The Art of the Con (12 page)

Whether the supposed clairvoyant sees the readings as a psychological tool, a deliberate deception, or a real psychic gift, the impact on the person receiving the reading can be devastating. As I read the patterns of fragmented shell and seemingly divined knowledge from the dissolving yolk, the mark leaned forward, absorbing every word and hoping for answers to her unspoken questions. Years earlier, magician, mentalist, and part-time medium Jules Lenier had taught me how to use every grain of information to read a “client.” His chosen props were tarot cards or the client's palm, and he had a devilishly simple trick to determine what someone was really interested in before the reading even began. He would point out the lines on their hands, explain what each one represented, and then asked where they would like to begin. For the requested line he'd point out other aspects of the hand related to that line and again asked them where to start his reading. This simple process told Jules what the client was most interested in and where he should concentrate his efforts for a convincing reading. With the eggs I used the same ploy and knew immediately that there were matters of health that concerned our mark.

For me, this was useful for the opposite reason. I wanted to avoid anything that was too sensitive; I only needed to get the money while Jules's goal was entertainment. For many “psychic” scammers, such information helps them to hook their victim and keep them on the line indefinitely.

Demonstrating supposed psychic powers is playing with fire. Even when performed by expert magicians or mentalists in the context of a show, people often want to believe that what they're seeing is real. Max Maven is one of the greatest living exponents of mentalism and a highly respected thinker and performer in the magic community. After thousands of shows, he made the observation that even if the performer were wearing a bright red nose, someone would eventually approach him after the show and ask for a personal “reading.” This “red nose theory of mentalism” is often discussed by entertainers eager to avoid misleading the public. I think that what happens on stage should stay there and that the audience is responsible for what they believe before and after the show. Others disagree and open their performances with a disclaimer, while some skew their powers toward psychological abilities that, while easier for a modern audience to accept, are just as fantastic as any supposed psychic abilities.

For me, this was especially difficult as there was no stage and no red nose. I was playing this for real; as I read imaginary signs in the first two eggs, it was little comfort to me that the truth was going to eventually be revealed. My reading was working all too well and I could feel the power it was having over the mark. Later I would reflect on how easy it would have been to abuse that power and heartlessly manipulate someone over time. The third egg, however, changed everything.

The mark had asked me to discuss health first, and I gave a solid, positive reading, telling her there was nothing ominous on the horizon. I wanted to move quickly past matters of health and give a more personal reading regarding relationships before breaking open the egg that would supposedly reveal her financial future. When I cracked the last egg and poured the dark, bloody innards onto the plate, the reaction was visceral. She gasped and I heard the breath become trapped in her throat as her eyes widened, reflecting genuine fear. I felt like a complete jerk, but the cameras were rolling and the end was near. I told her the blood only indicated a possible problem, but that she could easily resolve this. I wanted to explain how I could bless some of her money, that she could lock it away until the danger was passed and that if she did as I instructed, everything would be fine, but all she wanted to know was, “Are my kids going to be okay?” Suckered by a well-designed set and long-proven psychology, she was convinced enough to be genuinely concerned about the bright red omen I had just spilled onto a plate. Finances be damned, all this lady cared about was the welfare of her children.

It took several minutes to completely assure her that only her money was at risk. I gave her the pitch and asked her to bring as much cash as she could so that I could cleanse it. When she left to get the money, I took a few moments to gather my thoughts and prepare for the final phase of the scam, where Alex and I would switch her money for pieces of newspaper. While we waited for her to return I contemplated just how easy it would be to take horrible advantage of somebody with this kind of scam. Had I been a real con artist, I would certainly have used the mark's fear for her children as leverage. I would probably have isolated her from her family by insisting she keep our consultations secret and then bled her dry over time rather than going for quick cash. A genuine hustler couldn't care less about psychological damage, ethics, or decency. All that matters to them is GTFM:
Get The Fucking Money
.

The mark returned, we went through the motions of our invented ceremony to wash her money of negative energy, and switched it and locked the pieces of newspaper in a box, which was to be hidden under her bed for at least a year. Happy and grateful, she left to do as instructed. My producer and a camera crew greeted her outside.

Inside the store, I sat down and took a deep breath. I hated how this scam made me feel and was still reflecting on the lessons I'd learned when the mark threw open the door and charged back into the office. Her face was bright red and her eyes were on fire, but it wasn't just anger. She was hurt. Betrayed. It always takes time for people to calm down after I've conned them, but this type of scam was different, more intense. Worst of all, the producer and the camera crew, working on instinct, followed to film the confrontation.

“Why? Why would you do that? Why would you say something like that?” I remember her saying. She was hurt, perhaps scared, but at the same time, fearless. I talked softly, calmed her down, and the crew took her outside for her interview. Afterward, we sat down and I explained the techniques I'd used, from psychology to a syringe filled with blood. I explained how I had tried to avoid anything too sensitive or personal, but as she accurately observed, that was not in my control. It was up to her to connect anything I said to what she was thinking or feeling; I had no sway over how personal or sensitive that might be. My objective has always been to expose and demonstrate these scams, but clearly that had backfired.

Psychic scammers don't always hit and run. This particularly heinous type of con game grants the hustler so much power over their victims that the scam can sometimes continue indefinitely. Scams of this nature are all about the line and creating a constant flow of money from the mark. If the victim goes broke, wakes up to the con, or someone successfully intervenes, then the game is up and the hustlers move on.

