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} A confidence trick or '''confidence game''', also known as a '''con''', '''scam''', '''swindle''', '''grift''', '''bunko''' or '''flim flam''', is an attempt to intentionally Mislead a person or persons (known as the " Mark ") usually with the goal of financial or other gain. (For confidence tricks dealing with information theft or computers see Social Engineering .) HISTORY The first known usage of the term "confidence man" was in 1849; it was used by the press during the trial of William Thompson . Thompson chatted with strangers until he asked if they had the confidence to lend him their watches, whereupon he would walk off with the watch; he was captured when a victim recognized him on the street.Karen Halttunen, ''Confidence Men and Painted Women'', p 6 ISBN 0-300-02835-0 VULNERABILITY TO CONFIDENCE TRICKS Persons of any level of intelligence are potentially vulnerable to deception by experienced con artists. Confidence tricks exploit human weaknesses like Greed , Dishonesty , Vanity , but also virtues like Honesty , Compassion , or a Naïve expectation of good faith on the part of the con artist.
Confidence tricksters often rely on the greed and dishonesty of the mark, who may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning. This is such a general principle in confidence tricks that there is a saying among con men that "you can't cheat an honest man." A Conversation with James Swain online However, some tricks depend on the honesty of the victim. In a common scam, as part of an apparently legitimate transaction, the victim is sent a worthless check, which the victim then deposits. The victim is then urged to forward the apparent value of the check to the trickster as cash, possibly keeping a small portion of the money as a commission, which they may do before discovering the Cheque Bounces . Another fashionable scenario ( As Of 2006 ) has the victim recruited as a "financial agent" to collect "business debts". Paper checks are not always involved: funds may be transferred electronically from another victim. Sometimes con men rely on naive individuals who put their confidence in Get-rich-quick Scheme s, such as "too good to be true" investments. It may take years for the wider community to discover that such investment schemes are bogus, and usually it is too late, as many people have lost their life savings in something they have been convinced to invest in. The confidence trickster, '''con man''', '''swindler''', '''grifter''', '''scam artist''' or '''con artist''' often works with one or more accomplices called Shill s, who help manipulate the mark into the con man's trick or dishonest plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be random strangers who have won and benefited from successfully performing the task. WELL-KNOWN CONFIDENCE TRICKS Confidence tricks are difficult to classify, because they keep changing, and often contain elements of more than one type. Get-rich-quick Scams Get-rich-quick Scheme s are so varied they nearly defy description. Everything from fake franchises, Real Estate "sure things", how-to-get-rich books and wealth-building seminars, Self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters, Fortune Tellers , quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals, charms and talismans are all used to separate the mark from his money. Variations include the ''' Pyramid Scheme ''', Ponzi Scheme , Matrix Sale , and Multi-level Marketing . Salting is the term for a scam in which gems or gold ore are planted in a mine or on the landscape, duping the greedy mark into purchasing shares in a worthless or non-existent mining company.Dan Plazak ''A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top'' (Salt Lake: Univ. of Utah Press, 2006) ISBN 978-0-87480-840-7. For a 19th-century example, see the Diamond Hoax Of 1872 ; for a modern example, involving imaginary gold deposits in Borneo , see Bre-X . Popularized in the HBO Series Deadwood (TV) season 1 when Al Swearingen and E.B. Farnum trick Brom Garret in to believing gold is to be found on the claim Swearingen intends to sell him. The Spanish Prisoner scam — and its modern variant, the ''' Advance Fee Fraud ''' or '''Nigerian scam''' — take advantage of the victim's greed. The basic premise involves enlisting the mark to aid in retrieving some stolen money from its hiding place. The victim sometimes believes he can cheat the con artists out of their money, but anyone trying this has already fallen for the essential con by believing that the money is there to steal. See also Black Money Scam . Note that the classic Spanish Prisoner trick also contains an element of the romance scam (see below). Many con men employ extra tricks to keep the victim from going to the police. A common ploy of investment scammers is to encourage a mark to use money concealed from tax authorities. The mark cannot go to the authorities without revealing that he or she has committed Tax Fraud . Many swindles involve a minor element of crime or some other misdeed. The mark is made to think that he or she will gain money by helping fraudsters get huge sums out of a country (the classic Nigerian Scam ). The mark cannot go to the police without revealing that he or she planned to commit a crime him- or herself. A recent twist on the Nigerian fraud scheme, the mark is told he is helping someone overseas collect "debts" from corporate clients. Large cheques stolen from businesses are mailed to the mark. These cheques are altered to reflect the mark's name, and the mark is then asked to cash them and transfer all but a percentage