The 10 Most Unwanted
A rogues' gallery of swindlers, frauds, and fakes who preyed upon and exploited the innocence, kindness, good humor, and trusting nature of Minnesotans. Darn them!
By Tim Brady and Burl Gilyard
Photo by Liz Lomax (Sculptures)
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No. 3
Lord Gordon-Gordon
the scot who was not
In days of yore, phony European aristocrats arrived on the shores of the New World by the boatload—or so it seemed. Lord Gordon-Gordon first popped up in Minneapolis in 1871, claiming he was searching for a way to alleviate overcrowding on his vast Scottish estate. He hoped to establish a colony of immigrants—tenants from his own property—on the Minnesota prairie. Wielding charm, impeccable manners, and that fancy double moniker, he persuaded local powers that he was prepared to invest millions in western Minnesota railroad lands. The Northern Pacific, strapped for cash and looking for a moneyed angel to finance the construction of a line into the Dakotas, wined and dined Gordon-Gordon on an extensive tour of the state’s western reaches. His Lordship platted, surveyed, and claimed hundreds of thousands of acres of Minnesota, before heading to New York with a glowing letter of introduction from Northern Pacific executives to East Coast financiers.
Using his Minnesota “property” like a letter of credit, Lord Gordon-Gordon was able to dupe such prominent New Yorkers as Horace Greeley and Jay Gould, who handed Gordon-Gordon $150,000 in Erie Railroad stock, before the law caught up with him and issued a court summons.
The verdict: We’re suckers for a rogue with a brogue.
Just deserts? Perhaps auguring the likely outcome of his trial, Gordon-Gordon skipped town before sentencing and headed for Winnipeg. When the Minnesotans who’d been conned by Gordon-Gordon heard the news, they sent a contingent north to arrest him. But it was too little, too late: Gordon-Gordon had by this time charmed his Canadian hosts. The police jailed the very posse that had hoped to put the pretender behind bars.
No. 2
Christopher Smith
internet pill Pusher
Twenty-something Christopher Smith fashioned himself as an Internet entrepreneur: a successful, self-made capitalist, shrewdly using the tools of the new millennium to turn a buck. Federal prosecutors saw it differently: They charged that Smith, of Prior Lake, was little more than an online drug dealer. Smith may have been a high-school dropout, but his Burnsville–based Xpress Pharmacy Direct illegally sold more than $20 million in drugs, including addictive painkillers. A physician in New Jersey signed off on prescriptions for thousands of patients he’d never met—in exchange for bags of cash.
As profits rolled in, Smith lived large, with a million-dollar home and a Lamborghini. When the feds shut down Smith’s site, he simply moved the operation offshore. But in July 2005, the law collared the dubious druggist after he stepped off a plane from the Dominican Republic, where he had established another online pharmacy. Last November, Smith was found guilty on charges calling for at least 20 years in jail.
The verdict: Sheer brazenness would catapult Smith to the top of almost any list of miscreants. But it’s his impact on global warming that really galls us: In addition to the Lamborghini, he owned, according to one report, three Mercedes, a Ferrari, a BMW, a Jeep, a Hummer, a Chevy Tahoe, and a Cadillac DeVille limousine.
Sucker punch! In March 2006, prosecutors alleged that Smith, while in custody at the Sherburne County Jail, had tried to hire a hit man. Is no one making a movie about this?
No. 1
Franklin Steele
The Man who flipped Fort Snelling
Franklin Steele came to Minnesota to seek his fortune in 1837 and began his career as a storekeeper at Fort Snelling. But he quickly found real estate more to his liking. When he learned that Congress was about to allow homesteading on a swath of land just north of the fort, Steele rushed to the Falls of St. Anthony and staked a claim that in a few years time would lie at the heart of a burgeoning city.
That was Act One. Act Two began in the 1850s, when Fort Snelling fell into disrepair. The War Department decided to sell the garrison to a Minneapolis investor by means of a no-bid contract: The man who now held the keys to the fort was, of course, none other than Steele, who parceled up the property around the fort and began selling off 40-acre lots. Even after the real-estate market tanked, he still made off like a bandit. During the Civil War, he leased the property back to the feds and, at the end of the conflict, presented a bill for its use: That’ll be $162,000, please—more than five times the price Steele had paid for the land.
The verdict: Steele made only one mistake: He didn’t anticipate the condo rush.
Sucker punch! In 1871, the federal government tried to revoke both the original sale of the land and the rental agreement as fraudulent. It didn’t work. The army eventually got the building back, but Steele, never one to lose his shirt, kept 6,000 acres.
Tim Brady, a St. Paul freelance writer, and Burl Gilyard, a reporter with Finance & Commerce, are frequent contributors to Minnesota Monthly.
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Reader Comments:
It seems that it is impossible to get a even handed story on most of your stories. Your lack of accuracy is amazing and your tongue in cheek attacks border on cruel in your Article of “10 Most Unwanted”.
Dee Henderson the “former Mrs. Minnesota is serving her time in Pekin Illinois with dignity. Your story contains no accurate facts about her case and trots out the tired old miss information