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 boundary between the legal praising a sold product and scamming is fluid. The German television channel 9Live, for example, is perceived to be a scamming operation by many, but not by the state.
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-20th-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
Frank Abagnale, masqueraded as a pilot, doctor and professor
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.
Joseph Weil, a.k.a. the Yellow Kid, one of the inspirations for the Academy-award winning film The Sting.
Tony & Sharon Bonicci, a.k.a. Christie & McLean, Australian confidence artists, who rip off innocent elderly people for all their savings and possessions.
Confidence tricks in the movies
The Rainmaker. 1956. Produced by Paul Nathan. Paramount.
Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art.
Many contemporary definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on culture, resisting aesthetic prescription, in much the same way that the features constituting beauty and the beautiful cannot be easily standardized without corruption into kitsch.
The word "artist" is used as a pejorative is certain circles (connotating, for example, pretentiousness, selfishness, temperamentalness, egotism, and having an inflated sense of one's own self-worth).
The next day, the conartist returns, posing as an insurance man. He tells the victim, or "mark," that the painting is salvageable, but a deductible is required.
The conartist will convince the mark to scam people with him, but after the crime spree is over, the conartist takes the mark's share of the money and disappears.
The conartist may tell their mark pitiful lies about their family, children, etc therefore the mark feels sorry for them and does not alert the police.
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