Fraud and Famous Scams
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50 free Fraud and Famous Scams trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Fraud is the one offence that needs the victim's cooperation. Every great swindle works because someone wanted to believe it: the guaranteed return, the secret bargain, the charming stranger with an impressive name. That is also why the stories are so hard to put down. This quiz covers the con artists who sold things they never owned, the Ponzi schemers and rogue traders who ruined investors, the corporate scandals that changed how company accounts are policed, and the forgers, impostors and cheats who fooled experts, publishers and television producers. A handful of questions test the vocabulary of financial deception that turns up in compliance training and business courses. It suits podcast listeners who love a good scam story, business students, and anyone who has wondered how so many clever people were taken in. Every answer comes with a short explanation of how the trick worked or how it came apart.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which European landmark did con man Victor Lustig 'sell' to a scrap metal dealer in 1925?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was 'for sale' because Lustig posed as a ministry official and claimed Paris could no longer afford its upkeep. His mark, André Poisson, even paid him a bribe to win the deal.
Q 02Malaysian investigators alleged that money stolen from the 1MDB state fund financed which Martin Scorsese film?
The Wolf of Wall Street
The Wolf of Wall Street, a film about a stock swindler, was itself allegedly paid for with looted public money. Its producer Riza Aziz was arrested in Malaysia in 2019.
Q 03Which country's basketball team lost a 2000 Paralympic title after a journalist exposed players with no disability?
Spain
Spain entered the intellectual-disability tournament with a squad that included reporter Carlos Ribagorda, who then revealed that most of his teammates had never been medically tested.
Q 04Which pop duo lost the 1990 Best New Artist Grammy after other singers were revealed to have made the records?
Milli Vanilli
Milli Vanilli were two dancers who lip-synced to session vocalists hired by their producer. He fired them and confirmed the secret days before the award was taken back.
Q 05An ex-policeman known as 'Uncle Jerry' stole winning pieces from which fast-food chain's Monopoly game?
McDonald's
McDonald's had outsourced the game to a marketing firm whose security chief, Jerome Jacobson, passed the top pieces to friends, family and a mob associate until the scam was uncovered in 2001.
Q 06How did a fellow contestant signal answers to Major Charles Ingram on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Coughing
Coughing from contestant Tecwen Whittock lined up with Ingram's correct answers, the production team noticed. Ingram reached the £1 million jackpot in 2001 but was never paid, and was convicted in 2003.
Q 07Charles Ponzi promised investors 50% profit in 45 days by trading which international postal item?
Reply coupons
Reply coupons bought cheaply in Italy could be swapped for pricier US stamps, a real loophole. In practice Ponzi simply paid earlier investors with the money of later ones.
Q 08Convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli had to forfeit a one-of-a-kind album recorded by which hip-hop group?
Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan made only one copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which Shkreli bought at auction in 2015. A federal court seized it after his securities fraud conviction.
Q 09Which 'missing link' fossil announced in England in 1912 was really a human skull with an orangutan jaw?
Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man was accepted by many scientists for four decades. Tests in 1953 exposed the Sussex find as a forgery that paired a medieval human skull with the 500-year-old jaw of an orangutan.
Q 10Con man George C. Parker repeatedly 'sold' which New York landmark to newly arrived immigrants?
Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge sales were Parker's signature scam, and he also offered Grant's Tomb while posing as the general's grandson. He died serving a life sentence in Sing Sing.
Q 11Which stock exchange did Bernie Madoff once chair, long before his Ponzi scheme earned him a 150-year sentence?
Nasdaq
Nasdaq grew out of electronic trading technology that Madoff's own firm helped to develop. His 2009 prison term was the maximum the judge could impose.
Q 12Which blood-testing startup did Elizabeth Holmes found at 19 while she was a Stanford undergraduate?
Theranos
Theranos peaked at a $9 billion valuation on the false claim that its compact machines could run accurate tests on a few drops of blood. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors in 2022.
Q 13Which rapper organised the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival in the Bahamas with entrepreneur Billy McFarland?
Ja Rule
Q 21Which accounting giant collapsed in 2002 after being convicted of shredding documents from the Enron audit?
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen gave up its licences to practise within weeks of the verdict. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction three years later, far too late to save the firm.
