Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

You know who doesn’t get enough credit for scamming? Tom Brady. The man’s a legend. A sixth-round pick, fluking his way into ten Super Bowl appearances and a supermodel wife? All by not eating strawberries or whatever? C’mon. I know a fraud when I see one. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. The man is a king. Regardless of scams or not, the upcoming Super Bowl is gonna be one for the ages. I’ve been scalping tickets hard. Re-sale market’s going crazy considering how limited they are. The ol’ laser printer’s getting a real workout, let me tell ya.

All this to say – as good as Tom is, when it comes to being pretty, he’s got his work cut out for him compared to our featured scammer of the week. Tom’s departure killed a franchise, but this lass’ treachery helped to bring down an empire.

JEANNE DE VALOIS-SAINT-REMY: INSIDE WOMAN AND DIAMOND SMUGGLER

BORN: July 22nd, 1756

DIED: August 23rd, 1791

Our protagonist this week was born in the small peasant village of Fontette, in the northeast of France, to Jacques de Valois, an alcoholic baron who’d fallen on extremely hard times, and Marie Jossel, a servant girl who’d formerly served in a noble court but had since lost her status. A hardcore drunk, Jacques was related to Count Henry de Saint-Remy, a bastard son of the former King Henry II. Even with noble blood, Jeanne de Valois’ early life was undeniably shitty.

Of the six children that the Valois parents had, three died in infancy. The remaining three – including Jeanne – were often horrifically neglected, and left to the bulk of the household and farming responsibilities. Without shoes and often begging for food, their situation was dire – until they were rescued by a nearby abbot and whisked away to Versailles. Upon further study by a royal genealogist, confirming their noble bloodline, the children’s lives improved greatly – Jeanne and her sister were given a yearly stipend of 900 pounds and studied at a prestigious boarding school, while her older brother Jacques got an annual stipend of a thousand pounds, as well as a post at a military academy.

With Jeanne’s life on the upswing, she gradually restored her social status. In 1780, Jeanne had a shotgun wedding with Nicolas de le Motte, an officer of the gendarmerie. Though her twins died in infancy, Jeanne’s social status continued to grow. Her new husband had some extremely dubious claims to nobility, but nonetheless, the couple elected to start using the titles of comte and comtesse de La Motte-Valois.

The death of her children cast a pall on their marriage for the rest of their lives. Jeanne, desirous of extreme elegance and wealth, felt her husband’s military position wasn’t prestigious enough to finance the lifestyle she desired, and as such, decided to petition King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, for an increase in her annual pension. Meanwhile, she took a series of lovers, including Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan (yes, you read that correctly – both high nobility and high clergy, all wrapped up in one, and greatly dishonoring both!), who provided her with extremely valuable insight into the inner workings of the politics of Versailles.

Marie Antoinette, though vapid and ignorant in many other regards, was well-attuned to Jeanne de Valois’ conniving nature – and as such, refused to ever meet with her in order for Jeanne to get her pension increase. As such, Jeanne had to resort to other means to become wealthy – and perhaps, one day, powerful.

Jeanne decided to go for broke. In 1784, she got wind of a massive, expensive diamond necklace, recently handcrafted by famed Paris jewelry artist Charles Auguste Boehmer. The necklace was the height of luxury – it had originally been commissioned by former King Louis XV for his mistress, Madame du Barry; however, Louis’ death from smallpox and his mistress’ banishment from the court meant that she never received it. Having taken several years to produce the necklace, Boehmer found that all of a sudden, he had no market to sell the expensive creation. After being rebuffed several times by Marie Antoinette, and with several failed attempts to sell the necklace to countries abroad, Boehmer was growing increasingly desperate for somebody – anybody! – to purchase it.

As lover of Cardinal Rohan, Jeanne became well-acquainted with his deeds – and misdeeds – as well as those of the king and queen. Cardinal Rohan had formerly been a French ambassador to Vienna, where his wheelings and dealings meant that nasty rumors about Marie Antoinette made to the ear of her fearsome mother, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. Marie Antoinette despised the Cardinal, as he did her, but the Cardinal understood the importance of trying to work his way back into her good books in order to further his own favors.

