The Art of the Con (30 page)

What our victims didn't realize was that the transfer service we asked them to use only required a proof of ID and the number of the transfer receipt for someone to collect the money that was being sent. It was true that they could have canceled the transfer and retrieved the money and that their trusted friend could pick it up instead, but once they shared the paperwork with me, Alex was able to make up a fake ID (a library card) and quickly collect the cash. The real estate scam was just a way to hook the mark. The line was simple and the means by which the mark's money was stolen had been adapted to the time and place.

There are hundreds of classic con games but almost all rely on the same principles. Victims become wrapped up in a story while focused on a prize and are eventually convinced to commit (and lose) their money. It's easy to see these elements from a distance, but a con game often reflects the hopes and desires of each mark, and for most, the experience is personal, even traumatic. Cons like these happen quickly, over hours or days. Their objective is to take a lot of money in a short period of time, but while there is enormous variety in the stories being told, most are just window dressing for age-old scams.

Bait and Switch

In London, in the 1950s, Dick Chevelle was a well-known magic dealer whose family owned a fur coat shop in the city center, which had an ingenious scam to attract people into the store. In their window was a beautiful fur coat on a mannequin with an incredibly attractive low price. Every year, hundreds of women came in to try on that coat but it refused to fit any of them. The shoulder on one side was a little loose or the sleeves were too short; there was always some detail that meant the coat wasn't quite right. Naturally another coat would appear, and then another until the customer found one that fit perfectly. By this time, the price had escalated with each new garment until it was more than double the price of the coat in the window.

The scam was in how the coat was tailored and the wooden mannequin specially made to display it. There was too much room in one shoulder, one sleeve was a slightly different length, the other was a little narrower at one end, and the length of the coat was different on each side, but when hung on the mannequin—which had been made to compensate for all of these flaws—it looked beautiful. Once placed on a potential customer, the coat would never fit until, one day, an old lady walked in with a walking stick and a hunched back. For her, the coat was a perfect fit, and she insisted on buying it for the price advertised in the window.

Bait and switch has become such a well-known strategy because it is now a common (questionable) business tactic used to lure customers with an attractive offer before upselling to a more expensive alternative. You've no doubt seen many examples of this, from simple psychological ploys and cleverly worded advertising to outright lies that are difficult to disprove.

Con games like the iPad scam, where a mark is left holding a cheap floor tile or White Van scams, where electronics are offered to people under the pretense of being excess or stolen stock, are much more blatant. Once the victim has examined a device, it is secretly switched. People return home to find they've bought a box filled with potatoes or cheap bottles of water instead of a Blu-Ray player or camcorder.

The Gold Brick game is a classic bait and switch scam where something is presented as being of much greater value than it actually is. The term refers to scams where a mark was convinced to buy a bar of gold from someone who either needed to sell it quickly or had no idea of its true value. In some versions, one con artist would play the part of the seller while another would “partner-up” with the mark to buy the gold cheaply. In essence, the mark thought he was scamming some yokel until he took the gold to be assayed and the truth dawned. This scam was usually accomplished with one real gold bar and a few gold-plated duplicates, but modern variations rarely need to switch the merchandise, relying instead on spurious proof of value that's easily accepted by a mark.

In a variation on this ploy, scammers would “salt” a mine by scattering tiny gold nuggets or rough gems for their victim to find before agreeing to buy a worthless hole in the ground. In the Thai Gem Scam, tourists are lured to bogus stores to buy supposedly expensive stones at bargain prices. Planted evidence or sham experts can be more effective than trying to make a switch or passing off a duplicate, but the principle is the same: prove by means of deception something is real and worth more than the mark is asked to pay. Whether you switch the genuine article out, employ a confederate to give a false variation, or invest in a few tiny stones or nuggets up front, the mark is ultimately fooled into buying something that proves to be worthless.

One of the most ingenious variations on this scam allowed the mark to bring his own expert, to test everything, and to keep his hands on the merchandise at all times.

In a hotel room in New Jersey, a jeweler and his associate met someone they believed to be a gold dealer who was about to return to Europe with a briefcase full of gold chains. The gold dealer was, in truth, an expert con artist who had roped the jeweler with a story about not wanting to take his gold chains back to Amsterdam after an unsuccessful business trip. He was willing to sell the chains at a very attractive price, if the jeweler was able to pay cash right away. Naturally, the mark wanted to test the gold and the dealer agreed for him to bring someone along for that purpose; but, before he would let him start the test, the con man demanded to see the money. The jeweler showed him the cash, the test continued, and every gold chain the jeweler tested proved to be solid, eighteen-karat gold. After a brief negotiation, they agreed on a price. The jeweler then took the whole case and returned to New York, while the fake dealer went in search of another victim.

The chains that the jeweler bought were solid gold, but worth only two-thirds of what he paid—but the chains were never switched. How the mark was tricked was ingenious. Just before the jeweler had his employee test the chains, the con artist demanded to see the money, and while the marks were misdirected, switched the tiny bottle of acid that was used to test the gold. The results were now determined by the scammer's chemical, which was designed to react to fourteen-karat gold as would be expected for eighteen-karat gold! This is an excellent example of a deceptive mind at work. Why try to switch a large briefcase full of chains, when you can switch a tiny plastic bottle instead?

