The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age

Before Anna Delvey or Elizabeth Holmes there was Cassie Chadwick, the first woman to bring down a federal agent, a bank, and a city’s worth of men. Paroled felon. Rich doctor's wife. Famous clairvoyant. The best con artists know how to reinvent themselves, time and time again. Over the course of fifteen years, Cassie Chadwick swept from town to town, assuming new identities and running new swindles at each railroad stop. In the dusk of the Gilded Age, years after the robber barons had amassed their fortunes, she was amassing her own. Then came the Carnegie con: Chadwick convinced prominent men from Cleveland to New York City that she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. Blinded by the name of the world's most powerful man, businessmen lined up to lend her hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time, making her impossibly rich. The crash shattered banks and bankers alike. Her sensational trial drew the eyes of a nation that couldn’t get enough of the woman. Interspersing Chadwick’s crimes with stories of an unsuspecting Andrew Carnegie, author Annie Reed spins an enthralling, page-turning tale of true crime.