The Art of the Con

by R. Paul Wilson

  The Work-Up

  Once the carny convinces a sucker to play toward some kind of agreed outcome or score, then the prizes become much more attractive. This approach allows a crooked carny to pick and choose his targets while presenting his stall as a typical, honest game until a mark agrees to play the “work-up,” and it is no longer a game. Then it becomes more akin to a robbery.

  The Queen’s Cut

  To help you understand how this type of scam works, it would be useful to invent our own game. I’ll shuffle a deck of cards and offer you the chance to cut to any card. In this game, if you cut to a queen, you win a dollar, but every cut costs you a dollar, so I either keep your dollar or give you one of mine whenever you find a queen. This isn’t really fair since, with four queens in a fifty-two-card deck, the odds are against you. But you should have a one in thirteen chance of cutting to a queen, which is much better odds than some that you’ll find at the fair.

  Let’s also imagine that this turns out to be your idea of a great time, so you’re happy to play and no one gets hurt until I offer you the chance to work your way up to a much bigger prize. Since you love this game so much, I generously offer to play for more money. This time, you get to cut the deck one hundred times. If you happen to cut to all four queens, then I will pay you five hundred dollars, but you still have to pay one dollar every time you cut the deck. That means you might have to pay me as much as one hundred dollars, but you’re pretty sure that, with a hundred chances, you can cut to all four queens so you agree to play.

  Sound fair? There’s a catch.

  Every time you cut to a heart, I’m going to add a hundred dollars to the prize, but you also have to pay double each time you cut. After cutting to five hearts, the prize fund would double to a thousand bucks—but you’d be paying thirty-two dollars for every round. Three more hearts create a prize fund of thirteen hundred bucks, but now you’re paying $256 per cut! What you don’t know is that I’ve secretly trimmed the queens so they’re slightly narrower and shorter than the other cards and, because of the way you must cut and show the face of the upper half, the chances of cutting to a queen at all are slim to none. Cutting to all four queens would take an act of God, especially since I’ve palmed-out one of the queens!

  Clearly, this is not a game at all, but rather a complete con. From the player’s point of view, it might appear to be a reasonable proposition. Once he’s doubled his stake a few times, the odds against him should be clear, but I can keep the player involved by offering to also double the prize money whenever he cuts to a heart. Now there seems to be a real chance to make some money, but by the time he’s cut to ten hearts, each turn will cost more than a thousand dollars and most people would go broke long before that.

  This imaginary game clearly illustrates how trying to work your way up to a prize, where the price to keep playing constantly increases, is a sure way to lose a lot of money; when the game is fixed or the odds are heavily stacked against you, it’s just a matter of time before you’re cleaned out. The important thing to remember is that real games of this nature are designed to seem beatable, that’s the point. But in actuality, they continue to take the player’s money until there’s no more to take.

  Getting Hooped

  A Hoopla game features a table filled with tall and short blocks of wood. On top of these are prizes that can be won if a wooden or plastic hoop is successfully thrown over one of the blocks and lands flat on the table, and is not hooked on the block in any way. Getting a hoop over any block is difficult, though achievable with a flat-topped cylindrical block, but other shapes can make a legitimate throw almost impossible. The game of hoopla is an excellent example of a flat store that can operate a legitimate skill-based game until the right sucker walks up with deep-enough pockets to reach into.

  First of all, the cheap prizes (the ones that are actually winnable) are moved away and the operator introduces more attractive prizes, including Rolex watches and bottles of expensive champagne. The only catch is that every ring costs a couple of dollars more. After the first round, the player has lost more money than he intended but has been frustratingly close to winning several times. Of course, it’s designed this way. The operator offers more rings for more money in return for removing some of the blocks. This makes it much easier to concentrate on prizes the player really wants, so he accepts and loses another fistful of dollars. Before the mark can back away, the hustler now moves the remaining blocks closer, offering more rings for more money. Now it seems entirely likely that the player will win, but despite hooking the rings around the edge of the blocks several times, none fall completely over their target.

  The hustler moves the block even closer and demonstrates several times that he can throw the rings over the block. Having come this far, the sucker buys a handful of rings for even more money, certain that this time he couldn’t possibly fail. He loses again, and the game continues until the mark either walks away or runs out of money, usually the latter.

  Hoopla is a brilliant little scam because it seems so easy, yet is almost impossible to win from the player’s position. The wooden blocks are flat on the bottom but their top is cut at a steep angle, which makes it fantastically difficult to throw a ring over, unless you are throwing toward the highest side of the block. If the lower side of the angled cut is toward you, then you might as well throw your money into a drain. The operator is naturally on the tall side of the blocks and can easily throw hoops from there. In fact, the blocks can be incredibly close to the player without improving his chances unless he reaches forward and drops the hoop straight down, which would be a foul throw, naturally.

