Charles Deville Wells broke the bank in Monte Carlo playing roulette in 1891. He won 1 million French Francs, worth approximately US$ 13 million in todays money. The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo: Charles Deville Wells, Gambler and Fraudster Extraordinaire Robin Quinn download Z-Library. Download books for free.

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• Charles Deville Wells
• Charles Deville Wells

1. The Incredible true story of the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. Charles Deville Wells has two loves in his life: a beautiful French mistress named Jeannette and his sumptuous yacht, the Palais Royal. At the risk of losing them both, Wells stakes everything he owns at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo’s world-famous casino – and in the space of a few days he breaks the bank, not.
2. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Charles Wells in Deville, LA. Whitepages people search.
3. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Charlie Wells in Louisiana (LA). Whitepages people.

Charles Wells is known for his extraordinary luck at the
roulette tables, breaking the bank at the Monte Carlo on more than one occasion. His love of
gambling would eventually get the best of him, though, causing him to resort to
fraudulent behavior to fund his addiction. Although Wells was born in the
mid-1800s, his actions are still talked about today.

To learn more about Charles Wells, his childhood, how his life of crime and
gambling started, and how he managed to break the bank at the Monte Carlo on
more than one occasion, please read through this detailed biography. Who knows?
You might even discover something you never knew before.

Early Years

Charles De Ville Wells was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, in 1841. His
father, Charles Jeremiah Wells, was a well-known poet and lawyer. His mother,
Emily Jane Hill, was a stay-at-home mother who took care of Charles and his
three older sisters. When Wells was still an infant, his family moved to
Quimper, France, which is where Wells spent the majority of his childhood.

Wells’ parents took him to church every week in order to instill good morals
in their young boy. Addiction to both alcohol and gambling ran in the family,
and they were hoping Wells would not run into the same difficulties when he was
older. His time in church proved to be profitable when he was young, as he was
very respectful and always followed the rules.

He attended L’ecole de Diwan, a very prestigious private school in France at
the time. Wells did exceptionally well in school, managing to graduate at the
top of his class in 1959. He earned himself a scholarship to attend
Clermont-Ferrand University, where he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in
engineering.

After he graduated, he accepted a job as an engineer at the Marseille
shipyards. While working there, he invented a device that could regulate the
speed of a ship’s propellers. He was able to sell the patent for his invention
for 5,000 francs, which was about 5 times his yearly salary at the time.

A Life of Crime and Gambling Begins

With a little extra money to spend, Wells became a frequent visitor of the
many casinos in France. This is where things started to take a turn for the
worse for this once-well-mannered, church-going gentleman. He quickly became
addicted to gambling, and before he knew it, all of his money was gone.

Desperate for cash, he found some investors who were willing to fund his
railroad building project. He had plans to build a railroad in Berck, an area in
France that was in need of transportation services. After seeing how expensive
it would be to actually build the railroad, Wells decided to take his investors’
money and flee. This was out of character for Wells, but he felt like he had no
other choice.

He found himself in England, where he continued to gamble away every dollar
he brought in. Once again, he turned to investors for help. He convinced several
different wealthy members of society to invest in one of his many inventions. He
took their money without any intention of paying them back, instead using their
money to feed his gambling addiction. This went on for several years.

Breaking the Bank

Wells visited the Monte Carlo Casino for the first time in July of 1891. At
that time, each roulette table at the casino had a cash reserve of 100,000
francs, which was often referred to as “the bank.” Every time a gambler won an
amount larger than 100,000 francs, they were said to have “broken the bank.”
When this happened, the casino officials would be forced to break into the
casino’s vault to pay the winner in full. Wells’ luck at the roulette tables
during his stay at the Monte Carlo amazed everyone, as he was able to “break the
bank” several times during the course of his stay there.

Up until that moment in history, the bank at the Monte Carlo had been broken
only 5 times, by 5 different people. It was unheard of for someone to be able to
do this more than once. Given his criminal record, many people believed he had
somehow managed to cheat his way to victory. They questioned if he somehow
rigged the wheel or paid the spinner to turn the odds in his favor; a thorough
investigation proved them wrong, however.

