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Sir Francis Drake Association
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sir Francis Drake Association is a name commonly applied to a 1913 hoax, in which people with the surname Drake were told to claim a fortune of $22 billion as long as they could trace lineage to Sir Francis Drake who had died in 1596.
Persons in both the United States and the United Kingdom were conned into paying up to $2,500 a week in "legal expenses" when it in actuality fell into the hands of an Iowa farmer named Oscar Merrill Hartzell, whose mother had been conned by a similar scam.
Hartzell swindled at least $2 million dollars, and an additional $350,000 by those who donated additional money by more than 20,000 people with Drake's surname. Hartzell was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and was later transferred to a mental institution where he died in 1943.
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