The Art of the Con (4 page)

A crooked pitch presents people with items they don't really need in such a way that almost anyone might be convinced to buy. Some might argue that the pitch we made from the back of that truck in Chapel Market barely qualifies as a con game since each individual item was sold in exactly the same way that a legitimate pitchman might sell it. This may be true, but a pitch becomes a scam when lies are presented and people are manipulated in order to take their money. This simple version of a Jam Auction, from the back of our truck, was just that. We hooked the crowd with apparently free merchandise and the unspoken promise of better items to come. It was almost a legitimate pitch but these small deceptions made it cross that fine line.

Jam auctions or Mock Auctions have been around for a very long time. In the late 1920s Walter B. Gibson published a series of newspaper articles concerning con games or “bunco” that proved to be both enlightening and entertaining. One of those articles, “Inside Information on Jam Auctions,” described the pitch scam that we pulled in Chapel Market. When speaking publicly I often related this scam so it was naturally one of the first con games I wrote for the TV show. People always laughed when I revealed the punchline to the scam but, as it turned out, I really didn't understand it at all.

Jam auctions are rarely subtle affairs. In the UK they are usually called run-out joints, where crowds of people are attracted to a windowless salesroom, often in the back of empty high street stores. Victims are tempted by sales notices promising high-end merchandise for incredibly low prices. It may seem too good to be true, but curiosity will cause many to come along and see what's on offer. Once everyone is inside, the long process of wearing down people's defenses begins. Naturally, the scammers do not advertise that the sale will take upward of ninety minutes, nor that it will be held in a crowded room without natural light and only one apparent way out. But, of course, these things make people easier to control and are essential elements of the scam.

A modern run-out joint begins once everyone is sealed inside the auction room. A barker, standing on an elevated podium, begins by showing the types of products on offer: game systems, televisions, Blu-Ray players, and so on. He tells the crowd about the auctioneer who will eventually conduct the sale and conditions the crowd to bid quickly so they don't miss out on the best bargains. In the sales I've witnessed (before I became recognizable from television and was routinely ejected), no actual merchandise is sold during this phase of the scam. Instead, the role of the auctioneer is built up and the crowd's anticipation is fueled by the sight of the “flash” (products used as bait).

Once the build-up is concluded, the auctioneer arrives: usually a powerful character, he is sometimes funny and charming, other times rough and forceful in his presentation. The sale often begins with a couple of items quickly shown and offered for incredibly low prices. Someone in the crowd always bids immediately and gets passed his/her merchandise for examination and to confirm that the item is genuine. The PlayStation might be real; the person buying it certainly is not. He or she is a shill (sometimes referred to as a “capper”) whose job is to snap up the real stuff and keep the marks from winning anything of actual value.

After these items are “sold,” the shill opens the box and examines the goods for the benefit of the people close by. The fact that these items are genuine gets quickly absorbed into the crowd; more hands jump into the air each time, but those people always lose out to other lucky buyers who are somehow quicker. This process continues in various forms with all sorts of stories and scenarios played out for the crowd who, by the end of this charade, has been on their feet for well over an hour. Finally, some wonderful product is introduced in an impressive box, filled with solid-looking items familiar to the crowd, now hungry for a bargain.

I've seen many items sold this way but one of the most memorable was an SLR “Olympic” camera. The name of the camera itself was deliberately close to “Olympus,” one of the finest manufacturers in the world, and the box was red and white and much like packaging used by that brand. As a keen photographer, I immediately identified these deliberate similarities, but to the other people watching, it must have looked like the real deal. From my position at the edge of the crowd (hiding my face from the bouncers), it certainly looked the part and I could feel people preparing to bid quickly. This is when the procedure changed; the room was about to get stung.

The auctioneer repackaged the camera and placed the box in front of him as he recounted the features and the enormous prices being charged for cameras just like this one “down the street.” This time, he did not invite bids or call for hands in the air. Instead, he named a price and asked anyone with enough cash to hold it in the air to prove they were serious bidders. Fistfuls of money shot up into the air. Suddenly, people from the back of the auctioneer's storage room pushed their way into the crowd holding laminated coupons as the auctioneer barked instructions at them to collect the cash. Each buyer was handed a coupon in return for their money and told to keep holding it in the air.

In the back, boxes of cameras were being prepared for distribution as the man on the podium held everyone's attention, congratulating everyone who was holding a coupon. A few stragglers were admonished for not taking advantage of this opportunity. Most eventually conceded and handed over their money. One of the helpers leaned into me as I stood to the side, but I held my ground, refusing to be bullied. Behind me, I could hear the doors to the street being opened, and without warning, the auction was over. People were traded red and white camera boxes for coupons as they were hustled up the stairs and onto the street. I was pushed along but managed to get a good look at the speed with which coupon holders were given their merchandise and sent packing.

Outside, I watched as the shills made their way down an alley to rejoin their fellow hustlers. Meanwhile, the honest victims were left to discover the true value of their purchase. Each camera was nothing more than a cheap, brittle shell with a limp plastic lens. A working mechanism could be detected but I doubt it would produce an image of any value. People became upset; some seemed ashamed. Most victims just walked away, accepting their losses. At the doorway, a couple of people tried to complain. Out of earshot, I couldn't hear what they were told by the imposing doorman but I knew the story all too well. All sales were final. No refunds. There was a sign to that effect, and if they didn't like what they bought, that was their problem. There certainly was a sign that explained these rules in accordance with the exact letter of the law. It was slightly bigger than a postcard and pasted to the wall behind the crowd as they watched the auction. The only real opportunity to notice it was when everyone was being forced to leave and by that time, of course, it was already too late.

