Speaker 1: And it's another episode of a podcast that I do.
Speaker 1: I have forgotten which one. Sophie, what is my job? You?
Speaker 1: You you are a professional podcaster you hosted That does
Speaker 1: not sound right. I know even when I said it,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you're Robert Evans, the host of
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, a show about the work history and today. Oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot it because of the head injuries. Um well,
Speaker 1: then I guess I should read this script that someone
Speaker 1: has handed me. Uh and the script says that my
Speaker 1: guest today is Lacy. Mostly script is right. Oh, I
Speaker 1: love a manufactured Jamaican air horn. It's my favorite. Yeah. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there's no air horn like the one you pretend to
Speaker 1: make with your mouth. So, Lacy, how's it going. Let's
Speaker 1: say I assume because it's minutes after we recorded the
Speaker 1: first episode, it's going good. It's nice to talk to people.
Speaker 1: Like on days where I have lots of podcasts, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a long day. But then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just talking to people I like, so then it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I uh. I don't have many social outlets
Speaker 1: these days because of the plague and being an introvert.
Speaker 1: So yes, I too, I too get all of my
Speaker 1: social life by talking about con men with my friends
Speaker 1: over the internet. So thank you for being my con
Speaker 1: man friend. Yes, I love this. Wait were you doing
Speaker 1: lots of socializing before COVID? I feel like you know. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was mostly hiding in a fortified compact anyway. So
Speaker 1: when Gregor McGregor traveled back to London in one he
Speaker 1: brought back with him his wife in a scheme that
Speaker 1: was on the surface very silly. The land that he
Speaker 1: had been given was beautiful, but again worthless from a
Speaker 1: financial perspective. It was a bad place to grow. It
Speaker 1: was completely uncultivated, so discovering like whatever resources might be
Speaker 1: there would take lifetime's worth of work. You'd have to
Speaker 1: cut through miles of jungle to even do anything. There
Speaker 1: were natives there, but none of the kind of cultivated
Speaker 1: infrastructure that Europeans looked for in colonial prospects. Remember, the
Speaker 1: most successful colonies that Europeans took were in places where
Speaker 1: like locals had been doing ship for a while, like
Speaker 1: food was growing, like ship was They kind of had
Speaker 1: to just move in. And this is not that this
Speaker 1: is like, this is actual uncultivated country. None of this
Speaker 1: matter to Gregor, obviously, because he had no plan in
Speaker 1: doing anything employer. His plan was to lie and pretend
Speaker 1: it was an actual independent nation, filled with riches and
Speaker 1: fertile land and friendly natives eager to learn from British
Speaker 1: civil Friendly natives, you know, natives we love when when
Speaker 1: the Brits come and take all our ship and give
Speaker 1: us us They love it. Oh that doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: the British name. More than forty times they did that.
Speaker 1: Come all, we're here, we we love to see it.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah. He his plan was to drum up
Speaker 1: a media frenzy around his new country and Great Britain
Speaker 1: and sell plots of land back to Global Rubes. And
Speaker 1: then it wasn't really clear what he planned to do
Speaker 1: after that, but it was like, if you've seen the
Speaker 1: monorail episode of The Simpsons, that's kind of what he
Speaker 1: was going for. It seems like. So as it happened,
Speaker 1: Gregor landed in London during the best possible time to
Speaker 1: sell a fake Latin American nation idiots. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to explain how this scheme got off the ground, but
Speaker 1: first I'm gonna have to walk you through how stock
Speaker 1: trading worked in the eighteen twenties. And this is a
Speaker 1: funner story than you might expect. So the idea of
Speaker 1: trading stocks is still pretty new in the eighteen twenties.
Speaker 1: People have not been doing it in like a kind
Speaker 1: of recognizable modern way for a long time. The whole
Speaker 1: concept had arisen in London during the time of Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: the first out of what was called merchant banking, the
Speaker 1: selling and trading of various commodities. Now this took off
Speaker 1: in the Aisles because the continent of Europe's but basically
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds fighting a bunch of
Speaker 1: horribly bloody wars, and the men who profited from those
Speaker 1: wars did all of their financial gambling in London because
Speaker 1: London was safe. Right, people aren't getting over to England
Speaker 1: into when they're fighting. Um, so it's a pretty good
Speaker 1: place to do your trading. Uh So. It was an
Speaker 1: English bank that managed the fifteen million dollar loan that
Speaker 1: let the US by Louisiana, And it was Rothschild's bank
Speaker 1: that loaned Britain and her allies more than a hundred
Speaker 1: million pounds during the Napoleonic wars. Now, when those wars ended,
Speaker 1: the situations kind of like it was for the US
Speaker 1: and World War Two, where everyone else is devastated and
Speaker 1: the British are doing all right, um, and they kind
Speaker 1: of like wind up holding everybody's money at the end
Speaker 1: of that war. Uh. And so with the fighting over,
Speaker 1: you had all these rich guys who had more money
Speaker 1: than ever and they wanted to make even more money
Speaker 1: with that, because that's the only thing rich guys do
Speaker 1: with huge piles of money. So they want to do, yeah,
Speaker 1: their hoarders, and they want to like make more money
Speaker 1: and they so they want to like gamble on something.
Speaker 1: And the Royal Exchange had for decades kind of handled
Speaker 1: that gambling. But by the end of the Napoleonic Wars,
Speaker 1: there's way too much money for this tiny little exchange
Speaker 1: to handle and there was no like real regulation and
Speaker 1: this this had started to become a problem. They were
Speaker 1: all these frauds and conman and uh, yeah, people were
Speaker 1: worried that the entire economy was going to collapse under
Speaker 1: like a whole bunch of giant grifts. And this had
Speaker 1: happened before, and it kind of happened repeatedly. As soon
Speaker 1: as people started trading stocks. UH. In seventeen twenty, there
Speaker 1: was something called the south Sea Bubble. This started when
Speaker 1: the south Sea Company bribed the British government with millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in exchange for monopoly and South American trade. UH.