Marilyn Baldwin, tireless anti-scam crusader and founder of Think Jessica, a well-organized publicity campaign to highlight the dangers of junk mail scams, lost her mother to hustlers who put her onto a “sucker list” when she replied to a piece of unsolicited mail. Over time the scammers told Jessica that her family didn't want her to have her own money, were jealous of her impending good fortune, and wouldn't let her make her own decisions. This played on her age, senility, and wavering feelings of self-worth. Soon, she was receiving several bags of junk mail per day. Worst of all, it gradually tainted the relationship between Jessica and her family, and the more Marilyn tried to reason with her mother, the more secretive and suspicious she became. After losing thousands to fake competitions and building a crippling commitment to fees for various scams, Jessica had started communicating with “clairvoyants” who demanded money to protect her from impending disaster or evil forces. These psychic crooks had a devastating effect on Jessica's relationship with her family until, by the end, she was sending away every penny she had. Inevitably, once the demands exceeded her resources, Jessica would panic, believing that she wasn't living up to her responsibilities.

Naïveté caused Jessica to become a victim, and once she was on the sucker list, the scammers were relentless. At one point, when Jessica could no longer afford to pay one of her clairvoyants, she received a letter saying that the medium could no longer protect her from dark forces and that something evil was hiding upstairs in Jessica's house. It's easy to dismiss Jessica and millions of victims like her because of age or gullibility, but she was clearly manipulated by her own honesty and determination to keep her word. Her last years were destroyed by hustlers, and she remained terrified to go upstairs until the day she died at the age of eighty-three.

There is no clearer example of a “con bubble” than scams that manipulate belief. Inside the bubble, real powers exist, life is more certain, and comfort is drawn from the seemingly spiritual or mystical. Con artists are able to grow and foster such beliefs with conjuring tricks, mind-reading stunts, and theatrical acts of legerdemain, but this is rarely necessary. Most victims already believe such things and are quickly drawn to someone who can validate and feed their convictions. This can build a relationship between the hustler and the mark that is too powerful for anyone to penetrate. The mark is easily isolated from those who “don't understand” or “refuse to believe” and, once under this kind of spell, people want it all to be true. After a certain point, it can be almost impossible for loved ones to drag the victim back to the cold reality of the world outside the bubble.

Though I'm not religious, I do respect the religious convictions of others as a matter of principle. Once anyone uses the beliefs of others as a means to control, direct, defraud, or mislead, they cross the line between honest and corrupt intent. How many times have you seen politicians cynically use religion to hustle votes? Con artists can use religion as a powerful weapon whether they are exploiting existing beliefs or inventing their own, but faith, as magnetic a force as it is, is not the most powerful weapon in the con man's arsenal.

Sex is a universal, natural motivation that has gotten more people into trouble than anything else in history. It might be the driving force behind all that's bad and all that's good in the world, but there's one thing for sure: we all want it at some time in our lives and if a con artist knows what you want . . .

The promise of sex (or the vulnerability of its aftermath) has been used by hustlers for centuries. All a beautiful girl has to do is walk into a sports bar to find someone interested in her; if she happens to be a con artist, then there's an endless supply of marks to be scammed. The most basic of these might be as simple as luring someone to an alley so they can be robbed or to a hotel room so they can be photographed and blackmailed.

On
The Real Hustle
we generally avoided scams that depended on manipulating people sexually. It's a dangerous game and there's almost no chance anyone would agree to be on the show afterward, but I did find a way to re-create a classic blackmail scam while keeping everyone fully dressed. Jess checked into a hotel in London, and we arranged for our mark to deliver a package to her room. When he arrived, Jess was dressed in a silk gown as if she was getting ready for the shower, and she asked the mark to help her with something on the balcony. Across from them, on the roof of another building, Alex and I took pictures as the mark helped Jess to remove an earring and Jess cleverly posed to create some damning pictures with the unknowing mark!

Later, the mark met Jess when she was apparently being threatened by two scumbag journalists (Alex and I were particularly good at this). The mark gave up his own money to buy the pictures to both protect Jess and avoid himself being splashed all over the front page of the tabloids. This was a strong facsimile, but a real hustler would genuinely seduce the mark, break into the hotel room at the most embarrassing moment, and take pictures that his mother should never see, let alone his wife. This blackmail scam depends on hooking the mark through a compromising situation, then making him pay to avoid embarrassment or ruination. Another scam plays on the same human needs but can have a much more powerful and devastating effect on the victim.

Whereas sexual blackmail scams begin with sex, romance scams also create the promise of love and friendship. These con games can be more damaging than any other type of scam because they depend on cultivating genuine feelings of love and attachment from the victim. Over time the mark is groomed to believe he is in a real relationship and these emotions are manipulated and directed toward the hustler's ultimate goal, which is usually money but—once someone is tangled in this type of web—can be almost anything. Today, victims don't even have to meet their dream partner personally. The Internet has allowed scammers to pull this con remotely, sometimes even pretending to be the opposite sex using Internet chat and photos of someone else as bait (a con called “catfishing”).

The Russian Bride scam employs girls to run a con on multiple people around the world, using video conferencing, Internet chat, e-mail, and snail mail to keep the mark on the line. Along the way the victim is asked to pay for all sorts of “gifts” and help cover the cost of travel and visas so the girl can meet the mark in his home country. All of this money goes to the hustlers, while they continue to stall the mark with excuses of more bureaucracy, sick relatives who need medicine, legal problems, necessary bribes, and even ransom demands after the prospective bride has been supposedly kidnapped.