Wells contributed his wins to the Martingale system. The Martingale system is
simple in theory; it involves keeping your bet the same when you win and
doubling it when you lose. While this system may have helped Charles at the
Monte Carlo, it has been proven to be unsuccessful in the long run.

Once Wells had a substantial amount of money to his name, he decided to
purchase a standard ship and turn it into a luxury yacht. He named his new yacht
Palais Royal; it came complete with a fully-stocked kitchen and a 50-person
ballroom. He hosted lavish parties aboard his yacht almost every weekend; they
were an invite-only affair. This was to avoid having one of the many people he
had scammed over the years show up to his party in search of vengeance.

A Life of Crime Continues

While that never happened, one of his famous yacht parties was interrupted by
the authorities, who had a warrant out for his arrest. He was extradited to
England to face charges in connection with the former investors he had failed to
pay back. His trial took place at Old Bailey in March 1893, where he was found
guilty on 23 counts of fraud. The penalty for his crimes was 8 years of
imprisonment, but he was able to get out a few months early for good behavior.

Once Wells was released from prison, he set up a private bank in Paris under
the alias “Lucien Rivier.” He promised to pay investors an interest rate of 365%
per year, or 1% per day, on their investments. Eager to take advantage of this
generous offer, investors started sending money his way. Within just a matter of
weeks, 6,000 investors deposited a total of 2 million francs. He paid his
existing customers out of the funds coming in from his seemingly never-ending
supply of new customers, which would only work for so long.

French authorities soon started investigating his business practices to make
sure his bank was legitimate. Once they started doing this, he fled back to
England once again with his customers’ money. He is said to have revisited Monte
Carlo at this time, only to lose the majority of his customers’ funds at the
roulette tables.

It took authorities nearly two years to make the connection that Lucien
Rivier and Charles Wells was the same person. Wells was arrested in January of
1912 and sentenced to another five years in prison. To make sure Wells would not
be able to do anything like that again, the French government issued strict
controls on private banks that involved a rigorous background check on the
owners.

After Wells was released from prison the second time, he kept a low profile
for the remainder of his life. He spent his evenings gambling away the rest of
the money he had left. In 1922, he passed away just after his 51st birthday as a
result of kidney failure. Only family members were invited to attend the private
funeral service that was held in his honor.

Impacting the Media

Wells’ life has been the theme of various books, films, and musicals over the
years. His life story first hit the entertainment world in 1935 with the release
of the American romantic comedy The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. This
film was directed by Stephen Roberts, and it starred Ronald Colman, Joan
Bennett, and Colin Clive. A fictional book with the same title was written by
Michael Butterworth in 1983. Then, in 1988, a musical titled Lucky Stiff made
its first appearance on Broadway.

It wasn’t until recently that a nonfiction piece of literature was actually
written about him. Robin Quinn wrote a factual biography about Wells in 2016
titled The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo: Charles Deville Wells, Gambler
and Fraudster Extraordinaire. This is a thorough biography that exploits many of
Wells’ darkest secrets; Quinn wrote it after interviewing several of Wells’
ancestors and reading through several of his private diaries that were left
behind after he passed away.

Conclusion

Wells’ love of gambling certainly got him into trouble. It caused him to
steal millions of dollars from thousands of innocent people across England and
France. In addition to his crimes, he will forever be remembered as the man who
managed to break the bank at the Monte Carlo on several different occasions.
People can choose to believe whatever they want about Wells, but one thing we
know to be true is that this man was passionate about gambling!

18th December 2013Reading Time: 5minutes2 comments

As I walk along the Bois Boolong
With an independent air
You can hear the girls declare
“He must be a Millionaire.”
You can hear them sigh and wish to die,
You can see them wink the other eye
At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

The words of the musical hall song that made a celebrity of Charles Deville Wells, the man who inspired the song and who was also dubbed ‘the biggest swindler living’.

Wells was born in Hertfordshire in 1841, the son of Charles Jeremiah Wells, the poet who was a contemporary and friend of John Keats.

