The Confidence Game

by Maria Konnikova

  As it turns out, a good con artist will upend all of these expectations. We think we know the typical victim profile. We think we know what makes a mark. And we think absolutely wrong.

  In 2014, the AARP asked more than eleven thousand adults over the age of eighteen, from twelve states, to answer questions designed to figure out whether there were any characteristics that made people more vulnerable to online scams. Certain behaviors, they found, especially in combination with certain life circumstances, were particularly common. Victims tended to be more active in their online activities and gave out more personal information on social media—not just “No, duh” things like birth dates and phone numbers, but things like their daily activities, geo-tags and schedules, check-ins and tweets from specific restaurants or stores that made it easier to fake knowing them—or, in some cases, being them.

  The behaviors to avoid, the researchers discovered, were, for the most part, fairly standard Internet best practices: clicking on pop-ups (don’t); opening e-mails from senders you don’t know (again, don’t); using online auction sites (this one is tricky—some are legitimate); signing up for free limited-trial offers (bad idea); downloading apps (don’t do it unless you know what it is and trust the source); and using online payment sites (again, tricky—many are fine, but it’s the times when the secure connections go bust that you need to worry).

  The problem is, not only does this best-practice list deal with only one very particular kind of con, but most of these activities apply far more broadly than is actually useful. One in five Americans who are online—about 34.1 million people—does seven or more of the fifteen things the study associated with fraud susceptibility. But the number who get conned is far lower. If one fifth of the country were falling for Internet scams, Nigerian princes would be the happiest men alive.

  When it comes to predicting who will fall, personality generalities tend to go out the window. Instead, one of the factors that emerges is circumstance: it’s not who you are, but where you happen to be at this particular moment in your life. If you’re feeling isolated or lonely, it turns out you’re particularly vulnerable. Likewise if you’re going through a job loss, divorce, serious injury, or other major life change, are experiencing a downturn in personal finances, or are concerned with being in debt. People in debt, in fact, are also more likely to fall for fraud that’s completely unrelated to finances, like weight-loss products.

  One of the reasons that Robin Lloyd fell for a basic game of three-card monte was that she really needed the money and, on top of that, was completely out of her element. Had either of those factors not been present, she would likely have walked away with her forty dollars still in her wallet. Instead, her motivation to believe was far higher than it normally would be—I need that money so I want to believe that money is obtainable. And her usual deception radar was more off than it normally would be—it’s often hard to calibrate your reading of social cues in a new environment, especially when that environment is unlike any you’ve previously encountered. On another day, in another town, Robin would have laughed; that day, in Manhattan, she fell.

  It makes a certain kind of sense. Often, patient, levelheaded people will go a bit crazy in the wake of a major life change—we become more impulsive, less stable, riskier versions of ourselves. And our impulsivity and appetite for risk are some of the only reliable indicators of fraud susceptibility. In one study, risk takers were over six times more likely to fall victim than those whose risk tolerance was low. Given the right circumstances, just about anyone can fit that description. When we’re feeling low, we want to get out of the slump. So, schemes or propositions that would look absurd in another light suddenly seem more attractive. When we’re angry, we want to lash out. Suddenly, something that once seemed like a gamble looks awfully appealing. A victim isn’t necessarily foolish or greedy. A victim is simply more emotionally vulnerable at the exact moment the confidence artist approaches. Risk taking and impulsivity need not be stable aspects of our personalities; they are intimately tied to where we find ourselves emotionally at any given point.

  Victims may also be more prone to belief, broadly speaking. One study of con victims found that two factors seemed to play a major role in which emotionally susceptible people, in particular, fell prey to an unscrupulous actor: they were more optimistic and more religious. In other words, they believed things could get better, and they believed that greater forces could play a role in that improvement. But then again: which of us doesn’t on some level, in some guise believe that might be true?

  The more you look, the more you realize that, even with certain markers, like life changes, and certain tendencies in tow, a reliably stable overarching victim profile is simply not there. Marks vary as much as, and perhaps even more than, the grifters who fool them. In a 2011 study of over seven hundred fraud victims, alongside fifteen hundred non-victims, psychologists Karla Pak and Doug Shadel found that different types of people fell for different types of cons; depending on where you look, the profile of the ideal mark shifts considerably. Victims of investment frauds, like Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and business opportunity frauds, like a lucrative investment in a new oil field, were more likely to be well-educated older men who made over $50,000 a year. Lottery frauds, on the other hand—fake tickets and the like—were likely to claim victims who were less educated and earned less money. When it came to prescription drug fraud and identity theft, the typical victim was a single female who made less than $50,000 a year. Older adults were more likely to experience a different type of con: from within the family, or by someone close to them. In a 2012 survey from the Elder Investment Fraud and Financial Exploitation Program, the top two risks to older adults were theft or money diversion by family members and theft by caregivers. Strangers came in third place.