Speaker 1: The government needed that money for a different war with France,
Speaker 1: so they passed a bill to make this legal um
Speaker 1: and suddenly all like the south Sea Company stock rises
Speaker 1: to ten times its value, and all these Englishmen see
Speaker 1: like it's like with bitcoin, suddenly like oh my god,
Speaker 1: that got worth so much more overnight. Something else has
Speaker 1: got to be like that. What if I invest in
Speaker 1: something else and then I can get rich too, And
Speaker 1: so there's like anyway, speculation starts running wild and people
Speaker 1: start investing in some really stupid ship. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from a write up in Historic UK here speculation
Speaker 1: ran wild, and all sorts of companies, some lunatics, some
Speaker 1: fraudulent or just optimistic, were launched. For example, one company
Speaker 1: floated was to buy the Irish bogs. Another was to
Speaker 1: manage manufacture a gun to fire square cannon balls, and
Speaker 1: most ludicrous at all quote this was an investment at
Speaker 1: the time for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage,
Speaker 1: but no one to know what it is. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: not how to scam silicon. Then they're like, if we
Speaker 1: tail you, then somebody's most steal it. But just give
Speaker 1: us money for the thing that would make it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course the bubble burst and the entire economy
Speaker 1: collapsed and the government had to resign. So like that
Speaker 1: had happened about a century before, and people saw the
Speaker 1: same stuff starting to happen again and they got like
Speaker 1: really worried. Um, So the more level headed citizens in
Speaker 1: England decided to make a system of rules and regulations
Speaker 1: to govern the selling of stocks so the country wouldn't
Speaker 1: be destroyed completely by reckless greed. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of how the London Stock Exchange came about. And like
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot more to the history than that,
Speaker 1: but that's more or less the anyway. So you get
Speaker 1: this stock exchanged by the eighteen hundreds and it regulates
Speaker 1: trading and only approved entities could list commodities for sale
Speaker 1: or sell commercial stock, so fraud was kept to a minimum,
Speaker 1: which was good for the economy but bad for people
Speaker 1: who want to get rich quick, bad for fraud, Bad
Speaker 1: for fraud uh, So the London Stock Exchange worked for
Speaker 1: a while to keep fraud in check. But then Napoleon
Speaker 1: loses his war and British, the British wind up with
Speaker 1: all of the money in the world, and that kind
Speaker 1: of makes people reckless, so they start looking for schemes
Speaker 1: that they can't find on the London Stock Exchange because
Speaker 1: it's vaguely legitimate. And I'm gonna quote from the economist
Speaker 1: here to explain what happened next. The economy was expanding steadily,
Speaker 1: driven on by manufacturing. The cost of living was falling,
Speaker 1: with industrial workers wages rising, Interest rates drifted down with
Speaker 1: the government borrowing more and more cheaply. The country was
Speaker 1: in an upbeat mood. The downside to all this was
Speaker 1: that investing in government debt, a staple place to park
Speaker 1: spare funds, had become boring. The market rate on the
Speaker 1: most popular British government bond else steadily between eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen twenty five. The government made the most of this,
Speaker 1: swapping its existing debt for new bonds that paid rates
Speaker 1: as low as three percent. All this gave British investors
Speaker 1: the incentive and the confidence to look for more exciting opportunities.
Speaker 1: One option was to lend money to governments that paid
Speaker 1: higher interest rates. Russia, Prussia, and Denmark all had good
Speaker 1: credit records but offered a five percent return. So this
Speaker 1: is what how it happens at first, as they start
Speaker 1: investing in foreign companies that offer more of a return
Speaker 1: than the government, and foreign bonds weren't traded in the
Speaker 1: stock exchange, so there's no regulation. Now this is okay
Speaker 1: when you're investing in like Denmark, because Denmark is a
Speaker 1: real country and like, you know that your investment is
Speaker 1: not going to just like fly away. Right Prussia is
Speaker 1: not going to default on all of its debt. But
Speaker 1: right at this time, like this, this is it's kind
Speaker 1: of an open place where a scammer could establish themselves
Speaker 1: and it's not a scam is maybe the wrong way
Speaker 1: to put it. But less less set, less safe bets
Speaker 1: start start being possible. Yeah, it's so all of these
Speaker 1: South American colonies that we've been talking about had been
Speaker 1: in the process of fighting wars against their colonial oppressures
Speaker 1: and winning them. And you start wanding, you start having
Speaker 1: independent South American states at this point, uh and and
Speaker 1: these are very new countries and they just finished fighting
Speaker 1: these horrible wars, so they had a need for a
Speaker 1: bunch of cash. And all these people in Great Britain
Speaker 1: are both obsessed with South America and they have too
Speaker 1: much money. So you get this kind of like perfect storm.
Speaker 1: And it starts with Colombia, which is the first new
Speaker 1: nation that comes to the people of Great Britain asking
Speaker 1: for a loan. They wanted two million pounds and this
Speaker 1: is uh they offer, and like they're willing to offer
Speaker 1: a six percent return rate, which was actually illegal in
Speaker 1: Britain at the time because it's too high. Because it's
Speaker 1: too high, and the government's like any any anything with
Speaker 1: the return that high has to be somehow what's sketchy. Um.
Speaker 1: But people fall for this and they like, they love it,
Speaker 1: and they invest a shipload of money in Colombia. And
Speaker 1: the way that Columbia has to like the country to
Speaker 1: do this is Columbia. So they kind of go to
Speaker 1: an effort to convince people that they're legitimate, that like
Speaker 1: they'll be able to pay this back. So they print
Speaker 1: up all these brochures with lists of like the revenues
Speaker 1: they expect to make and how good their tobacco market's
Speaker 1: going to be. And how much gold and silver they're
Speaker 1: going to be mining as soon as the economy gets
Speaker 1: off the ground. Uh. So it seems like a stable investment.
Speaker 1: People go fucking wild for Colombian bonds and the bonds
Speaker 1: run out almost immediately. Uh, and so people start like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people are very hungry for another opportunity like that. And
Speaker 1: so Chile comes up, and Chile is like, well, we
Speaker 1: like alone too, and then Peru comes up next. And
Speaker 1: by the time Peru starts offering investments, they're not even
Speaker 1: telling people what natural resources they have to guarantee they're
Speaker 1: they're they're just being like, hey, we're fucking Peru. You
Speaker 1: guys want some of this ship And they guess correctly
Speaker 1: that like London was, no one was going to factory
Speaker 1: like we just like Colombia were just like know everything.
