How to Win at Life by Cheating at Everything

by Mark Perez

  Publisher

  Mike Richardson

  Editor

  Jemiah Jefferson

  Designer

  Anita Magaña

  Special thanks to Keith Goldberg at Dark Horse Entertainment.

  HOW TO WIN AT LIFE BY CHEATING AT EVERYTHING! © 2017 Mark Perez. Illustrations © Scott Shaw! Photographs © Annastasia Goldberg. All other material, unless otherwise specified, is © 2017 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Dark Horse Books® and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental.

  Published by

  Dark Horse Books

  A division of Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

  Dark Horse Comics

  10956 SE Main St.

  Milwaukie, OR 97222

  DarkHorse.com

  Names: Perez, Mark, auhor. | Shaw, Scott, illustrator. | Goldberg, Annastasia, photographer.

  Title: How to win at life…by cheating at everything : an illustrated guide to all things: from conning your way through high school, to bilking a small town / written by Mark Perez; illustrations by Scott Shaw; photographs by Annastasia Goldberg.

  Description: Milwaukie, OR : Dark Horse Books, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016049407 (print) | LCCN 2016053233 (ebook) | ISBN 9781506701943 (paperback) | ISBN 9781630089832

  Subjects: LCSH: Swindlers and swindling–Fiction. | Conduct of life–Fiction. | Satire. | BISAC: FICTION / Humorous. | FICTION / Satire.

  Classification: LCC PS3616.E74337 H69 2017 (print) | LCC PS3616.E74337 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016049407

  Ebook ISBN 9781630089832

  First Dark Horse Books Edition: June 2017

  v4.1

  a

  This book is dedicated to my father. A man who taught me that the best things in life are free. Especially when you can swindle them off of somebody else.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  FOREWORD

  PART 1: BECOMING THE WORST PERSON YOU CAN BE!

  Start Cheating Now—Read the Last Chapter First

  Committing Crimes as a Toddler

  Felonies for Grade Schoolers, Ages 6 and Up

  Getting Your Varsity Letter in Fleecing

  Get a Degree via Degrees of Bullshitting

  Finding Yourself by Defrauding Others

  Making It in the Real World by Being Really Fake

  Become a Doctor by Doctoring Your Medical Boards

  PART 2: VICTIMIZING PEOPLE ON THE MACRO LEVEL

  How to Be Ambitious in Your Depravity

  Making a Good First Impression When You’re Actually a Prick

  How to Get a “10” when You’re Barely a “2 ½”

  Using People From Your Past in Shameful Ways

  Pretending to Love Your Family When You Don’t

  Get Elected to Something and Abuse Your Power

  Remember Not to Be White-Trash Rich

  Sometimes Your Con Can Burn You Back. Like Herpes

  How to Protect Yourself from a Prison Sexual Assault

  Enough with the Book. Go Scam Someone

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  Steal this book. Yep. You read that right. Don’t pay for it with your Discover card. Don’t download a cheaper version on your Kindle. This one—this actual book that’s in your hands right now—put it in your pocket and steal it. Because—here’s the thing—if you pay for this book and then read it, it would totally defeat the purpose of why I wrote it in the first place. So have some balls for once in your miserable excuse for a life. Grab the goddamned book. Jam it into your purse or down the front of your pleated Dockers or under your uglier-than-average kid’s stroller, and walk right out that front door. Don’t be a pussy. DO IT! NOW! GO! GO!

  Okay, everybody calm down. I’m just joking. But now that I have your attention, I can explain my reason for writing this book in the first place. Because I’m sure you’re wondering, “Why the hell would a master of his craft, at the height of his powers, decide to publicly divulge all of his trade secrets?” They say Houdini went to his grave with every one of his tricks. And like a magician, or a psychiatrist, or Bruce Jenner’s cadre of plastic surgeons, the con man is sworn to a code of confidentiality—to never disclose the secrets that have been passed down from generation to generation, mentor to apprentice, or, as it was in my case, father to son.

  But fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I am dying.

  Therefore, I have decided that before I do expire, as a sort of penance for all the shitty stuff that I have perpetrated in this life (and I have perpetrated quite a bit of shitty stuff, as you’ll soon read), I am going to pool the resources in my mind and put all of that knowledge down on paper. I want this book to act as not only a testament of my life, but also as a sort of guidebook to yours, illuminating the darker part of our society, where it’s getting harder lately to delineate what’s right from what’s wrong.

  Now, how this book is used—well, that’s up to you. As soon as you crack this book open to chapter 1, I wash my hands of what happens next. It’s kinda like posting a bomb-making recipe on the Internet. If you’re a civilian trying to understand the mind of a lunatic, you’ll use it to know how to protect yourself from those who want to kill you by making a bomb. But if you’re the lunatic, then I suspect I just helped you make one.

