The Art of the Con (14 page)

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In actual fact, the mark only thinks he loses an opportunity when, in fact, he probably just dodged a bullet.

U
ncle Barry had me on the ropes.

When he charged back into the office, the look in his eyes told me that I needed to be careful. While walking back to his hotel, Barry had been working out the numbers in his head and had a question that needed to be answered. As our hidden-camera experts quickly crawled behind the counter and producers scurried back to their hiding places, Uncle Barry and Randy were already walking through the door and I was suddenly back in character.

“How did you come up with that number?” Barry asked. “It doesn't make any sense. Twenty percent would be a huge profit on a deal like this but forty just seems like . . . where did that number come from?”

I smiled and nodded, feigning confidence, but my mind was racing for the right answer. With years of experience I had options that I could draw from other scams, but if I picked the wrong strategy, Barry would walk away. The truth is that 40 percent had been chosen to make the deal more attractive, but for a shrewd businessman, this number set off alarm bells. On the spot, I came up with a logical explanation. The entire scam hinged on what I would say next; I had to trust my instincts. Now, it was my turn to roll the dice.

“It's essential to show how much John and my other clients are paying at this end,” I explained. “In this case, 40 percent is the minimum amount to avoid paying a higher percentage at the Euro end.” I went on to explain that my system used loopholes in international law that protect investors from being “double-dipped” when moving large sums of money. If I could clearly prove that John was paying 40 percent in the United States, he would avoid losing 70 percent overseas. Had Uncle Barry known a little more about foreign investments or how money really moves between countries, we'd have been busted. Fortunately for us, he accepted my explanation.

We were back in business, but Barry needed to slow everything down. He explained that deals are built on relationships, and that even under the best of circumstances, it would be unwise for him to invest so quickly—even for such a modest amount. I smiled and agreed, apologized for my haste, and explained that I had reached for an opportunity without thinking. Barry accepted this and we agreed to meet for dinner. I now felt sure we were back on track. There was no doubt I could convince Barry to invest, but I needed to make him feel that his money was safe.

Had I been pulling this scam for real, I would have attracted as many marks as possible before skipping town, multiplying all those 20K investments into quite a score. Given time, I could have convinced people to invest a lot more than twenty grand, perhaps using Charles Ponzi's strategy of paying investors to attract a fresh supply of suckers. No matter Barry's personal wealth, he was not about to agree to put 20K into something until he was sure of it. During dinner, I cautiously suggested an idea that would put his money on the table without him having to fully commit to the deal.

“Meet me tomorrow and bring the money,” I told him. “We'll walk it over to the bank and call your accountant from the manager's office so he can verify everything I've told you. I'll show you all of the transactions for the last six months and if you're still not sure, no problem. If you decide to wait, we'll still work together once you're completely comfortable.”

Barry quickly agreed that this was a fair way to handle the situation. I took a small gamble by offering him another way out—but I was sure he wouldn't take it.

“If twenty thousand is too much, then I apologize if I mis-read the situation,” I added.

When Barry quickly confirmed that he could easily obtain the money, I knew he was seriously considering my offer. At the end of the night, he guaranteed that he would come to my office the following day with the cash.

By the time Barry arrived with his breast pocket bulging, we were ready for the sting. All I had to do was separate Barry from his cash and switch it for paper. But first, I used a touch of theater to keep his confidence up. I turned my laptop around to show John, supposedly on a video call from New York. Appealing to Barry's ego, John said how happy he was that they'd be doing business together as Barry smiled and returned the compliment, never suspecting that John was actually upstairs, sitting in front of a backdrop. Next, I asked to see the money and watched Barry pull a thick envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills from inside his jacket.

“No need to check it now, the bank will do that when we get over there,” I told him as my security guard approached with a heavy flight case. I opened the case and tipped it forward so our mark could see that it was filled with euros before adding his own money. As Barry dropped his envelope inside, the security guard asked to verify he wasn't carrying any weapons, a question designed to provoke a response. While Barry was joking with the guard, I smoothly placed the bag on the floor, passed it under the desk, and exchanged it for a duplicate case filled with pieces of newspaper.

Randy agreed to meet us later to celebrate, while Barry, the security guard, and I walked toward the bank down the street. The location of our fake office had been perfect. To take a car to the bank would have meant negotiating downtown Charleston's one-way street grid, and the beautiful weather and relative safety of the area made it natural to simply walk. Our bases were now loaded for the sting. All I had to do now was get away from the mark.

