May 12, 2011 • 38 mins
They say you can't con an honest man, and that's key to thwarting cons; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Learn how to avoid everything from small-time scams to the Nigerian money transfer in this captivating episode with Chuck and Josh.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes this stuff. You shouldel guest producer Casey in
the house. Yes, it just sounded like you did, because
welcome Casey. That's pretty good. Thank you. Yeah, Chuck. Um.
Have you ever heard of again named Gregor McGregor. That's
not a name, it is a name, you know. I
(00:40):
once lived with a guy named John Johnson in college.
Choose a college roommate. Gregor McGregor had um an evil
sense of humor, or else just was driven by greed.
But at the beginning of the nineteenth century he fashioned
himself as the Prince of paw Wa Poia. Did he
make up that name? Completely? P o y o I
(01:03):
s completely non existent place? No. Not only was it
a non existent like places in a non existent country,
it was a non existent island supposedly off of Honduras
that he supposedly owned because he was supposedly the prince
of this place. This is at a time when you
could basically say, hey, you want to go colonize this
this um country called Poi wa Um that's rich with
(01:27):
oil and um, well probably not oil at the time,
but rubies and gold and timber and all this stuff.
And you guys will be the first settlers there. So
you're going to be in on the bottom of this
and you're going to make tons. And the guy basically
went around selling stock the right to go colonize this
(01:48):
this place that didn't exist to the English, and I
imagine to the English, two d and fifty settlers traveled there.
Two hundred died on the journey looking for this place
that didn't exist because they got the coordinates and there
was nothing there and they were all exact, not necessarily.
(02:08):
While these people were off, he moved Gregor McGregor moved
on to France and was doing it again. Finally, about
fifty of these people come came back, and they still
couldn't believe that this guy made this up. That some
of them testified on his behalf when he was finally
caught and tried as a con man, sounds like had
(02:31):
a lot of confidence. He got the confidence of the
two and fifty settlers and then some Actually during his trial,
this guy was so audacious that um he was still
selling stuff too. He was still selling stock and and
and um rights land rights to this place to like
local nobility, whoever he could get to buy it. Sounded
(02:53):
like a skilled con man. He is a con man.
And like you said, Cohn is short for confidence. Most
people knew that, but turns out that's not true. I
just told Lizzie that and she went really well, if
she probably wasn't paying attention, you never know, So, Chuck, Josh,
I think it's high time, after all these requests, that
we've gotten to do how common work that we do?
(03:16):
How common work? Yeah, this was on the Facebook page
of the day. I should have written down the name.
So apologies to whoever put this on our Facebook wall
mid April. Yes, this is for you. And we've done
at least one before, we've done Ponzi schemes. Yeah, and
that'll pop up here. Yeah, but this is like an overview.
There's a lot of different cons going on at any
(03:39):
given time all around you in the world that you
take as real and genuine. You're actually being conned an
average of eight to twelve times a day. Studies show
connart Is Josh are deceptive, their liars, their cheaters, They
trick people. They're probably pretty smart. They take advantage of
(04:00):
your weaknesses. If you're lonely, if you're not too smart
like cats, if you're elderly, and unfortunately a lot of
times they prey on the elderly. Yes, if you're in
poor health, or if you're just plain ignorant and dumb,
or and this is a very very um important point.
If you are greedy, well, yeah, greed, they can't. Well
(04:22):
what's the saying, you can't cheat an honest man. Yeah,
that's as true as true it gets, my friend, it
is um. There's there's such thing as something for nothing.
And if you are greedy, um, you are likely going
to fall prey to a confidence scheme because you're going
to go against your better judgment. And once you take
that step, you've just become ensnared in one of the
(04:45):
eight to twelve cons that are taken on you every day.
It reminds me of the movie Wall Street. You know,
Charlie Sheen got swept up in that greed and they
weren't cons. I thought was shy La boof but here,
but there was inside trading going on. But remember Sheen's father,
Martin Sheen played his father in the movie. Yeah, remembering Hotshots.