Speaker 1: They said, that's what we're doing too in Peru. Just
Speaker 1: give us the money. Yeah, we'll which of course we
Speaker 1: probably have gold probably you don't know, soil, very rich
Speaker 1: soil the other day. Anyway, give us. Now, these were
Speaker 1: not necessary, These were not all great investments. Obviously, all
Speaker 1: these countries do have natural resources, but Latin America was
Speaker 1: still fighting a whole bunch of civil wars. All of
Speaker 1: these countries were still fighting, like none of their governments
Speaker 1: were actually really all that settled at this point. They
Speaker 1: had no credit history, and nothing was known about the
Speaker 1: resources of these places or when they would start being
Speaker 1: the kind of seeing the kind of profits that all
Speaker 1: these British people were going to expect. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: even possible to truly vet that all the men claiming
Speaker 1: to represent these governments were who they said they were,
Speaker 1: So it's like, who, Yeah, none of these nations are
Speaker 1: even recognized by the British governments. Now. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the only path to being legitimate is being recognized colonizers. However,
Speaker 1: I do think it's fun that it's like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't know who's going to be in charge tomorrow. We
Speaker 1: are definitely yeah. And if you are a British and
Speaker 1: vest and your country doesn't recognize this as a country,
Speaker 1: that might be a sign that like, okay, this maybe
Speaker 1: I should be a little bit more. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they invested a bunch of money in these places, um,
Speaker 1: and this is the London that Gregor McGregor, the Prince
Speaker 1: of Poier, walks into in eighty two. And the only
Speaker 1: disadvantage he had when he was trying because he he
Speaker 1: wants to do the same thing with Poier. He wants
Speaker 1: to put it up for a bond issue and like
Speaker 1: get a bunch of money from people who are expecting
Speaker 1: it to be paid back. Uh. And the only disadvantage
Speaker 1: he has in doing this is that Spain had never
Speaker 1: owned his country. Um. So one reason British folks were
Speaker 1: willing to invest in like Columbia or Peru is that
Speaker 1: the Spanish had fought like hell to hold onto these places.
Speaker 1: So even though they didn't know exactly what resources these
Speaker 1: countries had, they figured if the Spanish are willing to
Speaker 1: fight hard for them, there's gotta be yeah, exactly now.
Speaker 1: So Poier didn't have that, but it had an advantage
Speaker 1: that none of the Latin American countries issuing bonds in
Speaker 1: Great Britain had, which is that its head of state
Speaker 1: was in London, and its head of state is of
Speaker 1: course Gregor McGregor. Yeah. So he immediately goes to the
Speaker 1: press like that's his first thing, and he starts talking
Speaker 1: about how like basically talking at Poier, is this like
Speaker 1: utopia with with undiscovered riches and stuff? Uh, and he
Speaker 1: he has. He hires a bunch of assistants to write
Speaker 1: newspaper ads and leaflets and ballads to be broadcast by
Speaker 1: like street singers in London and Edinburgh and Glasgow to
Speaker 1: try to convince thing. Yeah yeah every day that rhymes
Speaker 1: we bopping bottles and poier every day. Yeah yeah it
Speaker 1: is ship yeah funk. That's good. So we have some
Speaker 1: examples of some of the ads that he hired. This
Speaker 1: one was published in the Glasgow Sentinel Sentinel and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read it now. The climate is remarkably healthy and
Speaker 1: agrees admirably ably with the constitution of Europeans, many of whom,
Speaker 1: having become much stabilitated by a long residence in the
Speaker 1: West Indies, have been completely restored to health by a
Speaker 1: removal for a short period to the Bay of Honduras.
Speaker 1: The soil is extreme, the rich and fertile, bearing three
Speaker 1: crops of Indian corn in the year, and produces not
Speaker 1: only all the necessities of life and profusion, but is
Speaker 1: well adapted for the cultivation of all those valuable commodities
Speaker 1: which have rendered the West Indies so important, especially coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco,
Speaker 1: coco etcetera. So everything valuable grows here, and the climate
Speaker 1: makes you healthier if you're Europeans, right, and everyone's coming
Speaker 1: here to the island. Here, the land heals the sick.
Speaker 1: Basically is what you said, Beautiful snake oil heels sick
Speaker 1: white people, only white people. Don't worry, We'll only heals
Speaker 1: sick white people. Well, you know, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a thing. After this period, all the places where Europeans
Speaker 1: are making all of their money by selling and mining
Speaker 1: commodities kill Europeans and huge quantities because you know, they're
Speaker 1: giving smallpox to the names, but like they don't have
Speaker 1: immunity to like any of the local diseases either. So
Speaker 1: uh yeah, there's a lot of reasonable questions that responsible
Speaker 1: men asked about this investment scheme. For example, Gregor, how
Speaker 1: do you pan to plan to repay this loan? And
Speaker 1: Gregor answered that he had a lot of gold, and
Speaker 1: it had all sorts of animals that could be hunted,
Speaker 1: and it had great soil and soon there'd be a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff for sale. And so when he said this,
Speaker 1: people were like, hey, Gregor, if Poyer has all this ship,
Speaker 1: why has no one ever traded with it before, and
Speaker 1: Gregor's like, well, the locals were too scared of getting
Speaker 1: the Spanish attention and then Spain would colonize them, and
Speaker 1: like they didn't want that, and so then they were like, well, well,
Speaker 1: why why didn't Spain conquered Point, like they were right there.
Speaker 1: And he was like, well, there's mountains too. There's all
Speaker 1: these big mountains, huge, biggest mountain you've ever seen. No
Speaker 1: one could get into it, and a really deep lake,
Speaker 1: like the deepest lake, and honest, lots of lake currents, sharks,
Speaker 1: lake sharks, tons of sharks, sky sharks too. Nobody could
Speaker 1: get it. So these, again are all pretty transparent lies.
Speaker 1: But nobody was checking him out because people just have
Speaker 1: money to burn and they want to get in on
Speaker 1: South America. So the loan that Gregor wound up seeking
Speaker 1: on behalf of Poer was two hundred thousand pounds, just
Speaker 1: a fraction of what larger nations had asked for, but
Speaker 1: enough to make him very rich. It's the equivalent of
Speaker 1: about like eleven million dollars or elevenillion pounds I guess today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of money. So if Gregor had been
Speaker 1: an ordinary con man, he would have focused on just
Speaker 1: this grift. But by eighteen twenty two, Gregor had gotten
Speaker 1: good at being a con man and the loan was
Speaker 1: just his side grift. His real plan was to convince
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds and eventually thousands of English and scotsmen
Speaker 1: to sell their property by land from him and immigrate
Speaker 1: to Poier to help civilize it. Now, I should note
Speaker 1: here that there's some debate about whether or not he
Speaker 1: actually intended to try to settle and govern a new nation.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence that, like he did on emilya Amelia Island,
Speaker 1: he wanted to move all these people out there so
Speaker 1: they could form the core of a private country. Um.
