Oscar Hartzell: The Con Man Who Sold Shares in Drake's Lost Fortune

For sixteen years, tens of thousands of ordinary Americans bought shares in a lawsuit. The lawsuit was to recover the lost fortune of Sir Francis Drake, an English sea captain dead for more than three hundred years. The fortune never existed. The shares made Oscar Hartzell rich. This is the story of the Drake estate scam, one of the longest-running frauds in American history. A failed Iowa farmer's son built a 21-district machine that promised $1,000 to $5,000 for every dollar invested, wired $2,500 a week to London, and lived like royalty at the Savoy while Scotland Yard watched. We reconstruct it piece by piece: the legend, the shares, the secrecy, and the believers who kept paying long after the courts had spoken. CHAPTERS: 0:00 The Fortune That Never Existed 1:33 The Man from Monmouth 3:04 The Legend of Drake's Fortune 4:34 The Machine: Selling Shares in a Lawsuit 8:25 A Parade of Red Flags 10:50 The Fall 12:27 Trial and Conviction 13:57 The Believers 15:30 Next: Case File 003 Hartzell's victims kept sending money after the conviction, after the appeals, after the raids. What would it take to make you walk away from a sure thing? Drop your answer in the comments. I read every one. Subscribe for a new case file every week. Next: The Most Expensive Diamond Necklace in Europe Was a Lie —    • The Most Expensive Diamond Necklace in Eur...   #TrueCrime #Documentary #Fraud More from the Archive — Full case-file playlist:    • Case Files  . New case file every week — subscribe so you don't miss the next one.