Meet the Real 'Wolf of Wall Street': David Lamar

named The Wolf of wall Street. Right, that is a person named Jordan Belford, and that movie was based on Jordan's book where he described his debaucherous rise as a New York stockbroker right up to his very corrupted, messy fault. Yeah, so Jordan's rise. At his peak, he bought mansions. He bought cars for those car people out there, especially from the eighties. He had two superstars, the Lamborghini Kuntosh and the Ferrari Tester Rosa. He bought a helicopter which he crashed.

He bought a yacht which he sank. And as a side note to that yacht, he bought it from cocosan. Now, he took a lot, a lot which explains a lot of his behavior. He took a lot of coludes. He said that he modeled himself after his on screen hero, Gordon Gecko, who was the ruthless corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in the eighties movie Wall Street. Ultimately, Jordan was arrested that was in and he pled guilty to fraud and various crimes associated with defrauding investors out of

more than two hundred million dollars. And because he was willing to cooperate with the FBI and give testimony against his partners and subordinates in this whole thing, his sentence was lightened. He only spent twenty two months in prison, and it was during his prison time when he began writing his book, his memoirs, which he called the Wolf of Wall Street. That's a road name. We're going to

talk about that in the second need. He did steal something in years after Jordan had served his time, Martin Scor says, he's movie was released, it wouldn't be wrong to call Jordan's the Wolf of Wall Street because he certainly sounds as though he could be the wolf of Wall Street. But it turns out though that Jordan's just a Wolf of Wall Street. He's not the first, and of all things he did, he actually never impersonated anyone.

Enter the real topic of today's conversation, David Lamar. David Lamar is the original Wolf of Wall Street, not Jordan Belfort. Although comedically enough, they do have something in common despite that it's in their name. Neither of these men actually ever really worked on Wall Street. It's just coincidence. Bryan, So um, it is a little bit early, But we're going to stop now for a break for a word from our sponsor, so that when we come back, will

introduce David Lamar. Welcome back to criminal LYA. Do you know how to short stock? This has been in the news in recent times. Everyone's trying to figure it out. Well, David Lamar, sha knew how to do it. Yes, So David David was born in or around seventy seven, we don't know the exact date. He went on to become a legend for his financial scams as well as his impersonation of a member of Congress and various other people.

Let's just say for right now, he was known for walking about New York City with his diamond studied walking stick for his horses, and also for being brash and cutthroat in his dealings. So he was actually born David Levy. We know that because he had a brother, Henry, who would sign his last name Levy, and that how people put it together. But David later told people that he changed his last name to Lamar to match that of a noted Mississippi senator in order to help facilitate his

business dealings. And Holly just said facilitate with quotation marks around him. Yeah, that person he's referencing would presumably be a man named Lucius Quintus Cincinnatis Lamar. And in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties that Lamar served as both a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and then the U. S. Senate, and then he became Secretary of the Interior and eventually an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But here's the thing. L QC. Lamar's legacy

is one that is deeply rooted in racism. It is extraordinarily ugly, and he had a lot of very active rhetoric around white supremacy. So really not a great choice for someone to associate yourself with via a name change.

It was not actually the only name that he would use, though, David at Lamar also went by David Lewis, particularly during a stretch of time he spent in Omaha, Nebraska, and at one point JP Morgan smartly had become suspicious of Lamar and his financial doings, and he put two and you together, and he figured out that these were very likely the very same man. So Morrigan actually paid to have a judge from Omaha who had had dealings with David Lewis fly to New York to identify David Lamar

as being the same man. And as you probably expected, he was. And many sources say that David pretended to be the heir of a wealthy Georgia family that allowed him not only to live very extravagantly, but also gave him better access to politicians and financial heavyweights. Some sources also suggest that around people with money, David pretended to be a legitimate businessman. He was charged with bribery in in Virginia after what he got involved with, which the

press called quote electric franchise fight. Presumably he was trying to help monopolize the delivery of electricity to people. He went on to pose as a New York businessman while he was in Mobile, Alabama. I mean, the list goes

on and on and on. It's actually kind of tricky if you look back partically at his obituaries that came out when he died, all of the newspapers are just like lists of weird things that he was involved in, and like his rap sheet, and it's actually so thick it's you can see that they were even having trouble keeping it all straight. It's hard to track the timeline

with the name and the associated event. Because he was mobile, he was in a lot of places, and you can see he managed to get into a lot of scrapes. But he was very driven and even after any of these scrapes, he always continued simply moving on from one ruse to the next because he he had big imagination um and knew a lot of people. Uh So, David was the type of fraudster who would do whatever it