For the sake of the TV show, I wanted Barry to know that he'd been scammed right away, so once we left the office, our production team began clearing the room of all furniture, transforming it back to an empty shell. Meanwhile, I walked with Barry and my security guard until, halfway down the street, I pretended that I'd left something important in my desk. Excusing myself, I quickly walked back to the office while Barry waited with the guard.

Minutes passed by before a car pulled up to the curb. Calmly, the guard walked to the car, got in, and drove away. Suddenly, Barry was alone on the street with what he still believed to be a bag full of money. Our mark was in the open and outside of our control. Across the street, cameras watched closely to see how he would react. We expected him to open the bag quickly and come back to the office, but none of us had predicted what Barry did next.

The sinker, where the mark is finally conned into handing over money or possessions, can either be contrived or unfold naturally. With many con games, hustlers must create an imperative that forces the mark to make a decision. The most common is time pressure, where some force or factor demands that the mark act quickly. Another strategy is to seemingly allow the victim to take over—he begins pushing for a deal to happen. In this scenario, a con artist can tease the mark, frustrating him until he's ready to jump at any opportunity. Saying no or withdrawing an offer can make people want it all the more.

Often the longer a mark is played, the easier it is to get him to commit. During the con, the mark commits time, money, and emotion until he becomes wrapped up in the lie, and desire often overtakes common sense in the early stages of a scam. Even with the most resistant of marks, there comes a point when he can almost taste the prize and believes that all he has to do is take one more step toward it.

“A fool and his money are soon parted,” goes the adage. The con man's challenge in scams of this nature is to get the money and be able to walk away, to sink the mark without him knowing he has been sunk—until it's too late. How foolish a mark is in retrospect has little or no bearing on how sharp and attentive he was when his money was still in play. Every element of a con builds to a moment of commitment when the victim is determined to get serious. A mark might easily be
separated
from his money, but in most cases,
getting that money into play
is a con artist's biggest challenge.

Black Money

The Black Money scam is a perfect example of a con game that makes absolutely no sense to someone unless he has been roped by a gifted con artist. In essence, the story goes like this: The scammers have a container filled with pieces of black paper that, when treated with a special chemical, transform into genuine hundred-dollar bills. Convinced? Probably not. Presented like this, few people would think it's anything more than a joke, but versions of this scam have successfully fleeced suckers for centuries.

In a way, it relates to the idea of alchemy, where base metals can supposedly be transformed into precious gold or silver via some invented process and life-extending elixirs can seemingly be concocted via pseudo-magical means. As a con game, alchemy has endured for hundreds of years because the ideas are not only seductive, they somehow make sense to the public. Most important, they appeal to two of mankind's greatest desires: riches and immortality.

Alchemy was also the progenitor of modern chemistry thanks to seventeenth-century Irish philosopher and scientist Robert Boyle. I'm certain that early chemists found it easier to sell their skills as alchemic, which was more appealing to their medieval clients. More important, it kept the actual methodology secret, granting alchemists a power that was soaked in mystery. The notion of alchemy continues to endure because people still want what alchemists claim to deliver. Con men are smart enough to see that the idea of transforming lead into gold is still powerful, so why not give it a modern makeover?

Count Victor Lustig did just that in the 1920s when he retreated to America after successfully selling the Eiffel Tower
several times
. He had a cabinetmaker build a box with a slit in either end, a few fancy knobs, some buttons, and a crank on the side. Lustig would demonstrate how his Rumanian Box could accept a real hundred-dollar bill at one end and a blank piece of paper at the other. After a few twists and button-presses, he would tell the mark that the chemicals inside needed six hours to finish the process. Later, the count would turn the crank in the opposite direction and two perfectly identical bills came out of the box—even the serial numbers matched! Once a bank confirmed that both bills were real, the mark was all too eager to buy the box, and Lustig sold several for huge sums of money.

The black money scam is a modern variation of Lustig's Rumanian Box con game that uses a little alchemy to explain how it works and a backstory that hope-filled marks often accept without question. According to some versions of the scam, new money is printed on large machines that need to be tested extensively before the real cash is manufactured for the treasury. The money made while testing the machines is perfect and just as good as anything in circulation, but in order to accurately track how much is being made, the test sheets must be destroyed. The problem is that the incinerator is in a different state, so to avoid the chances of this test-printed money being stolen, it is painted with indelible black ink before being cut and packaged for transport. The result is boxes of seemingly worthless black paper that eventually gets burned unless someone happens to intercept the shipment and replaces the canceled bills with identical black paper.