Doomed to Fail - Ep 159: The Cazique of Nothing - Gregor MacGregor

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Are you looking for a great opportunity in the new world???? Can we introduce you to the beautiful country of Poyias? It's on the coast of South America, and there are palaces and princesses, promenades, and an opera house! The land, you ask? It can give you multiple harvests per year! The rivers, too, you ask? Well - they are filled with GOLD!!! Wait, do people already live there? Yes, yes, they do - but they LOVE colonists, and they can't wait to see you!! Just buy a land grant from our grand Cazique - Gregor MacGregor! He'll take your £ and convert them into Poyais dollars right here on the dock before you leave! Nothing could possibly go wrong!! Join us for the wild story of Gregor MacGregor this week! Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom. Taylor, we are back. How are you doing today? Good. Have you refilled your sippy cup of wine? It's, uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of it. Good for you. How's your, how's your, how's your vino consumption going?

good have this like this glass because I couldn't find a red wine glass and I actually really wanted ones I'd like find this one I have a lot of glassware like kind of a problem with I love going to their stores and buying dishes I have like so many dishes it's not a bad problem okay as long as I continue to have places to put it and not like piling up dishes on the floor you do have this one really fun looking crystal that you use one night where it was like had little spiky things stick out all the way around. You have a good dishware taste.

Thank you. Thank you. Cool. Well, hello friends. Welcome to Doom to Fail. We are the podcast that brings you history as most notorious disasters and epic failures. And I am Taylor joined by Fars.

And we are going into a Taylor story today. I have a fun one. that I heard about, wait, let me find my writing. I'll tell you how I heard about it. So I listened to another podcast about this, which was okay. And an article, and I'll tell you what those are, I put them in the notes. But I heard this story in the Niagara book that I read for last week.

And they mentioned it like kind of just as passing. And I was like, whoa, what is that about? So I looked it up. And there's a book about it. I didn't get a chance to read, but I got other stuff from me. the internet as well. So I know we talked about con men before. You talked about Ponzi. Oh, yeah. But I'm going to talk about one of the biggest con men in history, Gregor McGregor. Have you heard of him? No, that doesn't even sound like a real name. Gregor McCrecker. He was, of course,

from Japanese. He was from Korea. He was Scottish. And yeah, Gregor McGregor was Scottish. He was, and I'm going to tell you what he did, it's wild. I'm going to give you any hints. I'm just going to tell you. So he was born on December 24th, 1786 in Stirlingshire, Scotland, which sounds adorable. It sounds like where Frodo and Sam Weiss would play. Right. And it's cute. It's also the ancestral home of Glengile on the north shore of Locke-Katrine. I don't even know what that means, but like it sounds even cooler. And there's a big castle there. There were some Willi.

and Wallace battles there and near there. So it's like very Scottish, very old, very pretty. And his dad was a sea captain for the East India Company because, of course, he was. So he was making money going back and forth, colonizing. And they were from the clan McGregor, which is also really fun to be like he's part of this clan, the McGregor clan. They go back to the 9th century. The clan McGregor motto is royal is my race, which is intense.

But fine. Hardcore people. A couple hundred years before R. Greger was born. There was a thing with religion, and I think potentially, like Catholicism and Protestantism, like there always is up in those parts. And the McGregor's stopped being allowed to exist. So in an act of parliament in 1617, they said, quote, it was ordained that the name of McGregor should be altogether abolished and that the whole

persons of that clan should renounce their name and take them. some other name and that they nor none of their posterity should call themselves Gregor or McGregor under the pain of death. So that's super intense. And then like it takes hundreds of years for them to be able to say that they're McGregor's again for like a very complicated, very Scottish reason, but I don't really understand. So it's interesting because my first thought originally went to, oh, this is like if you were to get canceled in like our culture, except in this case, you'd be killed. Like, I cancel you and your family forever. Yeah.

Intense. Exactly. So there's a couple other people in his family who are famous. There is Rob Roy, Rob Roy McGregor, which is like so hard to say for me, Rob Roy. That goes back to not be listening to my arms. But you know the Rob Roy because it is a drink. It's a cocktail. Yes, correct.