  Also worth noting: all proceeds from this book will go to a foundation I recently created, the Coalition Helping Underprivileged and Moneyless Peoples. A nonprofit organization that remunerates the most vulnerable casualties of fraudulence in this country: the old, the very young, and the underrepresented. You see, folks, if I can somehow pay back society, even just a little, for all the ills I have caused it, then my life will not have been lived in vain.

  My dear, departed father once told me, “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.” Well, this one’s for you, Dad.

  In closing, I’d just like to say that all of the previous is total bullshit. I’m not dying. I have no interest in helping anyone, let alone giving some saps back their fucking money. And the Coalition Helping Underprivileged and Moneyless Peoples is something I just made up literally two minutes ago. My father gave me a lot of advice growing up, most of it terrible. But it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said that ridiculous quote about helping others. Barf. Oh, and the acronym for my fake charity is actually CHUMP—because I’m clever.

  I guess that’s my point. The real lesson to be learned here has already been taught. In the last few seconds, just by reading the mere foreword to this book, you have already been scammed. And that’s the thing. It’s just that easy. And in the succeeding pages, I’m gonna show you just how easy. Now, what the hell are you doing here? Reading this foreword in the middle of the store like a jerkoff?

  HOW TO STEAL THIS BOOK

  Hide it in a place no sane person would ever want to frisk.

  Grab a much cheaper book. Perhaps about dieting?

  Pretend you forgot to pay for said diet book you’re never ever gonna read.

  Pay for the cheaper book. When the alarm sounds again, they will in
evitably let your fat ass walk right out the door with your ironic weight-loss book in tow.

  Steal the fucking book.

  Note: If you’ve got real cojones, you’d also return the stolen book after you’re done reading it and get “your” money back. That’s the move. But first things first…

  PART 1:

  BECOMING THE

  WORST PERSON

  YOU CAN BE!

  START CHEATING NOW—READ THE LAST CHAPTER FIRST

  This is your first lesson about any great racket or scheme. You always start at the end. When you do that, when you start where you want to finish, then you’ll always know how it’s going to turn out—well before it actually does. And that is key in this Game of Con. Always know the results ahead of time. In a boxing match. In a presidential election. In life. I mean, think about it: what if you could gauge how everything ended before it actually did? And imagine if you could do that with all the important moments in your life. Look into the future to see how things turned out, years ahead of time. For example:

  My plan working to perfection.

  What if you could see just how enormous your beautiful wife was going to balloon up to some twenty years after you married her?

  Wouldn’t it be great to see the dead-end your “promising job” was going to lead to before you devoted some thirty-five fucking years of your life to that pointless tripe?

  And just imagine if you could see the galactic loser your sweet bundle of joy would turn out to be—before you spent a couple hundred thousand dollars and the best years of your life raising his ridiculously disappointing ass?

  Well, the same is true when you’re trying to pull off one of the biggest, most ambitious cons in the history of the art form. At the end of the day, a great con is not just about stealing millions of dollars via some underground computer hack (any egghead with no imagination can do that). No, this con was less about the size of the haul—and more about the scope of the crime. I had made enough loot. This was going to be the kind of swindle that would be talked about for years in the annals of con-dom (not the Trojan kind). Now, that’s what I was after. A certain level of immortality. And as you’ll see by reading this book, not only will I teach you the basics, but if you pay close attention, maybe take some notes in the margins, I might just show you how to steal an entire town.

  And if you’re really, really good, after you’ve scammed them all, you may even end up beloved there.

  I’m sure when you were little, there was some asshole adult figure in your life—a guidance counselor, a Big Brother, maybe even a super flirty priest—who told you some bullshit about “keeping your feet on the ground and reaching for the stars.” Or maybe that was Casey Kasem. Either way, it’s all garbage. “Trying your best” and “never giving up on your dreams” will usually lead to living a life well below the poverty line and playing rhythm guitar for a Maroon 5 cover band at Universal CityWalk. The only, and let me repeat that, only way to succeed in this life is to cheat. You don’t believe me? Henry Ford became an industrial success in good part because he sold to both sides during World War II (and yes, one of those sides was the fucking Nazis). Joseph Kennedy basically bought the US presidency for his son by using the immense profits from a very illegal bootlegging operation. And New York billionaire Leona Helmsley was once quoted as saying, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” (A New York federal court disagreed—and gave her eighteen months in prison, by the way.) And while Leona was an asshole for actually saying it out loud—the witch was right.

  You see, I wrote this book not only to prove that anybody can become a con man, but also, and more importantly, that most extremely successful people are con men in their own right. I also wanted to show that the greatest con man in the world (hello, me) could accomplish anything if he put his mind to it. And not by reaching for the stars. Or being all I could be. But by using the library of skills I’m about to lay out for you, in detail, in the following pages. Which means you too can accomplish anything. You can con a whole town. And get rich while doing it. And, if you do it properly…you may even achieve something greater.