Speaker 1: But he never actually tried to do this. Uh, And
Speaker 1: whether or not he intended to try and start a settlement,
Speaker 1: the plan was a con from the beginning, and evidence
Speaker 1: of this comes from the propaganda booklet he wrote to
Speaker 1: entice colonists to immigrate. It was titled Poier Sketch of
Speaker 1: the Mosquito Shore including the Territory of Poier, descriptive of
Speaker 1: the country with some information as to its productions. Now,
Speaker 1: he credited the writing of the book to Thomas Strange Ways,
Speaker 1: a man who did not exist, but was supposedly a
Speaker 1: captain in the Poie in military, which also did not exist.
Speaker 1: That was his fake friend's name, Yeah, Johnny, fake name,
Speaker 1: my good friend, Jesus. The booklet was a pretty good
Speaker 1: piece of con art. It opened with an apology that
Speaker 1: the contents were very dry and serious and wouldn't be
Speaker 1: entertaining to ordinary readers, because he knew that the intelligent
Speaker 1: and like serious men who would agree to invest in
Speaker 1: Poier wanted only the best information. They didn't want it
Speaker 1: to be flowery and interesting. They wanted serious facts, and
Speaker 1: that's all he was going to give you. So, like,
Speaker 1: first off, he's he's being like, oh, if you're not
Speaker 1: really if if you're expecting like like a lurid read like,
Speaker 1: this is for serious people. So like, clearly, if you're
Speaker 1: into this, you're serious person. Book. Yeah, not for poland
Speaker 1: dumb people, just the very smart. Yeah. So the book
Speaker 1: was a bunch of included a bunch of like plagiarized
Speaker 1: descriptions of different plants and like lies about the growing season,
Speaker 1: and also these very elaborate calculations for how much farms
Speaker 1: of different sizes and plantations of different sizes could expect
Speaker 1: to earn and all of this was lies, but he
Speaker 1: he did all like all of the math was laid
Speaker 1: out in a way that like, oh wow, this has
Speaker 1: to be legitimate. He did a bunch of math. There
Speaker 1: are numbers in this leaflet. Yeah, and these calculations went
Speaker 1: next to like things that were a lot less reasonable,
Speaker 1: like claiming that like it had more fresh water than
Speaker 1: anywhere else, and all of the freshwater rivers were also
Speaker 1: just filled with hunks of gold that you could pick up,
Speaker 1: and like it's this mix of like, yeah, it's very fun,
Speaker 1: very fun. One question this point because he did inherit
Speaker 1: land that wasn't there's real land. But there's real land.
Speaker 1: That Poier is the location of the land that he inherited. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what isn't fake land? Kind of grifted from
Speaker 1: I don't know, Sophie, I don't know anymore. Let's just
Speaker 1: roll the ads. Don't be sad, Robert. So we're back.
Speaker 1: I missed the ads already, but we get to talk
Speaker 1: more about Gregor McGregor. So. Thomas's guidebook included lengthy descriptions
Speaker 1: of the local natives, the local poi Aians or the
Speaker 1: poi Aians Poiasians. I think, Yeah, Poiaisians, I think is
Speaker 1: the correct way. In his description, the Poisians basically had
Speaker 1: no real culture of their own. Their culture was that
Speaker 1: they loved the British. Yeah he knew, he knew how
Speaker 1: to sell this ship. Like he's not dumb, he knows
Speaker 1: his people. Uh. He wrote, quote you yeah, they love
Speaker 1: they love you. Yeah, he wrote A tradition has long
Speaker 1: prevailed among them that the gray eyed people, meaning the English,
Speaker 1: have been particularly appointed to protect them from oppression and bondage.
Speaker 1: That's his good grift. All the women are young and
Speaker 1: the breasts are right underneath the chin, and all they
Speaker 1: wanted to was marry an old, decrepit British men. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The women won't very young men. They won't anyone under seventy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he tells them that, like, these people are
Speaker 1: probably descendants of the Aztecs, so they're formerly civilized people
Speaker 1: who needed English help to rescue them from barbarism. Oh god,
Speaker 1: he was like, look, they were colonized once and they
Speaker 1: loved it. They were like colonization chef's kiss and they
Speaker 1: really wanted you guys to come back. Yeah. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote quote they have repeatedly june An anxious desire
Speaker 1: to acquire the arts of Europe as is manifest by
Speaker 1: their repeated invitations to the English to form settlements among them,
Speaker 1: as well as by their former offers to seed a
Speaker 1: part of their country to Great Britain, there by showing
Speaker 1: that their aversion to Spain does not extend to all
Speaker 1: other nations of Europe. Yeah, I can't wait for you
Speaker 1: white people to get here. They need Yes, they don't
Speaker 1: know how to have a country without Yes, every indigenous population.
Speaker 1: Where are the people? What do they get? But oh
Speaker 1: we've got is this unspoiled country and like a culture
Speaker 1: not based on constant toil, and like, ah, you know
Speaker 1: what we really need is some incredibly filthy cities choking
Speaker 1: to death on cold up scott If only we had
Speaker 1: gold up Turlington to pull up, We're ready. So yeah.
Speaker 1: He He also goes into length in this book about
Speaker 1: like how how happy the natives are to be hired
Speaker 1: for basically nothing, and how like, oh, you just give
Speaker 1: them ammunition and they'll hunt all the food that you need.
Speaker 1: They love doing it. Like and also you know if
Speaker 1: you if you hire them and pay them, they never
Speaker 1: want raises, like they're happy getting pay in the same
Speaker 1: amount forever. They also want to be treated a second
Speaker 1: class citizens. Oh, they love it. Can't get enough of
Speaker 1: being second class citizens. You know what they said to
Speaker 1: me the other day, They were like, what if we
Speaker 1: had a system of segregation here, wouldn't that be grant said?
Speaker 1: They said to me me McGregor, they said, we are
Speaker 1: tired of opportunity. So he also lied about the present
Speaker 1: extent of European civilization in Poyer, claiming that a forgotten
Speaker 1: load of British settlers had already set up like a nice,
Speaker 1: orderly European city in the country that was its capital.
Speaker 1: Like there's already a white people city waiting for you.
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is land there. You'll have workers,
Speaker 1: you'll have a nice city with a bunch of comforts.