A Rob Roy is a Manhattan essentially, but with scotch instead of whiskey. and it was invented in 1894 in the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. And it was named because there was a operetta about Rob Roy, the person, that was premiering that night. And the bartender was like, let me switch out this whiskey for scotch in honor of Rob Roy. So that's what that is. And Rob Roy was like a Scottish hero. And it became sort of like a folk legend hero person, just like a very brave Scotsman who was fighting all around. for freedom.

Thank you, Taylor, for that very robust recap of Scottish history. You are welcome. So that's fun. But by the time our Gregor McGregor is around, he's going to use his clan name because his grandpa, who was also named Gregor McGregor, aka the beautiful Gregor McGregor, was high up in the British Army and he got it back, which I love the idea of an Army guy's name being like, The Beautiful. You know what?

My whole thought, Taylor, has you been talking? talking since I was like a kid. It's like my first year in college, I was like into the UFC finally. And the biggest celebrity that came out of the UFC was Connor McGregor, which I think most people have heard of. And when you've been talking this whole time, I was thinking about him and then also going to the fact that he literally just just got convicted of like sexual assaults. like like but also i was like confused i was like his name's mcgregor but he's irish for i was like well yeah but people can move across lines so he was probably scottish and then maybe he his family left scotland to go to ireland to like have more mcgregors you know we're to have more

more mcgregors but then also you're like and then this guy called himself the beautiful and i was like yeah that's something that i could see like a very weird fighter saying about themselves I guess he Connor McGregor saying that. Yes, that man should be in prison, most likely. I would agree with that. Yes, for like 50 reasons, actually. You know what's funny? For many reasons.

Is the sexual assault part? Is the only the recent thing that happened? Exactly. We also forget the fact that he assaulted and punched a fucking 80-year-old man in the face in his bar. And then also threw something in the window of a van carrying all. UFC fighters have nothing to do with any of the, anyways, whatever. He's just so when he punched that mascot? And he also clean the clock off some poor, probably 43-year-old divorce,

with like his kids who he gets custody of once every three months for like a $40,000 on your job. Like, he just, he's not a good guy. Yes. I will, I do appreciate what he did for the UFC. I think he was a great fighter at that time, but he's kind of a scumbag now. Yes, he should be a jail. Anyways, back to your bag writer. Cool. He could be really into this McGregor, because this

McGregor is also not that great. So we'll get to that. Oh, this is my aside in that is not as funny anymore because yours was, makes more sense. But I was watching Independence Day the other day. And there's a guy named Adam Baldwin, who's a distant cousin of the other Baldwin's, who plays Major Mitchell, who's like one of the top people who's like in area 50, wait, area 41, 41, whatever, where they aliens are. It's 51.

Oh, my God. That was really hard for me for no reason. Aren't you? You lived in Nevada for like, no, I know. I don't know. I just, I lost it.

But that man, Adam Baldwin, the actor, it was very handsome. And I was, like, distracted by his handsomeness. So, like,

I get that there's, like, handsome people in the army. He's an actor. So he's, he's like, he's like, he's a residual

Alec Baldwin. Like, what is he again? Yeah. He's like a second cousin of other Baldwin's, but he's more handsome. Dude, that's how,

for the younger audience, That's how fucking incredible Alec Baldwin was when Taylor and I were kids, that these like weird offsprings of the Baldwin group who like, even they are famous now for no reason other than they are his relative. That's not true. I just said he was very handsome, like distractingly so. He made Kim Basinger when Kim Basinger was like the peak of the peak. No, I totally. Batman. I get it.

I get it. Anyway, back to this story. So many sides. You get it. So R. Greger may not have gone to university. He said he did, but he can't be trusted. So who knows. But he did join the army. So this is the tail end of my favorite time, which is the Enlightenment. And the Napoleonic Wars are just starting. And Gregor joins the army. He's 16. And his family buys him the rank of Ensign. So it sounds like you have to pay to get any sort of rank at all when you get in or you're just going to be like a grunch like a nothing in the army so in 1872 the word ensign gets changed to second lieutenant so you can kind of like think about that but that's

also the lowest rank you can get but he had to pay to start at a rank rather than start like the very beginning he quickly gets promoted he becomes a lieutenant for real and he goes down to gibraltar he's going to spend a lot of time in like the coast of spain gibraltar portugal area He's going to be off the coast of the country known as Gibraltar. Yes. You know where Gibraltar. The Rockford, Gibraltar.