  Given the right fraud, it seems anyone can be a victim—even a con artist. There’s an entire subset of cons, in fact, devoted to catching the master grifter at his own game, often perpetrated by others who feel he might have gotten too big for his boots. Con artists tend to be supremely confident—how can anyone beat me at my own game?—and that confidence is often their undoing. One master flimflammer, Oscar Hartzell, whom we’ll meet in detail later on, fleeced thousands of people out of millions of dollars for several decades. While he was living in London, he spotted a curious ad in the paper for a crystal ball séance that would tell you your future. Intrigued, he went. Over the promised crystal ball, Miss St. John Montague read him a wondrous prediction of his future life. Soon, he was visiting her three times a week, parting with thousands for her confidential advice. Realizing she’d found an ideal mark, Montague set a private investigator on Hartzell’s trail, who quickly uncovered his own murky dealings. Over the next five years, she would use the information to extract a further $50,000—a con woman getting the better of the con man who had seen through so many traps in his day.

  The distinction between ideal mark and ideal grifter can be a spotty one. In 2003, two Spanish brothers purchased what they thought was a beautiful painting by Goya. After the sale’s conclusion, though, they learned the painting was in fact a fake from the nineteenth century. A 2006 court order ruled that they could keep the painting for the price of the original deposit of 20,000 euros—a good price for a work from the time. Having themselves fallen for a scam, the two brothers decided to learn from their experience: this time, they would become the con artists. In December 2014, they attempted to unload the painting on a wealthy Arab sheikh, passing it off as authentic Goya. An Italian middleman offered to broker the deal: he would act as objective guarantor for both parties for a 300,000-euro deposit. The brothers traveled to Turin, where they handed over the painting and brokerage fee in exchange for a down payment of 1.7 million Swiss francs. Thrilled with themselves, they went to deposit the haul. It was fake. The middleman and “sheikh” promptly disappeared, with painting and real euros in tow. The marks had become grifters only to once more find themselves marks.

  C
on artists are often the best marks because they think themselves immune. And that false sense of immunity extends to victims more broadly: the better protected you are and the less likely you think you’ll be a victim, the more you’re apt to lose if a con artist can find a way to earn your trust. It ends up that the more you know about something, the more likely you are to fall for a con in that specific area.

  Colorado boasts one of the most fraud-savvy, well-educated retirement communities in the United States. It’s not as popular a destination as sunny climes like Florida, and the people who do go there are a fairly self-selected bunch. The majority of them have instated various protections against common cons in their day-to-day lives, from protective software and e-mail filters, to fraud alerts on credit cards, to personal measures like never giving out an e-mail address or phone number. Indeed, when the AARP surveyed its Colorado members, it found significant but single-digit amounts of victimhood. About 7 percent of them had been a victim of identity theft. And just about 6.5 percent of them had been the victims of fraud—still a high number, of course, but far better than national averages. Then, however, came the twist. This was typically investment fraud, and the sums lost were far above the typical scam. A full 10 percent had lost over $100,000, and another 21 percent between $10,000 and $99,999. As for the rest: a quarter had lost a relatively modest sum below $10,000, and half had no desire to even report how far they’d been taken. They’d admit to having fallen for it, but not by how much.

  They had, for the most part, thought they were very knowledgeable about investing, and over 60 percent were investors in stocks, bonds, and other securities. But investment fraud is the precise fraud they fell for. They felt protected, and their guard, predictably, went down.

  Even when it comes to a con that seems as obvious as a psychic, it’s not just those we tend to think of as gullible who fall for it. “Lawyers, professional athletes, college professors—people call me from all walks of life,” Bob Nygaard, a former police officer turned private investigator specializing in psychic cons, told the television show 20/20.

  An increasing number of financial professionals have also turned to psychic help—especially in the wake of the 2008 crash. “It used to be always love, love, love. Now it’s money, money, money,” Mary T. Browne, a favored psychic of Wall Street, told the New York Times in 2008, just as the financial crisis hit. She’s the real deal, though. She’s not one of those “storefront gypsies who take advantage of people’s fear.” No, no. She’s been psychic since she turned seven, when she saw a dead woman rearranging the flowers that surrounded her coffin. She claims to have persuaded two clients to reject higher-paying offers from Bear Stearns eighteen months before its collapse. A session with her (in 2008): $400.

  Jude Deveraux, a bestselling romance novelist, handed about $17 million over seventeen years to Rose Marks, a psychic who split her time between Florida and New York. And for what? Marks had told her that she could transfer the soul of her dead son into another boy’s body and reunite mother and child once more. “When I look back on it now, it was outrageous,” Deveraux later testified. “I was out of my mind.”

  What unites all of these marks, then? They are human, and humans are fallible.

  “Confidence men,” David Maurer sums up, “trace upon certain weaknesses in human nature. Hence until human nature changes perceptibly there is little possibility that there will be a shortage of marks for con games.”

  So if anyone is a potential mark, how does the con artist choose the mark to begin with? How to pick out the best one for this particular game, the one most likely to fall quickly and profoundly? That’s what grifters are particularly good at: looking at a sea of faces and finding the one who, at this point in time, would be the perfect mark. It’s the first step of the confidence game, the put-up, and no one is better at it than Apollo Robbins, the so-called Gentleman Thief famed for his sleights of hand in even the tightest of circumstances. (Two career highlights: stealing the president’s top secret itinerary from a Secret Service man and removing the cartridge from a pen belonging to Penn of Penn and Teller fame.) As Robbins told me over dinner one evening, he never just steals willy-nilly. First, he cases. He observes. He profiles. Only then does he begin his act.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE PUT-UP

  I can spot someone’s weakness a mile away. In any room I can pick out the best target.

