Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Gregor MacGregor and the Biggest Scam in History

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

One of the most audacious scams in history took place in the early 19th century in Britain.  A man sold thousands of people a dream of land in the New World. His claims attracted large investments, encouraged hundreds of people to move around the world, and even suckered in members of the royal family.  However, his promises were empty, and in the end, shiploads of people were stranded in the middle of nowhere, and many people lost their life savings.  Learn more about Gregor MacGregor and one of the biggest scams in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Visit meminto.com and get 15% off with code EED15.  Listen to Expedition Unknown wherever you get your podcasts.  Get started with a $13 trial set for just $3 at harrys.com/EVERYTHING. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most audacious scams in history took place in the early 19th century in Britain. One man sold thousands of people a dream of land in the new world. His claims attracted large investments, encouraged hundreds of people to sail across the ocean, and even suckered in the king. However, his promises were empty, and in the end, shiploads of people were stranded in the middle of nowhere, and many people lost their lives as well as their life savings. Learn more about Gregor McGregor,

and one of the biggest scams in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The focus of this story is a man named Gregor McGregor.

And if you're wondering, yes, that was his actual birth name. Such names are known as reduplicated names, and Gregor McGregor joins the list of notable such as Kelly Kelly, William Williams, Tommy Thompson, Robbie Roberts, Edward Edwards, and of course Chris Christensen. Gregor was born on Christmas Eve, 1786, at his family's home on the shore of Locke-Katrine in Stirlingshire, Scotland. He was born into the noble clan Greger, a Scottish Highlands clan that can date its ancestry back to the 9th century.

His father was Daniel McGregor, a ship captain for the British East India Company and his mother's name was Anne. His family was Roman Catholic and were part of the McGregor clan that had been placed on a prescription list by King James I of Scotland. He decreed that anybody using the surname McGregor had to change it or would be executed. The law was technically on the books until 1774. The McGregers were mostly Jacobites who supported the Catholic British King James II who was exiled rather than the Protestant William and Mary. Gregor McGregor's great-great-uncle was the Scottish outlaw and folk hero, Rob Roy McGregor. Despite the history of his clan and family fighting the British monarchy,

his recent ancestors, including his grandfather, served with distinction in the British army. Gregor's father died when he was eight, and it's believed that he probably spoke Gaelic as his first language, not English. Like his grandfather, Gregor sought a career in the military, and joined the army at the age of 16 in 1803. He initially served with the 57th West Middlesex Regiment of Foot. His family purchased him a commission to become an officer, which is how the British military worked at the time.

He enlisted as an ensign and was quickly promoted on his own merits to the rank of lieutenant. He was assigned to the British garrison in Gibraltar, where he met Maria Bowwater, the daughter of an admiral who was also related to several members of Parliament. With her substantial dowry, he purchased the rank of captain for £900 in 1905, which would be about $65,000 or $82,000 today. He served in Gibraltar until 1809 when he was sent to Portugal to fight in the Peninsular War against Napoleonic France.

He participated in several key battles, but after disagreement with another officer, he resigned from the army in 1810. He was only 23 years old when he left the military, but he had already begun regularly. lying to people about his military record. He continued to use his association with the 57th regiment his entire life, which was true, but much of the prestige that the unit earned was at the Battle of Albuera, which came after he left the unit. He called himself a colonel, which he never was, and then started calling himself Sir Gregor McGregor, claiming to be a baronet and the chief of Clan McGregor, which he also wasn't. In 1811, his wife Maria died, and he was he, and he

he suddenly found himself without his primary source of income. His options were limited as he couldn't quickly marry again lest he anger his in-laws, and he also didn't want to become a farmer back in Scotland, and he left the British Army on bad terms, which is the only thing he really knew. So, McGregor traveled to Venezuela, drawn by the revolutionary movements that were seeking independence from Spain and colonial rule. He landed in Caracas just weeks after a major earthquake had devastated the city, The revolution which had been led by General Francisco de Miranda was starting to fall apart as royalist forces were making headway against the new revolutionary government.

