors You'd think the main requirement for serving in such a capacity would be surviving 9/11, but Head wasn't. She simply lied about it.
Head claimed she was in the South Tower on 9/11 when the plane hit. The same floor, no less. She nearly lost an arm in the mayhem and suffered burns. She was taken to safety by Welles Crowther, a man who died saving lives during the disaster. She said she woke up in the hospital a few days later to find her husband had died in the North Tower. Tragic, really.
It turns out the woman's story was bogus. The dead man was her husband and sometime fiancé. She said she worked at Merrill Lynch, but the company didn't list her as an employee. Harvard and Stanford, her supposed schools, also had no records.
Her real name was Alicia Head. On September 11, 2001, she was in her graduate school class at Barcelona, Spain . Oddly, despite her lies, other survivors online have noted that she did a great job of raising money and awareness for them. She never took any money for herself, but actually donated her own. Their best guess is that while she was genuinely sympathetic to what happened, she also had some strange need to be at the center of the story.
5. Mamoru Samuragochi pretended to be deaf for 18 years
Beethoven is one of the greatest composers in history, a fact that is all the more astonishing given that he eventually went deaf. Mamoru Samuragochi called the Japanese Beethoven, the famous composer who was thought to be deaf for 18 years. It turns out he was just made this up and hears perfectly well. He was also not a real composer, and someone wrote his music.
He supposedly went deaf at age 35, but continued to compose music, including work on popular gaming franchises like Resident Evil. His ghostwriter later outed him, saying that the man couldn't read music and had perfect hearing. Samuragochi claimed that his hearing had just begun to return. A reporter who once interviewed him actually saw the man opened the door He finally admitted that his hearing was not as bad as he said and returned the certificate stating that he was disabled.
4. Sarah Wilson pretended to be royalty
There's something about the idea of a misfit royal that appeals to the average person. It's hard to resist the idea of someone being secretly special, and that's how Sarah Wilson became known as Princess Suzanne Caroline Matilda Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
In reality, she was a convict, but in 1772, after escaping from slavery, she convinced people that she was the sister queens She traveled around Virginia and North Carolina, ingratiating herself with politicians and high society. She understood the mores of the court and even had a stolen photograph of the queen to back up her claims.
She was eventually recaptured by the man who bought her, but then planned another escape before marrying and then disappearing completely.
3. Carlos Kaiser pretended to be a professional footballer
Even if you're a fan of professional football or soccer, you may not be familiar with Carlos Kaiser. He had a career that spanned more than 20 years games and 13 different teams, including Flamengo and Vasco de Gama, and you will never, ever see a highlight reel where he even tried to kick the ball because it never happened.
Hailing from Rio de Janeiro, he befriended both players and club owners by telling everyone what a great player he was. No one had ever seen him play, but he was so charming that people believed him. He signed for a team and then immediately got injured, so he never had to play. He pretended to be kids attacking him so he could pretend to be hurt, and paid spectators to chant his name when the bosses were around.
According to Kaiser himself, he enjoyed being a player and being around players, he just never liked to play . Lying, cheating and tricking meant that he didn't play for years. When he got on the nerves of one team, the other team would fall for his charming lies and the game would continue.
2. Woman pretended to be a nurse for 20 years
Have you ever noticed a diploma on your doctor's wall? You might feel better knowing that the doctor knows what he's doing. But what about the hospital? What about your nurse? Are you sure they're experienced?
A woman from Canada managed to work as a nurse for 20 years without any education. She had that same name , as a real nurse, and she used her identity for work, including during operations. She was caught only after she noticed some problems with her license number , which she shared with a real nurse. No word on whether anyone was hurt as a result of her work.
1. The US Embassy in Ghana was a double scam
Thanks to the long-standing internet scams, Africa is now known as a hotbed of fraud. And while it is easy to understand the internet or phone scams, the fake embassy scam that was carried out in Ghana is a whole new level.
In 2016, authorities took a special interest in the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana. For a decade, the embassy had been doing the things you'd expect an embassy to do, like issue visas. There was an American flag outside and a portrait of Barack Obama on the wall. Except the embassy was fake . The scammers sold the fake documents for about $6,000. The fake embassy was raided and the scammers were arrested, bringing the entire operation, a joint venture between the US and Ghanaian forces, to a halt. The whole thing came from the US State Department and is, in fact, still detailed on their website. But here's where things get weird.
A journalist researching the story decided to contact the Ghanaian police, who had no idea what the story was about. The State Department claims they carried out the raid with the Ghana Detective Bureau, which is not even a real law enforcement unit in Ghana.
No local cops carried out the raid, and no cop in the country knew about it. And the photo of the fake embassy that accompanied the story was actually taken by one of the fraud detectives who would have been on the case if it had been real. took this photo earlier that year, acting on a tip that the building was issuing fraudulent visas, but found nothing there. Other photos were his, too, taken in other places and at other times.
As far as we can tell, this fake embassy is a double fake. The State Department seems to have falsified the story of the fake embassy for reasons unknown, as they stuck to their story despite the weight of evidence that it was fake. In this case, the fake was faked. Maybe for PR reasons, maybe not. It's hard to tell when no one is explaining themselves.
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