In 1925, a con artist named Victor Lustig pulled off one of the boldest scams in history: he sold the Eiffel Tower — and almost got away with it.

Lustig posed as a government official claiming the iconic monument was too expensive to maintain and would soon be dismantled for scrap. He invited wealthy scrap metal dealers to a secret auction and convinced one of them to pay a small fortune for the rights to "buy" the tower.

By the time the buyer realized he’d been duped, Lustig was long gone with the money.

But here’s the twist — he did it again. A few months later, he returned to Paris and nearly repeated the scam with a new group of victims. This time, police caught on, but Lustig escaped once more.

He was eventually arrested in the U.S. — but not for selling the Eiffel Tower. He was counterfeiting money… because, of course, he was.