The Art of the Con

by R. Paul Wilson

  It should be clear by now that con artists cannot be recognized by the way they look or talk nor by the way they dress or behave. A person’s background or breeding, real or invented, is no assurance of honesty; judging someone by one’s own moral limitations can be an expensive mistake. Trying to identify a con artist this way is like trying to determine someone’s job by the shape of their ears. That’s not to say there aren’t common traits that might arouse suspicions, but until compared to actions and intent, there’s no way to be sure. Our objective here is to recognize the con game rather than the con man.

  Many books exist that describe hundreds of scams and I recommend them to anyone with a sincere interest in the subject. The problem is that con games evolve over time. How often have you heard a joke, only to recognize it after the punchline? A different setup, altered details, and the way of telling can make a simple joke seem different or new, but like a well-proven scam, the punchline often remains the same.

  Naturally, if you recognize a particular scam, you should immediately walk away. Once you are caught in the web of a con, weaved by an expert con artist, it can be incredibly difficult to wake up and smell what’s being shoveled. Many people walk up to Monte games fully aware that they’re a scam, but still get caught up in the action and leave with empty pockets. It’s like watching a Rocky movie before getting into a ring with Mike Tyson; you might know what’s coming but you’re still going to the hospital. Con artists are better at conning you than you are at not being conned. Remember, they have played this game before and you are almost certain to lose—even if you know what’s going on.

  Society often makes the mistake of giving con games a lower priority than more immediate and sensational crimes, but the ramifications of scams can be severe and extremely damaging. It is not unusual for victims to shoulder full responsibility for being fooled, as if they are to blame for losing their own money. Perhaps this is a natural reaction, but it is also one of the key reasons that con games continue to flourish. Grifters depend on their victims to feel this way, knowing that the shame of being conned usually discourages a mark from reporting the crime.

  Writer, actor, and magician Ricky Jay is a genuine expert on the subject. His work in the field is both illuminating and entertaining, but I have grown to disagree with his assertion that a confidence trick is a “soft crime.”* Certainly, some scams are softer than others. Being swindled by a carnival game might merely bruise the ego, but giving away one’s life savings has driven some victims to suicide. Being threatened with a knife in a back alley, even assaulted, is traumatic, but there is a sharper edge to personal guilt or lost self-respect. Many victims internalize this suffering and withdraw from family and friends. It’s like comparing slashed tires with sugar in your gas tank: The subtle attack can be the most damaging over time.

  Information is the most powerful weapon against con artists. My shows, The Real Hustle, The Takedown, and Scammed, all sought to entertain the audience and educate them by osmosis. I firmly believe that we succeeded in our goal of making ordinary people more aware, of giving them tools to spot these scams before falling victim. But journalists continued to ask me the same question in almost every interview: Aren’t I teaching people how to con other people? You might ask the same question as you read this book. Will it provide further education to the criminally inclined?

  My answer is simple: Con artists already know how to con you. Scams have been spreading like viruses for centuries, and today, anyone can learn countless new con games with a simple Google search. Hustlers do not need my help to rip you off, but what they do need—what they absolutely depend upon—is the ignorance of the general public about how they operate. An informed public is a protected public. It’s a simple equation and it bears repeating. In the history of con games, the only reason a con has ever succeeded is because the mark did not realize he was being conned.

  How big the problem is depends on your perspective. The occasional crooked street game may seem like nothing more than a nuisance, but some can wipe out fortunes or destroy trust and reputation. Sustained attempts to defraud foreign visitors could contribute to a declining tourist industry while regular attempts to con people on the Internet might seriously impact a country’s image, as Nigeria (now synonymous with a famous online scam) has learned in recent years.

  Con games continue to evolve and find new victims. The rewards for the fraudster can be enormous, but the ramifications for the victims can be much more serious than merely financial. In 2007, businessman James McCormick began selling a bomb-detection kit, designed to be used as a way to effectively locate explosive devices. The device was offered to both the military and civilians, selling for up to forty thousand dollars each. It featured a gun-like grip with a retractable antenna that folded back into the device. Samples of suspected substances were placed into a jar, then transferred to a card, which was inserted into the handle. McCormick claimed the device could detect explosives and other materials from over one kilometer (3,260 feet), even underwater or from the air, and pre-programmed cards were supplied to detect everything from ivory to one-hundred-dollar banknotes.

  The method McCormick claimed he used to supposedly program these detection cards was fascinating. A substance was placed into a glass Kilner jar, along with a paper sticker, which would then “absorb the vapors” before being placed onto a card and inserted into the device. McCormick’s detector would then, he claimed, compare chemicals in the air to those on the sticker, giving the user a visual indication of concealment.*

  This is nothing more than a dowsing system* and has no scientific merit whatsoever. In fact, even someone who believes in dowsing might question these claims. The simple truth is that James McCormick knew perfectly well that this system would never work. It was a scam from the beginning.

