Here’s another short selection from the first draft of “Clear and Present Thinking”. It comes from the chapter on Reasonable Doubt, and concerns how to recognize scams, frauds, and confidence tricks.
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An associate of mine once saw a job listing on craigslist, in which the employer was looking for a mystery shopper (a person who poses as a normal customer at some business, and then reports about his or her experience back to the employer.) My associate was sent a cheque for $3,000 and then asked to wire-transfer the money to an address in a foreign country, and then report about her experience with the money transfer service. But when she brought the cheque to the bank, she was told that the cheque had the wrong signature, and would not be cashed. Had she deposited the cheque using an ATM, or a cheque-cashing service, then she would have transferred the money to the destination, and then the bank would have eventually discovered that the cheque was bogus and cancelled it. The result would have been that my friend would have lost $3,000 of her own money.
Another associate of mine described a very clever scam involving the distribution of pornography. Unsuspecting men purchased a package of pornographic videos featuring celebrities, to be delivered by mail. Later, they received a letter in the mail stating that the distribution company had just gone bankrupt, and a reimbursement cheque was included in with the letter. However, the reimbursement cheque was drawn on a company with a very embarrassing name: “Triple-X Bondage Fetish Babes Inc.” or something ridiculous like that. Most men were too embarrassed to bring the cheque to the bank, and they just accepted the loss of their money. Other men who did bravely try to cash the cheque found that it was bogus, and they still lost their money.
All scams and confidence tricks depend on two main factors for success: the victim’s self-interest (especially his or her desire for money, sex, and social prestige), and the victim’s gullibility. They are successful when prospective victims want something desperately enough, and they accept what they have been told or shown, and don’t ask too many questions. Scam artists and con men tend to be creative, persuasive, and original; they constantly change or improve their strategies, so that their scams become harder to detect, and of course more successful. Yet all cons depend on a fairly small number of basic strategies. Here’s a few of them:
Deception. Effective con artists use lies and half-truths to make themselves, or their situation, appear to be other than what it really is. Almost all confidence tricks rely on some amount of deception. They might dress in some kind of costume or disguise, for instance to appear very rich or very poor. They might pretend to be a professional in a field they actually know nothing about. They might set up a web site to make themselves look like a legitimate business.
Distraction. Con artists keep your attention focused on something unrelated, while they or an accomplice steal from you when you’re not looking. Think of the person who steals your purse or your wallet while pretending to accidentally trip and knock you down, then help you to your feet again.
Research. Some con artists will research their victim’s history, and find out things like what the person wants, what their weaknesses are, what events in their past cause them shame or anger, and so on. These facts are then used to manipulate the victim later.
Flattery. Con men often open their game by being friendly and amiable, and quickly become admiring and deeply respecting. Some con men might pretend to fall in love with their intended victim. Since most people enjoy being praised and admired, this strategy helps make the victim more receptive and agreeable to the con man’s claims and requests.
Time pressure. People who have been lead to believe that an important decision must be made in a very short amount of time tend to make bad decisions.
Obedience. Most people still defer, at least partially, to lawyers, judges, police officers, professors, priests, rich people, and just about anyone who looks like they possess some kind of social authority or power. This is true even in societies that claim to be democratic and equal. Con men exploit people’s willingness to defer to authority to trick them.
Conformity. Taking advantage of the fact that most people will do what they see lots of other people doing, the con artist and accomplices will do something in order to make it easier for their victim to do it too. Think of people who start crossing a road before the lights have changed because two or three others have already started crossing ahead of them.
Although all cons involve those basic psychological strategies, some specific applications of those strategies have been so successful that they have been given names. Here are a few of them.
“Big Store”, named after the Marx Brothers movie, involves renting out a large building, such as a storefront or a warehouse, and filling it with furniture and people to make it appear like a well established business.
“Phishing”, the con artist sends an email that looks like it comes from a legitimate business, bank, or government agency. The message asks the victim to ‘verify’ or ‘confirm’ personal details that may have been lost or subject to a computer virus attack, such as email passwords and bank account numbers.
“Shell game” and “Three Card Monty” is a sleight-of-hand trick in which a coin or other small object is placed under one of three cups or shells or similar objects. The position of the cups is then mixed up at random by sliding them across the table quickly, and then the victim is asked to bet some money on which cup has the coin. What the victim does not normally see is that the coin has been hidden separately, and is hiding elsewhere, such as in the con artist’s palm.
“Bait and Switch”: This is a con in which a victim is offered a chance to buy something, or must do something to get something else in return. They might be shown the product or the reward that they have been offered. But once the money changes hands or the service is performed, the product or reward turns out to be something very different, and not what was promised.
“Honey Trap” is a very aggressive kind of scam in which a sexually attractive person lures the victim to a private location with an expressed or implied promise of sexual intimacy. Once the victim has been lured to the private place, he or she might be robbed, blackmailed, held captive, photographed in a compromising position, kidnapped, harmed in other ways, or even killed.
“Ponzi Schemes” are types of financial investment frauds. A con artist posing as a businessperson will offer to prospective victims a chance to invest in some low or medium risk enterprise, and offered an excellent return of investment rate. But in reality there is no enterprise. The con artist uses money from his second investor to pay his first investor. Then he uses money from his third investor to pay the second one, and so on. (In a variation of this scam called the Pyramid Scheme, the con artist freely admits that there is no enterprise to invest in, and promises to pay earlier investors with new money from subsequent investors.) This procedure can be very difficult for victims to spot, since at least some investors think they are getting their money’s worth. A successful pyramid scheme operator can eventually become exceedingly rich, if he’s careful. But the system depends on a constant flow of money from new victims to keep working. If the flow of new investment should slow down or stop, the scheme collapses.
“Psychic Scams” involve a con artist who claims to possess magical powers. For instance, he might say he can communicate with the dead, or with angels or other supernatural beings, or with aliens, or even with God. For a price he will convey to the victim messages from a recently deceased person (or animal!). Or he might be claim to be able to detect and remove curses. Or he might offer to cast spells intended to bring the victim money, good heath, love, or some other kind of worldly benefit. Leaving aside the question of whether there might ‘real’ psychics or mediums, the fraudulent medium exploits the victim’s belief in the paranormal to part him from his money.
“Advance Fee Fraud”. In this type of scam, a person is asked to do something and is promised a large sum of money as the reward, but must pay the con artist a small sum in advance as part of the deal. A common version of this is called “Nigerian Money Scam” or “419 Scam”, named for the section of Nigerian criminal law which covers fraud. In this type of scam, the con artist sends an email message to hundreds of people, in which he poses as someone from a foreign country, and asks for your help opening a bank account in your country. He’ll say this is needed to transfer a very large sum of money as part of an inheritance, or tax-avoidance plan, or similar deal. You are also offered a share of that large sum of money. But once you open the account, you will be asked to make deposits to keep the account ‘active’ or ‘viable’ or something like that. And your share of the big sum never arrives. Another variation, going back to the 19th century, is called the “Spanish Prisoner”. In this scam, a person asks for help transferring money to an individual who will help break a rich friend out of a jail (in Spain). The con artists ask for some money in advance in order to bribe the guards, and promises a share of the money that the rich prisoner will surely pay as a reward when he is free. A more recent variation is the “Casting Agent” scam, in which the scam artist poses as a talent scout for a film studio or modeling agency. The con artist asks for large up-front fees for professional photoshoots, and promises the victim that well-paying jobs will soon follow. The photos for the victim’s portfolio might arrive, but the jobs never do.