Speaker 1: Like it'll be fine. All you gotta do is set
Speaker 1: up your your your farms. They're ready to just be
Speaker 1: planted and you can just get start making money. Right McGregor,
Speaker 1: you said the city. You said the city is called
Speaker 1: white people city. Yeah, white topia. It's full, full, full
Speaker 1: full like nice white people things. It's got. I don't know.
Speaker 1: John Mayer is always there. He never leaves White cod forever,
Speaker 1: white conda. Oh, I love it condos as far as
Speaker 1: the I can see burritos with no spices at all.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you thought that. Do you think I
Speaker 1: said condo? Oh? I mean yeah, like Wakonda forever white Condah.
Speaker 1: That's that's better. I thought you were making a comment
Speaker 1: about white people's famous love of condos. Shaking her head.
Speaker 1: So hundreds and hundreds of people sign up and they
Speaker 1: all start paying him a ton of money for acreage.
Speaker 1: He's he's making money hand over fist for this land
Speaker 1: that these people had never seen. And the bulk of
Speaker 1: his volunteer years were Scotsman. Because Gregor finally figures out
Speaker 1: how to con his own people. Yeah, um, it's it
Speaker 1: starts at home. Yeah. The historians have spent a decent
Speaker 1: amount of time trying to tease out why Scottish people
Speaker 1: were particularly vulnerable to this scheme, and there's an interesting
Speaker 1: paragraph in the BBC on it quote. According to Columbia
Speaker 1: University psychologist Tory Higgins, people are usually more likely to
Speaker 1: be swayed by one or or other of the two
Speaker 1: motivational lines. Some people are promotion focused they think of
Speaker 1: possible positive gains, and some prevention focused. They focused on
Speaker 1: losses and avoiding mistakes. An approach that unites the alpha
Speaker 1: with the omega appeals to both mindsets, however, giving it
Speaker 1: universal appeal, and it's easy to see how McGregor's proposition
Speaker 1: offered this potent combination. He published interviews and national papers,
Speaker 1: for instance, touting the perks that would come from investing
Speaker 1: or settling in Ployer. He highlighted the bravery and fortitude
Speaker 1: that such a gesture would demonstrate. You wouldn't just be smart,
Speaker 1: you would be a real man. The Scottish Highlanders were
Speaker 1: known for their heartiness and adventurous spirit. He out Pier
Speaker 1: would be the ultimate testing ground, a challenge and a
Speaker 1: gift all in one. Gotta love toxic masculinity. It's like,
Speaker 1: are you going to move to Poier or is your
Speaker 1: dick small? And yeah, I'm working on using that griff
Speaker 1: like are you too much of a coward to get
Speaker 1: into a gunfight with the FBA, f D A swat team?
Speaker 1: Like oh, I mean, if you don't want to get
Speaker 1: into a gunfight with the FDA, then don't move to
Speaker 1: my compound and die for what's wrong with you? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what's wrong with you? Oh, you're a coward. No,
Speaker 1: that's fine. It's cool to be a coward. That's cool.
Speaker 1: Like you don't have like the cool people are gonna
Speaker 1: go die fighting the f d A. You don't have
Speaker 1: to because you're not cool. You can live the rest
Speaker 1: of your life knowing that sera mass Yeah yeah, knowing
Speaker 1: that you suck so uh. It is also speculated that
Speaker 1: one reason the Scots were particularly interested in this is
Speaker 1: that they were jealous of the English and all of
Speaker 1: their fancy colonies, and there was also a manner of
Speaker 1: honor at stake here. In the late sixteen hundred hundreds,
Speaker 1: the Scots had tried to start a colony on the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Darien near Panama, and it was a poorly
Speaker 1: led ship show and basically everyone either died or were
Speaker 1: conquered by Spain, and Scotland invested fully twenty of all
Speaker 1: of its money in the scheme, which kind of destroyed
Speaker 1: the entire country for years. So they were bad at
Speaker 1: colonizing them. Yeah, yeah, it is nice about them. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're good at being the soldiers of colonial oppressors, because
Speaker 1: that's how the British did a lot of before. Before
Speaker 1: they had African soldiers to fight for them. They had
Speaker 1: Scotts to conquer the chunks of Africa and then hired
Speaker 1: African soldiers to fight under Scottish officers. It's this whole
Speaker 1: it's the whole thing. Yeah, they're not dumb, so uh yeah.
Speaker 1: You would think that having been a part of this
Speaker 1: like giant scheme that had crashed the entire economy and
Speaker 1: cost a bunch of people their lives would have actually
Speaker 1: built like a cultural immunity to schemes in Scotland. But
Speaker 1: it just made them feel like they had a shame
Speaker 1: to wipe out. And McGregor took advantage of that. He
Speaker 1: pointed out that colonizing ployer would like, this will wipe
Speaker 1: out the shame of Darien, Like nobody's gonna talking about
Speaker 1: Darien because you're gonna up Poier. People are gonna be like,
Speaker 1: oh those Scots, they're so good at colonizing. So gregor
Speaker 1: was flooded with applicants and he happily set to work
Speaker 1: hiring and refitting a small fleet of boats for the journey.
Speaker 1: The first one set sail in September with seventy immigrants aboard.
Speaker 1: These were to be the vanguard. They were there to
Speaker 1: prepare the way for everybody else now. Gregor, of course,
Speaker 1: stayed behind to prepare the next wave of ships, and
Speaker 1: in his stead he promoted the most gullible of the settlers,
Speaker 1: commissioning a former British Army officer named Hector Hall as
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel of the fictional second Native Regiment of Foot.
Speaker 1: Gregor even generously made him the Lieutenant governor to and
Speaker 1: granted him a twelve thousand, eight hundred acre estate that
Speaker 1: again absolutely did not exists. You're king of everything, now
Speaker 1: get to work. Now do all the stuff for me.
Speaker 1: So the second wave of colonists would depart in November
Speaker 1: after their ship was refit to carry two fifty people.
Speaker 1: Uh and while Gregor waited, he designed and printed his
Speaker 1: own poiis and currency and started handing it out to
Speaker 1: colon in exchange for their gold from the land that
Speaker 1: never was quote. The new world of their dreams suddenly
Speaker 1: became a very real world as the men accepted the
Speaker 1: kaseque's dollar notes with the coat of arms the crest
Speaker 1: of the Bank of Poier and the promise that on
Speaker 1: demand or three months after sight in the option of
Speaker 1: the government to Poier, one hard dollar will be paid
Speaker 1: to the bearer at the bank office in St. Joseph.
