One of the great 19th-century con artists — a Scottish impostor who defrauded Jay Gould out of $1M (as 'Lord Gordon-Gordon'), swindled merchants across Scotland, and nearly caused a diplomatic incident between the U.S. and Canada before his eventual exposure.
Lord Gordon-Gordon as the Gilded Age con artist archetype: his scam on Jay Gould — presenting himself as a British aristocrat seeking to invest, gaining Gould's trust, receiving shares to vote as a friendly proxy, then selling them — exploited Gould's own greed and the period's susceptibility to aristocratic imposture. The subsequent Minnesota kidnapping attempt (when Gould's agents tried to abduct Gordon-Gordon from Canada) caused a near-diplomatic crisis. When Canada refused extradition and the impostor faced exposure, he shot himself. A pure picaresque story embedded in Gilded Age financial history.
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