took to close a deal and make some money. And early and really significant score for him was when he fleeced the Rockefeller's in by manipulating George Rogers, who was the secretary to Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Senior. David convinced the junior Rockefeller to buy stock in US Leather. Rockefeller did buy that stock, and then David did short it. Rockefeller Junior lost about a million dollars of his father's money. Okay,

so we told you we would talk about shorting. If you do not know what shorting is, here is the quick and dirty version because this will come up again, and also it's just good life information to have. Shorting stock, also called short selling, is when an investor borrows shares and then immediately sells them with the intention of buying

them back later at a lower price. This is a trading technique for people who are willing to take substantial risk of capital laws, at least potentially substantial risk and lass. It's also a trading technique that can make someone like Jordan who we mentioned earlier, or David Lamar a lot of pocket change. Yeah, he's gonna need a lot of

pockets right now. So much of David's story actually revolves around following his arrest record, So we're moving ahead a few years to a really great example of how ruthless and cutthroat he could be, as well as his air of feeling sort of above the laws he was doing things. So in July, David's coachman was a man named James McMahon, and he was supposed to appear in court to testify

against David Lamar on an assault charge. But unfortunately McMahon was stabbed and beaten before he was able to enter the courthouse, and because of this he was unable to testify. David's brother in law and two of David's plays were arrested and subsequently charged with having been involved in the attack on McMahon. So now we're going to move on the timeline to and that was an extraordinarily busy year

for Lamar. And during one scandal, a reporter actually asked Lamar about his name change and his involvement in various nefarious business dealings, and David replied, quote, I'm sorry, I've never given an interview and I can't start now on a personal matter. As for the matter of my change in name, well, the Senate records show I declined to tell the right one because it would make the innocent suffer. Perhaps we really have no idea what he was getting

at with that, none whatsoever. I my personal suspicion is that he was just trying to continue to cultivate his air of mystery. I agree to, especially the addition of perhaps. But it's here in nineteen thirteen when David begins to impersonate some real big fish for power and financial gain. Say you want an drive down steel prices in an effort to short the stock and make huge amounts of

money for yourself. If you're David, you settle on a plan to defraud the US Steel Corporation as well as JP Morgan and Company, which pretty much dominated the corporate finance world on Wall Street at the time. So to do this, he figured he would pretend to be a member of Congress. And he really did just do exactly that. Yes,

Like he woke up one day, I know this will work. Uh. His target to impersonate was Pennsylvania Representative Alexander Mitchell Palmer, who was a lawyer and a politician, and David faked this persona in telephone interviews, and he even attempted but failed to deliver a floor speech to persuade Congress to his proposal. Sometimes your schemes, though, do not go as planned. In this instance, while no one could see him over

the phone, and that seemed to work. He could not mask his face in front of all those gersman who actually knew Alexander Mitchell Palmer. That would actually been really impressive on his impersonate, like the way that he was imperson in people. And now he's like, now I covered my face and face job it becomes Harry mission impossible

with the very much right, so Palmer. Actually, Palmer served in Congress from nineteen and nine to nineteen fifteen, although you probably actually know him better as the U. S. Attorney General under President Wilson Woodrow Wilson. By nineteen twenty, Palmer had his eye on the White House, and so if you're not really familiar with his name, you may be familiar with one of the things he's most famous for doing, which were the Palmer Raids, conducted by the U. S.

Department of Justice between nineteen nineteen and January nine. The raids kicked off what became known as the Red Summer, and this was all led by Palmer, but it was executed by a young j Edgar Hoover. This campaign targeted people who were alleged communists anarchists, focused on people of certain countries Russians were targeted, but basically any people who were suspected of far left extremism were targets, and in the end, about four thousand people were arrested and about

eight hundred were deported. Yeah, that whole thing started because there was a bombing attack on Palmer, but then he parlayed that into I am going after anyone I don't like, particularly anyone for him, Like he just went mad with his quest on that. It was kind of a weird little story, you know, like somebody tried to bomb his house, that messed up and blew themselves up, and the Roosevelts looked across the street and they were afraid. So all

of this kind of played into what became this terrible year. Yeah, they treated people absolutely horribly. David Lamar, not surprisingly, did not get away with impersonating the Palmer, even though this was several years price or when Palmer really would have been in the every single paper in the United States, though he was already a prominent politician, and David was subsequently arrested at his apartment at the Hotel Laurelton, which

was in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood. So to set the wealth scene. Here. Let's say, if you're not familiar with New York City, this is a neighborhood today where you'll find the Empire, State Building, the christ they're building Times Square. I can just keep listing them. There are many more attractions. But back at the turn of the twentieth century, Midtown was

kind of a stagnant, almost commercial neighborhood. When David moved in there though, it was undergoing a huge transformation and moneyed families were turning the neighborhood into this bustling business district. And that's when the big towers were created, the Prysler Building was built, and it was all on par with

Wall Street when it came to power. Yeah, if you look at the history of New York City, it's very fascinating how initially the population was all clustered at the south end of the island and it just slowly spread up and up and up and up northward. Um, that's a whole other story. It's a whole another show. In a Senate committee hearing on this whole matter, Lamar, calmly and perhaps amazingly, just confessed to impersonating people all the time.

