A confidence trick, confidence game, or con for short, (also known as a scam) is an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons (known as the mark) usually with the goal of financial or other gain. The confidence trickster, con man, scam artist or con artist often works with an accomplice called the shill, who tries to encourage the mark by pretending to believe the trickster. In a traditional con, the mark is encouraged to believe that he will obtain money dishonestly by cheating a third party, and is stunned to find that due to what appears to be an error in pulling off the scam he is the one who loses money; in more general use, the term con is used for any fraud in which the victim is tricked into losing money by false promises of gain.

Some confidence tricks exploit the inherent greed and dishonesty of their victims; it has been said by confidence tricksters that it is impossible to con a completely honest man. Often, the mark tries to out-cheat the conmen, only to discover that they have been manipulated into this.

Sometimes conmen rely on naïve individuals who put their confidence in get-rich-quick schemes 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 confident of investing in.

The transition between the legal praising a sold product and scamming is fluent. The german television channel 9Live for example, is percieved to be a scamming operation by many, but not by the state.

Contents

1 Well-known confidence tricks 2 Famous con artists 3 Confidence tricks in the movies 4 Confidence tricks in paper literature 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Well-known confidence tricks

• Three Card Monte, The Three-Card Trick, Follow The Lady or Find the Lady, which is (except for the props) essentially the same as the probably centuries-older shell game or thimblerig. The trickster shows three playing cards 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 are sceptical, 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 choose to make him lose. See three card monte.
• The Spanish Prisoner scam, which is essentially the same as the Nigerian money transfer fraud. The basic come-on involves entreating the mark to aid in retrieving some stolen money from its hiding place. The victim sometimes goes in figuring he or she can cheat the con artists out of their money: anyone trying this has already fallen for the essential con, by believing that the money is there to steal.
• The early-20^th-century favorite The Big Store, around which scam the plot of the film The Sting revolves. Big store scams are described in detail in David W. Maurer's The Big Con (see references), on which the film was loosely based. They often involved teams of dozens of con artists working together with elaborate sets and costumes.
• Religious cults. Some religious cults have been described by their critics as confidence tricks. It is alleged that their aim is to obtain money from their followers by deception.
• Pseudoscience and Snake oil. Some popular psychology confidence tricksters make money by falsely claiming to improve reading speed and comprehension using speed reading courses by fooling the consumer with inappropriate skimming and general knowledge tests.
• The Pigeon drop , also featured early in the film The Sting, wherein the 'mark' or 'pigeon' "assists" an elderly, weak or infirm stranger to keep their money safe for them. In the process, the stranger (actually a confidence trickster) "puts his money with" the pigeon's money, i.e., in an envelope, briefcase, or sack, which the pigeon is then entrusted with. The money is actually not put into the sack or envelope, but is switched for a bag full of newspaper etc... the pigeon is enticed to "make off with" the con man's money through the greed element and various theatrics, in actuality, they are fleeing from their own money, which the con man still has, or has handed off to an accomplice.
• Pig-in-a-poke originating 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 containing a live healthy little pig 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" (a common colloquial expression in the English language, meaning "to be a sucker"), they get what they paid for. This is also the origin of the expressions: "Let the cat out of the bag" (meaning to reveal that which is secret), and "left holding the bag" (meaning to find oneself with nothing for their efforts, as the cat is quite likely to flee when the bag is opened).

Famous con artists

• Lou Blonger, organized massive bunco ring in Denver in early 1900s
• Louis Enricht, US chemist who claimed to have made a substitute for gasoline
• Susanna Mildred Hill , US woman who fooled potential suitors
• Megan Ireland, Australian con artist and Lottery scammer
• Henri Lemoine, French diamond faker
• Victor Lustig, sold the Eiffel Tower
• Gregor MacGregor, Scottish conman who tried to attract investment and settlers for a non-existent country of Poyais
• George Parker , who sold New York monuments
• Charles Ponzi, the inventor of the pyramid scheme
• Christopher Skase
• Franz Tausend , German fake alchemist
• Joseph Weil , a.k.a. the Yellow Kid, one of the inspirations for the Academy-award winning film The Sting.
• Billie Sol Estes, who was paid to produce millions in quotas of cotton, which never existed. LBJ was implicated by Estes in taking payoffs to ignore the scam, which took place in Texas.
• Tino De Angelis, who sold rights to $175 million in soybean oil stored in tanks, which was actually a thin layer of oil floating on water.
• Bernie Cornfeld ran what is to date the greatest scam in history, taking in just under $2.5 billion (yes, billion) in what was later realized to be a Ponzi scheme.
• Frank Abagnale, masqueraded as a pilot, doctor and professor

Confidence tricks in the movies

• The Rainmaker. 1956. Produced by Paul Nathan. Paramount.
• The Hustler. 1962. Directed by Robert Rossen.
• The Music Man. 1962. Produced and Directed by Morton da Costa. Warner.
• The Flim Flam Man . 1967. Produced by Lawrence Turman; Directed by Irvin Kershner and Yakima Canutt. Twentieth Century Fox.
• Paper Moon. 1973. Directed and produced by Peter Bogdanovitch. Paramount.
• The Sting. 1973. Directed by George Roy Hill. Universal.
• House of Games . 1987. Produced by Michael Hausman; Directed by David Mamet. Orion.
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. 1988. Directed by Frank Oz.
• The Grifters. 1991. Produced by Martin Scorsese; Directed by Stephen Frears. Miramax Films.
• The Spanish Prisoner . 1997. Directed by David Mamet.
• Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens). 2000. Directed by Fabián Bielinsky.
• Boiler Room. 2000. Directed by Ben Younger.
• Bandits. 2001. Directed by Barry Levinson.
• Heist. 2001. Directed by David Mamet.
• The Score. 2001. Directed by Frank Oz.
• Catch Me If You Can. 2002. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
• Confidence . 2003. Directed by James Foley.
• Matchstick Men . 2003.
• Out Of Time . 2003. Produced by Neal H. Moritz; Directed by Carl Franklin.
• Criminal http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362526/ . 2004. Directed by Gregory Jacobs.

Confidence tricks in paper literature

(very incomplete)

• Many of the crime novels of Jim Thompson involve confidence artists.
• Joyce Carol Oates's My Heart Laid Bare features a family of confidence artists.
• Neil Gaiman's American Gods uses a two-man con as a major plot element.
• O. Henry's collection The Gentle Grafter describes a variety of confidence tricks.

See also

• White-collar crime
• Email fraud
• Internet fraud
• Spamming

References

• Maurer, David W. 1940. The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man and the Confidence Game. New York: The Bobbs Merrill company.
• Maurer, David W. 1974. The American Confidence Man. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher.

External links

• Compendium of scams etc http://www.quatloos.com