of the funds (his Commission ) to the con artist. The cheques are often completely genuine, except that the "pay to" information has been expertly changed. This exposes the mark not only to enormous debt when the bank reclaims the money from his or her account, but also to criminal charges for Money Laundering . A more modern variation is to use laser-printed counterfeit checks with the proper account numbers and payer information. Romance tricks Romance fraud, when fraudsters seduce people only to target their money, is an old type of fraud. It received high attention in Sweden around 1950 when a man (Gustaf Raskenstam) had had relationships with more than one hundred lonely women, and been engaged with many of them, often several at the same time. He took a lot of money and went to prison for fraud. His contact ads usually had the headline "Sun and spring" ("sol och vår" in Swedish). This type of behaviour is since called "sol och vårande" in Swedish). The traditional '''. Gold brick scams Gold brick scams involve selling a tangible item for more than it is worth; named after selling the victim a supposed gold bar that turns out to be gold-coated lead. The 1883 "No Cents" Liberty Head Nickel , a scam developed by con artists that electroplated Liberty Head nickels, intending to make storeowners believe that the gold-plated nickel was a $5 coin. The Coin collecting scam is a scam that preys on inexperienced collectors, coins or otherwise. The con man convinces the mark by stating that a high-priced collection is for sale at a lower amount. The Coin Collector then buys the entire collection thinking it is actually valuable. Pig-in-a-poke originated in the late Middle Ages , when meat was scarce, but apparently rats and cats were not. The con entails a sale of a "suckling Pig ", in a "poke" (bag). The bag ostensibly contains a live healthy little pig, but actually contains a Cat (not particularly prized as a source of meat, and at any rate, quite unlikely to grow to be a large hog). If one "buys a pig in a poke" without looking in the bag (a common Colloquial Expression in The English Language , meaning "to be a sucker"), the person has bought something of lesser value than was assumed, and has learned firsthand the lesson Caveat Emptor . It is also said to be where the phrase 'letting the cat out of the bag' comes from, although there may be other Explanations . The Thai Gem Scam involves layers of con men and helpers who tell a tourist in Bangkok of an opportunity to earn money by buying Duty-free jewelry and having it shipped back to the tourist's home country. The mark is driven around the city in a Tuk-tuk operated by one of the con men, who ensures that the mark meets one helper after another, until the mark is convinced to buy the jewelry from a store also operated by the swindlers. This scam has been operating for 20 years in Bangkok and is alleged to be protected by Thai police and politicians. A similar scam usually runs in parallel for custom-made suits. Many tourists are hit by con men touting both goods. People shopping for Pirated Software , illegal pornographic images, bootleg music, drugs, firearms or other forbidden or controlled goods may be unable to report swindles to the police. An example is the "big screen TV in back of the truck"; the TV is touted as "hot" (stolen), so it will be sold for a very low price. The TV is in fact defective or broken, and has bricks inside its otherwise gutted case to give it heft. When it is plugged in, of course, it doesn't work - and the buyer has no legal recourse without admitting to attempted purchase of Stolen Goods . Extortion or false-injury tricks The Badger Game extortion is often perpetrated on married men. The mark is deliberately coerced into a compromising position, a supposed affair for example, then threatened with public exposure of his acts unless blackmail money is paid. The Melon Drop is a scam in which the scammer will intentionally bump into the mark and drop a package containing broken glass that has already been broken. He will claim that the contents were broken by the clumsiness of the mark, and demand money to replace them. This con arose when artists discovered that the Japanese paid high amounts of money for watermelons. The scammer would go to a supermarket to buy a cheap watermelon, bump into a Japanese tourist and demand that they pay a high price. The Hydrophobia lie was popular in the 1920s, in which the con man pretended to have been bitten by the mark's (possibly Rabid ) dog. Insurance Fraud is a scam in which the con artist tricks the mark into damaging, for example, the con artist's car, or injuring the con artist (in a manner that the con artist can exaggerate). The con artist fraudulently collects a large sum of money from the mark's Insurance Policy , even though they intentionally caused the accident. Charity tricks The con-man may pretend to have some injury or disadvantage to gain sympathy (and donations) e.g. a panhandler in a wheelchair, the woman with kids along the freeway off-ramp or the homeless veteran. In India in 2006, three doctors were investigated for offering to sever limbs in order to increase public sympathy toward their clients. online The Just $5 trick is an abuse of charity scam: the conman approaches the victim and asks for "just $5" to help them achieve some goal that is almost within reach. The conman displays cash to prove they have "almost enough" and usually adds some props/window-dressing to add veracity: carrying a car part that needs repair/replacement or carrying a gas can (because the car ran out of gas and the wife/child is waiting). Gambling