McGregor arrived and offered his services to the Republican government, which were happy to have him. They immediately promoted him to an actual colonel leading a cavalry unit. He scored an important victory right away and used that to get married to the niece of the Latin American Revolutionary leader Simone Bolivar. He was soon promoted the Brigadier General. but the royalist forces eventually took Caracas, capturing Miranda. Bolivar became the leader of the revolution and established a close relationship with McGregor. He promoted him to a full general, and McGregor engaged in a series of failures over the next several years, which included being charged with piracy by the British, incredible military defeats,

and eventually being accused of treason by Bolivar who ordered his execution. All of this resulted in him fleeing to the mosquito coast of Nicaragua in 1820. The mosquito coast was on the Caribbean side of the country, and it wasn't very populated for good reason. The soil was poor for farming, and the only people who lived there were the mosquito people, who were the descendants of shipwrecked African slaves and indigenous people. The British actually controlled the territory, but it was technically ruled by kings who had little or no power. And one of them was King George Frederick Augustus. McGregor became friends with the king who eventually gave McGregor a tract of land that was 12,500

square miles or 32,375 square kilometers in area. To put that into perspective, it was an area larger than Belgium. Up until this point, Gregor McGregor was a kind of interesting person, but not somebody who was worthy of their own podcast episode. What happened next is what made him a person that we're still talking about today. In 1821, he arrived back in London, and his penchant for lying and self-aggrandizing started to take over. McGregor started calling his land the country of Poyer, and claimed that he was the Cazique of Poyer. Cazique was a Spanish term that was used for native chieftains, but McGregor made it sound like he was a prince given the title by the king.

He began spreading stories about Poyet. He told people that it was some of the most productive farmland in the world and that it was able to produce three crops a year. McGregor became a hit amongst the London elite. He was invited to dinner parties by people who had no clue what had happened to him since he left Britain and all his various failures. All they knew is that he was part of the 57th Regiment, but few people know the circumstances under which he resigned from the army.

The people in London had no clue if a place called Poyet existed or not. The Spanish colonies were in revolt, and there were new countries popping up all the time. The idea of a country called Poetet didn't sound ridiculous. McGregor's lies about his fictitious country became more intricate. He claimed that Poetet had a tri-camera legislature and was a natural democracy. He spent a lot of time creating supporting documentation, including a coat of arms for the country, military uniforms, banking regulations, laws, and even a flag, which was just a green cross on a white background. One person, Major William John Richardson, really bought into the Poetay story.

McGregor appointed Richardson to the fictitious Order of the Green Cross, and even appointed him as a diplomat to represent Poet in the British court. McGregor created documentation with fake credentials that Richardson gave to King George VIII himself. McGregor really cranked up the hype machine for Poet. He hired people to sing songs about the country in the streets, and distributed handbills and leaflets. He even wrote a guidebook for the region titled Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, including the territory of Poethe.

He opened an office in London, which began selling deeds to land in Poet. The cost was two shillings and three pence per acre, which was approximately a day's wage for a working man in London at the time. Many people invested their life savings in Poetier real estate. He then stepped up his efforts and raised money for the Poyer government through bonds. Again, this was not unusual in London at the time. Several South American countries raised money in London by selling bonds because they offered a higher interest rate than other investments at the time. A notable bank in London secured a loan for McGregor

of 200,000 pounds, which was backed by, quote, all the revenues of the government of Poyer. It was a loan worth about 18 million pounds or 22 million dollars today. And this wasn't the worst thing he did. He began to target his fellow Scotsman to encourage them to migrate to Poet. And quite a few people wanted to move to Poet. There were seven ships filled with people who were prepared to leave their lives behind to move to this magical utopia that McGregor had promised. When the first 70 people sailed off in a ship called the Honduras Packet,

