From CrimeReads:
Thérèse Humbert: Born a French peasant, Humbert moved rapidly up the social ladder when she announced that she had inherited $20 million from an American industrialist whom she had nursed back to health from a serious illness. She then had her two brothers pose as nephews of the dead man who brought lawsuits contesting the non-existent will, eventually forcing the French courts to seal the safe in which the fortune was supposedly secured until the lawsuits were settled. Madame Humbert then proceeded to borrow at usurious rates against her expected inheritance, obtaining an estimated $14 million over a period of thirty years. Finally, one of her creditors forced the authorities to open the safe which contained about $1,000 in negotiable bonds, an empty jewel box and some brass buttons. Many of her creditors were ruined, but she and her cohorts only received short prison sentences. I used Madame Humber’s version of the Drake Inheritance, a con that dates back to Sir Francis Drake in the Sixteenth Century, in City of Fortune. My version has a much happier ending.
—one of three in "My Favorite Con Artists", December 21, 2022.
The other two are more famous