During pre-production for
The Real Hustle
, we infiltrated a full-scale run-out joint armed with hidden voice recorders. As was typical by this point, I was immediately spotted and politely asked to leave. Alex remained unchallenged and returned two hours later with the recording and a brand new camera. We constructed our own script based on that auction and sold the same camera, and a dozen just like it, from an empty shop on Manchester's High Street. Afterward we interviewed everyone, while I took extensive notes about the experience.

I played the “barker,” roping the crowd and building up “Mr. Harvey” the auctioneer, played by Alex. As an actor, Alex was keen to play this role based on—and named after—the same hustler we had recorded weeks before. Alex was brought up in English boarding schools and went from there to drama school in London. His cartoon Cockney accent held up for most of his performance, slipping to his polite upper-middle-class self every now and then, but the script he memorized worked perfectly. As I had learned selling trick cards years before, a refined pitch—even a crooked one—works wonders. The real Mr. Harvey had no doubt learned the scam, graduated to run his own crew, and applied proven principles to his own line of patter. I'm pretty sure he would be less than happy to see his pitch played out for millions of viewers on our TV show, so after the broadcast, I retired from watching jam auctions.

How did that first jam auction in Chapel Market open my eyes? What were the factors that made me realize how much there was to understand? Until I was given the opportunity to actually perform these cons for television, I regarded them the way anyone with a serious interest in the subject would. I had an encyclopedic knowledge of the actual scams, but if asked to explain how and why they worked, my answer would have pointed to the cunning of the hustler or the gullibility of the mark.

Almost everything one reads on the subject makes the same point, taking great pleasure in recording the details of these confidence tricks without touching upon the human factor. The list of different con games is almost endless and new cons appear every year, but they're mostly just old wine in new bottles. I'm by no means the first to recognize that most modern scams are easily traced to older progenitors; nor that, like jokes or stories, scams can be easily categorized. What shifted was my perspective. Suddenly, I was looking at these scams from the other side of the table.

In the back of that truck, I was staggered by just how effective our con had been. By simply acting out a scam described in an article written decades before, we were holding handfuls of twenty-pound notes. If we had more time, more merchandise, and fewer scruples, this could easily have become a very profitable career. It struck me then that it was not our expert cunning that helped make this money: We had only ever pulled the scam once! Was it the gullibility of the crowd? We were certain that those people would be extremely upset as we negotiated to return to the scene of our crime. The producers, however, reported a completely different story.

Once we, the “hustlers,” had made a safe getaway, the producers would typically approach our victims and let them off the hook. Many times, this had to be done very quickly before real panic set in and emotions got too high. I never envied the victims at that moment, but almost every time, it was a relief to learn their property or cash was safe. This was different. First, our runners had a tough job gathering everyone who'd bought from us because none of them felt conned in any way. They were all happy. They were all satisfied. This changed once people had some time to think about it, but even then, they were content. Incredibly, many refused to take their money back and preferred to keep the merchandise! On our return, there was no animosity, so I asked a couple of people what they felt when we rolled down the shutter and drove off. Mostly they were just disappointed that the sale was over before I got to the Xboxes and televisions at the back of the van. This really made me rethink everything.

There were two seasons of
The Real Hustle
between the back of that truck and the full-scale run-out joint we played in Manchester. By that time, I was already beginning to identify how each scam seemed to work in terms of deceiving people. I understood that scams could be played softly to walk a profit without waking up the marks or used to hit people hard and leave them stunned on the sidewalk. I could see that these two versions of the jam auction not only shared certain principles, they actually manipulated the crowd in exactly the same way, taking them down the same paths and walking them off the same cliff. The only real difference was how big a fall awaited the victim.

It was then clear to me that there was a real structure that could be identified and used to understand how and why scams work and to more effectively protect the public. Instead of exposing hundreds of con games based on analogous principles, I could reveal the fundamental concepts at the heart of all con games, so that no matter how they might be re-invented, people would be able to see past the illusion and recognize the hallmarks of deception.

About now, you might begin to worry that this information could be abused in the wrong hands, that I have created a blueprint for con men to follow. As I have pointed out many times before, informing con artists has never been my goal, nor has it been necessary: They already know how to con people. The scams I expose already exist in the real world and could easily be learned from the same sources that I have used over the years. Informing the con man is a non-issue, but informing the victim can genuinely change things for the better. Informing the public is the only way to protect people from these crimes; I can assure you that con artists are much more concerned about potential marks learning their methods than they are in need of ideas. The only reason any con game was ever successful is that the victim did not recognize it as a scam until it was too late.

My intention is to put you into the mindset of a hustler, to make you think like a thief and see through the eyes of a swindler. It's much easier to recognize ingredients once you've cooked with them yourself, and this book will give you a taste of how it feels to pull a con. If that motivates you toward a life of crime, know that you need to have more than a little larceny in your heart to be a successful grifter, and I can't take responsibility for any qualities or character traits that would allow you to act upon such feelings. Nor can I be blamed for the time you are almost certainly going to spend behind bars, because almost every con artist eventually gets caught.