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Dr. Frederick A. Cook, career con artist
• - Congressman accuses Cook of "perverting American history."

Dr. Crook's
prison visitor #
 1,399,212
Brooklyn milkman went from humbug to a prison felon

Frederick Cook is infamous for stealing the Yahgan dictionary that linguists are now desperately trying to locate. Cook faked being "first to climb" Mt. McKinley in 1906. Cook hoaxed the world with his "first to reach the North Pole" in 1909. Cook's 1921 stock fraud is the first documented instance of a "Ponzi scheme".

Federal prisoner #23118 was to the anti-establishment movement what Hitler was to anti-Semitism. Frederick Cook is only remembered today because of the million dollar Vetter's Vendetta Trust Fund that carries on Cook's vindictive legacy. Their records, available to the public at Ohio State, show an annual budgetary item called the "Encyclopedia Project." This consisted of paying graduate students to author scholarly appearing text portraying Cook as an explorer, and submitting it to the major encyclopedia publishers. This activity in the 1990's is a reflection of Cook's antics in the 1910s that prompted Congressman Fess to accuse Cook of "perverting American history."

The Cook perversion of history is so pervasive that only a handful of people know that "Noose of Laurels" author, Scotsman Wally Herbert, was a friend of Janet Vetters. His letters to her boasted about how to "fool the public" with recycled Cook vitriol against North Pole legend Robert E. Peary. Acceptance of Herbert's 1987 book in England has created the belief, shared by "several million" Brits1, that Peary never reached the Pole. In 2005 a team of Brits2 are planning to re-enact Peary's historic journey because of the false information Herbert derived from Cook.

Specifically Cook is anti-intellectual, anti-Peary, anti-Matthew Henson, anti-Mt. McKinley experts, anti-establishment, and staunchly anti-National Geographic Society. [These facts are verifiable by requesting copies of the letters/documents stored at the Ohio State Archives.]

Cook is a classic study in how to pervert history with persistence, insistence, patience and finally, paid propaganda. The Vetters Vendetta continues to mislead otherwise intelligent people who believe Cook was only the victim of a conspiracy by "Peary's wealthy backers." In fact, Cook was a criminal sociopath whose ill gotten gains were inherited by his equally vindictive daughter to carry on a trans-generational perversion of history.
1,2 )  Tom Avery, Don Quixote of the Arctic

Frederick Cook faked both climbing Mt. McKinley and reaching the North Pole. A famous 1920s stock fraud sent him to federal prison.

Fred waves goodbye to laughing reporters who named him "The Prince of Liars." He completed parole in 1935, then began suing his critics.
Cook Society Financial Expose!
Dr. Cook takes revenge in novel
The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston. ISBN: 0385507674 History gets turned on its head in what I believe is a deliberately anti-Peary/anti-Henson Canadian novel!
Do your tax $dollars sponsor "polar hate literature"? Janet Vetters tax-exempt Frederick A. Cook Society has a $1,000,000.00 trust fund with an annual income of $91,000.00 (1990). In 1994 they spent $115,997.10 to promote their interests.  According to their charter the money must be spent on promoting the convicted felon Fred Cook. Cook's 90 year old vendetta against North Pole discoverer Robert E. Peary now includes co-discoverer Matthew Henson. See our special on Henson Hate Literature.
Cook's polar fraud, perpetrated by yellow journalism in September, was headlined a "Huge Fraud" by December.
Cook never trained a German Shepherd as a sled dog.
• Scholar blasts Fred for destroying Yahgan language!
• Navigator of New York—Canadian history-fiction
• Latest fraud—Dr. Cook helped this student to cheat
• Dr. Crooks Online Web Pharmacy sucks
• Pseudoscience & Cook by Steve Dutch
• Eskimo's tell real story of Cook hoax—went south, not north
• Dr. Cook responsible for death of Robert Falcon Scott and crew!
•  Congressman accuses Cook of "perverting American history."
•   Complete Judge Killits Federal Court sentencing document
•  Dr. Crook on an early RCA Victor record

The book that made Bryce pay an attorney!

