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By definition, a con artist is a manipulator who cheats, or tricks, others through persuading them to believe something that is not true. Through deception, they fool people into believing they...
- Cathy Scott
Jan 5, 2016 · In The Confidence Game, Maria Konnikova shows how con artists exploit our tendency to overestimate our intelligence and judgment, and examines the psychology of her victims.
The monologue communicates Hamlet’s fixation on the play’s primary moral question: whether it is right for Hamlet to avenge his father’s death by killing his father’s suspected murderer, Claudius. The speech also conveys Hamlet’s obsession with the concepts of life (“to be”) and death (“not to be”).
- Meg Matthias
Con artists are the magicians of film - we suspect the double-cross is coming yet we get duped while admiring the illusion. Like spies, cons come in disguise, seducing us with diabolical promises and secret, coded language. If you’re in the game, you need to speak the lingo.
- The Fake Nurse Who Profited Off A Pandemic
- The Man Who Sewed Goat testicles Into People
- The Hollywood Con Queen
- The Man Who Sold The Eiffel Tower
- Sidney Poitier’s "Son"
- The Poyais Affair
- The Counterfeit Kubrick
- The Man Who "Revealed" Howard Hughes
- The Golden Gulch Gold Mine
- The Man Who Claimed to Be Clark Rockefeller
Even by the low standards of the con game, Julia Lyons stands out as one of the most diabolical. During the 1918 flu pandemic, Lyons (under false names) “volunteered” in Chicago as a nurse to care for indigent patients at their homes. While she had plenty of training in cashing stolen checks, she had no medical background to speak of. She was count...
The con world is full of wellness claims that rarely stand up to scrutiny. Even by those standards, John Brinkley—who was awarded his medical degree by a disreputable diploma mill—was one of a kind. His methodology for restoring virility in men took more from science-fiction than modern medicine. In the early 20th century, Brinkley pushed a procedu...
Beginning in 2015 (and according to some sources, even earlier), a mysterious person began placing phone calls to a multitude of Hollywood hopefuls, using a feminine voice and assertive tone to convince them that they were an industry power player. Sometimes they would claim to be Deborah Snyder, the producer and wife of director Zack Snyder. Other...
As is probably fitting, much of the life of Victor Lustig is unclear, including his name (when he was at Alcatraz, he was held under Robert V. Miller). Lustig was a famous counterfeiter, but it's said his biggest swindle came in 1925, when he had documentation arranged identifying him as the “Deputy Director General of the Ministère de Postes et Té...
David Hampton, who was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1964, found himself in New York City as a young adult in the early 1980s. Rather than face the city as a man with no social connections, he perpetuated an elegant and simple lie: His name was David Poitier, he was the son of acclaimed actor Sidney Poitier, and he was down on his luck because he h...
In 1822, Scotland native Gregor MacGregortalked up Poyais in modern Honduras, making it sound irresistible: He told people it was incredibly fertile, had endless gold in the river, and boasted beautiful cathedrals. Soon, investors were flocking to seize their chance at a fortune; MacGregor collected 200,000 pounds and sent ships full of eager settl...
If you’re going to impersonate a living film director, Stanley Kubrick was a terrific choice. While venerated for his films like The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, the reclusive Kubrick was not as familiar a face as Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. That left the door open for Alan Conway (born Eddie Alan Jablowsky) to perpetuate a lie that he w...
A writer of little regard in the 1970s, Clifford Irving concocted a literary scheme for the ages. He approached publisher McGraw-Hill in 1971 claiming that he had struck up a rapport with eccentric aviator and billionaire Howard Hughes, who had largely retreated from public life. Irving’s con was simple: He offered editors an autobiography of Hughe...
The secretto good business for Ed Barbara, a furniture salesman in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s and 1980s, was irritation. Barbara became a well known figure by peppering the region with annoying commercials. He also did more than just irritate: In 1984, Barbara declared he had a 50 percent interest in the Golden Gulch gold mine near Tru...
For years, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter—who was born in Germany—passed himself off as Clark Rockefeller, one of the members of the oil-rich American dynasty. Using this identity, he found himself surroundedby wealth and wound up marrying financial lawyer Sandra Boss and becoming a stay-at-home dad to their daughter. They divorced in 2007, and in 2...
The Con Queen of Hollywood ‘gave good phone’, as they say in Los Angeles. For at least seven years he/she pretended to be female studio executives such as Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and former Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal, according to Vanity Fair .
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Feb 18, 2024 · But even when a con is outrageous—or downright obvious—unsuspecting targets keep getting duped, from wealthy individuals to government officials to experienced journalists.
