THE MAN WHO SOLD THE EIFFEL TOWER

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Victor Lustig was born in 1890 in Arnau, today known as Hostinné, a small town in Bohemia. Later in life, he would introduce himself as a count whose dynasty had fallen on hard times – but this was total nonsense. His parents were middle-class Catholics who owned a tobacco store.

Lustig was well educated and spoke five languages. But he had two qualities that often matter more than education and intelligence – he was charming, and he was patient. By his twenties, he had found his calling in life – he became a full-time confidence trickster.

The ocean liners running between France and New York were floating hotels full of wealthy men with nothing to do for five days. Initially, Lustig passed himself off as a producer of Broadway musicals seeking investors; later he posed as a nobleman and would talk his marks into buying a large contraption he claimed could duplicate banknotes.

In the spring of 1925, Lustig found himself in Paris and came across a newspaper article about the Eiffel Tower’s decline. Built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the Eiffel Tower was never meant to last; by the 1920s, the paint was peeling, and the city was unable or unwilling to pay for upkeep.

Most of the locals put it down to municipal incompetence and did nothing about it. But Lustig saw an opportunity – seven thousand tons of scrap iron.

Within days he had forged government stationery and recreated himself as Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He wrote confidentially to six leading scrap dealers, explaining that the French government had reluctantly concluded the tower could no longer be maintained and would be sold for scrap. The decision was final, and absolutely secret, as public reaction would be catastrophic.

The imposed secrecy was the key factor for the success of the con; someone presented with an absurd proposition will normally ask at least some awkward questions, if only for form’s sake. But a business person who is told that an attractive deal is a state secret will be thrown off his game.

Lustig’s final mark was chosen with care and precision. André Poisson was new to the Paris scrap trade, prosperous but not fully established, and painfully aware that the old guard considered him an outsider. This deal would propel him to where he needed to go.

Lustig explained that certain arrangements were customary if a contract this size was to proceed – a cash bribe, discreetly handled, to make sure the scrap iron bonanza came Poisson’s way.

Poisson paid without hesitation, and Lustig caught the next train to Vienna with a suitcase full of cash. There, he waited for the scandal and the outcry, but nothing happened. Poisson was so humiliated at having “bought” the Eiffel Tower from a man who did not own it that he never went to the police.

Boosted by this outstanding success, Lustig returned a month later and tried to sell the Eiffel Tower again. But this time the buyer alerted the authorities, and Lustig was forced to flee to America, where he was eventually arrested for counterfeiting and sent to Alcatraz. He died in 1947.

But the part that really interests me isn’t Lustig; it’s Poisson. How was it possible for an experienced scrap metal dealer, a seasoned businessman who knew how governments award contracts, to fall for such a brazen con? At some point, surely he must have thought to himself—this is too good to be true.

Yet that is the folly of a conman’s mark. The trickster rarely forces his victim to believe something absurd; he finds what the victim already wishes were true and makes it possible for him to believe it.

There is a verse in Nitzavim that hints at this exact point. Moshe is finalizing the covenant, spelling out exactly what will happen if the nation abandons it, and he pauses over one type of person in the crowd, who might be listening to every word (Deut. 29:18): וְהָיָה בְּשָׁמְעוֹ אֶת דִּבְרֵי הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת וְהִתְבָּרֵךְ בִּלְבָבוֹ לֵאמֹר שָׁלוֹם יִהְיֶה לִּי כִּי בִּשְׁרִרוּת לִבִּי אֵלֵךְ – “When he hears the words of this curse, he will quietly reassure himself, saying: I’ll be fine – even as I carry on exactly as I please.”

Rashi reads וְהִתְבָּרֵךְ בִּלְבָבוֹ literally – the man blesses himself. Which is to say that the confidence trickster here is not someone else; it’s you.

And that is what is so unnerving. There is no Lustig in Moshe’s projection. Nobody forged any documents or posed as a government official. You’ve heard the covenant spelled out in full, understood every word of it, and disputed none of it – and you still fall for the one proposition you want to be true: that you can carry on exactly as you please and still be fine.

Lustig understood that a secret sale has no checks and balances, and that is exactly how we do it to ourselves. We sell ourselves the Eiffel Tower, even though we know it’s not for sale. The transaction takes place away from prying eyes, with no awkward questions and no reality checks.

We are all guilty of this. We know anger is destructive – except when we decide it isn’t. We know gossip is forbidden – except when we decide something isn’t gossip; it’s information people have a right to know. We know we should apologize – but not to someone we don’t think deserves an apology. Because, like Poisson, we are greedy for the deal, so the rules that normally apply don’t apply to us.

Perhaps that is why Nitzavim always falls on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, in the season of repentance. Before doing teshuvah, you must stop pretending nothing is broken – and that is the hardest part of all.

We all know which relationships have gone cold, which bad habits would mortify us if they became public, and where our religious life has turned into mere motions. The problem is not information. It is the rationalizing voice in our heads, which works overtime at this time of year, reassuring us that we’re fine, and that it’s everyone else who has a problem.

Someone who knows they have fallen can get up. But someone who has convinced themselves they are standing up straight will never move. And the easiest person to defraud, as Lustig understood so well, is never the stupidest person in the room. It is the one most invested in the con being true.

Elul is not about deciding we are terrible people. Judaism has no interest in that, and neither, frankly, does God. It is about looking at ourselves in the mirror without tampering with the evidence – and saying, without drama, this part of me is good, this part is weak, and if I don’t deal with it, I am both the conman and the mark.

Poisson’s tragedy was not that Lustig lied to him. Plenty of people are lied to. It was that Lustig found a lie Poisson was ready to buy. Nitzavim asks us to draw up an honest list of what we have been selling ourselves all year and to have the presence of mind to say, “No, I’m not buying that anymore.”

The most dangerous confidence trickster any of us will ever meet doesn’t need forged stationery. He or she knows our weaknesses, knows exactly what we want to hear, and has our complete confidence. True teshuva begins when we stop being such an easy mark.