Yes. So in 1805, he marries a woman named Maria Bowwater, and she's pretty rich, and they live in her aunt's house in London. So, like, that's good. He's got, like, a good deal going on. Two months later, he joins, his group is called the 57th foot, which is, like, foot, I don't know, 57th group. They're called a foot.

And they're in Gibraltar. And he buys the rank of captain for 900 pounds. And so I assume that's 18.05 money. Otherwise, everyone would do that because they'd be like, okay, that seems easy. But in our money, it's roughly 80,000 to 90,000 pounds in today's money that he paid to move up to the rank of captain. So he is back in the 57th foot, up and down the coast of Portugal to Gibraltar. He ends up in a fight with other people in his division. and he gets kicked out, but they give him his money back, which I was surprised by.

I don't know how you did that. I doubt that that's, like, in a contract. Right? Yeah, I don't either. But later, like a couple weeks later, the 57th is in like a really big battle and they do really, really well. And they get called the diehards. And they're going to be, it's going to be a thing where you're going to be able to say like,

oh, yeah, I was part of the 57th foot. The diehards, people will be like, you are so brave. That is so great. So he just said that he was there during that battle, even though he had left a few weeks before. I mean, Taylor, I would do that. There's no internet. Nobody knows anything. Who gives a shit? I mean, a lot of this is no internet.

Yes, exactly. So, Gregor and Maria head back to Edinburgh. He's only 23 when he's like out of the army for real. But he still likes to wear like his full dress uniform. He's really into making everybody, even when he's in the army, wear all their medals and everything. You have to be like fully

dressed every time you go out. And he makes people call him colonel, even though he's not a colonel. And he has this beautiful carriage and he's like I'm super important and he drives around Edinburgh but people don't buy it they don't like it so they move they move back to London because he wasn't getting as popular as he

wanted to be in Edinburgh by like being fancy so was his wife like constantly just rolling her eyes being like what if this guy is? I mean I imagine I can't find really a lot about her but I feel like probably so they move back to London

and it calls himself a baron which is like also not true and he told people in london that he was part of the mcgregor clan leadership which was also not true so maria i couldn't find out how but she dies in december 1811 so now he is widowed and it's bad because they were loving off of her money and he they don't have kids they haven't been together that long so he can't like go to her family and be like great can you support me forever now they'd be like absolutely not like who are you who cares and he didn't want to go home and it couldn't really go back to the military because he had left in like a weird way because he got in a fight with

someone so he was like not sure what to do next so he decides to take the money that he has his little bit of money from inheritances and he sails to the Americas and he stops in kingston jamaica but no one gives him a job there like they also are not impressed by his like not zero accomplishments and so he goes to venezuela and so there's a dude in venezuela who is fighting the Spanish because the Spanish are have control of it at the moment there's a man named General Francisco

de Miranda have you heard of him it sounds pretty familiar I really feel like I haven't and I wish I knew more but he's a Venezuelan who fought in the American French and Spanish revolutions like he couldn't find a revolution that he didn't want to be a part of 100% I wish I knew more I might

talk about him later that's another story but that was so interesting. And he's pulling Venezuela away from a Spanish rule with the help of the English, which is wild to me because it's like the early 1800s. And the Revolutionary War is like 40 years ago, 50 years ago. So he's like, A, older. And B, like now he wants the English to help him. Stop colonization.

It makes sense. I mean, it's the whole enemy of my enemy of my friend. Yeah, totally. So Gregor ends up working for him. And he says, oh, call me, sir. people assume that that's actually like an earned title but it's not but he says that anyway and he marries a woman named Josefa lavera and she is a cousin of simone bolivar so he's now like in with the people who are doing this revolution in venezuela the first campaign they do fails and they all flee a kurosau and that's not at the end of it there's more battles he fights alongside bolivar and new granada which is like columbia area and he goes to venezuela and moves troops And he does this thing where for a whole month, he takes these troops from one side of Venezuela to the other. And they're fighting people.