Cook was paid for his confession story—but recanted after cashing the check.
Classic Cook roasted by Browne & Stuck
Librarian at junior college amassed overwhelming evidence, of the previously established fact, that Frederick Cook was a fraud.
The name Fred Cook, AKA "Dr. Cook" still clutters the history books because a trust fund is paid to do so. Cook was an 1880's Brooklyn milkman who added "doctor" to his name after a scant 2 years of medical study who never made a profession of medicine. Instead Cook was twice a polar volunteer, then twice tried to arrange "Arctic tours" before going completely criminal. Fred was only a travel writer and photographer who sold his self-serving (but faked) adventure stories to magazines, newspapers, and book publishers. Only his daughter's Vetters vendetta trust fund pretends he was an explorer. • Cook stole a missionary's life work and published it under his own name, • Cook bribed a guide to go along with his fraudulent claim of being first to climb Mt. McKinley in 1906, then • Cook faked a trip to the North Pole in 1908 just before Peary's expedition returned from that accomplishment. Fred sold his tales of fraud to newspapers, magazines, and lecture audiences in the days before TV and radio—thus earning millions of dollars.
Some people today are still confused about this career con artist—even the History Channel, because his vindictive, tireless troublemaker daughter, created a $1,000,000 Vetters vendetta trust fund that fuels the tax exempt Cook Society which runs a website, publishes the dead doctors phony books, maintains an anti-Peary newsletter, etc. All of this perpetuates a cult about Dr. Cook that feeds upon gullible individuals—dupes who are made to think that there is a "Peary conspiracy" against Cook, when in fact, there is a virtual Peary vendetta carried on by the trust fund of Janet Vetters.

Travel writer, not explorer—it is a myth that he was an explorer. Cook merely freeloaded (volunteered) on other men's expeditions (1-winter in Greenland, and 1-winter on a ship stuck in Antarctica) or used other people's money to organize a couple of tour groups to Greenland that both ended prematurely in failure. He married a rich widow and used her money, plus that of others, to go camping in Alaska in 1903. His attempt to climb McKinley was so amateurish, his leadership so poor that a tour group member, reporter Robert Dunn, wrote a damning article about the misadventure. His book is a classic and still in print. Frederick Cook, Bradley land - a hoax

1903 Cook roast noted Fred's pathological side.

Cook's stock scam put him in Federal Prison. But his relatives claim they found some oil somewhere, after Cook died of old age.
(above) Fred's phony land discovery. Proof of fraud just doesn't get any stronger than a faked photo. See the faked map with non-existent land. Fred got ratted out by the Eskimo guides who weren't as stupid as he thought they were.

Without Dunn watching him, Fred went back to Mt. McKinley in 1906, this time bribing his guide to say he was the first person to climb the 20,300 ft. mountain. Cook was praised as a hero due to his self-promotional skills and soon was the president of several New York clubs and a well paid lecturer. In 1907 he knew that if he acted fast he could do another scam like McKinley by claiming he reached the North Pole ahead of Robert E. Peary's 1909 expedition. He went north on a millionaire's yacht, then disappeared for a year to stage the hoax.

Fred never got within 500 miles of the North Pole. Most incriminating are his phony maps and faked photos from his ridiculous 1911 "come-back" book. Fred made fools of his supporters who believed he discovered new land named after his sponsor, professional gambler John Bradley. The "Prince of Liars" located his land hoax where no one had yet explored. When an expedition proved it didn't exist Fred was serving a 14 year prison sentence in Leavenworth for mail fraud.

After the exploring scams backfired Fred wrote a vindictive book and sold copies at his traveling vaudeville show 1911–1917. Then he turned to suckering thousands of poor, rural people with his Ponzi type oil stock mail fraud that landed him in prison. After parole ended in 1935 he began filing lawsuits against many of his critics but judges tossed the suits out of court. A vindictive daughter carried on Cook's vendetta.
 
 

1909 Newspaper cartoon ridiculed Fred's phony North Pole claim.

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