Confidence tricks in depth

Wikipedia's list of confidence tricks is a globe-spanning journey through con-jobs ancient and modern. Required and fascinating reading:

A clip joint or fleshpot is an establishment, usually a strip club or entertainment bar, typically one claiming to offer adult entertainment or bottle service, in which customers are tricked into paying money and receive poor, or no, goods or services in return. Typically, clip joints suggest the possibility of sex, charge excessively high prices for watered-down drinks, then eject customers when they become unwilling or unable to spend more money. The product or service may be illicit, offering the victim no recourse through official or legal channels.

The Melon Drop is a scam in which the scammer will intentionally bump into the mark and drop a package containing (already broken) glass. He will blame the damage on the clumsiness of the mark, and demand money in compensation. This con arose when artists discovered that the Japanese paid large sums of money for watermelons. The scammer would go to a supermarket to buy a cheap watermelon, then bump into a Japanese tourist and set a high price.

List of confidence tricks

[#1 posted by slgalt, January 27, 2009 10:44 PM]

One of those wiki ones is the Duck Season Wabbit Season bit - are you sure that link isn't a con? :D

[#2 posted by elisd, January 27, 2009 11:38 PM]

"The Big Store is a technique involving a large team of con artists and elaborate sets. Often a building is rented and furnished as a legitimate and substantial business."

Haha. There's one of these on every street corner. Somebody ought to do something!

[#3 posted by kiltreiser, January 28, 2009 1:51 AM]

Wow, that's my morning's work output halved...

[#4 posted by Beanolini, January 28, 2009 2:13 AM]

I can also highly recommend the Encyclopedia of Scams; extremely detailed and wide-ranging (Kiltreiser, your afternoon's work is in danger too).

[#5 posted by Crubellier, January 28, 2009 3:14 AM]

Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames, was home to a wonderful clip joint scam in the 16th century in establishments known as 'trugging houses' - patrons were induced to buy cheap and nasty apple pies for the young ladies at a vast mark-up.

[#6 posted by Zan, January 28, 2009 6:10 AM]

I love this description:

The con entails a sale of a (suckling) "pig" in a "poke" (bag). The bag ostensibly contains a live healthy little pig, but 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).

[#7 posted by noen, January 28, 2009 6:25 AM]

They should add a new scam called "The Free Market". Where the rich are 'free' from the pretense that you are anything more than a slave.

The whole history of civilization can be understood as a series of cons and confidence games. "Here, this is money. Oh, that didn't work, here is this thing we call interest."

Wait, is this post a con?

[#8 posted by urshrew, January 28, 2009 6:38 AM]

Most of these cons seem to rely on greed, the desire to make a quick buck, and ignorance to work.

But some of them seem to rely on our charity and goodwill.

What to do?

[#9 posted by yrogerg, January 28, 2009 6:44 AM]

Yeah, this is a classic one. One of the overriding themes to a number of successful cons is to lead your mark to believe that they're complicit in something that's legally dodgy, at best, and patently illegal, at worst; it basically discourages them from going to the authorities as the victim of a scam, as they'd have to incriminate themselves to level an accusation.

As a result, one of the common places you see a lot of this is in the sex trade; very few johns are willing to admit to being scammed or robbed by a lady whose services they were purchasing, particular when doing so is illegal in the first place. Another place you see this is in a lot of the the 419 ("Nigerian") scams; often, these will, either through implication or overt statement, suggest that the mark is rendering assistance in a money laundering scheme, and that contacting the authorities will get the *mark* in trouble.

[#10 posted by Takuan, January 28, 2009 8:01 AM]

teach your kids the second law of thermodynamics.Then teach them about money.

[#11 posted by zikzak, January 28, 2009 8:29 AM]

Then, teach them about fractional reserve banking.
Then, teach them about pyramid schemes.
They can probably connect the dots themselves.

[#12 posted by noen, January 28, 2009 8:57 AM]

I really like the mortgage-backed securities and credit default swap cons. Those are classic schemes also known as "paper kiting" The short version goes something like:

"Loan me money based on my future earnings I imagine I will have even though my company is losing money, and when you do I promise to turn around and cut you the same deal. We can keep this going as long as we can find new marks. Oh, do you know any congressmen? When it all falls apart, we get the government to pay for it all and then blame the Negroes (for being poor) and the Liberals (for letting us do it in the first place) because the GOP base really is that stupid."

[#13 posted by Roy Trumbull, January 28, 2009 9:55 AM]

The two classic cons are the pigeon drop and the Mexican prisoner plus many many variations on both. Then there is the fortune teller con in which a mark with a guilty conscience is told to bring money so it can be cleansed.
But the biggest con of all is "Trust me."

[#14 posted by UncommonSense, January 28, 2009 10:48 AM]

Can you use a tuna for the "Melon Drop" scam? I've heard the Japanese will pay around $100k for a prize tuna.

[#15 posted by Anonymous, January 28, 2009 2:14 PM]

How about the "Crappy But Cheap laptop" scam ? I heard Americans will buy almost any laptop if it's cheap, ugly, and has a glossy screen.

-Philippe Laurichesse