They're fighting the Spanish. They're doing all these little mini battles. And it is legitimately very brave that he did this. And when he was done, Bolivar said, quote, the retreat, which you had the honor to conduct is, in my opinion, superior to the conquest of an empire. Please accept my congratulations for the prodigious services you have rendered my country. So, like, that's good. they said that the people down there called McGregor

the xenophon of the Americas because he was like a great general and they like he did a really good job legitimately and there's one thing all right well he might he might that have been full shit after all yeah well so now he's like I can do anything

so he goes to find something else that the Spanish own that he can try to take back or take and guess what he finds um the fountain of youth close he finds Florida that is actually pretty close

I think the fountain of youth was in Florida or supposed to be right so I my understanding of it was it's in Puerto Rico at Poncdalen's mansion but it could be wrong no that might be right because I do think that we have a kid's book about

a turtle and a frog who try to find it so he decides to liberate Florida from Spain and they don't necessarily care or want this, but he's going in to do it anyway. He gets money and men. So he can go back to England, to Scotland, and get people to, like, come on board, loan him money, do all these things. And he goes to Amelia Island, which is an island that's very beautiful, is in the northeast of Florida, kind of by Jacksonville. And the men that he recruits are mostly from Georgia and South Carolina. And on June 29, 1817, he says the word.

I shall sleep either in hell or Amelia tonight and like charges on Amelia Island like brings his ships and they're like going to take it take it over and people didn't really care they were like okay either they left or they stayed like it didn't really matter there was no fighting like no one not even a single shot was fired nothing really happened when he got there he put down a flag and the flag is like white with a green cross just like an up and down like a plus sign all the way across and he declared himself in charge of the republic of floridas so he was like he wasn't really taking it over for any other country he was like i am in charge of this area now and it started with amelia island he tried to attack mainland florida but some of his troops died

and the people who were in his troops were in his army he was paying with amelia dollars which were not real dollars there are things he had just printed and was like Like this is going to be worth something once we have this Republic of Florida and have all this stuff going. So he was paying them with Amelia dollars and they were pissed and a lot of people left. And he ended up kind of sneaking off of Amelia Island without telling anybody and leaving. And when he left, he went back down to the Bahamas and he was trying to get things engraved that said, Amelia, I came, I saw, I conquered and Liberty for the Florida is under the leadership of McGregor. But nothing ever had really happened.

They really were only there for three months. And then the U.S. took it back. because they were just kind of holding this island for no reason and the U.S. took it back and they held it for Spain until the Florida purchase. So that kind of fails and it was weird. So I will say that I'm going to sound nuts saying this,

but that does it sound crazy to me. Isn't that what everybody does? It's crazy because he failed, but it's not what everybody does. You take over an area and they're like, this is money now. It's got my face on and not your face. No, that part is true.

And I actually am going to bring that up later that, like, yeah, he made up money, but, like, so did we. Money's made up. Yeah, it's all fish. That part's totally true. But the part that is weird is that he did it, like, for himself for no reason. Like, I'm on behalf of Scotland, you know, he was like, I'm in charge now. Right, right. And then we're going to invade all of Florida on behalf of this and start this new thing.

It's going to be the Republic of Florida as not connected to any European country, right? I kind of admire the own thing. I kind of admire the tenacity. Fair, fair. So, Josefa, his wife, gave birth to their first child in the Bahamas on November 9th, 1817. And if you were a Scottish man named Gregor McGregor and you had a baby whose family spoke Spanish, what would you name your son? I don't know. Gregorio.

Oh, yeah. I couldn't imagine two more different things than Scottish and Spanish, you know? No, totally. Totally. But his son was named Gregorio McGregorger, which I think is hilarious. And they're living in the Bahamas, and then they kind of skip town because things aren't really working out and they go back to London. In London, he's involved in a couple schemes to take over places like New Granada, which is like, like, aside it turns into Columbia and I'm not even sure who's taking it over for like he gets people to

give him money to like give him loans to promise him land and all these things but nothing really happens like no one goes anywhere he doesn't really own any land in south America and people kind of get embarrassed because they give him their money and then it disappears so it's like your friend who has like a new startup every week and finally you're like I can't give you any money anymore like this is embarrassing you know yeah and eventually he gets he's one wanted for piracy because he stole a boat and named it L. McGregor, among other things, which made me laugh also. So he decides to do his next thing. And his next thing is like the big, bad thing that he does if you Google him. So in April 1820, he's back in South America.

