Archive Holiday Special: The 1920s Santa Claus Scam

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this 2019 episode, journalist Alex Palmer tells the story of his great-granduncle, colorful conman John Duval Gluck, who created the Santa Claus Association. Before Gluck started his charity, letters from New York City children to Santa were destroyed, unopened, by the U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity and created the Santa Claus Association in 1913. The organization claimed to use the donations it collected to answer children’s letters to Santa and deliver them Christmas gifts. For a time, the charity did just that. For 15 years money and gifts flowed to the association, and Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity. But efforts to crack down on corruption in New York ultimately resulted in the uncovering of irregularities that would lead to the charity’s downfall.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan. It's the holiday season and while you are working overtime to get ready, criminals are working overtime too.
0:12.0	Holidays are prime time for scammers to reach out and deceive you well.
0:16.8	You might be distracted by all the hubbub.
0:19.7	So we thought it would be a good time to bring back one of our favorite perfect scam
0:23.6	episodes. It's about one of the most famous Christmas season scams ever involving a
0:29.6	man who turned children's letters to Santa into a charity empire in New York City, an
0:36.7	empire that eventually collapsed in disgrace.
0:40.4	It's a bit of a history lesson dating back to the very first time a tree was lit publicly in New York City
0:47.1	back when children still mail letters to Santa Claus
0:50.9	But past is prologue, so there's still plenty to learn from this story. The man who
0:57.0	would be Santa Claus. Perfect scam producer Julie Gets is the host on this one.
1:05.0	Our guest this week is Alex Palmer.
1:09.0	He's a journalist and New York Times best-selling author
1:12.0	who covers travel, culture, and history.
1:15.6	His book, The Santa Claus Man, The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age con man and the invention
1:20.8	of Christmas in New York, tells the story of a dapper con artist named John Duval Gluck,
1:26.2	who used a Santa letter answering scheme to make himself rich and famous.
1:30.8	It's a fascinating story and one to which Alex has a personal connection.
1:35.0	This is Alex.
1:39.0	Hi, Alex, it's Julie Getz with AARP's The Perfect Scam.
1:42.0	How are you?
1:43.2	Good, how are you?
	...

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