In the basement of a nondescript Sydney house, unbeknownst to his wife and neighbours, Robert Baudin made an absolute fortune — literally.
Mid-last century, Baudin printed about $2 million in fake US notes, which equates to around AU$31 million in today’s money.
And the basement printing press was just one of his many scams. Throughout his life, this counterfeiter and con artist swindled his way around the world and managed to — mostly — stay one step ahead of the law.
“I’d imagine that if he was shaking your hand [today] … with the other hand, he’d be dipping into your back pocket for your wallet,” Sunil Badami, a writer, academic and local historian tells ABC RN’s Great Aussie Cons.
‘The black sheep’
Baudin was born in the US state of Ohio in 1918. His father was a French professor, and young Robert grew up in a respectable, middle-class home.
But it was clear early on that he “was always going to be the black sheep of the family”, Badami says.
Baudin claimed that during his first year of high school, he was seduced by a maid. A much older maid.
“It set him on this road where … he was forging cheques, so that he could go to brothels twice a week,” Badami says.
However his parents tried to keep him in line, it didn’t work. By his mid-teens, Baudin left home and rode the rails across the Depression-stricken US, travelling from the Midwest to San Francisco.
“He was buying cheap, worthless jewellery, and then passing it off as much more expensive jewellery. And even working as a prostitute around San Francisco, having no qualms about sleeping with anybody who would pay him money,” Badami says.
Asia and back again
In the 1930s, just as his crimes were starting to catch up with him, Baudin moved to Shanghai, a port town that was seen as a seductive mix of glamour and sin at that time.
“This guy, who had committed all these crimes in America, managed to become a member of the Shanghai constabulary,” Badami says.
But Baudin didn’t last long on the right side of the law, deciding to scam his way across Asia, from Hong Kong to Rangoon to Delhi.
As World War II was approaching, he headed back to Los Angeles, dodging the draft by pleading insanity, and getting by on schemes like printing fake ration tickets.
Then he got busted. Baudin spent eight months on a prison farm for the fake tickets, but talked his way into the psychiatric hospital so he didn’t have to toil in the fields.
And while out on parole, he made a fateful decision.
As he later wrote in his autobiography, by the time his next parole meeting came round, “my probation papers had been tossed into the sea and I was a week out of San Francisco, bound for Sydney”.
Money, money, money
Baudin arrived in Australia after the end of World War II.
“He was a very attractive, magnetic, sexually voracious man. So he immediately fell into the underworld of Sydney, a bit of sly grogging and SP bookies [or illegal bookmaking],” Badami says.
Baudin married a young country girl named Betty, and moved into her house in Mort Street, Balmain.
His other passion was flying, and Baudin had one career plan that wasn’t too nefarious: Setting up his own aerial photography business.
But with necessities like cameras and a plane, it was an expensive dream.
So, as Baudin told veteran British documentary maker Alan Whicker many years later, he came up with a plan.
“Having done one bit of forging, why not progress to something a little bit more ambitious?” Baudin said.
At the time, printing Australian money was illegal, but printing American money here wasn’t.
So, Baudin started by creating a fake $US20 bill.
“Working on the tracing material was sheer joy, and since President Jackson’s portrait seemed the hardest part, I tackled it first. I had a little trouble with his nose and eyes. I indulged in a few departures from government engraving to bring him back to normal,” he wrote.
And his wife’s Balmain house seemed like the perfect location to hide a printing press and make the money.
Baudin went on to print about $US2 million, using a radio — turned up loud, but not suspiciously loud — to mask the sound of the printing press.
He also printed some Australian notes, as part of a deal with a shady airline executive. But that deal fell through so he burned most — but not all — of them.
And what did Betty Baudin make of this?
“I just gave her a bit of a cock-and-bull story. I explained the machine was an acquisition for the purpose of producing a bit of pornography,” Baudin said.
As Badami puts it: “It seems like an excuse many wives wouldn’t accept, but she seemed to.”
Back overseas
Baudin then packed his bags full of the American “cash” and left Australia to execute his scheme.
He travelled around Europe from Rome to Paris to Granada exchanging counterfeit greenbacks for real currency.
