Manhattan started on a real estate fraud? The tradition continued for centuries.
According to author Louis L’Amour, the Dutch, gave the local Indians found there the equivalent of $28 dollars in beads for the land. He also said the tribe the Dutch paid were just passing though and it was not their tribal lands.
So the “passing through” Indians shafted the Dutch by selling land that was not theirs, but another tribe’s.
Maybe that is why the Dutch later had to build a WALL along the area to stop Indian attacks from local Indians. The wall eventually became Wall Street.