Little is known of the early life of Wells Junior, but appears later in life describing himself variously as a ‘naval architect’ and ‘civil engineer’, although there is no trace that he ever made any designs on anything other than other people’s money.

By the late 1880s, Wells could be found in rather grand offices in Great Portland Street and he was a regular visitor to the London Patent Office where he took out patents on 192 of his inventions, none of which worked apart from a musical skipping rope that played a tune while the children played.

That didn’t stop him making money hand over fist though which he managed to do by swindling the gullible investors who answered his many newspaper advertisements guaranteeing a large return for the backers of his ‘important proved inventions’.

Wells didn’t sign the ads but used pseudonyms like ‘Bonus’, ‘Discovery’, ‘Genuine’ or ‘Investigation’ and people flocked to invest in his genius to the tune of £50,000 which Wells spent on himself almost immediately.

His backers were rather put out when the promised returns did not appear and when their disappointment turned to suspicion, Wells decided it was time to skip the country and took himself off to Monte Carlo. And it was there that he made his name at the gaming tables, becoming famous along the Riviera.

Wells placed a complicated bet at the roulette table that netted him a total of 90,000 francs and ‘broke the bank’. That’s the bank at that table, not the whole casino, and as was the custom, the croupier dutifully laid a black cloth over the green baize.

Wherever Wells went, people would touch his clothes for luck and try to copy his complicated bet, most just telling the baffled croupier to ‘do the same as Wells.’

The man himself was unmoved by all this attention and continued to arrive at the casino at noon, staying until it closed at 11pm and not stopping to eat or drink. Wells said it was the hardest work he had ever done!

If Wells had a system, he never revealed it, but it seemed that it mostly involved holding his nerve. One approach was the ‘coup de trios’ where he would bet on red or black. If he won he would let his winnings stand for a second and third time before reverting back to his original small wager.

Charles Deville Wells Children

The casinos loved the publicity and didn’t object to their losses. They knew it would return a hundredfold as word spread and they likes of Sarah Bernhardt gambled away her entire wealth before attempting suicide.

Wells returned to London and his usual line of work – fleecing the gullible. He also held a dinner for 35 guests at the Savoy to celebrate his gambling success. He had the walls and ceiling painted red, a red carpet was laid, the waiters were dressed in suits, ties and gloves of red, there were red flowers on the table only red foods were served – prawns, lobster tails, ham mousse, red cabbage and strawberries.

But things got hot again for Wells and he left the country once more, this time in some style aboard the 291 foot yacht he had bought and which he had renamed the Palais Royal.

Arriving in Monte Carlo, the casino did not believe that lightning could strike twice, but strike it did. On his first day back, Wells turned a tiny 120 franc stake into 98,000 francs and in those first few days of November 1891 he had cleaned up a quarter of a million francs.

It was around this time that the headlines of Wells’ winnings that inspired Fred Gilbert to write The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. It was first sung by Charles Coburn and wasn’t an immediate hit with the public. When his audience refused to join in the chorus, he told them ‘I am engaged here for twelve weeks and I am going to sing this song every night and repeat the chorus till you join in with me’.

The song was soon being sung across the country, but by 1892 Wells was not enjoying such success. His third visit to Monte Carlo in 1892 saw him losing money hand over fist as his system, whatever it was, began to fail him. Soon he had lost everything, his yacht was mortgaged to the hilt and he was reduced to selling the coal from its hold to raise some cash.

Meanwhile, the duped investors had complained to the police and Scotland Yard had investigated his fraudulent business practices. A warrant was issued and Wells was arrested in Le Havre aboard the Palais Royal.

In March 1893 he was convicted on 30 charges of obtaining £50,000 by false pretences and sentenced to eight years imprisonment at Dartmoor and the prison governor later said that ‘he was the pleasantest and the most unselfish of all the rascals that passed through my hands’.

On his release, Wells emigrated to France where he was to serve another five years after another scam went wrong for him and he died penniless in Paris in 1922.

Charles Deville Wells

But the song that made his name lived on and below is Charles Coburn performing The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.

Charles Deville Wells

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