  In war-torn regions, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are one of the most dangerous weapons faced by civilians and professional soldiers. Finding and disposing of these devices can be a deadly business and McCormick saw this as an opportunity. Combining a feasible story with a desperate need allowed him to sell thousands of useless devices to governments, companies, and individuals. He made eighty million dollars from sales, selling six thousand devices in Iraq alone. There are no figures to estimate how many people may have died while relying on this device but I suspect the number to be depressingly high.

  McCormick was able to secure contracts to supply the device to governments around the world. Once he had one major client, he was able to use that client’s patronage to convince others that he was a legitimate businessman. While I discourage blaming the victim in most cases, I believe the British government had ample resources to conduct even the simplest of tests on this equipment. Incredibly, McCormick sold them hundreds of units and used this to support his claims with other clients. The UK government may be guilty of neglect in this regard, but that is nothing compared to the irresponsibility of the Kenyan government. Three days after McCormick was found guilty and sentenced, the Kenyan police demonstrated their magic detection devices for reporters, apparently proving that they worked exactly as McCormick claimed. Even after the device was fully exposed as an adapted twenty-dollar golf ball locator, the Kenyan authorities publicly insisted that they were effective at locating drugs, explosives, and firearms. This proves only that it’s easier to cling to a lie than face the depressing truth and all that it implies.

  When confronted in 2010 by one of his salesmen, McCormick told him, “They do exactly what they are meant to do: make money.” This is all a con man cares about. Free from remorse or regret, McCormick simply kept selling his “bomb detectors” without any regard for the consequences.

  Compare this awful fraud to the almost amusing dancing dolls scam and we find that exactly the same principles are at work. Both scams depend on a feasible working method and both feature demonstrations to prove that the products work, but whereas the dancing dolls scam depends on novelty to attract buyers, McCormick’s scheme took advantage of
a genuine need for safety and protection. He identified a situation that demanded a solution, one which people would be willing to pay a great deal to have. McCormick created a bogus device, concocted a story around its abilities, and was overwhelmed by demand from potential victims.

  Con games are everywhere and even the simplest hustle can be transformed into a big con with a little imagination. James McCormick may never have seen a dancing doll seller, but his objectives and methods were exactly the same. To be able to recognize the elements of a scam, we need to look deeper into how it unfolds. Virtually all cons have four phases: the hook, the line, the sinker, and the cool-out.

  Footnotes

  * This is not always true. Some scams force the mark to invest in a lie by repeating it to a third party, but this requires careful handling and depends on context and timing.

  * It might be argued that con games are a soft crime for the perpetrators.

  * Morris, Stephen; Jones, Meirion; Booth, Robert (23 April 2013), “The ‘magic’ bomb detection that endangered lives all over the world. ”The Guardian (London). Retrieved 23 April 2013.

  * Dowsing is a centuries-old method of detecting water, underground structures, or precious materials using sticks, metal rods, or pendulums (among other methods). Scientifically speaking, it’s hogwash.

  THE HOOK

  Protection is not just a matter of spotting a scam before getting involved; it’s equally important to recognize one from within. Con games evolve over time and anyone can be suckered in by the right story; but if you spot the hallmarks of a scam before it takes you, then it might be possible to walk away without losing a penny. This knowledge can also be invaluable when helping others who are likely to get scammed or already entangled in a con man’s web.

  My bookshelves groan with the weight of past volumes, exposés, and reminiscences by retired con artists, police officers, federal agents, and bunco men. I have books by academics and magicians who, like myself, were fascinated by the genre, interpreting its history and characters from their own peculiar or entertaining perspective. Strange stories, facts, and personalities fill these pages and have sold quite a number of copies.

  As it turns out, writing a book on con games can be quite easy. Many are merely a rewrite (sometimes a blatant rip-off) of already existing material. For hundreds of years, authors have filled their pages with poorly veiled facsimiles of past texts. This counterfeit creativity can be mapped over the years as new authors appear to recycle the same old stories for each new generation because scams make great stories; like good jokes they often feature a fascinating setup followed by a strong punch line. People love clever ideas and tales with a twist, so the constant interest in swindles is easy to understand.

  Most books relate their selection of scams with a little commentary or theory thrown in. Such cautionary tales hope to protect the reader by revealing these tricks and supposedly teaching how to avoid falling victim in the future. The problem is that this simply doesn’t work. One of the key reasons that people enjoy reading stories about con artists is that they feel detached from the action. They see the hustler as a clever fox and the victims as gullible chickens waiting to be plucked. The details of each story are often embellished, re-ordered, or simply invented to be more entertaining—it’s designed so that the readers enjoy the ride without actually remembering where they’ve been.

