[1] Born on Jul 7, 1811, in Boston, Meiggs came to New York City in 1835 and began a lumber business that was ruined by the Panic of 1837.

Before his fraud was discovered, Meiggs left San Francisco on October 6, 1854, in the brig American, heading for South America.

According to him, he landed with only $8,000 (his fraud raised, by some accounts, half a million), lost it immediately, and had to pawn his watch.

He is said to have been the virtual dictator of Peru by that time, known as "Don Enrique,” with interests ranging from silver mines to cleaning up the city of Lima by building a seven-mile-long park.

[5] In 1876–1877, he financed French adventurer Théodore Ber for an archaeological expedition to Tiwanaku, Bolivia, against the promise that Ber would donate the artifacts he found, on behalf of Meiggs, to Washington's Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In preparation for his never-to-occur return to San Francisco, he got the State Legislature to pass a bill making it illegal to try him for offenses occurring before 1855.

As a result of Meiggs' adventures and escapades in Latin America, he left the economies of many countries in desperate conditions.