Speaker 1: The people who had bought land and who had planned
Speaker 1: to take their savings with them in coin, were also
Speaker 1: delighted to exchange their gold for the legal currency of poet.
Speaker 1: He loved to print the money, to print money. McGregor,
Speaker 1: didya give me your real money? It's a it's a
Speaker 1: good scheme. It's oh, you're you gotta get on a boat.
Speaker 1: All that gold is heavy, you know, it's not heavy,
Speaker 1: These totally real dollars. Oh yeah, real as hell they are.
Speaker 1: So just as the refitting neared completion, disaster struck. See
Speaker 1: the financial market that had gotten so bullish and investing
Speaker 1: in all these south amera in bonds started to get
Speaker 1: a little bit like antsy because the Colombian government basically
Speaker 1: basically the Colombian government wrote a letter or something to
Speaker 1: England being like, hey, you know the guy who's been
Speaker 1: saying he's our representative, Like he didn't actually have the
Speaker 1: right to to to ask for a loan. We were
Speaker 1: not really sure what's going on here. So this worries
Speaker 1: the people who had invested shiploads of money in Colombia,
Speaker 1: and like a panic takes ahold of the market. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this spreads to the holders of Chilean and Peruvian
Speaker 1: bonds and they start to be like warnings in the
Speaker 1: press that um, people might like, yeah, people might have
Speaker 1: might be about to lose all of their money. Um.
Speaker 1: So the bubble bursts and people stopped buying Gregor's bonds,
Speaker 1: which he had not sold all of the bonds he
Speaker 1: was trying to issue, so he's in a cash crunch. Now,
Speaker 1: this didn't halt colonization because he had a bunch of
Speaker 1: money that he had gotten from these people who are
Speaker 1: buying fake land from him. Um. But so he had
Speaker 1: to like rush along and send you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: people off on these two boats uh, and then travel
Speaker 1: back to London to find a way to grift more money.
Speaker 1: And it's funny the way he does this. He meets
Speaker 1: this like British Army officer who's like a very rich
Speaker 1: and famous man in London and offers him a place
Speaker 1: to stay, and Gregor becomes good friends with him, and
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, I'll make you the ambassador to poi
Speaker 1: A if you like help me get some bank loans
Speaker 1: and ship you can be the other king. So while
Speaker 1: he's doing this. The first shipload of colonists land at
Speaker 1: Poier in early and they were immediately surprised by a
Speaker 1: couple of things. For one thing, there was no European
Speaker 1: style capital right at the edge of the harbor like
Speaker 1: the drawings that Gregor had showed them had depicted. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were no signs, no roads, no buildings, no signs
Speaker 1: of what they called civilization at all. And there's also
Speaker 1: no signs of the friendly natives that they've been promised
Speaker 1: were eagerly awaiting them. There's no people that they see
Speaker 1: at first. The first wave of guys splash ashore and
Speaker 1: they're just kind of baffled. The landes beautiful, but it's
Speaker 1: completely undeveloped and there's no way to like there's no
Speaker 1: clear way to make farms there. You'd have to chop
Speaker 1: down hundreds of trees and like put in soil and everything. Like, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this would not have been an impossible task. Like obviously
Speaker 1: you could have turned this land into land that had
Speaker 1: farms and shipped on it if the expedition there had
Speaker 1: been filled with people who were like ready to do that,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of experienced woodsmen and young farmers who
Speaker 1: like were were used to hard work and expecting it.
Speaker 1: But the party that Gregor had sent to be the
Speaker 1: first people in the poyer consisted of only a couple
Speaker 1: of veteran soldiers and younger farmers with any sort of
Speaker 1: experience with hard work. The rest of the party was
Speaker 1: a mix of lawyers, artisans, a banker, and one young
Speaker 1: man who Gregor had promised would be the first theater
Speaker 1: director on the island of Poi. Yeah, there's yeah. And
Speaker 1: there were some other farmers, but most of them were
Speaker 1: old men who, like had hoped that they'd get to
Speaker 1: retire in a place that Gregor had promised that Gregor
Speaker 1: had told them that, like the climate employer extends, the
Speaker 1: lie was of English people's. And then there were clerks
Speaker 1: who were supposed to staff the empty government offices in
Speaker 1: a capital that did not exist. So this was not
Speaker 1: the crew of people you would pick to build civilization
Speaker 1: from the ground up using nothing but hand tools, right Like,
Speaker 1: these aren't the folks who are going to clear cut
Speaker 1: forests and start farms from nothing. Oh my god, these
Speaker 1: are the influencer girls. Yeah, these are a lot of influencers,
Speaker 1: right Like, there's a lot of people who basically thought
Speaker 1: like basically a lot of people who are like middle
Speaker 1: class and upper middle class and who were told like,
Speaker 1: you want to be aristocrats, you move here, you can
Speaker 1: be like the new aristocracy of this new country. And
Speaker 1: then like, ah, there's no country, sorry, but you are
Speaker 1: still aristocracy. Look, you you can rule that tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can rule those leaves. You're the richest guy in
Speaker 1: the woods, according to the fake dollars I gave you
Speaker 1: that you can use nowhere. Because there's no one here
Speaker 1: you cannot use. So there were people. There were natives,
Speaker 1: and some of the natives were friendly, but others weren't,
Speaker 1: and like none of them had any desire to work
Speaker 1: for white people, like because they were doing their own thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, like we're fine, we already have lines,
Speaker 1: like what do you guys are all dying, Like we don't,
Speaker 1: we don't want to, like nobody wants to take advice
Speaker 1: from you. For white people to think that people want
Speaker 1: to work for them, like, of course they want to
Speaker 1: work for us, but nothing. Well, this is where we
Speaker 1: get to the thing about this, that is this a
Speaker 1: beautiful piece of historic irony because all of the white
Speaker 1: men here, they weren't particularly bad within sort of the
Speaker 1: context of their cultures. But they all had the same
Speaker 1: thing that basically all white Europeans had, which is this
Speaker 1: belief that like they inherently knew how to be civilized
Speaker 1: in a way that other peoples of the world didn't,
Speaker 1: and like, that's why they should take all this land
Speaker 1: from these people, is they knew how to civilize it.
Speaker 1: And so finally, a group of these people who believe
Speaker 1: that they were who believed that they were going to
Speaker 1: help a bunch of poor, non white people learn how
Speaker 1: to be civilized, this group of people finds themselves in
Speaker 1: a land that's actually truly wild and undeveloped, and so
Speaker 1: it was like, okay, guys, like you're here, are you're
Speaker 1: gonna make a civilization? Now? Can you do it? And
Speaker 1: of course not. They all completely fucking collapsed because there
Speaker 1: was nothing for them to just take over and steal.