Realizing the Cardinal’s vulnerability, Jeanne took advantage of her lover; having made it into the royal court with the help of a completely different lover, a gigolo by the name of Retaux de Villette, she pretended that she was back in Marie Antoinette’s good books, and thus could help the Cardinal. She faked hundreds of letters, writing back to the Cardinal as Marie Antoinette, gradually convincing him over the months that the Queen was secretly in love with him. Meanwhile, Jeanne “borrowed” large sums of money from the Cardinal, under the premise that it was going to the Queen’s “charity work”. She used this money to buy her way back into respected society, boasting all the while of a close relationship with Marie Antoinette.

Ah, yes. The necklace. We have to work this into our story now. As it turns out, Boehmer and his associate, Paul Bassange, felt that Jeanne’s close relationship with the Queen would be the perfect way for them to sell this ridiculous thing, so that they could finally recoup the costs of years of hunting for suitable diamonds – the two men were perilously close to bankruptcy. Conspiring with Jeanne, her husband, and Retaux de Villette, the jewellers helped her hatch a plan, using the Cardinal as the rube. De Ville forged some letters from the Queen addressed to Jeanne, with the subject being that she now wanted to buy the necklace, but was worried that Louis XVI wouldn’t approve due to the wretched state of the French economy. Our fake Marie Antoinette asked Jeanne to ask the Cardinal to loan her the money – as a secret favor; the Cardinal, eager at the opportunity to put himself back in the Queen’s good books once and for all, agreed.

Jeanne arranged a midnight meeting, using a prostitute who resembled Marie Antoinette, for the handoff of the necklace. With the Cardinal’s IOUs in the jeweller’s hands, and with the necklace in Jeanne’s hands, all was well.

Naturally, Jeanne and her husband turned around and broke up the necklace as fast as they could, scattering the diamonds and selling them on the black market in Paris and London.

Of course, there was one problem. When Jeanne finally went to pay Boehmer and Bassange, the Cardinal’s IOUs were insufficient to cover the cost. They complained to the real Marie Antoinette – who of course had no knowledge of the situation – and the dominoes began to fall.

The Cardinal was arrested – loudly proclaiming his innocence – and he quickly put the blame on Jeanne de Valois, her husband, her lover, and the prostitute who posed as the queen. In a show trial in the famous Hall of Mirrors, all four were found guilty in the scheme. Nicolas de la Motte, tried in absentia, was sentenced to become a galley slave, while Retaux de Villette was exiled to Italy. Jeanne received the harshest sentence of all – she was ferociously whipped, branded with a “V” (voleuse, or “thief”) on each shoulder, and sentenced to life imprisonment in a prison for prostitutes. The Cardinal was acquitted, though the King also banished him from court.

Despite the guilty verdicts, the French population still felt Marie Antoinette to somehow be in the wrong – and the Cardinal’s acquittal was a big reason for that. Despite her innocence, public opinion about the Queen was permanently swayed – and it would never recover. Hatred of the monarchy would bring down Louis and Marie Antoinette just a few years later, kickstarting the French Revolution and changing the world forever.

As for Jeanne – she actually escaped prison, impersonating a boy and sneaking out. She escaped to London, and wrote a memoir of her life, viciously slandering Marie Antoinette the entire time. While the former Queen of France would be guillotined in 1793, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Remy would die two years before her, having fallen out a window in London trying to avoid debt collectors. In the fall, she broke both her legs, one arm, and somehow also lost an eye – a gruesome end for a woman whose selfish, conniving actions indirectly spelled the end of a great empire.

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Man, how about that? A little bit of Uncut Gems action in the 18th century. Now that’s hustle! Thanks for listening this week. Gotta head off to meet with the Super Bowl officiating team… I’m taking the over. They’ll get 20%* if they make it happen. Remember – if you want to live your life like Hue Jackson’s Hall-of-Fame Scammers, just dial 1-900-FAST-BUX now, and you’ll even get a set of lotto numbers** with it!

*Off the purchase of a new car from my buddy who’s a Daewoo dealer.

**They’re from last Saturday.

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Information from this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.