ARTHUR FURGUSON

IT takes just three ingredients to create confidence tricks of monumental proportions… a famous landmark, a fool gawping at it and a fraudster to dupe him.

One of the most infamous of such stories is Arthur Furguson, a Scottish actor who had once played the role of an American cheated by a conman – which gave him the idea for his brazen stunts.

Within a few weeks in 1925, Furguson conned three American tourists into buying London landmarks: Big Ben, Nelson’s Column and Buckingham Palace.

So impressed was he with the Americans’ generosity that he emigrated there, first selling a Texas rancher a lease on the White House for $100,000, then flogging an Australian the Statue of Liberty so that it could be relocated to Sydney Harbour. Caught and jailed for five years, Furguson retired to California where he died in 1938. Or did he? That, at least, is the story that has circulated for half a century.

But according to Dane Love, author of a recent book on Scots hoaxers, the existence of Furguson himself is a ruse.

Love tried to trace records which would confirm the story but he found “nothing about his supposed arrest in New York, his trial, his five years in jail or his grave in Los Angeles”.

The author spoke out after know-all Stephen Fry, of TV quiz show QI, was duped by the story.

The host, who often ridicules contestants for their wrong answers, gave viewers a detailed catalogue of the conman’s exploits.

But Dane says: “The story is itself a fake – with Arthur Furguson having the same initials as April Fool!”