Speaker 1: They actually would have had to build civilization from the
Speaker 1: ground up, and none of them were ready to do that. Right.
Speaker 1: They're like, we did that once and then everything from
Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, and we didn't, like people like a
Speaker 1: thousand years ago did that once, and we've just been
Speaker 1: kind of coasting, Like I'm gonna be honest. We stole
Speaker 1: guns from China and it's been easy. So some of
Speaker 1: this was the fault of the lieutenant governor who refused
Speaker 1: to lead his party to higher ground and build permanent structures.
Speaker 1: See midway through the unloading of the equipment, they brought
Speaker 1: a storm and hit the coast, and the captain of
Speaker 1: the boat that dropped them there used this as an
Speaker 1: excuse to abandon them and sell the rest of their stuff.
Speaker 1: And the governor, Yeah, the governor couldn't believe he had
Speaker 1: been abandoned, and he wanted everyone to stay close to
Speaker 1: shore because he thought a boat was coming back to
Speaker 1: rescue them, that there had been some mistake. And he's
Speaker 1: there is one there is like there is like an
Speaker 1: actual town that's like a a several days journey away,
Speaker 1: that's where like the actual king of the Mosquito Coast
Speaker 1: is based out of. And like there's some civilization you
Speaker 1: know by the European terms there, but it's not very big.
Speaker 1: They don't have any interest in taking these people's money.
Speaker 1: And they certainly like when they talked to this guy
Speaker 1: who suppose has supposedly this king who supposedly made Gregor
Speaker 1: prince and He's like, I don't know what the funk
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Like I gave that dude some land,
Speaker 1: but like I was not, like nobody, nobody wants you
Speaker 1: all to civilize us, Like what do you what's what?
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Yeah, so they're kind of fucked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who isn't kind of fucked though? The products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. Oh we're back. So
Speaker 1: these people have just realized that they've been drifted um,
Speaker 1: and that there's no country for them and that they're
Speaker 1: alone in the wilderness with dwindling supplies um. And so
Speaker 1: for months they did very little. They were just kind
Speaker 1: of waiting for the second colony ship and a chance
Speaker 1: to escape. Some of them hunted for meat, others dug
Speaker 1: holes in the sand to collect semi drinkable water. Uh,
Speaker 1: they didn't have any rum, which was used to clean
Speaker 1: water back then. So everybody starts getting sick. And eventually
Speaker 1: the second boat does arrive a lot with two d
Speaker 1: fifty new colonists, and you know, they realized that something's
Speaker 1: gone wrong. But the boat that took them wasn't hired
Speaker 1: to take them back, and they didn't have any money
Speaker 1: because their only money is fake. So they're all stuck
Speaker 1: to um. So I had to try to finess on
Speaker 1: that boat up but like y'all whatever is great, y'all
Speaker 1: just go head up that way. Okay, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to the boat. So they're they're a little fucked um
Speaker 1: with all the new blood that's just come in. They
Speaker 1: briefly try to like build permanent structures. They try to
Speaker 1: chop down pine trees and float them on the river
Speaker 1: down to their camp, which is a thing that like
Speaker 1: people do. That's how you get big trees. That's how
Speaker 1: you moved him in this period, And that would have
Speaker 1: been a good idea if they'd known what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But you said, you have to drain the pine resin
Speaker 1: out of a tree like that before you can float it,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it won't float. All their logs sink. So
Speaker 1: they realized their mistake and they start tapping the resin
Speaker 1: out of pine trees, which takes a long time and
Speaker 1: doesn't isn't done before the rainy season, and because they're dumb,
Speaker 1: they throw all the reson away rather than using it
Speaker 1: to seal the roofs of the huts that they built,
Speaker 1: because again they don't know what the funk they're doing.
Speaker 1: So the rainy season comes and they all get soaked,
Speaker 1: and they all get sick, and all their kids start
Speaker 1: to die, and then the old people start to die.
Speaker 1: The guy who got Like one of the real tragedies
Speaker 1: is that there was a guy who Gregor Condon to
Speaker 1: buying his way on, who was a shoemaker and was
Speaker 1: promised he was going to be the first shoemaker and
Speaker 1: all of POI like get to establish Yeah, which he was,
Speaker 1: and he shot himself to death when he realized he'd
Speaker 1: been gripped um blew his brains out with a musket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very sad. So all of the people who were supposed
Speaker 1: to be in charge of this endeavor, all of the professionals,
Speaker 1: the former military officers, the civil servants, the kind of
Speaker 1: the people who are planning to be the aristocracy of
Speaker 1: this new society, completely failed to take a hand in
Speaker 1: building an actual survivable settlement. Instead, they vested all of
Speaker 1: their hopes and the lieutenant governor who made regular trips
Speaker 1: to the only settlement Poyer to try to find some
Speaker 1: ship to take them home. They didn't. They just had
Speaker 1: no interest in actually attempting to make the best of
Speaker 1: their circumstances because they didn't know how to bring civilization
Speaker 1: to a place. They just knew how to exploit people
Speaker 1: when there was already civilization. David Sinclair writes, quote, they
Speaker 1: had been led to believe that they would find homes
Speaker 1: inter near a great city that was essentially European in
Speaker 1: style and peopled by men and women like themselves, including
Speaker 1: English and Americans, and the event the only people they
Speaker 1: found living in Poyer, aside from the natives, were too
Speaker 1: eccentric Americans named Murray and Winship, who had built themselves
Speaker 1: a farm in the hills behind the Black Lagoon a
Speaker 1: couple of years earlier. I kind of think those guys
Speaker 1: might have been gay and just like escaping, Well, this
Speaker 1: is just the like we're gay, the world's terrible, Let's
Speaker 1: go live alone in the middle of nowhere on a farm.