  —SIMON LOVELL, FORMER CON ARTIST

  Debra Saalfield was heartbroken. A professional dancer and ballroom dance instructor, she had been working at what she saw as a dream job: marketing for a Times Square dance company. But in July 2008, within a two-day stretch, she had lost job and boyfriend both.

  Debra had been splitting her time between Florida and New York. Florida was home, where she had her house and her three children, but New York would be soon, she’d hoped. There was the job, and, well, her boyfriend was going to propose any day. Now, however, she was in the West Village not to move the rest of her things permanently up to the city, but to move whatever she’d left out of her now ex’s apartment. The next day, she was scheduled to fly back to Florida.

  The packing was emotionally grueling, each item a reminder of a life she’d no longer have. Debra walked down the stairs. She needed to clear her head. A walk would do her good.

  It was then that she saw it. A sleek triangle of a building on the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Bleecker Street, immediately familiar to anyone in the neighborhood: the home of Zena the Clairvoyant. Deep blue awnings, adorned by a single gold Z. A heavy gold frame by the entrance, offering everything from palm readings to horoscope charts. Crimson and gold curtains with thick tassels—also gold—cover the windows, inviting you to peer inside another world. Come in, the whole façade seems to beckon, and all your troubles will be over. “Walk ins welcome!” the sign brightly declares.

  Debra had walked past it many times. Her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—had warned her to stay far away. It wasn’t a good place. Now, though, she slowed her step. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

  Almost out of rebellion—he couldn’t tell her what to do—she opened the door. Inside, it was even more opulent than she’d envisioned. Beaded curtains. Hanging plants. Ornate lanterns adorning the ceiling. A sign advertising Zena’s second office, in Cannes. Could Zena see her? she inquired.

  Sylvia Mitchell sat upstairs, awaiting her next customer. She lived in Mystic, Connecticut (the irony of her hometown surely inescapable even to her), and she’d been working as a, well, mystic for over a decade. In most every way, “Zena” was her home. The door opened. There was Debra. Tall, thin and elegant, long strawberry blond hair streaming down her back. She moved with a smooth grace—a dancer, perhaps? She looked to be older than Sylvia herself—the clairvoyant had just turned thirty-six—and she appeared a bit lost.

  Debra, in turn, saw an attractive thirtysomething with a welcoming face. “Very charming, very comforting, very pretty. Dressed nicely,” she would later recall. She was here, she told her, for a basic psychic reading, one of Zena’s entry options, at a mere seventy-five dollars.

  Sylvia Mitchell carefully took Debra’s palm and began to talk. Almost immediately it was as if a greater force took over. A pained look came over her face. There was something else there. She had “very important information that could help her change and better her life, but it would cost her $1,000,” she told Debra, according to one detective’s statement.

  A thousand dollars was a lot of money. But Sylvia seemed open and sincere. And her time was, of course, valuable. Maybe this was the thing she needed to make everything better—the job loss, the ruined love life. “My heart was pounding out of my chest,” Debra later remembered. She handed over a check.

  All of a sudden, Mitchell’s flash of insight crystallized. In her past life, she told Debra, she’d been an Egyptian princess. As a royal, she had grown rather too attached to material possessions. “She told me I was part of a ruling city, a good doer, but I had a problem,” Saalfiel
d later told jurors. That materialistic attachment was creating negative energy in her life—and that energy, in turn, was bubbling over into her love and professional lives. But, Mitchell told her, there was a solution. “In order to get my life back in order, there was something I needed to do,” Debra said. She could hand over $27,000, as an exercise in letting go of wealth. Sylvia would keep it for her in a jar. And she could have it back any time she so desired.

  Saalfield had recently divorced. She knew she would need a financial cushion, what with three children, so she had taken out a line of credit on her house for “emergency money.” She decided to tap into the supply. It seemed like emergency enough: “At the time, it felt like it was an emergency because I was very unstable,” she says. Anyway, Sylvia had promised she could have it back. Debra gave Mitchell a check for $27,000.

  “I needed some direction and guidance, and she said she was pretty confident that she could help me. I don’t know that I thoroughly trusted her, but I wanted to listen to words of comfort,” she told jurors. “I had a meltdown. I lost it. I was unable to keep myself together.”

  The next morning, however, she regretted her haste. Her “judgment had been clouded,” she said. Thinking quickly, she went to her bank. Could she stop the check? Too late, she was told. It had already been cashed. So Debra called Zena. Could she have a refund? she asked Mitchell. She’d parted with her money, just as she’d been ordered to do, but now she wanted to reconnect with it. “I called her immediately and told her I made a mistake and needed my money back,” she says. Not possible, Mitchell told her. She was sorry, but the money simply wasn’t available.