00:00Today's side quest is brought to you by our good friends over at Surfshark VPN.
00:05But more about them at the end.
00:08I think we can all agree that stealing is not okay.
00:14You wouldn't, for example, steal a car or a handbag.
00:18Yet there's a certain scale of theft beyond which one can only feel a sense of awe at
00:25the sheer audacity of the attempt.
00:27Today's story documents exactly one such case.
00:31That one time when the Portuguese central bank was almost stolen.
00:37Our story starts, unsurprisingly, in Portugal.
00:42Ah, Portugal.
00:44I still have your cork postcard under my pillow.
00:48Everything.
00:49Well, actually, no.
00:51It doesn't.
00:51I got you there.
00:52It actually starts in Angola on the southwestern tip of Africa.
00:57Angola, or at least parts of it, had been a Portuguese colony since the 16th century, going
01:03through the full colonial experience of mass slavery and brutal exploitation.
01:08Admittedly, by the start of our story in 1916, things had toned down just a bit.
01:15Slavery had been outlawed and replaced with a questionably less evil forced labor system.
01:20And the Portuguese government was pouring millions of dollars, no, sorry, escudos, into building
01:27up Angola's railways in the wake of its entry into the First World War.
01:33Thousands of Portuguese engineers made their way to Angola to work on this project.
01:37And one of them, well, wouldn't you like to know, was Alvis Rice.
01:43His life was a phenomenal underdog story.
01:46Coming from abject poverty, he had managed to graduate from Oxford University's Polytechnic
01:51School of Engineering, specializing in geology, physics, civil engineering, and mathematics.
01:57He was one of the most highly qualified engineers in Angola, and he quickly rose to the position
02:03of chief engineer of the railway project.
02:06There was, however, one minor flaw in this Cinderella story.
02:11Oxford University had no Polytechnic School of Engineering, and Alvis himself had never
02:17set foot on the hallowed turf of England.
02:21It was all an elaborate ruse.
02:24Alvis had forged his diploma and gotten a notary of dubious integrity to stamp it, relying on his
02:32wit and charms to, as they say, fake it until you make it.
02:42His scheme did work.
02:45Alvis saw the Angolan project through and earned a decent sum for his troubles.
02:50Yet, at the end of the day, Alvis wasn't even a millionaire after six years of hard work.
02:57Clearly, forging a diploma to get a better job was a small-brain move.
03:01So, he came up with a better idea, and that was forging checks.
03:08Alvis leveraged his reputation to make a buyout offer to one of the Angolan railway companies,
03:14which were flush with cash from the Portuguese governed.
03:17He wrote enough checks from his newly set up and totally empty bank account in New York
03:23to gain a controlling stake in the company.
03:26Then, while the checks were sailing across the Atlantic to be cleared,
03:30he phoned in at New York and ordered a transfer from the company's bank account to his own,
03:36ensuring, of course, that his checks would not bounce.
03:40It was, without a doubt, a big-brain move.
03:44Within a few months, Alvis had quadrupled his money.
03:47But then, something unexpected happened.
03:51No, not that, not that, and certainly not that.
03:54A pregnant Alvis.
03:57The Portuguese government suddenly decided that Angola was no longer cool.
04:02All those railway investments had proven to be expensive and unprofitable.
04:07So, to clear its balance sheet, Portugal declared escudos in Angola to be a separate currency,
04:13and not backed by the Bank of Portugal.
04:17Overnight, Alvis and most Angolans lost everything.
04:22His big-brain move was evidently not big enough.
04:26So, upon returning to Lisbon, he plotted an even greater scheme – forging Portuguese currency.
04:33Actually, this was a surprisingly feasible task.
04:36You see, in the early 1920s, many central banks, especially in smaller countries like Portugal,
04:43didn't print their own currency.
04:45The printing machines were complicated to run and expensive to maintain.
04:49So, oftentimes, the job was outsourced to dedicated printing companies.
04:55Not bad work, if you can get it.
04:57In the case of Portugal, all escudos were printed in London by Waterlow and Sons.
05:04All Alvis needed to do was to convince them to print a little bit of money for him.
05:10It's not so hard, is it?
05:11I mean, really.
05:12He wrote up a contract from the Bank of Portugal,
05:15empowering him to order the printing of 200 million escudos to be used to rescue Angola's economy.
05:23Oh, was that the time?
05:24Supposedly, the endeavor was being kept secret to avoid outraging the Portuguese public.
05:29After all, you can't have Portuguese taxpayers bailing out Angola.
05:35That would be preposterous.
05:37Alvis ran the contract through a notary, as usual, then through the consulates of Britain, France,
05:44and Germany for official translations.
05:46And after a quick meeting with Lord Waterlow, the printing was officially underway.
05:51The first tranche of notes arrived early in 1925,
05:55and Alvis began eagerly laundering it through various Angolan businesses.
06:01The gigabrain play was finally paying off.
06:04However, problems quickly started to emerge.
06:09Too many notes had either duplicate serial numbers or non-existent ones.
06:13And before long, a nationwide investigation was underway.
06:18Alvis himself became a suspect in the summer of 1925,
06:22at which point he realized that he had only one way out.
06:26He had to buy the Bank of Portugal itself.
06:30This too was a surprisingly feasible task.
06:35Many central banks of the era were private institutions with their own shares and shareholders.
06:40In the case of the Portuguese central bank, only around 10% was owned by the government,
06:46with the rest of the shares circulating across the public.
06:50If Alvis could acquire enough shares to gain a controlling interest,
06:53he could retroactively legitimize all the currency he had printed.
06:58It was truly a galaxy brain plan.
07:02And in the span of just six months, Alvis managed to acquire around 20% of the shares.
07:08He was on the verge of greatness.
07:12He was this close.
07:13But alas, his scheme was blown in December and he was promptly arrested.
07:20When the news of the scandal broke out, the Portuguese government lost all of its credibility.
07:25Alvis had managed to print about 2% of Portugal's GDP by the time he was caught.
07:31And, well, things turned south very fast.
07:35Within a few months, the Portuguese Republic was overthrown by the military
07:39and was replaced with a dictatorship that would last for another 50 years.
07:44Somewhat surprisingly, Alvis only got 20 years in prison for his deeds.
07:50Though he did die in poverty not long after,
07:53while Lord Waterlow resigned and took up the comfy position of Lord Mayor of London.
07:59Ah, such is the way of aristocracy.
08:02If only Alvis had been wise enough to obscure his identity just a little bit better.
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09:19Let me know what you think and stay tuned for the next legitimately fraudulent episode
09:24of SideQuest!
09:29Oi! Knock knock!
09:30Who's there?
09:31Cash!
09:32Mmm, Cash who?
09:34I didn't realize you were some kind of nut!
09:36Oh my...
09:37I'm...
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