  Because at the end of the day, this book is about winning at life. About getting everything you ever dreamed of. And oddly enough, it’s a sort of love story, too. About two people you’d never imagine would end up together in the end…ending up together in the end. So now that you know how the story ends, how’s about we get back to where it begins…

  COMMITTING CRIMES AS A TODDLER

  I stole my first car when I was three. That’s not a typo, folks. Three. Now, while I didn’t pull off the scam entirely by myself, I was certainly a semi-willing accomplice, or at least as willing as you can be, committing grand theft auto while still in pre-K. One of the first lessons to learn is that everything and everyone around you can always be used as potential tools to aid you in a grift. Maybe it’s a Michigan roll (a few dollar bills wrapped around a roll of Xerox paper). Maybe it’s a cackle-bladder (a squib of red dye you bite down on when you fake a slip-and-fall at Home Depot). Or maybe it’s one of the most commonly used tools in the Game: a shill, also known as a capper (a seemingly innocent accomplice that makes people feel more comfortable when dealing with a total stranger—you).

  It could be a dog with one leg. It could be an older person with a broken-down walker. Or it could be, as was the case in my first foray into the Game, a toddler.

  People are generally trusting. I have no idea why that is. With all the history of cheating and deceiving that has been perpetrated over time, by individuals, religions, and just about every government that has ever existed on Earth, you’d think a healthy skepticism would have been ingrained in us, merely by natural selection. But luckily for guys like me, humankind remains genetically naive—dumb fuckers who may walk on two feet but still think like their ape ancestors. And sometimes all they need is a little push back to their more natural position: bent over on all fours.

  Here’s a quick list of quality shills and cappers:

  THE ELDERLY

  Our country has decided to collectively deem old people useless and a burden on our society. I am here to tell you that notion is some totally ageist bullshit. I’ll agree that they’re super depressing to look at, and tend to repeat the same fond memories of the Korean conflict and institutionalized racism, but they do have a purpose in this world. A worthwhile function. A reason for taking that very dubious first breath every morning. And that purpose is to help you get over on somebody. Even if they’re unaware of it at the time. Especially if they’re unaware. Which is what makes being a confidence man a true art form. Any asshole can storm into a bank and rob the joint with an ironic mask and a half-decent submachine gun. But it takes a true artisan to enter that same bank armed only with an octogenarian in a wheelchair and take the place for triple what the Point Break guys made off with. So make friends with an oldie. You’ll find it makes suffering through those long, boring stories about how the Hollywood Jews faked the moon landing well worth it.

  ANIMALS

  There’s a reason that you may see thousands of people die in a disaster movie, but you almost never see a single dog killed. And that’s because the powers that be know that people love dogs far more than they love each other. And although that may seem irrational and unsettling, think of it this way: Humans cheat, they murder, they pretend to have a debilitating back injury in order to receive a government check. Meanwhile, all a dog wants from you is love. Kinda makes sense when you think of it that way, doesn’t it? Now, choosing any animal won’t do. You need to pick just the right one. If you’re gonna bilk an old lady, usually a tabby cat works best. If you’re gonna roll a meathead with a tribal tattoo, buy an obnoxiously large snake. And if you plan on duping your average Middle American rube, always go with a dog, preferably a puppy. (Note: Never use a parrot. You’ll come off as the weird guy at the party that people expect to start juggling bowling pins. Unless you’re trying to roll a pirate. Then it’s apropos.)


  FOREIGNERS

  I know what you’re thinking. Foreigners??? We’re Americans, damn it. Americans have hated foreigners since the Pilgrims docked their cruise ship on Plymouth Rock and gave the natives syphilis and a hastily written eviction notice. This is all true, of course, but there are always exceptions to any rule. Generally speaking, foreigners can be divided into two categories, easily understood for your mildly racist American consumption. For example…

  Safe foreigners: Chinese. Mexican (of the gardening and housekeeping variety). Almost all Europeans.

  Dangerous foreigners: Middle Eastern. Mexican (of the gangbanging variety). And Russian.

  You know those commercials? Where they show you some starving African kid from Malawi eating a handful of dust for breakfast? And then that fat, bald guy starts in with the whole “for just forty cents a day” rap, making you feel all terrible while you’re eating a bacon double cheeseburger and chili fries in front of your plasma TV? Well, it’s that same effect that you want to produce when you are perpetrating a ruse of this kind. I’m telling you, just as an experiment, go walk into any church accompanied by a skinny kid with terrible teeth from war-torn Burundi (or some other similarly shitty locale), and you’ll see just how quickly you’ll be getting donations to pay for the make-believe college he’s never going to attend.

  And finally, that brings us to…