Get-rich-quick schemes
Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied. For example, fake
franchises,
real estate "sure things", get-rich-quick books, wealth-building
seminars,
self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products,
chain letters,
fortune tellers,
quack doctors, miracle
pharmaceuticals,
Nigerian money scams,
charms and
talismans are all used to separate the mark from his money. Variations include the
pyramid scheme,
Ponzi scheme and
Matrix sale.
Count
Victor Lustig sold the "money-printing machine" which could copy $100 bills. The client, sensing huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price (usually over $30,000). Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce just two more $100 bills, but after that it produced only blank paper, as its supply of hidden $100 bills would have become exhausted. This type of scheme is also called the "money box" scheme.
Televised infomercial scam: Certain
infomercials with slick or questionable video production value feature enthusiastic
hosts and highlights of satisfied customers' testimony extolling the benefits of get-rich-quick methods such as internet auctioneering, real estate investment and marketing, for-profit
toll phone business,
classified advertisement and unique products of questionable value requiring active marketing by the paying customers. Infomercials which fall under the aforementioned descriptions are highly likely to be scams devised and engineered to "bamboozle" the unsuspecting viewers for the express purpose of enriching the scheme inventors who produced the infomercials (often of dubious production value) which often grossly exaggerate their claims, in conjunction with the clips of satisfied customers' over-excited testimonies with the superimposed captions of the alleged profits made.
Don Lapre, creator of "Money Making Secrets", "The Ultimate Road to Success", "The Greatest Vitamin in the World" and other schemes, was reported by Internet customer watchdog organizations
Ripoff Report,
Bad Business Bureau and
Quackwatch, plus
alternative newspaper publications such as
Phoenix New Times as one of the premier confidence artists whose characteristic traits of overly positive attitude and over-enthusiastically cheerful and
charismatic personality depend on the gullibility of the infomercial viewers to purchase the essentially useless products to gain substantial sums of profit by deception.
The wire game, as depicted in the movie
The Sting, trades on the promise of insider knowledge to beat a
gamble,
stock trade or other monetary action. In the wire game, a "
mob" composed of dozens of
grifters simulates a "wire store", i.e., a place where results from
horse races are received by
telegram and posted on a large board, while also being read aloud by an announcer. The griftee is given secret foreknowledge of the race results minutes before the race is broadcast, and is therefore able to place a sure bet at the wire store. In reality, of course, the con artists who set up the wire store are the providers of the inside information, and the mark eventually is led to place a large bet, thinking it to be a sure win. At this point, some mistake is made, which actually makes the bet a loss. The grifters in
The Sting use miscommunication about the race results to simulate a big mistake, and the bet is lost.
[1]
Salting or
to salt the mine are terms for a scam in which
gems or
gold ore are planted in a
mine or on the landscape, duping the greedy mark into purchasing shares in a worthless or non-existent mining company.
[2] During the
Gold Rush, scammers would load
shotguns with gold dust and shoot into the sides of the mine to give the appearance of a rich ore, thus "salting the mine". For a 19th-century example, see the
Diamond hoax of 1872; for a modern example, involving imaginary gold deposits in
Borneo, see
Bre-X. Popularized in the
HBO series
Deadwood, when Al Swearingen and
E.B. Farnum trick Brom Garret into believing gold is to be found on the claim Swearingen intends to sell him.
The
Spanish Prisoner scam – and its modern variant, the
advance fee fraud or
Nigerian scam – take advantage of the victim’s greed. The basic premise involves enlisting the mark to aid in retrieving some stolen money from its hiding place. The victim sometimes believes he can cheat the con artists out of their money, but anyone trying this has already fallen for the essential con by believing that the money is there to steal (see also
Black money scam). Note that the classic Spanish Prisoner trick also contains an element of the romance scam (see below).
Many conmen employ extra tricks to keep the victim from going to the
police. A common ploy of investment scammers is to encourage a mark to use money concealed from tax authorities. The mark cannot go to the authorities without revealing that he or she has committed
tax fraud. Many swindles involve a minor element of crime or some other misdeed. The mark is made to think that he or she will gain money by helping fraudsters get huge sums out of a country (the classic
Nigerian scam); hence marks cannot go to the police without revealing that they planned to commit a
crime themselves.
In a recent twist on the Nigerian fraud scheme, the mark is told he is helping someone overseas collect debts from corporate clients. Large
cheques stolen from businesses are mailed to the mark. These cheques are altered to reflect the mark's name, and the mark is then asked to cash them and transfer all but a percentage of the funds (his
commission) to the con artist. The cheques are often completely genuine, except that the "pay to" information has been expertly changed. This exposes the mark not only to enormous debt when the bank reclaims the money from his or her account, but also to criminal charges for
money laundering. A more modern variation is to use
laser-printed counterfeit cheques with the proper
account numbers and payer information.