A big deal. He would be like a picture of nonchalance about it, and joked about it, like, oh yeah, you got me. I'm impersonated people. It's hilarious, Like you don't do that too. One press write up noted quote, never before had the national lawmakers listened to such brazen effrontery and acknowledgement of chicanery as came from the lips

of the Wolf of Wall Street on that occasion. His own confessions clearly proved that his character was a dash of Baron, Munchausen and Anius and a trace of Cagliostro. I love that. That's a good description. It's a great description that just apeared in the newspaper, like it has

a great description of him. So David was charged for his attempt at impersonating a member of Congress, and on December three, he appeared in the Federal District Court before he had judged sessions, and after just about forty five minutes, the jury found him guilty of impersonating by telephone representative Alexander Mitchell Palmer with the intention of defrauding two major

corporate players. He was convicted on two counts of the second of three indictments against him and his council planned to appeal, and the court granted his counsel a writ of error that meant a stay of execution of the sentence pending the result of that appeal. And if that just sounds like a lot of legal language in mumbo jumbo, because kind of is. What it boils down to, is that the court temporarily suspended David's sentence while his lawyers

prepared to challenge the case's outcome. And we did look that up, of course as well. David did go on to serve two years in Atlanta pen a tentury in Atlanta, Georgia. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, but when we're back, we'll talk about the sunset of david sordid occupation. Welcome back to Criminalia. Okay, let's kick things off with David conspiring with a German

spy surprises no one. So over the years, the type of David's engagements kind of changed a bit, although his end goal was still, of course, power and money. So fresh out of prison in nineteen fifteen, he acted as an agent for Captain Franz von Rintelin, who was a German naval intelligence officer which you could also call him a German spy in the United States during World War One. Much later, while giving a speech, the Captain joke amid the audience is laughter that a secret service agent is

a spy. He is on the other side, but an intelligence officer if working for you. He also admitted he had lived in New York under five aliases, but that was just about all he ever divulged of his intelligence slash spy work. He was always pretty tight lipped about what exactly he did and how exactly he did it. Von Brintlin spoke on occasion about how the war would not be decided in Europe. He believed rather that it

would be in the United States. So he struck a plan to conduct a campaign of propaganda to improve relations between the United States and Germany, and it would also, he hoped, create a pro German sentiment in the US. There was actually a second piece to this plan as well. You know. So this was war and he also wanted to curtail the commercial power in other countries and in

particular Great Britain. To do that, he wanted to prevent munition manufacturing and shipments, and that meant strikes in American munitions factories. This was important to the war effort, of course, because munitions factories were making military weapons and equipment that we're in high demands. Working together, Von Rintlin and David Lamar as David Lamar this time concocted a plan to

pressure American munitions factories and shipping agencies to strike. They figured out that they could do this by taking aim at financial institutions and business organizations. And because of his talent for manipulating people, as well as his obvious total disregard for ethics and morals, David was considered the brains behind this campaign. Von Rinteln gave him somewhere between three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars at the reports

on just how much vary. It's all big numbers, uh. And this was given to David to implement the plan. Yeah. You know, when you're doing spy work, you don't really like broadcast your receipts on people speak your David Lamar was not signing a received three dollars with a copy right for this little carbon book. This whole thing, though, despite all the money involved and promises of what would be done with it, did not go as planned, and that is because of David. Remember he was not any

kind of expert in such matters. He was an opportunistic poser. David's reports on the campaign's success, when he reported von Riddlen, we're all faked and they were always exaggerated, he was basically like, yes, boss, everything is according to plan. Where it was not until later that von Rentalin realized that David had swindled him out of a large amount of

money and didn't deliver any results. And we should point out this really doesn't reflect well on von Rentalin's intelligence at all, Like, yeah, surely he should have spotted a collaborator, but David somehow convinced him that he would be a great partner in such a move. Why not, I's got a lot of risk in and here's five thousand dollars um. So it actually wasn't after he was swindled. It wasn't bon Vinoline or any other man involved in the plan as far as we can tell, who actually tipped off

the authorities. But David was yet again arrested. This time he was convicted of conspiring with Germans and interfering with munitions shipments, which technically yes, um he testified on his own behalf that indeed he had engaged in the anti munitions scam. David also gave up the captain and claimed that the campaign was done at the request of actually another man, someone named the Reverend doctor Thomas C. Hill, who had also been a professor of Christian ethics at