(05:05):
They passed one another in the river and go I
love you in Wall Street. That's true. I forgot about that.
But um, the father was honest. He was an honest man.
He couldn't be conn he couldn't be bought. He's like, no, no, no, son,
you can't get something for nothing. Yeah, you gotta use
elbow grease and you're strong back to make your money. Yes,
(05:26):
And what happened, Charlie Sheen went to jail. Martin Sheen
did not. And look at Charlie. Now, yeah, he's psychotic.
Let's talk about con man, So, chuck one of the
hallmarks of the confidence man or woman or woman. That's
a really good point because, um, that's they're just as
(05:46):
likely to be a con person as a man. Yeah.
A woman will more likely play on a man's lust, yes,
to get his money, whereas a man will do other things. Yeah,
because women aren't stupid enough to fall for that. Um.
And that's a good point. Although a gay con artist
could still pull it, pull it over because you're still
(06:09):
working the man. Chuck. One of the hallmarks of con
people is that they travel frequently, mainly because they don't
like to be chased by mobs with pitchforks and torches.
Although they frequently are right, so um, to kind of
explain or excuse this frequent travel, they may say that
(06:30):
they have a job that causes them to or they
may actually have a job that that gives them a
reason to travel, Like you could be a traveling salesman,
but really you're a connarst, but you really do have
a job as a traveling salesman, Like, um, have you
seen Paper Moon your favorite movie? Yeah? They were always
just sort of from town to town, right, yeah, Bible salesman.
(06:52):
That's right, traveling Bible salesman. Although the whole thing was
a con and she was the cutest darn little con
artists I've ever seen. She was awesome. Uh. You could
also be a carny, which I think partially explains why
a lot of people don't trust carnies. You think you
ever see the famous Simpsons episode with um, oh, what
was the guy's Jim Varney as the Carney He and
(07:14):
his son ultimately got got by Homer in Bark they did, casey,
can you verify that alright, he's a Simpsons guy, Josh.
If you want to throw some other cool nineteen twenties
style terms out there that get on the trolley, Yeah,
you can call him a flim flam man, sham, modest,
(07:36):
a shy sta, a bunk o man, a grift, swindler, hustler, bamboozla.
Grifter is my favorite. It's my favorite too. It's a
good one. It's it's let's call him grifters because it
sounds like you do not mess with this person. Grifter
is it sounds to me like a professional. Yes, you know.
And the awesome movie The Grifters from Stephen Freers is
(07:57):
what I think one of the top three con man
movies all time. Did you like that one? I made
it halfway through The Grifters it we'll talk about the
movie part in a minute. So there are um, you know,
we talked about Ponzi schemes before. That is one of
many types of cons. And there's actually under the umbrella
of con cons, there are sub umbrellas types of cons,
(08:21):
and then under those are actual different cons. That is
the granular level we're going to get to on this. Yeah,
and there's there's all kinds of cons. But it is
funny how many of them are just variations of the
same con. Yes, for example, street cons, let's talk about
some street cons. Street cons are generally characterized by um,
(08:41):
the the the the traits that they happen in public.
They happen quickly and usually for a fairly small take
a couple hundred bucks or less. Dude, if you can
make a couple hundred bucks in a street con and
in fifteen minutes, you're doing pretty well for yourself. But
you shouldn't be doing that at all. Legal. That's wrong, immoral, unethical,
it really is. I mean, that's it's it's it's fooling
(09:02):
someone out of their money. It's kind of the worst
thing you could do. I almost respect the the guy
who like hits you over the head and sticks your
purse a little more. I don't like that guy either. Yeah,
you're right, they're both jerks. All right, So let's talk
about some street cons. Okay, what about Chuck the pedigree dog.
And by the way, this article has the most super
(09:23):
superfluous illustrations of any article on how stuff works at all. Yeah,
there's very apt descriptions, and then there's some illustrations of
the apt descriptions, and this is written by the grabster.
