It was a major political and economic scandal in France during 1933 and 1934.
Alexandre Stavisky was a Russian Jew from a wealthy family who settled in Paris in 1909, at the age of 21. He acquired French citizenship.
In the same year, in collaboration with his grandfather, he carried out his first fraud. They were looking for staff for a theater they took over and demanded a sum of money as a guarantee. When they collected enough money they tried to leave Paris. But his grandfather died suddenly and he was eventually identified and arrested.
At a later stage he managed to establish a bank which he abolished in order to appropriate the deposits. He even set up companies to cover up his involvement in the drug trade. He was also active in film production and fruit trading. His frauds include reselling title deeds twice and forgeries. He also established forgery workshop. He also pawns fake jewelry to get money. This meant that he was constantly changing names and identities.
He tried to take advantage of a sum of money given by the League of Nations as compensation to landowners, but he did not succeed.
When the situation began to pressure him and arrest was very close, he planted his identity on a disfigured train accident corpse to fool the authorities that he was dead.
He was finally arrested at his mansion when police officers shot him in the head. He was taken to the hospital where he died. Then many of his associates, politicians, government officials and lawyers were either arrested, murdered or committed suicide.
There are films about his life, Stavisky, and Stavisky, the crook of the century.
[Source: el.wikipedia.org]