Union Theological Seminary. Hill only comes up in the men's testimony. Actually he remains a bit of a mystery to both of us. Another man who was implicated in this plan was Henry B. Martin, and he, like David, took the stand. While he denied he knew that the money came from a German source, he did admit that he accepted large amounts of money from David, which he spent on the behalf of the Labors National Peace Council as well as

promoting and distributing pro German propaganda to Americans. All of the Labors National Peace Council really does sound like a very official group. It actually wasn't at all. It was a reputable organization, it was just one that David formed all as part of this larger plan. So also taking the stand that day was George Plockman, who was treasurer of the Transatlantic Trust Company. He testified against von Riddlin, David, a former congressman, and five associates for the Labors National

Peace Council. Other prominent businessmen and former politicians all denied that they knew about any of this, and they definitely or so claimed did not know that the Labor's National Peace Council was backed by a German spy. The Sherman Act passed in eight nine as a way to prosecute violations that would include things like price fixing, market allocation, and interfering with trade with the intent of lowering economic

competition for your personal gain. And if that doesn't sound like David Lamar to you, yeah it does to us. So the charge was conspiracy to instigate strikes, and the men were all found guilty. David, Ron Ridlin, and Martin were all sentenced to one year in jail. Yeah, it kind of sounds like David Lamar read the Sherman Act as like a job description, right, He's like, I could do all these things, check in check. It should surprise no one that after losing a scheme this big David

initially tried to run. According to the Evening Star of Washington, d C quote, he jumped an appeal bond and fled to Mexico by airplane, subsequently sur rendering himself and serving

out the sentence in Trenton, New Jersey. There's actually a pretty steady stream of press coverage about all of this while it was going on, and one of the most fun to read is uh this story that ran in the San Francisco Examiner in April of n under the headline the Wolf of Wall Street Trapped, with the subheadline A prison cell at Last awaits David Lamar, the most daring and resourceful pirate whoever tormented New York's Great Financial District,

And perhaps the best paragraph from all of this the reads quote, David Lamar has been one of those hovering vultures, and from time to time he has prayed upon the best workers of the financial district for many years until he became known as the Wolf of Wall Street. While he was surely active in his fraud and impersonations games, it actually wasn't until ninety three when we find that David again gets arrested, and this time it was a

charge of grand larceny involving the sale of rubber. History actually doesn't have to say about this particular trial and arrest and jailing. We don't really know that much about the story except that he sold but he never delivered. Throughout all of this, we should mention that David he wasn't just scheming. He had a social life and a family. In Nive he got married to an actress who was thirty six years younger than him. She was just twenty one at the time, and her name was Edna French.

But that was actually his second marriage, his first wife, Marie Anderson. You'll remember we mentioned his brother in law earlier, but Marie divorced him in nineteen four, a year before he married French. Yeah, and and she doesn't come up very much at all. So, not long after his rubber scandal, on January twelve, four, when he was in his mid fifties, David was found dead in a hotel room at the

Hotel Wellington in New York City. His death was determined to have been caused by heart disease um and all that was left of his fortune, which at one time was said to be in the millions, was thirty eight dollars in cash, a suit, a hat, a cane, a gold watch and chain. And gold cuff links. The front page of the New York Times the day after he died ran the headline Lamar found dead in midtown hotel Wolf of Wall Street dies obscure and alone owing a

week's room rent. Yeah, all of those stories that broke when he was found dead, you could tell they were just aching for it to be something more dramatic than it was, and they're like listing out, like, well, a hotel porter said he did um stick to his room by himself and wanted his towels delivered without knocking like a druggist down the street. Was like he did buy a lot of heartburn medication. And it's like, yeah, because he had heart disease, because he was about to die

of heart disease. Yes, it's not really a very thrilling end for someone that led nefarious, but thrilling to the spectator life exactly. No spy came and got him in his room, right, and the whereabouts of his wife when he was initially found were unknown according to those first press coverage appearances about his death. But David's body was claimed by Edna French Lamar on January sixteenth, that's four days after the story broke from the Riverside Memorial Chapel

in Manhattan. A funeral was arranged for the following day, and a burial immediately followed. Friends, and we're using quotes around that because that is who Edna named of David. We're covering the expenses. And that was all according to a story that ran in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. So at one time in his I don't necessarily want to call it a career, but like you know, it kind of was a long career. He had an estate in New Jersey, and he had a mansion on Fifth Avenue.

