Confidence trick

Sponsor with the world's largest charity for orphans

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.

Confidence tricks in general exploit the inherent greed and dishonesty of their victims; it has been said by confidence tricksters that it was 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 naive 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.

Table of 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

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 trickster 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. See three card monte.
The Spanish Prisoner scam, which is essentially the same as the Nigerian money transfer fraud. The basic come-on is "we need your help to get some stolen money out of 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.

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
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.

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 FabiÃÂ¡n 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.
Confidence. 2003. Directed by James Foley.
Matchstick Men. 2003.
Out Of Time. 2003. Produced by Neal H. Moritz; Directed by Carl Franklin.

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.

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.