  The hustler’s ability to appear to make the game easier and improve the mark’s chances while taking more money each time are the hallmarks of a work-up scam or “trap game.” The mark is moved gradually toward the prize until it seems like he can’t possibly fail; then the true odds (which are enormous) do the rest. In Blackpool, a popular seaside town on England’s west coast, hoopla stalls have been known to set up along the sea front, drawing people in with free throws and friendly banter until someone takes the bait and plays for bigger prizes. People regularly lose hundreds, even thousands at these grubby, ugly little stalls playing for expensive bottles of booze, jewelry, and fancy watches. This is why they are called “trap games” because, once a player has lost so much, it’s very difficult to walk away. They just end up following their losses even deeper into the hole.

  Speaking to friends “in the know” I was told that several people had been mugged after refusing to play and that rumors of drug dealing from these stalls were rife. I once walked up to one of these games and was quickly recognized from The Real Hustle and threatened. Smiling, I backed away, but it was clear that these guys meant business.

  Despite claims that hoopla was merely a game of skill, Black-pool police finally managed to close the stalls down after passing the blocks to a statistician for analysis. He quickly proved that the odds were unreasonable and the operator was then charged and taken to court. Personally, I was disappointed that it took so long, especially since the FBI had performed similar tests on the same props decades earlier. When breaking down the operation, police even discovered that the prize Rolex watches were cheap knock-offs and the bottles of booze were all empty!

  Mark Mason, a dear friend and now a dealer in magicians’ props, was once one of the biggest game operators in Blackpool. His joints varied from mini jam auctions and trap games like the Razz to the ticket scam, where players would pick sealed paper tickets from a large basket hoping to find the name of a winning football team. Everything in the basket was a loser; Mark would secretly hide a winner in his palm and add it to their pile of chosen tickets. The objective was to pick out ten tickets, and if they could find three winning teams, they’d win a prize. By adding the winners with a little sleight of hand, Mark was in complete control of how many winners they found and could use this to keep them playing for that last golden ticket.*

  Once s
omeone has lost a lot of money to this kind of game, it might seem easy for him to walk away, but in the heat of the moment, the player is convinced that he is so close that he is certain to win eventually. The con is designed to lure the mark into believing that winning would easily compensate for the money he has already lost. This is why prizes in a trap game must be bigger and more attractive. If the victim has lost three hundred dollars but is playing for a two-thousand-dollar prize, then he will keep playing until either he runs out of money or it no longer seems worth playing. Hoopla is a powerful trap that succeeds because it looks like a simple game that’s entirely possible to win.

  The king of these games comes in many different guises, is known by countless names from Lucky Numbers and Thunderball to Cuban Bingo, but most famously it’s known as The Razzle Dazzle.

  Razzle

  I’m often asked to name my favorite scam and, like trying to decide a preferred film or book, this question is impossible to answer truthfully. The term “favorite” isn’t really appropriate since we’re talking about a criminal act, but the question is a natural one. I’ve pulled over five hundred different con games, so surely there’s one that stands out? There are many con games that I find fascinating or ingenious to varying degrees (many are described in this book), but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to name just one scam that embodies everything that interests me, the Razz would be it. If fate or misfortune threw me onto the street and I had to resort to larceny, the razzle dazzle would be my game of choice.

  It took several seasons of The Real Hustle to convince production that the razz was worth filming, because it was incredibly difficult to describe in words. Game charts with points for certain scores, a box with numbered holes, and a cup filled with marbles hardly sound like great television; but, when we finally built the props and filmed the scam, the result was everything I’d hoped for. The razzle proved to be a perfect example of how and why scams work, and after the first mark walked away penniless, my producer leapt out of hiding and ran over to the stall shouting “that was fucking fantastic!”

  My interest in this particular game began with a conversation in Las Vegas. A friend told me a funny story about a hustler who was arrested for playing the razzle when the victim’s wife became convinced he was either drugged or mesmerized. Later, I did a little research to learn more about the game but found that there was very little information available to me. I had trouble understanding why this particular swindle was so strong or how it could make so much money with such a simple secret.

  The razzle depends on the operator to miscount quickly and without hesitation. The hustler in my friend’s story had worked the razz for so long that when he was hired as a blackjack dealer, the pit boss had to constantly stop him from accidentally busting out his own hand when his mind naturally reverted to old habits. In a razzle joint, it is when the miscount is used that makes it such a perfect little scam. Rolled fairly, the odds of scoring any points are astronomical, but once a victim starts to play, the operator uses the miscount to give him points and keep him in the game. Put simply, you only cheat in the mark’s favor! Over time, the player’s score can creep closer and closer to the prize without any real hope of winning.

  Once I got my head around this simple secret and why it was so powerful, I needed to know more. To practice, I built a simple little joint with a game chart from an old gambler’s supply catalog, eight tiny dice, and a large leather cup. Quickly, I learned how unfair the game really was when played honestly. I then began to experiment with ways to fake the count.