He had wealth on and off, but what do you want? It really was power and recognition and I mean, yeah, and wealth, but like he wanted that to come with it. While we mentioned a few of the highlights, and there are way more than we even talked about. There are much smaller incidents that lended David in court over the years, usually under accusations of swindling someone out of money. Often and seemingly miraculously, he often went free, uh not totally free, though.

You know, you play this game long enough and you might, like David, find yourself forbidden to have transactions with various stock firms due to your various unscrupulous doings, um or you know, often you'll just find yourself broke. Oh, David, I know he wanted wealth and power so badly. I mean he got it sometimes sometimes not and off sometimes so h it's an interesting one actually to do a mocktail for I think, um, I know, researching David, I

wanted to take a few shots of whatever. So uh, you know, So what do you bring to the table this week, my dear. So this is a drink that I'm calling a wolf and sweet clothing, and this is one that is, um, it's very yummy, but it does have a surprise little kick even without any alcohol in it. So it starts out with three ounces of orange juice, and then you are going to take any kind of spicy syrup. I did mind two ways. I have one that's a spicy mango syrup and I have another that's

a hobby nurro lime syrup. And I made it both ways and both were very delicious. The aftertaste was the primary difference. Interesting. I always love when you bring in the mango one good. I'll describe how they taste a little bit different afterwards. Um. And then on top of that, you're gonna pour three ounces of sprite, and I like to not mix this as I go because I like

a little subtle gradient to it. And then you're going to take some black cherry puree just and just drizzle it on top, and it's going to sink largely to the bottom, but it creates these pretty streaks in the drink, and then you kind of top it with three to four marrish you no cherries. So it looks very beautiful and sweet, and it is very sweet. But what happens because of that spiky syrup that's in there afterwards, Like it leaves this like film in your mouth where you're

like hot, spicy hot. It's very subtle, it's not it's not bad, but I feel like this is how people felt when they met this person who looked very handsome and very put together, and then they realized, like, I've been duped. Where did um? Oh? This bites a little bit at the end. So yeah, So the one that I did with spicy mango, it leaves that sense of spice in your mouth. And the one that I did with the Habbanniro limes syrup, it's not so much a taste is just the sensation of heat, so it's a

little bit different, but both are very yummy. And if there's like another syrup that you have that is in that sort of family, like sometimes I'll make hallepeen you syrup, which is super easy. If anyone's interested, you just do your simple syrup recipe, which is one part sugar to

one part water. Throw a couple of sliced Halloween ews in there while you get it to boiling point and make sure the sugar is dissolved, and then you let it cool and then you strain out or pull out the Halloween news if you want, you can leave them in there to steep. It will make it hotter and hotter depending on the Halloween you. There are lots of fun, easy ways to make hot syrup, but that was the

one I did and it was very yummy. Now for my drinkers in the crowd, I will shock you because in my experiments, this is another time where I thought vodka was going to be the easy clear winner, and again it was gin. I don't know how it is changing. What's going on. Jim. Jim goes so well with that, like hyper sweet and citrus combination. This drink can be, if you are not into sweetness, a little bit cloying. So when you add gin, it really kind of like

cuts back on that that soda sweetness. And it was really really yummy. But I didn't try it. But I think you could also throw rum in here, like a white rum, and it would be delightful. It would feel very tropical at that point. Yeah, exactly. So I actually will admit that I found Marischino chraerries in my refrigerator and happened to mention it to Holly, who promised me that she would use them for a drink at some point.

And so I am very excited about this because it's either used them in his drink or eat them on a fork. Well, you can also make yourself a little Shirley Temple course with a lemon lime soda and some Maraschino cherries and some pomegranate juice or any kind of juice really, if you just do half juice, half lemon lime soda, or even club soda, if you want to take it back from that sweet place and throw those cherries in there, delicious. I have a lot of options,

but I like yours, got to do it too. Uh yeah, throw a little spicy sir up in there and you'll get a nice surprise and you won't be cheated out of your money and doing so, I hope, we all hope, like I paid seven hundred dollars to this bottle of syrup, Please don't do that. You can make it for a buck. This guy outside the story told me that it would be the cheapest that I would find in town ever. Ever. Alrighty, thank you so much. We hope if you trying this

mocktail or cocktail that you dig it. We want to thank you again for spending this time with us, and we will see you right back here next week with more imposters. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,