Speaker 1: Seems like, yeah, yeah, it's a good good I whish
Speaker 1: I hope things worked out for them. I don't know
Speaker 1: anything else about them, so it was hardly surprising then
Speaker 1: when the likes of Colonel Hall, the civil servants, the
Speaker 1: officer class, and the manager of the National Bank of
Speaker 1: Poyer realized that they had been comprehensively duped. Their first
Speaker 1: thought should have been to escape from the inhospitable wilderness
Speaker 1: in which McGregor's deception had deposited them. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there can be no doubt that part of the tragedy
Speaker 1: of Poier was the failure of the men, who, through
Speaker 1: their societal position alone, would have been regarded as the
Speaker 1: national leaders of the group, to adjust the uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: dangerous circumstance created by McGregor's lives, and to show some
Speaker 1: of the capacity for leadership that might have been expected
Speaker 1: of them. Instead, when the conditions they found on their
Speaker 1: arrival did not correspond in any way to those promised,
Speaker 1: they took the view that because the authority conferred upon
Speaker 1: them my McGregor was obviously as bogus as the country
Speaker 1: he described, it was no business of theirs to try
Speaker 1: to compensate for his betrayal. Basically, they totally dropped all responsibility.
Speaker 1: When they thought they were going to be in charge
Speaker 1: of a country that was already ready built, they were
Speaker 1: they were ready to be responsible. When they realized they
Speaker 1: were in a dangerous situation, none of them were willing
Speaker 1: to do anything. They took all their badges off through
Speaker 1: the jacket down. No, No, I'm not in charge of ship.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Yeah, And there's there's a
Speaker 1: part of this story that kind of reveals how fundamentally
Speaker 1: hollow the social structure of the British Empire really was.
Speaker 1: These colonists had been left in a bad position, but
Speaker 1: not an unsurvivable one. They had a year's worth of
Speaker 1: food rations, they had two doctors, medical supplies, tools and guns.
Speaker 1: They could have built a survivable community, but they weren't
Speaker 1: to community. They had no desire to be one. There
Speaker 1: were a bunch of people who wanted to get rich
Speaker 1: quick and make non white natives do all of the
Speaker 1: hard work. As one survival survivor of the expedition, of
Speaker 1: the expedition, James Hasty later noted, I do not wish
Speaker 1: to say anything rashly, but instead of attending to make
Speaker 1: us comfortable, it seemed as if everyone was for his
Speaker 1: own hand, was in it for himself. Even the boards
Speaker 1: and timber used for fitting up our births and the
Speaker 1: ship were mostly sold or delivered. Basically like they had
Speaker 1: this wood that was used to build births in the
Speaker 1: ship that they took out of the boat when they
Speaker 1: landed to build homes with. But instead of building homes,
Speaker 1: the people in charge sold It's that they could buy
Speaker 1: some manner of luxuries from the local like they're like.
Speaker 1: Nobody took care of each other. It was just like
Speaker 1: this complete. It was every man for himself. Now, A
Speaker 1: couple of the braver souls left to make a five
Speaker 1: mile journey to a British colony in Honduras to try
Speaker 1: to get help. And this was noble for them, but
Speaker 1: it meant that like the most decent and competent men
Speaker 1: in the whole expedition weren't there anymore. So by the
Speaker 1: end of April, as James wrote, quote, sick sickness and
Speaker 1: despondency was so general that few were able or willing
Speaker 1: to make any exertion. And I am sorry to have
Speaker 1: to have to add that many of those who were
Speaker 1: still well plundered instead of assisted their sick brethren, and
Speaker 1: likewise plundered the public stores of anything they could conveniently
Speaker 1: lay their hands upon. They robbed them. They were planning
Speaker 1: to rob other people, they wound up robbing themselves, and
Speaker 1: in the end more than two thirds of them died
Speaker 1: just a couple of months. Yeah, the traumatized survivors were
Speaker 1: eventually rescued by a passing ship, which was fortunate because
Speaker 1: as they were rescued, Gregor had dispatched five more ships
Speaker 1: filled with like a thousand other people men, women and
Speaker 1: children to a colony that had become a graveyard. The
Speaker 1: British Navy was thankfully able to recall these boats before
Speaker 1: anyone else died. Sending people over there, of course he was.
Speaker 1: He's a grifter. He ain't done grift. Maybe he thought
Speaker 1: the first people would actually just buck up and start
Speaker 1: building something so that by the time the other people
Speaker 1: got there they saw something in progress that did not happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I keep sending people over, eventually it will be
Speaker 1: true that there's a settlement there. He's not wrong, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they'll die otherwise. Yeah. So, by autumn of eighty three,
Speaker 1: the story of what had really happened at Poyer had
Speaker 1: hit London, and McGregor's response was to do what McGregor
Speaker 1: did treat. Yeah. He fled to France, where he tried
Speaker 1: to do the same trick again and it tried to
Speaker 1: get more colonists to go to Poier. He he got
Speaker 1: about sixty people to sign up and pay him. But
Speaker 1: even thankfully, like Paris isn't that far from London, the
Speaker 1: authorities there figured out what was happening, uh, and they
Speaker 1: got they got wind of what was going on really
Speaker 1: when French settlers started applying for passports to a country
Speaker 1: that wasn't real. So there's an investigation. He gets imprisoned,
Speaker 1: but being McGregor, he's able to kind of get himself
Speaker 1: out of incarceration. But that was his last trick. Um.
Speaker 1: He was left in financial debt to his investors, and
Speaker 1: his repeated attempts to find more buyers for his fake
Speaker 1: POI Asian bond failed to sell for some inexplicable reason.
Speaker 1: He tried to go back home to Edinburgh, but he
Speaker 1: was caught by some of the people he'd coned and
Speaker 1: he was forced to flee Scotland for the only place
Speaker 1: that would accept him Caracas, where he was still a
Speaker 1: war hero and his status is that guaranteed him uh
Speaker 1: kind of a place to live basically, but not much more.
Speaker 1: He died penniless in December of eighteen forty five. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had come up so much. If you hadn't just
Speaker 1: go to that last I'm gonna sell y'all a break country.
Speaker 1: He could have just lived his life out rich dollars
Speaker 1: are proud like, wow, ye can't stop, won't stop, can't
Speaker 1: That's that's the scammer thing, right, That's how they all
Speaker 1: get caught, because like, you have to be able to
Speaker 1: walk away. It's like gambling. You have to know when
Speaker 1: you're up. You just gotta. That's how you win at gambling.
Speaker 1: There's no other way to win a gambling but leaving
Speaker 1: deep well, plug your pluggable. Speaking of scams, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be like robbery. You like company scam got his podcast.
Speaker 1: You could buy me a d I V A l
Speaker 1: A c I DVA Lacey on all platforms, Robert, when
Speaker 1: they find you, Oh no no, I can't be found Hills.
Speaker 1: That's when I thought, yeah you can. You can. You
Speaker 1: can find this podcast at Bastard's pod on all the things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: H h m hm