Holiday Special: The 1920s Santa Claus Scam
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2019
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 AARP's The Perfect Scam. I'm Frank Abagnale and a new set of 12 episodes |
| 0:09.0 | featuring America's most shocking scam stories. As you know, it's been an amazing journey this past 48 episodes of our inaugural podcast with the collaboration of our co-host, Will Johnson. |
| 0:20.0 | As the podcast matures and takes on a new and challenging stories, we look forward to expanding our talent of co-hosts. |
| 0:27.0 | For the next set of 12 stories, The Perfect Scams Producer, Julie Gets, will be hosting with me. |
| 0:33.3 | Julie is great to have you here. |
| 0:34.8 | Hi Frank, and thank you. |
| 0:36.0 | I'm excited to be here and really looking forward to co-hosting with you. |
| 0:40.6 | Will certainly left big shoes to fill, but I'm thrilled for the opportunity and ready to take on the challenge. |
| 0:46.0 | So with that said should we dive right into it? |
| 0:48.0 | Let's do it. Okay, great. |
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| 1:26.3 | 4200. AARP receives a royalty fee for the use of its intellectual property. |
| 1:33.2 | These fees are used for the general purposes of AARP. |
| 1:40.3 | So Frank, our listeners always want to know what you've been up to lately. |
| 1:44.0 | Well, of course, still teaching at the FBI Academy. |
| 1:47.0 | This is Cyber Awareness Month, so I've been traveling out to Major Fortune 500 and 100 companies speaking to their employees |
| 1:54.8 | which explaining to them that the most important job they have is keeping their |
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