Back in 1872 the American West was gripped by gold fever. Everyone wanted to strike it rich. The crazy stories of sudden overnight wealth made people completely blind to common sense. Two ordinary cousins named Philip Arnold and John Slack knew exactly how to use that powerful greed against the smartest men in the country. They walked into a high end bank in San Francisco looking dirty and totally exhausted from the trail. They asked to store a heavy leather bag in the giant vault.
When the curious bankers finally peeked inside they saw a massive pile of uncut diamonds and bright red rubies. The cousins acted like simple uneducated miners who had accidentally stumbled onto the greatest treasure in human history.
In reality they were setting up the most brilliant and bold scam of the entire century.
Setting The Ultimate Trap
The rich men of San Francisco begged the cousins to share the location. Arnold and Slack played hard to get. They mumbled about a secret spot hidden deep in dangerous territory. This secrecy made the wealthy investors want it even more. They practically forced the two cousins to take their money in exchange for a piece of the action.
With that initial cash the two con artists took a quiet trip to London. They bought cheap industrial grade diamonds and bags of low quality rubies and sapphires for a few thousand dollars. They took these worthless stones to a remote flat mesa right on the border of Wyoming and Colorado. They spent days burying the gems in the dirt and leaving them sitting visibly on top of anthills. They were planting a garden of fake treasure to catch billionaires.
Hooking The Biggest Fish
To make the scam work they needed a trusted expert to verify the claim. They agreed to take a famous mining engineer to the secret location. But there was a catch. They blindfolded him for the last few days of the journey so he would have absolutely no idea where they actually were.
When the expert finally took off his blindfold he saw diamonds literally lying directly on the ground. He went completely crazy with excitement. He wrote a glowing official report that convinced the biggest names in America to invest immediately. Even the famous founder of Tiffany and Company inspected a sample of the stones in New York and declared them incredibly valuable. The rich guys gladly handed over hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out the two humble miners.
Arnold and Slack took the giant pile of cash and quietly disappeared into the wind.
The Geologist Who Ruined Everything
A massive new corporation was getting ready to dig up millions of dollars a month. But a government geologist named Clarence King became very suspicious of the whole magical story. He used tiny clues from the blindfolded expert to track down the exact location of the secret field.
King and his team started digging. At first they were amazed to find real diamonds and rubies right near the surface. But King noticed something completely wrong. In nature diamonds and rubies are formed in totally different geological conditions. Finding them sitting right next to each other in the dirt was scientifically impossible.
Then one of his men picked up a diamond that had tiny tool marks on it. It had clearly been cut by a professional jeweler. The game was totally over. The secret field had been salted with cheap imported trash. The wealthy investors were completely humiliated and lost absolute fortunes. The two clever cousins walked away very rich men proving that sometimes the easiest people to fool are the ones who already have too much money.
References: Smithsonian Magazine / EARTH Magazine