We should point out that's all the fun articles the
pedigree dog, but you can insert dog with violin or
really anything of value that you can trick someone into
(09:46):
thinking is valuable. So go, let's hear it. Okay, So
let's say that you are a shop owner and some
guy comes in with the dog and says, hey, can
you hold this for me for a minute. I gotta
go down the street and place a bet, or I
gotta go down the street and robin another store. Just
be thankful it's not your store. And the store owner goes, sure,
I'll watch your dog dogs. Yeah. Uh So the first
(10:08):
guy comes out and it goes out, and then the
second con man comes in, unbeknownst to the owner, related
to the first guy, at least in a business sense,
and he goes, wow, where did you get that dog?
That's like a very rare pedigree dog worth thousands and
thousands of dollars? Can I buy it from you? And
the owner says maybe, so come back in twenty minutes,
(10:31):
I'll see if I can buy this dog from the owner.
That's the greed that they play on the bartenders thinking, hey,
I might gonna make a few bucks here exactly, UM,
or the store owner, I want to say bar owner
either way. UM. So the first guy comes back, the
owner of the dog comes back, and UM finds that
the owner of the store wants to buy the dog
(10:52):
from him. Says, oh, I guess so, all right, I'll
sell it to you for two grand. The owner UM
pays the two grand, and the second guy never comes
back to buy the dog from him, And so the
owner of the shop all of a sudden is out
a couple of grand and they have a mutt on
their hands. Yes, the dog was never pedigree it. The
(11:13):
dog is a real loser here too, I might point out, Yeah,
because you know, the guy's probably not gonna be like,
oh well, I'll love him anyway. He's probably gonna kick him,
put him out on the street. And plus his name
is Jason. Who names their dog Jason? Right now, that's
so weird. The pigeon drop. That's another old school con Uh.
This works. Let's say you're hanging out on the street
(11:35):
and you spot something that you have placed there. Uh.
Let's say it's a money bag from a local vendor.
They dropped it on the way to the deposit thing.
And a good way to make this work is if
you can get the other person to notice it first.
That way, they don't feel like they're being conned because
they spotted it. Then you say, all of a sudden,
(11:56):
you realize, hey, both of us are looking at this
thing that says, um, you know the savings and loan,
and it's got a little money spilling out of it.
That's the most generic thing I can think of. And
they said, you know what, let's um, let's let's split
this up and see here's where an honest man can't
(12:18):
be cheated. Yeah, comes in for sure, because if you said, well,
maybe we should also just try to take you to
this bank first, the cons over it is. But let's
say you are a greedy guy and you're gonna go
along with it. What happens, well, the second car con
artists might show up and say, hey, listen, I saw
this too, so I want my fair share. There's no
(12:40):
easy way to solve this, So why don't in good faith,
why don't we all put some money in an in
an envelope, show good faith we're all financially on the
up and up, and then the money is in there
a little side of hand goes on and the original
dude ends up with an envelope full of coupons. This
one I don't get. You don't get it. I don't
like it, and I don't get it. First of all,
(13:01):
slide of hand. That is not a good con that's
not solid. If it involves basically like magician ship, well
that's what three card money is, agreed. The other thing
I don't like about it is why not just split
the money up three ways? Why would you put money
up to split money? That's the dumbest thing I've ever
heard in my life. I'm actually angered by that, you know.
(13:22):
I agree. Another way to do it, though, is if
it's say it's a ring or something like that, then
it makes sense to put up money. Because one of
the khan men says, well, actually, I do have a
little training in um diamond appraisal, and this thing is
probably worth about five grand. Um. I can't go upon
it or anything like that, or there's no way we
can go upon it. Right now? Do you want to
(13:44):
buy my share something I'll you know, for five bucks
or whatever. The guy who's being conned the target um says, well, yeah, sure, here,
I'll here's five hundred bucks and I'll take the ring
and go on my merry way. That makes more sense.
That make more sense. Putting up money to split a
bag of cash is dumbest thing I've ever heard. Well,
it's a con, and if you have fallen for that con,
that might make you one of the dumber rubes of
(14:06):
the world. If you have, send us an email so
we can come to your house and hit you in
the hea of the tag hammer. In the case of
the ring, obviously the original person ends up with some
sort of diamondoid and uh out whatever amount of money
they're stupid enough to give up. That's the pigeon drop.
