Frederick Waldo Demara, nicknamed "The Great Impostor", was a man who spent his entire life pretending to be someone else. He had virtually no education, but managed to try himself in many professions, and very successfully. He himself said about his life that it was a fraud and nothing more.....

Unfortunately, cases of people living under false identities do happen, and it is no surprise to anyone. But when a person with only a Bible college degree manages to pass himself off as a doctor, engineer, psychologist, teacher, journalist, etc....

And yet all of his employers and patients (when he was a surgeon) were very pleased with his qualifications! How could this be? Okay, when Demara pretended to be a monk - that is still somehow understandable, although from the ethical point of view of a priest swindler - sounds strong. The explanation for Frederick Demara's successful "career" in various fields is his excellent memory and superior intelligence quotient.

As a teenager, Demara entered a monastery, but the life of an ascetic was not for him. And look at the photo above - a healthy brute, as they say, blood and milk! Even if these are pictures of Ferdinand at a mature age, but in his youth he was also strong, and most importantly, enterprising and enterprising. And this does not fit at all with the monastic life - meekness and obedience were not for our hero.

At the age of twenty Demara decided to connect his life with the army service. As you know, bad is the soldier who does not want to become a general. But Ferdinand wanted to become an officer of at least low rank now! But with no education, what to do? The only way out was to impersonate someone else. So he did, presenting himself to the command under the name of another young man, his buddy. The deception was not revealed, but he was not to his liking the harsh discipline in the unit, and Demara and deserted from the army.

On the "civilian" our Great impostor could not find something to his liking and again went on the "military" path, this time joining the U.S. Navy, of course, under a new name. But even there things did not work out well, because the newcomer, of course, was not given the rank and position that he wanted.

Demara escaped from the Navy as well, took another name, and began working as a licensed psychologist. Moreover, Frederick became not a private practicing psychologist, but a college psychology professor! All his students and his employer were very happy, the self-styled Demara himself was happy too! After all, he had received what he had always sought for - reverence, admiration and recognition of his abilities. How had he mastered the work of a psychologist? By reading psychology books at night, and his sharp mind only made it easier for him to educate himself.

But then trouble struck. A criminal case was opened against him under the article "Desertion", initiated by the army and navy authorities. As a result, Demara served a year and a half in prison.

Coming out, the Great impostor again bought himself documents and entered the university at the Faculty of Law. But everyday study seemed to him boring, and Demara has left study and again has left in monks. There he met a young physician, Joseph Sira, and he was eager to become a physician!

Frederick Demara, under the name Joseph, enlisted in the Canadian Navy, where Ljesira was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. The Korean War (1950) soon broke out. Demar was sent to serve on the USS Cayuga as a ship's doctor. It is clear that at night he read books on medicine, because the flow of patients during the fighting is great. When it was necessary to render medical aid to soldiers who had caught a cold or patients with some inflammations, Demara successfully coped with the task with the help of antibiotics. But there was a war going on, so there could be wounded! And so it happened one day. Sixteen sailors came aboard the ship with various injuries. Demara examined them, diagnosed them, and told them to prepare for the surgeries he would perform the next day.

All night Ljesira read how to perform the operations, what to do and in what sequence. The day came, and Demara began to operate.....

Maybe he was just lucky, or maybe he was a really talented man who, with the right level of education, would have made a great surgeon. Whatever it was, but Demara operated on all the wounded, and very successfully - the fighters recovered and were grateful to him all their lives for successfully performed operations ...

Many newspapers wrote about such a labor feat of a young doctor "Joseph Sears". Demara was happy, he got fame and respect! But his joy was short-lived. This article was read by the mother of the real Joseph and reported where necessary, that under the name of her son hides someone else.

Frederick Demar was again dismissed from the army, but in view of the successful operations, they did not initiate a criminal case.

The great impostor returned from Canada to the United States, made his papers again and began working as a psychologist (he already had a diploma) in a Texas prison. From there, Frederick went to a homeless shelter, and then became a priest.

During this period, he decided to capitalize on his own name and wrote his life story. It was published by a publication, and Frederick Demara became known to everyone. Popularity came, but the opportunity to work under false names disappeared, so his earnings became erratic.

He, so long and talented deceiving people, once offered the role of a surgeon in some low-budget movie. But Demara was unable to play it, and this with his lifetime of acting!

Such a collapse Great impostor experienced very hard. He began to drink and died in 1982 from a heart attack. He was sixty-one years old. His name is not forgotten to this day. People condemn him for lying and fraud, but pay tribute to his intelligence and talent. One can imagine what heights the Great Impostor could have reached in one chosen profession, such as medicine. But he chose a different path. He wanted fame and he got it. Books have been written about him, movies have been made, and his name is not the last place in the list of the most famous swindlers in the history of mankind.