On a Sunday night in May 1935, Victor Lustig was strolling down Broadway on New Yorkâ??s Upper West Side. At first, the Secret Service agents couldnâ??t be sure it was him. Theyâ??d been shadowing him for seven months, painstakingly trying to learn more about this mysterious and dapper man, but his newly grown mustache had thrown them off momentarily. As he turned up the velvet collar on his Chesterfield coat and quickened his pace, the agents swooped in.
Surrounded, Lustig smiled and calmly handed over his suitcase. â??Smooth,â? was how one of the agents described him, noting a â??livid scarâ? on his left cheekbone and â??dark, burning eyes.â? After chasing him for years, theyâ??d gotten a close-up view of the man known as â??the Count,â? a nicknamed heâ??d earned for his suave and worldly demeanor. He had long sideburns, agents observed, and â??perfectly manicured nails.â? Under questioning he was serene and poised. Agents expected the suitcase to contain freshly printed bank notes from various Federal
Reserve series, or perhaps other tools of Lustigâ??s million-dollar counterfeiting trade. But all they found were expensive clothes.
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