Deception serves a curious purpose in the history of mankind. You can lie to ruin another person, you can lie to get yourself out of trouble, and you can even lie to be kind. Lies are told because sometimes they’re easy and lies are told because sometimes they’re incredibly complex and therefore seem more plausible. All of us have probably been told numerous lies without ever even realizing it. But some people go a bit further. They don’t just tell lies; they live them. And some of those lies turn out to be incredibly successful, at least for a while.
10. Grey Owl the Fake Native American Conservationist
The man called Grey Owl was a conservationist who, it was said, saved the Canadian beaver from extinction. He wrote books and gave lectures and spoke of man’s dangerous effect on the world. He sought to convince others that they needed to live in balance with nature and not destroy it. All in all, a noble endeavor for this mysterious half Apache, half Scottish man who was a complete fraud.
Grey Owl was born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney was born in Hastings, East Sussex in England. He was fully British and not Native American at all. He played the part though and lived out much of his life in Canada. He wore his hair in braids complete with feathers, and dressed in traditional Native garb right down to his moccasins.
As a boy, Belaney was fascinated by stories of Natives so he moved to Canada at age 17 around the year 1905. He married an Ojibwa woman and learned the language and then created a fake persona as a half white, half Apache man. Later he would marry women and learn skills from other indigenous Canadians.
He wrote books on conservation that became so popular he was invited on lecture tours across the country and into Europe, even to Buckingham Palace. It was only after his death that his wife revealed his true identity.
Ironically, the revelation has marred the legacy of a man who was actually a remarkable conservationist and really did a lot to help the environment and native species, despite lying about himself the whole time.
9. Rachel Dolezal Infamously Pretended to Be Black
In 2015 the internet was all caught up in the drama of a woman named Rachel Dolezal. She was the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP until some people began to question her credentials. Not her schooling, of course. They questioned her race. And, as it happens, they were correct. Dolezal had been born to white parents and was herself white. However, she had decided to live as an African American woman and that was how she chose to present herself to the world.
Dolezal drew attention to her own situation by reporting various unsubstantiated hate crimes that she said had been committed against her. In investigating these allegations, reporters began to find holes in her background, especially relating to her family. She claimed an African American man seen in photos was her father, and that an adopted brother was actually her son, but her biological parents were both white, and her own childhood photos showed a light-skinned blonde girl. Her mother indicated that Dolezal had been using her artistic skills to make herself look Black.
Remarkably, after all the truth came out, and she was dragged for being inconsiderate of the plight and history of Black America as well as essentially engaging in Blackface, she did not apologize. In fact, she held onto her position and says she still identifies as Black.
8. Stephen the Little Pretended to Be Tsar Peter III
It was 1766 when the man named Scepan Mali arrived in Montenegro. He came from nowhere and had no past that anyone wrote down for history to preserve. He was apparently an herbalist and skilled at healing but his greater claim to fame was that he told everyone he was Tsar Peter III. This was significant because he didn’t appear to be Russian but, more importantly, Tsar Peter III had died in 1762.
As the story went, he was seeking refuge from his enemies. Apparently he never actually claimed to be the Tsar, at least not publicly. Instead, rumors began to spread which he refused to deny even as he dropped hints that maybe they were true until it seemed like everyone knew the tale.
In a twist no one could have predicted he was declared ruler by the assembly in Montenegro and ran the country for six whole years after that. Russian even sent envoys to have him deposed who ended up endorsing him as leader after the fact because he seemed to be fairly good at the job. His rule only ended when a servant was bribed by Ottoman forces to murder him.
7. Lenny Bruce Pretended to Be Gay to Get Out of the Military
If you ever saw the show M*A*S*H, about a military hospital in the Korean war, then you likely remember the character of Corporal Maxwell Klinger. Klinger wore women’s clothing constantly, the idea being that he was trying to get kicked out of the military on a Section 8. The joke in the show was he was faking being mentally ill, which would be grounds for a medical and honorable discharge, but no one bought it so he just did his duties in drag. The character was inspired, in part, by real life comedian Lenny Bruce.
Although some sources claim Bruce “posed as a transvestite,” which allowed him to get an honorable discharge from the military, that doesn’t seem to be entirely true. The cross-dressing story seems to be bolstered by the character in M*A*S*H and is maybe a sanitized view of what Bruce actually did. According to letters that Bruce wrote, he didn’t fake being a cross-dresser, he faked being gay.
In order to receive an honorable discharge he would have needed to be both unfit for duty but not in a disgraceful way. So he reported to doctors that he had gay urges. His writing indicates he told them that he was struggling with these feelings and absolutely didn’t want them, but they came unbidden. He said he kissed other soldiers but never had sex even though he had a desire to. Basically, he presented it like an affliction that he was begging for help to overcome. And they obliged by giving him an honorable discharge which they felt could “cure” him.
6. Tania Head Faked Being a 9/11 Survivor
Some frauds just seem slimier than others and that’s firmly the case with Tania Head, onetime President of the World Trade Center Survivors Network. You’d think the main requirement for serving in such a capacity would be actually being a 9/11 survivor, but Head was not. She just lied about it.