Q 22Rogue trader Nick Leeson's hidden losses in Singapore brought down which historic British merchant bank in 1995?
Barings
Barings was Britain's oldest merchant bank when Leeson's unauthorised bets sank it. He was convicted in a Singapore court and served more than four years in Changi Prison.
Q 23Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after the 2022 collapse of which cryptocurrency exchange?
FTX
Ja Rule helped sell a luxury island weekend that delivered packaged sandwiches and rain-soaked tents instead of gourmet meals and villas. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison.
Q 14Which 2022 drama series cast Julia Garner as the fake heiress who conned New York under the surname Delvey?
Inventing Anna
Inventing Anna was created by Shonda Rhimes from a New York magazine article about Anna Sorokin, a Russian-born fraudster who posed as a wealthy socialite.
Q 15Advance-fee email scams are nicknamed '419' after the fraud section of which country's criminal code?
Nigeria
Nigeria also gave the scam its 'prince' nickname: the victim pays fees up front in the hope of a fortune that never arrives.
Q 16In 1983 Stern magazine paid millions for sixty forged diaries supposedly written by which historical figure?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler's supposed journals were written by forger Konrad Kujau between 1981 and 1983. Kujau and the Stern reporter who bought them both went to prison.
Q 17Which con man's tales of posing as a Pan Am pilot and doctor inspired the film Catch Me If You Can?
Frank Abagnale
Frank Abagnale was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 film. A later investigation of public records concluded that most of his claimed criminal career was itself made up.
Q 18Which carmaker admitted in 2015 that 11 million diesel cars carried software built to cheat emissions tests?
Volkswagen
Volkswagen's 'defeat device' kept engines within pollution limits only while they were being tested. The company pleaded guilty to US criminal charges in 2017.
Q 19Which US bank was fined $185 million in 2016 after staff opened millions of accounts without customers' consent?
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo staff were chasing aggressive internal sales goals, and created about 1.5 million deposit accounts and more than half a million credit cards that nobody had requested.
Q 20Author Clifford Irving went to prison for faking the 'autobiography' of which reclusive billionaire?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes broke years of silence with a televised telephone conference to say he had never even met Irving. The author confessed and served 17 months.
FTX was only founded in 2019 and filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. Its founder was arrested in the Bahamas a month later and ordered to forfeit $11 billion.
Q 24Simon Leviev allegedly posed as a diamond mogul's son to borrow fortunes from women he met on which app?
Tinder
Tinder gave the 2022 Netflix documentary about him its title, and three of the women tell the story on screen. Born Shimon Hayut, he took the surname of a real diamond billionaire.
Q 25Rosie Ruiz was stripped of her 1980 win in which race after officials found she had not run the whole course?
Boston Marathon
Boston Marathon officials took back her title eight days after the race. Her qualifying run in New York was annulled too, after a photographer recalled meeting her on the subway mid-race.
Q 26Dutch forger Han van Meegeren fooled Nazi leader Hermann Göring with a fake painting by which Old Master?
Vermeer
Vermeer fakes saved their maker: accused of handing Dutch cultural property to the enemy, he proved the canvas was his own work, the charge was dropped and he became a national hero.
Q 27Cassie Chadwick borrowed millions from American banks around 1900 by posing as which tycoon's illegitimate daughter?
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie's supposed heiress was really Elizabeth Bigley, a Canadian with an earlier forgery conviction. She had a lawyer take her to the industrialist's New York home to seed the story.
Q 28Lou Pearlman, later jailed for a huge Ponzi scheme, created which boy band before launching NSYNC?
Backstreet Boys
Backstreet Boys were five unknowns chosen by Pearlman in a $3 million talent search. He turned the fame of his groups into the engine of a scheme that left over $300 million in debts.
Q 29Barry Minkow's ZZZZ Best, founded in high school and floated in 1986 on forged contracts, was in which line of business?
Carpet cleaning
Carpet cleaning was the real trade, but most reported revenue came from insurance restoration jobs that existed only on forged paperwork. The accountant who audited it before the float never visited the sites.
Q 30Which Munich-based payments company filed for insolvency in 2020 after revealing that €1.9 billion was 'missing'?
Wirecard
Wirecard had been promoted to the DAX index of leading German companies only two years earlier. Its chief executive was arrested, while operations chief Jan Marsalek fled to Belarus.