On
The Real Hustle
we reconstructed another ingenious con game that was originally played on wealthy homeowners around London in the 1960s. Posing as an antiques dealer, a con artist would offer to value a mark's collection of artifacts, paintings, and objets d'art. During this valuation, the hustler would spot a vase or small statue and ask if the owner had a complete pair, since this would be worth many times more than just one. The mark admitted that he didn't, and the charade would continue until, a few days later, the con artist would return and excitedly tell the mark that he had found a matching vase and that, if the mark bought it, he could make a huge profit at auction.

Accompanying the con artist to see the other piece, the mark would buy it for a large sum, believing he was about to make much more when selling his new pair, but upon returning home, the victim found that his original item was missing. It had been stolen by the con artist before leaving the house, then sold back to him as a supposed duplicate. In this variation, the bait is switched-in and sold to the person who
already owns it
.

Separate and Lift

Certain con games are designed to isolate the victim's property so it can be easily taken. These scams can be as basic as the “watch my bag” distraction scam, or as complex as the scenario I devised for Uncle Barry in Charleston. Like the bait and switch, variations can come in all shapes and sizes but the principle remains the same: create a reason for the mark to be separated from his money or property, then take it. Making someone believe the story is the hard part.

The real estate/money transfer scam is a good example. In this case, the mark is convinced to place his money into seemingly safe hands but is conned into giving the hustlers everything they need to collect it. The separation happens when the victim places his cash into the transfer system and the steal comes once he shares the paperwork.

A similar scam used a flaw in the international check clearance system used by banks to process funds from overseas. Con artists would pay for goods and services but when their check arrived, it would be for too much money. A four-hundred-dollar invoice might be paid for with a four-thousand-dollar check. The scammer would ask the victim to simply cash the check and wait for it to clear, then send back the balance minus two hundred dollars more for their trouble. This seems perfectly reasonable and once the four thousand dollars appeared in the mark's account, he is happy to comply. Unfortunately, even though an international check could clear in ten days, it actually takes
longer
, sometimes weeks, for the banks to work out that the original check was from an empty account. At that point, the four thousand dollars would be removed from the victim's account while his own money, which he sent to the scammers, was long gone.

In the Murphy Game, which is a twist on the white van scam, victims are shown an expensive item that's apparently being sold to someone in a bar. When people become interested, they are offered the chance to buy the same merchandise but need to go to a second location to collect it. Assured by the person originally buying the item, the suckers quickly agree, but both the buyer and seller are working together. On the TV show, I played the part of someone buying an Xbox from Alex who supposedly worked in a nearby electronics store. As soon as our victims saw the Xbox packaging, they all wanted one, so Alex took us to the back of “his” store, collected the money, and asked me to come inside to help carry out the boxes while everyone waited for us to return. In a real con, we would have just walked straight through the store and into a waiting car, but we watched them for about thirty minutes until someone decided to look at the Xbox I had left with them. Inside was nothing more than a heavy ream of printer paper.

For a mark to let someone walk away with their money—or to leave it where it might easily be taken—requires a careful balance between trust and expectation. The simplest separation scam might be an “exchange of trust,” where a mark is asked to keep an eye on someone's laptop in a busy cafe while they step outside to smoke or make a phone call. Later, when the mark goes to the bathroom, he is inclined to ask that person to return the favor, and as soon as they're out of sight, the hustler packs up both devices and heads for the door.

A similar scam, for a much bigger score, was known as “van dragging” in the UK, where hustlers would pose as warehouse workers to redirect delivery vans to a second location where the goods would be off-loaded and whisked away. The most common reason given for sending trucks elsewhere was “broken loading bay doors.” Thanks in part to the lack of concern shown by many truck drivers for their load, this story proved to be extremely effective. Once the scam became well known, it soon died off until, several years later, a clever variation appeared.

Drivers would arrive to find a sign explaining that there was a problem with the loading area and instructing them to call a phone number when they arrived. This went straight to the hustlers, who would appear dressed in a similar manner to staff from that store. They would convince the driver to offload in front of the loading bay, and once the truck was gone, the scammer would bring in his own vehicle, load it quickly, and be gone in a matter of minutes. All of this happened at the back of a busy store and several managers have opened their loading bays to find their new stock being loaded into someone else's truck. The sign with a phone number was a clever convincer, but more brazen hustlers also approached delivery drivers in the days or weeks leading up to the theft, dressed appropriately and acting like they worked in the store.

“Seeding a mark” is the process of convincing someone slowly by building a sense of familiarity. Walking into a loading bay and chatting with drivers, perhaps even bringing them a coffee or a snack, can pay dividends when asking them to later break their routine. In pulling the classic Jamaican Switch scam—made famous by George Roy Hill's film
The Sting
—I used this technique to build trust with my intended mark. Over two weeks I regularly visited a local restaurant, chatted with the staff, and gradually created the image of a local businessman with a new store opening nearby. Each visit, I would sit at the bar and engage the manager with light conversation, so that by the time I was ready for the scam, I was well known to several members of the staff.

The Jamaican Switch is a simple ruse where the mark is convinced to take a sum of money from the con artist and place it together with his own money. The actual switch varies but the principle remains the same: have the victim place all of his money and the hustler's in the same package, then switch that package for a duplicate filled with paper. In the past, female grifters would tell victims that an ex-boyfriend was waiting outside a local bank to stop them from depositing money. The sucker would then agree to take the money to the bank and she would convince the mark to keep all their money in one package, illustrating where to hide it on his person. During this demonstration, the grifter would switch the bundle and the mark would later leave with nothing but newspaper.