Fraud has been around for as long as human beings have existed, and surprisingly, some of the scams we may think are recent actually go back centuries. From billion-dollar banking scandals to fake heiresses, every famous case in history has left victims shocked, the public outraged, and the world fascinated. Some fraudsters scammed entire countries, while others carefully targeted their unsuspecting victims, but all of them had a lasting impact. In this list, we’ve compiled 25 of the biggest fraud cases that made headlines and ultimately changed history.
#1 The Tinder Swindler (2017)
What better way to start this list than with the infamous Tinder Swindler, who took over our TV screens in 2022. Simon Leviev was exposed for running financial scams on unsuspecting women he’d matched with on Tinder. In 2015, Leviev was convicted of fraud in Finland, and unbelievably, that isn’t where his crimes ended. In 2019, he was sentenced to 15 months in an Israeli prison for scamming women in Europe out of thousands of dollars using a fake identity and shady manipulation tactics.