  Jeff McBride, a fellow magician, had worked a razzle joint one summer when he was a teenager. I called him long-distance to discuss how his version of the game was played. Jeff tipped me to a simple secret that made the miscount almost impossible to detect and looked every bit as fair as an honest count. Once I’d mastered this, I started practicing on my kids and in a few weeks I was ready to do it for real, but it took two more years before razzle became part of The Real Hustle. During this time I learned more about the game and that it had been banned many times because it was just too strong.

  Mark Mason told me that he always went for the money and is now quite open about his attitude in those days. “There were some guys who would always leave them a few bucks. Me? No . . . If it was to be got, I took everything I could get. I’d actually try to see inside their wallet . . .” In Blackpool, variations on the classic razzle joint ripped off so many tourists that after hundreds were left penniless, the town council stepped in and banned all numbers games, which made way for the hoopla stalls to take over. In order to demonstrate the razzle dazzle for TV, I needed to show just how powerful it could be and how much money it could make.

  The game works like this: Once someone approaches the stall, I engage them in a little chat, talking about the prizes and making sure they understand what they might win. If the mark is interested, then I sell him a couple of rolls to get him started. After each roll, I pick up the marbles one at a time and toss them back into the cup, adding up each number to create their total for that roll. As I pick them up, the total increases so I’m never calling out the numbers that the marbles are sitting in, just the sum of these numbers as it increases. “Two, six, twelve, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-five!” Counted this way it’s very hard to follow and correlate the numbers for each ball and the total. Using the counting trick I’d learned from Jeff, I could easily manipulate the total until the last two or three marbles brought me to a winning number. Within the first couple of rolls, I’d miscount to forty-four, which gives five points to the player. That takes him halfway toward a prize so long as he keeps playing. Now I slow down and let the odds take over, counting fairly until the player hits a roll of twenty-nine (the most common number, rolled fairly), which is marked on the chart as “ADD.” This number forces him to play for more money, sometimes even doubling the price per roll. After a couple of twenty-nines, I miscount again to throw him another point or two and continue feeding the player points as the price to play steadily increases.

  The prizes can also be increased during the game, and on many game charts, certain numbers are labeled “HP,” which can mean whatever the operator chooses! Most often, “HP” is translated as a “House Prize,” where either a piece of plush is given to the mark to keep him happy or another big prize is added to the mark’s ultimate goal. I’ve heard of some hustlers who use “HP” as “Half Points” in order to reduce the player’s score! Initially, this seemed unnecessary to me. Then I understood that it allowed the con artist to continue awarding points so the player is always scoring while occasionally being forced back. Also, each time the player’s points were halved, another prize could be added. The result is that the player gets a lot more action (winning and losing) and the game operator eventually offers to ignore the “HP” rolls (and stop reducing his score) as further leverage to keep him playing. Psychologically, this gives the mark the impression of progress, when of course, there has been none.

  It’s not an easy game to follow unless you’re actually playing, but it should be clear that the operator is in complete control of the outcome. The only thing getting played in the razzle dazzle is the mark. One of the most powerful aspects of the razz is its ability to put the victim on “the send”—to a cash machine. Once they’ve lost everything they have, there is a built-in angle that hustlers use to keep them playing if they can get more money, which is what sent my mark running toward the ATM on the show.

  By the time the player is out of money, his score could be as much as nine and a half points—painfully close to the ten points needed to win. This is where the operator leans into his sucker to offer him a deal he can’t refuse. Claiming that he’s never seen such bad luck and that he feels sorry for the player, the hustler offers to hold the score for five minutes if the player can get more money. He then sweetens the deal by offering his mark twenty rolls to make that last half point, and shows all the money the player’s lost so far and
adds it to his potential prize! The catch is that the player has to come back with whatever amount the hustler demands to continue playing. In one devastating move, the con artist has upped the stakes, offered an irresistible deal, and restricted how much time the victim has to act, making this a perfect example of a con game in action. It relies a great deal on the “sunk-cost fallacy” that keeps gamblers chasing their losses with more money. As the gambler’s prayer says: “Please God, let me break even. I need the money!”

  For my first mark on The Real Hustle, offering to hold the score until he came back with more money was a powerful hook. His common sense began to wake up and I could feel him resisting; then he saw all of the money he’d lost, which I folded and placed under one of the prizes. I then said “If you can get another three hundred, I’ll hold the score and I’ll let you win back your money. I can’t say fairer than that.” That was all I needed to say. Five minutes later he returned with more cash and I gave him twenty rolls to make half a point. This time I counted every roll fairly and let him follow along until the last roll sent him home, broke.

  We repeated the scam four times and in every case, if they could go and get more money, they did so. I calculated that, based on the daily maximum withdrawal from an ATM and the amount of cash most people would carry, making a thousand pounds an hour would be easy. In a holiday destination such as Blackpool, where people tend to bring more cash, the potential hourly score could be much higher and the damage to the mark much more severe. How many victims have lost all of their savings at the beginning of their vacation and had to take their family home early? Luckily for our victims in Bournemouth, I gave back all of their money!