He's in the mosquito coast. And that's like the East Coast of South America. There are a shit ton of mosquitoes there. But it's not named after that. It's named after the local mosquito Nation, spelled M-I-S-K-I-T-O, not spelled that way, but that's one way to spell it. On April 29, 1820, there was a man named George Frederick Augustus, and he's, like, a native leader from the mosquito nation, but he also is, like, involved in these dealings with, with the UK and Spain and all these things. So he signs a document granting McGregor and his heirs. Eight million acres of this mosquito coastline, which is a lot.

But he's like, sure. Like, you can have this land for you and your, in your ears. The reason that he gave it to him, it sounds like, is because the land was pretty terrible. So that land on the east coast of South America, what else was there? Do you remember what else famous was there where they weren't able to grow anything? No. Jonestown. Because I think it's the same land.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I remember if they went to Jonestown and they were like, oh, like, he was like, oh, everything is going to, we're going to grow all this food. It's going to be great. And they couldn't grow anything. Like, you can't grow anything there. So it's a very similar, like very uninhabitable.

Also, just, I was looking up exactly where Jonestown is because it's on the east coast of Guyana and then, like, Venezuela is like right above it. But the Jonestown settlement has 48 Google reviews and 3.6 stars. And they're also, they're very sassy. So Gregor takes us 8,000 acres and names it Poyer. P-O-Y-A-I-S. I'm going to say it Poyer like it's French. He's at Poyer, and he calls himself the Cazique of Poyer. And the Cazique is like a princely word.

So he's like, I'm in charge of this area. I'm the Cazique of Poyer. So he goes back to, so that was in April, 1820. He goes back to Europe and says he wants people. to come to be with the kizek in poisee he calls employers he says that like there is he's the kazique and father of this area and he wants people to start to move there so in the meantime a man named rafter had written a book about what a fool Gregor McGregor was because of the other things that he had done when he had done like these other weird schemes and like was kind of a pirate

and like all those things not a pirate but like in trouble for piracy and no one really paid attention to that book it should have been more of a warning for what was to come but it ended up not being at so he gets to london and he wants to raise money for his new land and now people like him because now he's exotic now he's not just like the scottish dude who's like trying to get people to like him he's a kazika poyeh and he has his beautiful wife and they have another another baby and they name her Gregoria you know, it's like our third name. It's Josefa and Gregoria, but hilarious. And even though we know that there's nothing in Poye, we know it's not a real thing, it's like it is land that he can bring people to, but we know there's nothing there. But he tells people that there's a lot there and that it's great. He says there's land, there are people, there's a parliament, there are banks, there are money. Here's the money.

I have it printed. You can have it. There's a coat of arms. Guess what animal is on the coat of arms? He's got to be a lizard. No, it's not a real animal. It's like a... Unicorn?

Yeah, it's a unicorn. Are you serious? Yes. It's two unicorns holding up that green check flag that you need. Can you buy this money? How am I expensive is this money? What's the money called? It's called Poetie dollars.

How do you show you? P-O-Y. Oh, my God, I lost it. P-O-Y-I-A-S. I don't know if any exist still. But wait, don't Google it because you might know where to. happens just wait so of course this is a unicorn it's all printed and it looks really nice so he says there's several offices in like edinburgh and london other cities that are selling land grants in poix

so you're like i want to give all my money to this to get like you know a thousand acres in poise the land is so lush and amazing people get really really excited waterloo had just happened so the napoleonic wars are over as people are like looking for something else like everything has been crazy. They're really excited to go. In 1822, there's a 355 page book called The Sketch, the Mosquito Shore, including the territory of Poyet, that's supposed to talk about how great it is. It has illustrations. It has facts. It's written by a man named Captain Thomas Strangeways, who is obviously not a real person. I kind of love this guy. I want to be his friend. And so in the book, Captain Strangeways is like, everything is so great.