Romance tricks
Romance fraud, when fraudsters seduce people only to target their money, is an old-fashioned type of fraud. It received high attention in
Sweden around 1950 when a man named Gustaf Raskenstam had relationships with more than a hundred lonely women, and had been engaged to many of them, often several at the same time. He was eventually imprisoned for fraud. His contact ads usually had the headline "Sunshine and springtime" ("sol och vår" in Swedish). This type of behaviour has since been called "sol och vårande" in Swedish.
The traditional
romance scam has now moved into
internet dating sites. The con actively cultivates a
romantic relationship which often involves promises of marriage. However, after some time it becomes evident that this Internet "sweetheart" is stuck in his home country, lacking the money to leave the country and thus unable to be united with the mark. The scam then becomes an
Advance-fee fraud or a
check fraud. A wide variety of reasons can be offered for the trickster's lack of cash, but rather than just borrow the money from the victim (Advance Fee fraud), the con man normally declares that they have checks which the victim can cash on their behalf and remit the money via a non-reversible transfer service to help facilitate the trip (
check fraud). Of course, the checks are forged or stolen and the con man never makes the trip: the hapless victim ends up with a large debt and an aching heart. This scam can be seen in the movie
Nights of Cabiria.
Gold brick scams
Goldbricking- Gold brick scams involve selling a tangible item for more than it is worth; named after selling the victim an allegedly golden ingot which turns out to be gold-coated lead.
The
1883 "No Cents" Liberty Head nickel, a scam developed by con artists that electroplated Liberty Head nickels, intending to make storeowners believe that the gold-plated nickel was a $5 coin.
The
Coin collecting scam is a scam preying on inexperienced collectors. The conman convinces the mark by stating that a high-priced collection is for sale at a lower amount. The
coin collector then buys the entire collection, believing it is valuable.
Pig-in-a-poke originated in the late
Middle Ages. 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). If one buys a "pig in a poke" without looking in the bag (a
colloquial expression in
the English language, meaning "to be a sucker"), the person has bought something of less value than was assumed, and has learned firsthand the lesson
caveat emptor. Dutch, German, Scandinavian and Polish speakers employ the expression "buying a cat-in-the-bag" when someone buys something without examining it beforehand. In Sweden and Finland, the "cat" in the phrase is replaced by "pig", referring to the bag's supposed content, but the saying is otherwise identical. This is also said to be where the phrase "letting the cat out of the bag" comes from, although there may be other
explanations.
The
Thai gem scam involves layers of con men and helpers who tell a tourist in
Bangkok of an opportunity to earn money by buying
duty-free jewelry and having it shipped back to the tourist's home country. The mark is driven around the city in a
tuk-tuk operated by one of the con men, who ensures that the mark meets one helper after another, until the mark is persuaded to buy the jewelry from a store also operated by the swindlers. The gems are real but significantly overpriced. This scam has been operating for 20 years in Bangkok, and is said to be protected by Thai police and politicians. A similar scam usually runs in parallel for custom-made suits. Many tourists are hit by conmen touting both goods.
People shopping for
pirated software, illegal pornographic images, bootleg music, drugs, firearms or other forbidden or controlled goods may be legally hindered from reporting swindles to the police. An example is the "big screen TV in back of the truck": the TV is touted as "hot" (stolen), so it will be sold for a very low price. The TV is in fact defective or broken, and has bricks inside its otherwise gutted case to give it weight. When it is plugged in, of course, it does not work. The buyer has no
legal recourse without admitting to attempted purchase of
stolen goods.
Extortion or false-injury tricks
The
badger game extortion is often perpetrated on married men. The mark is deliberately coerced into a compromising position, a supposed affair for example, then threatened with public exposure of his acts unless blackmail money is paid.
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.
The
Hydrophobia lie was popular in the 1920s, in which the con man pretended to have been bitten by the mark's allegedly
rabid dog.
Insurance fraud is a scam in which the con artist tricks the mark into damaging, for example, the con artist's car, or injuring the con artist, in a manner that the con artist can later exaggerate. The con artist then fraudulently collects a large sum of money from the mark's
insurance policy, despite the con artist having intentionally caused the accident. In countries where the insurance fee is usually tied to a
Bonus-Malus rating, the con artist usually offers to avoid an insurance claim, settling instead for a cash compensation. Thus, the con artist is able to evade a professional damage assessment, and get an untraceable payment in exchange for sparing the mark the expenses of a lowered merit class.
Bug in Food Trick/Foreign Object In Food Scam In this one, a patron goes into an expensive restaurant, orders the most expensive thing there and eats it; then to dodge paying for it, he/she places
cockroaches or other bugs in the meal, complains loudly that he/she will not pay for bug-infested food and threatens to sue the restaurant. To prevent the restaurant's reputation from being ruined, the owners give him/her the meal for free, and/or other compensations, since a bug infestation would cause the place to be shut down. The mark here is a five-star restaurant or other similarly expensive establishments in a city. This was featured in the films
Victor/Victoria and
Minbo, but is seldom seen in real life.
