Forgers

Elmyr de Hory (born Elemér Albert Hoffmann; Budapest, April 14, 1906 - Ibiza, December 11, 1976) was a Hungarian-born painter and art forger who is said to have sold over a thousand forgeries to reputable art galleries all over the world.

Peter Britton Tobin (born 27 August 1946) is a convicted Scottish serial killer and sex offender who is currently serving three sentences of life imprisonment with a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006.

Denis Vrain-Lucas (1818–1882) was a French forger who sold counterfeit letters and other documents to French manuscript collectors.

Clifford Michael Irving (born November 5, 1930) is an American novelist and investigative reporter.

Charles Dawson (11 July 1864 – 10 August 1916) was a British amateur archaeologist, who was initially credited with, and is now blamed for, discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, climaxing with that of the Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), which he presented in 1912.

Richard Allen "Rick" Davis (born June 2, 1954) is an American convicted murderer, whose criminal record fueled support for passage of California's "three-strikes law" for repeat offenders.

Piligrim (Pilgrim of Passau, Pilegrinus, Peregrinus) (date of birth unknown; died 20 May 991) was Bishop of Passau.

Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944 – February 10, 2002) was an American criminal and author.

Adolfo Kaminsky (or Adolphe; born 1 October 1925) is a former member of the French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents.

James Addison Reavis (May 10, 1843 – November 27, 1914), later using the name James Addison Peralta-Reavis, the so-called Baron of Arizona, was an American forger and fraudster.

Constantine Simonides (1820–1890), palaeographer, dealer of icons, man with extensive learning, knowledge of manuscripts, miraculous calligraphy.

Michel Roger Lafosse (born 21 April 1958, Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels, Belgium), subsequently known as Michael James Alexander Stewart of Albany, claims to be a descendant of Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and to be the legitimate Jacobite claimant to the throne of the Kingdom of Scotland.

John Henry Gooding, alias Frank Digby Hardy (5 April 1868 – 28 October 1930) was an English naval writer, journalist, soldier, career criminal and would-be spy during the Irish War of Independence.

Jean LaBanta (born c. 1879) was an American criminal, forger and train robber.

John Payne Collier (London, 11 January 1789 – 17 September 1883), was an English Shakespearian critic and forger.

Adolf Ludvig Stierneld (September 1, 1755 – July 31, 1835), was a Swedish baron, politician, courtier and collector of historical documents.

Brita Olovsdotter Tott (or Thott) (in Swedish) or Birgitte Olufsdatter Thott (in Danish), (fl. 3 March 1498), called the Lady of Hammersta, was a Danish and Swedish noble, landowner, royal county administrator, spy and forger.

Claude Robert Eatherly (October 2, 1918 – July 1, 1978) was an officer in the U.

Henry Woodhouse (1884–1970) was an Italian-born US aviation enthusiast, magazine publisher, speculator and forger of historical documents.

Lawrence Gwyn Van Loon (1903, New York City - 7 November 1985, Gloversville, New York) was an American general practitioner, amateur historical linguist and forger.

William Dodd (29 May 1729 – 27 June 1777) was an English Anglican clergyman and a man of letters.

Linda Bebko-Jones (May 1, 1946 – November 20, 2011) was an American politician who represented the 1st district of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which includes portions of Erie County.

Scott Faughn (born 1980) is the publisher of the Missouri Times and host of weekly political television show This Week in Missouri Politics.

William Wantling (November 23, 1933 – May 2, 1974) was an American poet, novelist, ex-Marine, ex-convict, and college professor born in East Peoria, Illinois.

John Ruffo (born November 24, 1954) is an American former business executive, white-collar criminal and confidence man, who in 1998 was convicted in a scheme to defraud many US and foreign banking institutions of over 350 million dollars.

Sydney Warburg is the pen name of an author or group of authors who remained anonymous and who published a book about funding of the Nazi Party by American bankers between 1929 and 1933.

Mark William Hofmann (born December 7, 1954) is an American counterfeiter, forger and convicted murderer.

John Edward Robinson (born December 27, 1943) is a convicted serial killer, con man, embezzler, kidnapper, and forger who was found guilty in 2003 of three murders and received the death sentence for two of them.

Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet (20 October 1873 – 8 January 1944) was a British oriental scholar, Sinologist, and linguist whose books exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

Stewart Murray Wilson (born 11 December 1946) was born and raised in Timaru, New Zealand.

Edward Simpson ("Flint Jack") (born 1815, fl. 1874) was a British geologist and forger of antiquities, such as arrowheads and fossils.

Francesco Maria Pratilli (1689–1763) was an Italian priest, scholar, antiquarian, whose name is known, from the 19th century, for being involved in a vast series of skilled forgeries.

William Chaloner (1650s, or 1665–22 March 1699) was a serial counterfeit coiner and confidence trickster, who was imprisoned in Newgate Prison several times and eventually proven guilty of high treason by Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Royal Mint.

William Roupell (7 April 1831 – 25 March 1909) was Liberal Party Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom for Lambeth from 1857 until his resignation on 4 February 1862.

Benedict Levita (of Mainz), or Benedict the Deacon, is the pseudonym attached to a forged collection of capitularies that appeared in the ninth century.

Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 – March 27, 2011) was a convicted American serial killer.

Matthew Bevan Cox (born July 2, 1969), commonly known as Matthew Cox, also sometimes known as Matthew B.

Neville George Clevely Heath (6 June 1917 – 16 October 1946) was an English murderer who was responsible for the deaths of two young women.

Veitel-Heine Ephraim (1703 – 1775 in Berlin) was Jeweller to the Prussian Court and Mint Master under the Prussian Kings Frederick William I and Frederick the Great.

Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (born 1931 in Cascante, Navarre) is a Basque anarchist famous for his practice of expropriative anarchism.

Monroe Edwards (1808 – January 27, 1847) was an American slave trader, forger and convicted criminal who was the subject of a well-publicized trial and conviction in 1842.

Leonore Carol "Lee" Israel (December 3, 1939 – December 24, 2014) was a noted author who was later discovered to be a literary forger and thief.

Charles Julius Bertram (1723–1765) was an English expatriate in Denmark who "discovered"—and presumably wrote—The Description of Britain (Latin: De Situ Britanniae), an 18th-century literary forgery purporting to be a mediaeval work on history that remained undiscovered for over a century.

Scott S. Reuben (born 1958) is an American anesthesiologist who was Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts and chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts from February 1991 until 2009 when he was sentenced to prison for healthcare fraud.

Absalom Greeley was the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Prince Edward County in the 1st Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1867 to 1870.

Charles Franklin Mitchell (February 18, 1806 – September 27, 1865) was a U.

Dean Faiello (born August 31, 1959) is an American criminal currently imprisoned at Attica Correctional Facility after being found responsible for the April 2003 death of Maria Cruz, whom he had represented himself to as a dermatologist.

Annius of Viterbo (Latin: Joannes Annius Viterb(i)ensis; c. 1432 – 13 November 1502) was an Italian Dominican friar, scholar, and historian, born Giovanni Nanni (Nenni) in Viterbo.

Israel Alvin "Izzy" Lang (born February 2, 1942) is a former American football running back who played for six seasons in the National Football League.

James Townsend Saward (born 1799) was a Victorian English barrister and forger also known by the nickname of Jim the Penman.