Great. Did we tell you there's a capital city called St. Joseph. It has mansions and boulevards and an opera house and a palace. And the natives there, they love England. They're really excited to work with us. They like absolutely love us. So we're super excited. They're super excited for us to be there. There shouldn't everybody's tell that he's lying? No, wait. There's one more thing. Guess what the river is having them? Champagne. Gold. So this is the place. This is a place to go. So he gets gold. He gets loans. He gets bonds. He's going to make a lot of money. And people are like, fuck yeah, let's go. So he's paid people to be in the military. There is a cobbler. There are doctors. There are bankers. Most of the people are Scottish, but there's a lot of people ready to go. They're like, we're in. The first 50 people leave from London on September 10th, 1822. Before they leave, they exchange their their real pound dollars pounds for poixie dollars like on the shore so they're basically like giving him all the real money and he's giving them all this fake money and again like i know that

like you're more socially um empathetic that i am but you can blame the guy if you taylor if i showed up in joshua tree with far's bucks and then i fooled a bunch of your neighbors into like trading the equity in their homes for far as bucks could you even be mad at me like I have a couple I have a couple of really big points like yeah that is such it's so interesting because like a I just wrote we know that money is fake you know so there's that there is all this stuff happening people are legitimately coming to the Americas to like colonize and like live their lives like that stuff's happening but also like this week that one that hawktaw girl did her fake coin

and people lost tons of money. So there are famous people are not doing that. So that literally happens with every meme coin. Like, somebody launches it. But how different is that for this?

Huh? Isn't that just like people are always going to try to like do the next get rich quick scheme? I mean. I want to believe you. So here's a thing. I see like four people getting rich from going to the Americas.

I see four people who are rich from crypto and like I would I would buy the hawk to a meme coin before I would buy fars bucks and my name is fars like that's all I'm saying totally but you wouldn't do that now you would do a far as meme coin you know that that's like the equivalent of this the poixie dollars were produced by the bank of Scotland's official printer so like they looked real like they were real they weren't not real as far as money goes the world was on a gold standard money was backed by gold it's fucking not real there's gold in the river you gotta fish it out you gotta get the gold out get some wellies get the gold you'll be fine so this is a beginning

you're starting to talk like somebody that worked for a hedge fund fair so this is September 1822 By the end of 1823, the Poyer dollars have totally crashed, which we knew they would, but they had a little bit of market value because you could trade them for your regular money because you thought you were going to Poyet, but now you're not. So, of course, that's going to happen. So those first 50 people off in September, 200 more people left on January 22nd, 1823 from London.

There were women and children on board. They sailed free because they're going to this land of opportunity. So that was like even more reason to go. They sang songs and hoisted the flag, and they were. were like, we're going to Poyer. They were like, just could not have been more excited. They were going to the new world. So when they got there, guess what they found? There was nothing. They got off the boat and they were like, where is the palace? Where are the boulevards? Where is the welcome party that was supposed to come? They couldn't believe that they were being duped. They were like,

something must be wrong with like where we landed. Something was wrong with like the information that they had sent to like the people who in charge of the government. Like there's no way that Gregor McGregor duped us. And then they had doctors and they had provisions. They could have technically been there for a while. But I'm going to read another quote from the Poi Immigrant's Situation, as described by Alfred Hasbrook in 1927. I think this is in a book.

But this author says, quote, disease seized upon them and spread rapidly. Lack of proper food and water and failure to take the requisite sanitary precautions, brought on intermittent fever and dysentery. Whole families were ill. Most of the sufferers lay in the ground Without other protection from the sun and rain But a few leaves and branches thrown across some sticks

Many were so weak as to be unable To crawl to the woods for the common offices of nature The censurizing from the filth they were in was unendurable It was bad I'm not even going to make fun of them Because That actually must be awful If you think you're doing something amazing for your family lineage

Yeah Because it's like a lot of people who left for America in like the 1920s and they just happened to guess right but like it was always a guess they're always rolling the dice exactly so the poor cobbler died by suicide because he was like nope no one here needs shoes it's terrible and eventually people were going out and trying to find help trying to figure out what to do because people were just like dying and they learned that poise never existed and that even the title of Cazique was made up. So the person who had given him the land was like, I never made him ruler or did all these things. Like I never said he could come here if he wanted to. So by the time that Word got back to England that this was a scam, five more ships were already on their way. And they got intercepted somehow and were told to turn back. Of the 250 people who went on the first two ships, 180 of them died. And some of of them stayed in the Americas, but about less than 50 went back to Britain.