Then he upped his game — returning to the US, where he was still on the lam for breaching his parole conditions and where it was far riskier to be using counterfeit greenbacks.
In cities across the US, Baudin started the tedious job of passing off the money in drugstores, jewellery stores and newsagents.
He’d buy small items with large denominations of the fake notes, and then get real money in change, making around $2,000 a day.
His victims — the shopkeepers — were left with his worthless “cash” and a lower balance.
“We often think about criminals as doing it easy, coming up with a big lurk or the great sting. [But this scam seemed] really exhausting. Because he’d have to go to so many shops and buy so much junk,” Badami says.
“In fact, he bought so much stuff, he could barely fit it into the bins. And he would often just leave cars that he’d hired filled with all this stuff.”
Baudin figured that if he kept this up for 100 days, he’d be set for life. And with two people, he’d be twice as fast, so he got a former girlfriend named Terry involved.
They made a good team, crisscrossing the US, before heading over to Europe together and posing as a rich American couple.
“I keep thinking about his dear credulous wife Betty back in Mort Street,” Badami says.
And although Baudin acknowledged his acts were less than ethical, he had a different take.
“The man that holds up a bank is one that’s desperate … But I put a lot of thought into this type of project,” he said.
‘A real bargain’
The law finally caught up with the pair in San Francisco. They were about to be arrested, but managed to buy their way out of it — with real notes.
“Starting with an offer of $2,000 for each officer, we entered into a round of haggling that didn’t stop short of double that figure,” Baudin later recalled.
“The older cop remarked that $8,000 for getting out of doing 10 years was a real bargain.”
Baudin left the US and went to the UK, where he picked up a light plane, intent on heading back to Australia.
But he crashed over Singapore — losing thousands in both fake and real cash.
The accident made the front page of a local newspaper in Singapore. And, always the con artist, Baudin leveraged this new-found celebrity status to sell shares in his future aerial photography business.
He made so much money that he bought two planes and then took off back to Sydney.
Then while flying over the Timor Sea, he threw all the share certificates out the window.
Bringing Sydney to a standstill
A decade on, Baudin was done with forging. He was running his legit aerial photography business, thanks to those Singaporean “investors”.
But then three detectives came knocking. And they found counterfeit notes with a face value of $US265,000.
Baudin thought he was legally safe — he hadn’t broken any Australian laws by spending the American money here. And the statute of limitations had passed in the US.
However, the detectives found four of those old Australian notes that he hadn’t burned, along with printing plates bearing Australian images.
It was a “horrifying discovery,” Baudin recalled.
He was arrested but while out on bail, Baudin came up with another crazy idea.
In February 1969, he took to the air.
For hours, he flew around Sydney in a light plane, threatening to fly out to sea and crash unless the charges against him were dropped.
“I figured the masses would be sympathetic to someone who was fighting the law in the sky above their biggest city rather than in a courtroom,” he later wrote.
The Navy even sent an aircraft carrier into the harbour just in case he decided to land.
While in the air, Baudin managed to get a message to NSW Commissioner of Police Norm Allan about his case.
Then, 20 minutes before his fuel was due to run out, his conditions were partly agreed to.
Baudin ended up spending just 15 months in prison, because the counterfeiting was so long ago, and he’d been such an upright citizen ever since.
After being released, he resumed his aerial photography, working for the government and taking pictures of Queen Elizabeth II when she opened the Sydney Opera House in 1973.
Back in the air
And this wasn’t the only time Baudin took to the air to make a point.
In his later years, he wrote an autobiography, calling it Fake: The Passing Fortunes of a Counterfeiter.
But American publishers wanted to call it Confessions of a Promiscuous Counterfeiter. Baudin hated the name.
So, in protest, he buzzed around New York in a light plane, the same way he had once buzzed around Sydney.
Baudin got a little too close to United Nations Headquarters in Midtown, triggering an evacuation of 5,000 UN officials and employees.
But like many times in his life, he dodged consequences and didn’t serve jail time after his stunt.
Baudin died in 1983.
“He may have broken a lot of hearts. But people seem to be really forgiving, whether it was his long-suffering wife, Betty, or the police and courts,” Badami says.
“And I think that goes to the heart of his charm.”
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