Since time immemorial, man has been known to employ deceitful means to obtain his goals. Motherhood and prostitution have often been prescribed as the world's oldest professions and fraud is not far behind them - and possibly was the first for men. It has many guises and is by no means confined to financial activity. Nor is fraud or forgery always done for personal profit or publicly to fool experts. The basic motives for it may remain a mystery. On the whole, through modern history, however major frauds have involved financial scams, with rogues and cheats relieving their general public, or in more ambitious schemes, governments of their assets and funds. It is the most noteworthy (not necessarily the biggest) of these which are the theme of this book.