Ferdinand Waldo Demara was not a genius. In fact, he dropped out of school before graduating. He wasn’t a well-known actor, astronaut, politician or hero, but he was the greatest con artist of all time. Among other things, he impersonated a doctor, professor, jail warden, and a monk. His most famous scam was when he worked as a surgeon on the battleship HMS Cayuga as Dr. Joseph Cyr. Having no medical training, he learned procedures from textbooks on the fly. Even after the Canadian Navy discovered the fraud, they refused to charge Demara. In order to avoid scandal and public scrutiny, the Canadian government chose to simply deport Demara back to the United States in 1951. A few years later, Demara took on a new identity and began working as a guard at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. After a year, one of the inmates discovered a Life magazine article about Demara and exposed him. He escaped but was apprehended two years later in North Haven, Maine. He was sentenced to six months in jail. His last con was at a hospital in Anaheim, Calif., where he worked as a chaplain. He was exposed there too, but because he became close friends with the management and one of the hospital’s owners, he was allowed to stay. He worked there until 1980, when he had both of his legs amputated due to diabetes, dying two years later of heart failure. Even though Demara had a really interesting life and never really cared about money, in the end, a con artist is still just a con artist.