McGregor met them at the docks and exchanged fake Poet currency with them, for their real British pounds. The first group of immigrants landed on the mosquito coast in November of 1822, and they did not find the land that had been promised. The capital city of St. Joseph, which supposedly had a population of 20,000 people, didn't exist. The dup settlers set up a camp on the coast but were abandoned by their ship after a storm. A second group arrived in March of 1823 and found the same thing. The settlers began to despair.

as they lacked food and nobody knew where they were. Disease began to set in and there were deaths. King George Frederick Augustus eventually found out about the settlers, but he didn't know anything about this poyeh. When he learned what happened, he revoked McGregor's land grant and told everyone that he had never been granted the title of Cazique, nor was there any right to sell land or raise money for it. The king felt sorry for the settlers, but told them that they were there illegally. all but 40 of the most sick settlers found passage to British Honduras, which is today known as Belize. Many of the settlers who arrived there ended up dying from disease. The governor and British Honduras opened up an inquiry into the scam and sent Word back to Britain.

By the time word had gotten back that there was no such thing as Pouye, five more ships of settlers had left. Some were intercepted en route and turned back, but some made it all the way to the mosquito coast, only to find the same. same thing that the first ships did. Of the 250 people on the first two ships that made it there, only about 50 ever returned to Britain. The rest either died of disease, settled in British Honduras, or left for the United States. Just before the first group of survivors arrived back in England in October of 1823, McGregor fled to France. The press back in London had a field day reporting on the scam, but given the slow speed of information at the time, McGregor managed to deflect much of the criticism, either claiming to have been the victim himself or denying the allegations completely.

He actually got another London bank to offer him a 300,000 pound loan. However, the French government soon caught wind of what was happening and put a stop to everything, including another boatload of settlers. The French government tried to arrest him, but he evaded capture for four months. When he was finally caught, he tried to claim diplomatic immunity, but that didn't work. He was tried and shockingly acquitted on all charges. He went back to London in 1827 and managed to get another bank to sponsor an 800,000 pound loan. Few people purchased the bonds, however, not because Poet didn't exist, but because the previous Poyer bonds hadn't performed well. In 1829, he was back to selling deeds to land in Poyer to people who were totally unaware of everything that had happened

beforehand. And he continued to conduct lower-level poise schemes until 1837. When his wife died in 1838, McGregor immediately went back to Venezuela, where many friends that he had made before his falling out with Bolivar were now in power. His military rank of general was restored, he was given a pension in back pay, and was made a citizen. He died on December 4, 1845, in Caracas at the age of 58, and he was buried with a child. He was buried, with full military honors. Despite his continuing fraud spanning almost two decades, which he kept doing over and over,

despite all the people who lost everything they had, including dozens of people who died, Gregor McGregor was never really punished for what he did. It was an era where information traveled slowly, and as such, Gregor McGregor used that to his advantage. Creating an entire fictitious country, with all the corresponding documentation and convincing hundreds of settlers to cross the ocean

and getting investors to put up the modern equivalent of tens of millions of dollars has to put Gregor McGregor and the poise scam near the top of the greatest frauds in history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. I've gotten way behind on my reviews, so I'm going to read a couple of them today. All of them come from Apple Podcasts in the United States. The first comes from Star Greater Than Symbol underscore underscore underscore underscore who writes, Perfect.

It was a good day when I discovered this podcast, shared an episode with my son that I thought he'd enjoy, and now he asked for it every day on the drive home from school. We're big fans. The next comes from DPK-1267, who writes, Best podcast ever. I love this podcast. I listen to it every day. Also, how many languages can you hold a conversation in?

Just curious. Also, do you take vacations every once in a while? or are you always traveling? Five stars. Well, thanks to both of you. To answer your questions, DPK, I have gone to some conferences and taken some time off, but I haven't been on a real vacation or traveled anywhere since I started the podcast in July of 2020. That might change eventually, as I can record the show from anywhere. As for languages, I can hold a conversation in, realistically, just English, but I can get by in quite a few different languages. Remember, if you leave a review or some of you a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show.