I don't know, man, like, it almost worked. Like, it almost worked. Like, I mean, that's how you build a civilization. You can't tell people, let's go live on the mosquito coast for nothing. It's like, you get a Selma vision. And all of a sudden, you're there and, like, I have no choice but to make it work. That's true, but there were a lot of lies involved, like the palace and the golds. Well, the gold, they always said that.

But like, can pilgrims do the same thing? like the Mayflower and all that like wasn't that all a bunch of bullshit? Yeah, I think so. Well, I know they left because they were boring. And then like, yeah, it worked, but like all the people died in James town, remember?

They ate each other. We are living in this country, Taylor. The country works. Yeah, but like a bunch of people, it was hard. But this was like, this was like very specifically a lie. And they would hear us.

I bet if they hadn't turned those, those boats around. Maybe they could figure it out. We'd be, seeing a different tune. All those people would have found the way to make it work about you know, I think you have your right. Thank you. Wow, that's the first thing you've ever said that to me.

That's not the first time I said that in 24 years. But I No, that doesn't make sense. Maybe they could have made it work of their risk of a thousand people rather than just 250. Because you're right. A lot of them would have died anyway, but then some of them would have had to figure something out. Yeah, if there's like 20 people, the cobbler has nothing to trade his cobbling for because how many can shoes can you sell a year to 20 people you sell 20 shoes once every 10 years I think you're

also repairing shoes oh I don't know how it works I've never been to a cobbler yeah I've been to a cobbler many times and they repair my shoes I've never bought shoes in a collar but there's one here in town anyway um but by the time that the couple people got back they got back in November they left in January they got back in November and Gregor had gone he had fled to France people were like there's people are still like it's not his fault it's not his fault but he had like like like taking their money and let them go to a place where he knew that there was nothing. In 1825, he ran away and he was hiding in the French countryside. There were other people involved.

It wasn't like just him. And him and two other people were arrested and sent to prison in France. And he said, what did he say? He said that he was held prisoner for reasons he wasn't aware. He was suffering as one of the founders of independence in the new world. so he was like saying what you're saying like everybody does it this way you know like why am i the person who's being called out for this and he got tried for this being a crime but he got off he was he was acquitted and then he was then they did it again and he was not guilty so he was just like

he was not guilty and he went back to the uk and he kept doing it he kept selling land and poitie even though poitie was nothing and he sold land and bonds i got loans from banks and he tried again for like years and years to do this finally at one point Josefina his wife dies and then somewhere in there two of their kids had died as well wait I feel like her name is not Josefina if I did say that but his wife dies and his um oh Josefa was her name and his wife dies some of his kids are dead so he goes back to Venezuela where he had started his journeys and in 1839 they made him a citizen and gave him a rank in the military so that he got a pension. And he died in Caracas on December 4th, 1845 with full honors.

And nothing was mentioned at his funeral about any of his schemes or any of that. And he is buried there. And the McGregor clan doesn't mention him at all in like their burial grounds in Scotland. And the part of Honduras is where Poir was that was, you know, cut out to be Poiré is still uninhabited today because it's not a place where you can live. What country is it a part of? Honduras. You know what? I kind of take back what I said earlier.

Do you want to know which one? Which part did it? Which part? So I think the difference is I think that the American settlers were doing this because of ideological reasons of disagreements with how taxation worked with, or not the taxation, like how. the monarchy works in england so it was like a very like we want to create a different structure of societal living no i think it's about money you think that the pilgrims moved here because they're trying to get rich yes i think then you got to defend it you got to defend it you can't just say it then then you got to do a oh do you have an answer or well kind of i feel like

it would have been happy to get rich you know if they were coming here thinking that if they got here and it was made of but I think that's what that I think a big part of it was that and then they're able to convince like family people and other folks who would not necessarily leave their town that they're going

for this religious reason when really they're going to be workers in this new world and create money Taylor can I ask you a question if I was worth like 80 billion dollars right but I lived on the moon

does it can matter that I have $80 billion dollars can you get Amazon deliveries up there probably I'm going to say yes

I think I don't know oh my but the distinction I was drawing in my mind was that this guy kept selling this shit after

afterwards and that puts them in a different category of like broad embezzlement versus like I'm doing this because of my own spiritual beliefs or ideological right there's no there's no ideal ideological right you know it wasn't like I don't even I don't hear I didn't even see any mention of God and like the whole thing um I did today I did go to a thrift store and I bought some books and I did buy one on cotton mather which I was very excited about so I'll give a post it The stories are always going to intertwine. Yeah. That's fun.