  When I first started speaking to businesses, educators, and law enforcement about con games, my approach was much the same as the contents of my library. I selected scams from a smorgasbord of criminal history, reconstructed them in my own words, and learned how best to tell them in an effort to entertain and inform my audience. The chances were excellent that if any con man happened to pick someone from that audience and attempt one of those scams, he’d come up empty because the mark would recognize what he was up to.

  The problem with this approach is that con games evolve with the times. Once a particular scam becomes well known, con artists can either move to the next town and ply their trade anew or begin a completely different con game, as yet unknown to the public. Most scams can be dressed up in a variety of disguises and re-invented thousands of times to produce the same result: “Get the Fucking Money,” or GTFM. As I will illustrate later in this book, some con games can even be repeated on the same victim! Reading about con games in a book is clearly not the same as being the target of one. It’s the difference between watching a racing car from the bleachers and being locked in its trunk.

  It seemed to me that a fresh approach for a book on con games would be to use these scams as examples to illustrate the underlying principles that make con games effective. Together, we’re going to ask why they work and learn how to identify a scam before it’s too late. Along the way I will share my own experiences as a con artist, examine the many types of con game, and discuss exactly how I got each mark to “pop.”

  After working on The Real Hustle for a couple of years, I began to analyze my notes from each of the scams we had pulled. The concept of breaking the con down into “hook, line, and sinker” came to me when I first used it in a talk for a credit card company in Miami. It was a simple way to illustrate how I felt con games worked; a convenient illustration of the core principles that I was starting to recognize.

  At that time, I felt that there was much more to find and that the list would expand as my understanding and experience deepened. To that end, I began to add to the list, but as we continued to film these scams, I grew to understand that almost everything important could be categorized by those first three phases. Eventually, I added the “cool-out” (also known as the “blow-off”) to the sequence, and, from this point I began to see how these applied to each and every scam that I’d pulled.

  The Hook—Get them interested in the bait.

  The Line—Build their desire, sell the story, and establish rapport.

  The Sinker—Close the deal.

  The Cool-Out—Get them to accept their losses.

  Some con games are all about the hook, others are about keeping the mark on the line, and some are nothing but a fast sting, sinking the victim immediately. The cool-out, while not always possible, is often inherent to the type of scam but usually needs to be either baked into the con or carefully applied after the sting.

  It is how each of these phases is played that determines the success of the con artist, and I hope to illustrate exactly how a hustler plays this game and responds to the challenges or concerns of a potential victim.

  To illustrate these hook, line, and sinker elements, I will walk you through the con game I designed for The History Channel TV show Scammed. It’s an excellent example because the principles used can be identified in almost any type of con game. Along the way we’ll pull several scams together, trying to anticipate every outcome to better understand what a con game feels like from my side of the table.

  Uncle Barry

  He was not an easy mark. Charming, intelligent, and witty, Uncle Barry was nobody’s fool. His nephew, Randy, had secretly set him up for Scammed, a two-hour special for The History Channel. My mission was to expose the world’s most famous scam by targeting an American businessman. To do this I had to re-invent the game, tailor it to my mark, and pull it off in just forty-eight hours. I had worked out the sting and the best way to reel him in, but setting the bait was going to be risky, as it always is. During pre-production, I was hoping for someone who would bite quickly—but Barry was way too smart for that.

  The Nigerian Prince scam is, by now, very well known to anyone with an e-mail account. The idea is simple: A foreign national wants you to hold onto a large amount of money in return for an irresistible percentage of it “for your trouble.” The only catch is that, for a variety of reasons, the person receiving the money, the mark, must pay a few legal costs, transfer fees, or put up his own cash as a show of good faith. Whatever the details might be, it amounts to this: The mark must pay his own money under some pretext in the hope of receiving a much bigger sum in return
.

  It’s not a new con game. Over two hundred years ago it was known as the “Spanish Prisoner,” where wealthy suckers were convinced they could pay a ransom or fund a voyage to receive the lion’s share of a ship loaded with treasure. Boiled down to its base elements, it’s the perfect example of a classic con game that might seem ludicrous from the outside, but from the perspective of an entangled victim, perfectly plausible.

  My challenge was to re-invent this scam—which would be well known to Barry in its “African prince” disguise—and prove that it could still work if the details were changed. While I had constructed a powerful story and a dramatic sting to get the money, I had to be very careful about how I got our mark to play the game. Just saying, “Hey Barry, want to make a hundred grand?” wasn’t going to cut it.

  We met over breakfast in Charleston, South Carolina. I played the part of a businessman who brokered large money transfers from overseas. According to my story, I employed US citizens to accept funds into their own accounts, hold them for an agreed period, then, once the legal requirements were satisfied, transfer the money back to the owner’s US bank, minus a very attractive percentage. Barry seemed to accept all of this at face value; he only asked a few simple questions as we chatted over coffee and orange juice. We agreed to meet later that day so I could talk to them about working together.