Head claimed she had been in the South Tower on 9/11 when the plane hit. On the same floor it hit, no less. She nearly lost her arm in the mayhem and suffered burns. She was taken to safety by Welles Crowther, a man who lost his life rescuing people during the disaster. She said she woke up days later in the hospital to the news her husband, in the North tower, had died. Tragic, indeed.
Turns out the woman’s story was a fake. The man who died was her husband, but sometimes her fiance. She said she worked for Merrill Lynch but the company didn’t list her as an employee. Harvard and Stanford, her alleged schools, had no records either.
In reality, her name was Alicia Head. On September 11, 2001 she was in a class in her graduate school in Barcelona, Spain. Weirdly enough, despite her lies, other survivors in the network noted that she did great work raising money and awareness for them. She never took any money for herself, and in fact, donated her own. Their best guess is that, while truly sympathetic to what happened, she also had some weird need to be the center of the story.
5. Mamoru Samuragochi Faked Being Deaf for 18 Years
Beethoven is one of history’s greatest composers, a fact made all the more astonishing by the fact he eventually went deaf. Mamoru Samuragochi was called Japan’s Beethoven, a famous composer who, for 18 years, everyone thought was deaf, too. Turns out he just made that up and could hear fine. He also wasn’t really a composer and someone ghostwrote his music.
He supposedly went deaf at 35 but kept composing, including doing work for popular game franchises like Resident Evil. Later, his ghostwriter outed him saying the man couldn’t read sheet music and could hear fine. Samuragochi claimed he had only just started to get his hearing back. A reporter who interviewed him once actually watched the man answer the doorbell. Eventually he admitted his hearing was not as bad as he said and gave back a certificate stating he was disabled.
4. Sarah Wilson Faked Being Royalty
There’s something about the idea of misplaced royalty that the average person loves. The idea that someone is secretly special is hard to resist, and that’s how Sarah Wilson rose to prominence as Princess Susanna Caroline Matilda of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
In truth she was a convict, but in 1772, after escaping slavery, she convinced people she was the sister of the Queen.She travelled through Virginia and North Carolina, ingratiating herself to politicians and high society. She understood the manners of the court and even had a purloined picture of the Queen to help back up her claims.
Eventually she was recaptured by the man who had purchased her but then plotted yet another escape before getting married and then vanishing entirely.
3. Carlos Kaiser Faked Being a Pro Footballer
Even if you’re a fan of pro-football, or soccer if you will, you may not be familiar with Carlos Kaiser. He had a career that spanned over 20 years in the game and 13 different teams including Flamengo and Vasco de Gama and you will never, ever see highlights of him even attempting to kick a ball because it never happened.
Hailing from Rio de Janeiro, he befriended players and club owners alike, telling everyone how great a player he was. No one ever saw him play, but he was charming as hell so people believed him. He got signed to a team and then would immediately get injured so he never had to actually play. He played kids to mob him so he could fake getting hurt and paid spectators to chant his name when the bosses were around.
According to Kaiser himself, he liked being a player and being around players,he just never liked playing. Lies, scams and ruses got him through years of non-play as a result. When one team got sick of him, another team would fall for his charming lies and the game continued.
2. A Woman Faked Being a Nurse for 20 Years
Ever notice the diploma on your doctor’s wall? Probably gives you some peace of mind that the doctor knows what they’re doing. But what about in a hospital? What about your nurse? Are you confident they’re skilled?
A woman in Canada managed to spend 20 years working as a nurse with no education at all. She had the same name as a real nurse and was using her identity to work, including during surgeries. She was only caught after noticing some issues with her license number, which she shared with the real nurse. No word on whether anyone was ever harmed as a result of her work.
1. There Was a Double Faked US Embassy in Ghana
Thanks to long-lived internet scams, Africa is known as a hotbed of fraud these days. And while fraud online or over the phone is easy to wrap your head around, the fake embassy scam that was run in Ghana is a whole new level.
In 2016, authorities took a special interest in the US Embassy located in Accra, Ghana. For ten years the embassy had been doing the sort of business you’d expect an embassy to be doing like issuing visas. An American flag hung outside and a portrait of Barack Obama was on the wall. Except the embassy wasn’t real. Scammers were selling forged documents for around $6000. The fake embassy was raided and scammers were arrested, shutting the whole operation down in a joint venture between US and Ghanian forces. This all came from the US Department of State and, in fact, is still detailed on their website. But here’s where things get weird.
A journalist looking into the story decided to follow up with Ghanian police who had no idea what the story was about. The State Department says they conducted the raid with the Ghana Detectives Bureau, and that’s not even a real branch of law enforcement in Ghana.
No local cops conducted the raid, and no cops anywhere in the country knew about it. And the photo of the fake embassy that accompanied the story was actually taken by one of the fraud detectives who would have been on a case like this had it been real. He took the photo earlier in the year acting on a tip that the building was issuing fraud visas but found nothing there. Other photos were also his, taken at other places and other times.
As far as anyone can tell, this fake embassy is a double fake. The State Department seems to have faked the story of a fake embassy for reasons unknown, since they have stuck to their story despite a mountain of evidence that it’s not real. In this instance, the fake was faked. Maybe for PR reasons, maybe not. Hard to say when no one is explaining themselves.