So, by the way, I looked it up. So the McGregor clan, which is like a weird way to call your family. But Connor McGregor is part of this McGregor clan. So is you and McGregor. Oh. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

So you got now, well, two. currently famous and I guess four total famous because you're we can count this guy and rob roy yeah that's fun I we went to we were at a pizza place they yesterday and some bikers came in like motorcycle guys and then one guy had his like cut and it was like the full thing and he had the name and I don't even want to say it because we look them up and like they have done bad things but he had like the name of his thing and then two other guys I had only like the bottom part of their vest had a patch so they're definitely like

rookies in the motorcycle gang but they bought a pizza and the guy bungee corded it to the back of his motorcycle and they drove away. Is it Mongols? No. But I was like that's brave as a way to transport pizza.

I think once you join a motorcycle gang where your only job is to cook and distribute meth, yeah you're going to take some risks in life, you know? Yeah, you know, just a bunch of quarter pizza. My last bit is not nothing to do with anything, but last night, Miles asked me what the name of the moon was.

And this kind of reminds me of, like, the money conversation that we're having, because I was like, well, it's just the moon. But, like, Saturn's moons have names. But our moon doesn't have a name because we invented the word moon. So our moon is the moon. And then other moons have names. Like planets, our Earth is the Earth, like the dirt. but other planets we give names to

we just made everything up I'm going to spend all night thinking about the moon thing the other thing doesn't make any sense because a planet's our thing but like what is the moon right what is the moon why don't we just name it something

right like why don't we name like Jeffrey or Gregor McGregor like name it something Why is it called them just a What we have? Oh my God. Oh my God.

It's a full Jeffrey tonight. Anyway. Anyway, thank you for listening, everyone. I hope you thought that was fun. If you know any other fun cons, and please don't buy any meme coins. Taylor, you can actually buy legitimately.

I just found it. A cohesion bond signed by Gregor McGregor for $1,700. All right. Well, if it was like $17, I'd buy it. That's fun. That's a fun part of history. That was very fun. That was a very, very fun. I love your lighthearted episodes where it's just like, there's a part of me that always loves scam people because it's like, good for you, man.

Like, good for you for fucking like. I'm more, I'm definitely more empathetic towards him than I was this morning. It's like, good for you for like finding a thing. finding a niche getting great at it and then also suckering people into that thing like you gotta be like kind of smart and talented it's weird because all these guys who do this they could have been like you a hedge fund manager

like they could have done something different you don't mean like they could have I'm joking I know you weren't a hedge fund manager but it's very kind of you no I'm laughing at the idea like this oh my god what a time in my life yes yeah i remember being like this is bad but you know whatever i'm fine i'm fine is it evil the way

they make money and i think that it's evil to have such a concentration of money you know but all they're doing is they're taking rich people's money and then moving it into company accounts what do they like i don't i don't really know they like move it around Cheers. Dude, at one point they were like, do you want to learn more about this? And I was like, nah, I'm going to watch X-Files.

It's fine. I turned out fine. I wasn't going to stay there forever. So, whatever. I had a breakdown. I had a breakdown. They gave me severance. It was very nice.

Cool. Well, thanks everyone for listening. Please tell your friends. We're doomed to philipot at g-mil.com. Doomedepid all the social medias. And if we are on your wrapped, let us know, and I'll mail you a sticker. And we have merch.

It still exists out there. It's on a link tree. Buy a t-shirt. Buy a coffee mug. they're cute uh great choice it's christmas time and christmas is when we make our money on this podcast through march sales so if you want if you want little four miles to get the toys they want uh you got to start buying shit great great thank you taylor thanks cars Thank you.