How could someone steal a country?
The Man Who Stole Portugal: The Greatest Swindle of All Time, by Murray Teigh Bloom (HC, 1966, $3)
"Artur Virgilio Alves Reis, the amateur composer of crime, had... [none of the usual] advantages. In terms of his targets- The Bank of Portugal and the world of banknotes- he was a complete outsider; and nearly a penniless one ... in 1924. Nor did he have any particular criminal skills. Worse, he was often careless with detail. And the three men he had chosen to help him could never be told the whole truth because anyone with a scrap of sense would know this insane scheme had no chance of success."
Amazingly his idea was not to make counterfeit bills, but to convince the genuine printer to use authentic plates to print extra money, and to give it to him. It shouldn't have worked, but somehow it did. When Reis used the money, he got rich. Portugal, on the other hand, ended up with inflation, which is never a good thing. Once the fraud was discovered The Bank of Portugal had to honor the fake banknotes, for there was no way to tell the real from the fake. What a mess, and it was a mess that unwound during the Depression!
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table, avail. 5/27. (L-GNF)
