The conman and soldier who invented a paradise. Then sold it
It was one of the biggest scams the world has ever seen, resulting in the deaths of many Scots and destroying the lives of countless others.
Yet Gregor MacGregor, with his self-anointed knighthood, escaped without conviction and was even brazen enough to attempt the fraud again.
From 1820, the Stirlingshire soldier duped his fellow Scots into investing in a Central American utopia he claimed to have discovered and purchased on his travels. He called it Poyais and announced he was its Cazique – its prince or chief.
MacGregor produced literature on the Eden-esque new country and promoted it through newspapers. He printed worthless Bank of Poyais dollar notes and proclaimed to already have the beginnings of a democratic government, army and civil service established. Now all he needed were settlers.
Fooled by his incredible rhetoric, families parted with their savings to invest in Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, and embarked in September 1822 on the long journey.
A guidebook promised much – fertile ground that could be harvested three times a year, trees teeming with fruit, refreshing water, and even chunks of gold along the riverbeds – but when the settlers arrived they found no rivers of gold or fields of dreams.
Instead, there was nothing to be discovered but the desolate, deserted jungle of the Mosquito Coast. Confused, they believed they had arrived in the wrong
area and someone from Poyais would come for them.
By the time the second ship of settlers arrived in March the following year, the original expedition were in a state of bewilderment,
confusion and denial as to what had become of their promised fresh beginnings.
Torrential rain brought disease, landslides and insects, and the settlers became fevered, sick and
depressed. It was too much for some, with suicide not uncommon.
In May 1823, a ship carrying an embassy to the Mosquito King from British Honduras came upon their camp. The settlers were told Poyais didn’t exist and their only chance of survival was to travel with them to Belize.
In the end, only 50 of the settlers ever made it back to Britain. Remarkably, they refused to apportion blame for the deadly exodus on MacGregor. He had been so convincing they blamed his associates instead.
Incredibly, MacGregor then moved to France and reignited the scheme there.
His lies caught up with him, for a short while at least, when he was imprisoned for eight months. But his lawyers argued his case so well that he was acquitted.
While the Poyais fraud was his biggest scam, he had been working towards it all his life. He was a Walter Mitty before there was a Walter Mitty.
Having joined the British Army at 16, he eventually travelled to Central America and fought against the Spanish, creating and embellishing tales of his military service and social status along the way.
He returned to Venezuela in 1838, where he was granted citizenship. When hediedonDecember4, 1845, aged 58, he was buried with full military honours in Caracas Cathedral, with the country’s president, cabinet ministers and military chiefs walking behind his coffin. The obituaries in his adopted homeland made no mention of Poyais or any of his other scams, and instead regarded him as a hero.