tricks Three-card Monte , 'Find The Queen', the "Three-card Trick", or "Follow The Lady", is (except for the Prop s) essentially the same as the probably centuries-older ''' Shell Game ''' or ''thimblerig''. The trickster shows three Playing Card s to the audience, one of which is a queen (the "lady"), then places the cards face-down, shuffles them around and invites the audience to bet on which one is the queen. At first the audience is skeptical, so the Shill places a bet and the scammer allows him to win. This is sometimes enough to entice the audience to place bets, but the trickster uses Sleight Of Hand to ensure that they always lose, unless the con man decides to let them win to lure them into betting even more. The mark loses whenever the dealer chooses to make him lose. This con appears in the Eric Garcia novel '' Matchstick Men ''. In the Football Picks Scam - The scammer sends out tip sheet stating a game will go one way to 50 potential victims and the other way to another 50. The next week, the 50 who received the correct answer are divided into two groups and fed another pick. This is repeated until a small population have (apparently) received a series of supernaturally perfect picks - then the final pick is offered for sale. Despite being well-known (it was even described completely on an episode of The Simpsons ), this scam is run almost continuously in different forms by different operators. Lottery fraud by proxy is a particularly vicious scam, in which the scammer buys a lottery ticket with old winning numbers. He or she then alters the date on the ticket so that it appears to be from the day before, and therefore a winning ticket. He or she then sells the ticket to the mark, claiming it is a winning ticket, but for some reason, he or she is unable to collect the prize (not eligible, etc.). The particular cruelty in this scam is that if the mark attempts to collect the prize, the fraudulently altered ticket will be discovered and the mark held criminally liable. This con was featured in the movie Matchstick Men , where Nicolas Cage teaches it to his daughter. A twist on the con was shown in Great Teacher Onizuka , where the more than gullible Onizuka was tricked into getting a "winning ticket". The ticket wasn't altered, instead the Daily Newspaper reporting the day's winning numbers was rewritten with a black pen. Visitors to Las Vegas or other gambling towns often encounter the Barred Winner scam, a form of Advance Fee Fraud performed in person. The artist will approach his mark outside a casino with a stack or bag of high-value casino chips and say that he just won big, but the casino accused him of cheating and threw him out without letting him redeem the chips. The artist asks the mark to go in and cash the chips for him. The artist will often offer a percentage of the winnings to the mark for his trouble. But, when the mark agrees, the artist feigns suspicion and asks the mark to put up something of value "for insurance". The mark agrees, hands over jewelry, a credit card or their wallet, then goes in to cash the chips. When the mark arrives at the cashier, they are informed the chips are fake. The artist, by this time, is long gone with the mark's valuables. False reward tricks The glim-dropper requires several accomplices, one of whom must be a one-eyed man. He goes into a store and makes believe he has lost his glass eye. Everyone looks around, but the eye can’t be found. He declares that he will pay a thousand-dollar reward for the return of his eye, leaving contact information. The next day, an accomplice enters the store and pretends to find the eye. The storekeeper, thinking of the reward, offers to take it and return it to its owner. The finder insists he will return it himself, and demands the owner’s address. Thinking he will lose all chance of the reward, the storekeeper offers a hundred dollars for the eye. The finder bargains him up to $250, and departs. The one-eyed man, of course, can not be found and does not return. (Described in '' A Cool Million, Or, The Dismantling Of Lemuel Pitkin '' (1934) by Nathanael West ). Variants of this con have been used in movies such as '' The Traveller (1997) '' and '' Shade (2003) ''. The fiddle game uses the Pigeon Drop technique. A pair of con men work together, one going into an expensive restaurant in shabby clothes, eating, and claiming to have left his wallet at home, which is nearby. As collateral, the con man leaves his only worldly possession, the Violin that provides his livelihood. After he leaves, the second con man swoops in, offers an outrageously large amount (for example, $50,000) for such a rare instrument, then looks at his watch and runs off to an appointment, leaving his card for the mark to call him when the fiddle-owner returns. The mark's greed comes into play when the "poor man" comes back, having gotten the money to pay for his meal and redeem his violin. The mark, thinking he has an offer on the table, then buys the violin from the Fiddle Player (who "reluctantly" sells it eventually for, say, $5,000). The result is the two con men are $5,000 richer (less the cost of the violin), and the mark is left with a cheap instrument. (This trick is also detailed in the Neil Gaiman novel '' American Gods '' and is the basis for The Streets ' song "Can't Con an Honest John".) Other confidence tricks and techniques
The above list is only a sample. Confidence games are continually evolving and subject to many variations and refinements. NOTABLE CON ARTISTS Born in the 18th century
Born/active in the 19th century
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