I feel mean saying stupid and dumb, but honestly, if
you give up cash like that, then on the street
(14:29):
we'll say naive. Okay, alright. Three card money we mentioned that.
That is more magicianship. That is my friend Jim used
to do that in high school. Jim was really good
at three card money, and he would just do it
among friends in the cafeteria at school, so it's not
like he hit the streets. But that's when you have
three well, that's true. That's when you have the three
cards and one of them um, they said Ace of Spades,
(14:51):
but I've always seen it as the Queen and queen,
you know what I mean, exactly find the queen and
you get the Jim did all that stuff that candy
stripe that matter to the mac. That's one of the
things that he would say. So you know, it's like
the shell game and you're moving these cards around such.
I mean they have it on the big board at
baseball games. You know, follow the braves and you know
(15:14):
they do the quick switchero at one point, and you
can't tell I actually know how to do that. I'm
just not very good at it. Well. I know the
trick though. It's like you put one both of them
in one hand and do one of these and you
drop the one that you're not supposed to drop. And
so once you lose track of it, then unless you
guess you know, luckily, you're not gonna know where the
queen is. I always just assume one was sticky. Now
(15:38):
you're just you're just good at it. And there's also uh,
as we've mentioned, the other cons usually other con artists
are not usually a lot of times they'll they'll be
in working concert with you, so like they'll come up
and win a couple of rounds while people are watching,
and they'll say, Hey, well that guy just want a
couple of times I can do this this This must
be a legit game card mine. Yeah, exactly. Um. So
(16:03):
those are just three of many examples of street cons,
which are all um short cons is another way to
put them to they fall under another sub umbrella of
short con. That's right, there's no long street con as
far as I know, I don't think so. Um business
and internet cons. These can trapes into the long con
(16:24):
genre of confidence tricks, but for the most part, they're
usually fairly quick. For example, the pumping up scheme. Right,
I've never heard of this one. Pyramid schemes we covered
with the podcast. And should we get how detail do
we need to get here? With the pyramid scheme, I say,
we just go back and listen to Ponzi? Okay? Is
(16:46):
that we should do? Yeah? You should give him another
Ponzi though it's a Ponzi scheme where you basically there
is nothing exchanging hands many times, and you recruit people
under you to give you money, and they recruit people
under them to give them money. And the only people
who ever actually get a payout or the fear very
(17:07):
few people at the top of the pyramid. It's an
unsustainable business model if it actually is a business at all. Sometimes,
like Ponzi's original scheme wasn't a scheme. It was basically
buying and selling like postage stamps because there was an
exchange rate associated with the back of the time. But
um he started taking new investors money because the investment
(17:29):
wasn't paying off like a thought, and giving it to
old investors. And that's the creation of the Ponzi scheme.
It's the people on the bottom pass money upwards, so
only the people in the first couple tears actually can
make money, that's right, Josh. And the way they get
you in is they tell you that you're one of
the top people. It's like, even if you have suspicions
(17:51):
like this pyramid scheme, they're like, it totally is, but
you're one of the top three, so you're in, right,
which makes you a greedy jerk exactly playing on your
greed once again, multi level marketing, Josh. A lot of
times that's basically a pyramid scheme. There are some legitimate
companies like the Pampered Chef or Tupperware or um am way.
(18:13):
But and it is legitimate. I mean they can be,
but they have a pyramid structure. They're just not They're
not a m it's not grif. Yeah. But if you
start poking around and they're a little vague about the
product and stuff and payouts and things like that, then
it's probably not legit pyramids, right, not one of those companies.
But yeah, if you start asking questions, if you ever
(18:33):
started asking questions of a somebody who wants to you
to buy into their franchise and they start sweating and
getting all kg yes, walk away. Yeah, it's a good sign. Yeah.
Do we really need to talk about the Nigerian money
transfer at this point? I would think our listeners are
wise to this, but it still happens. It's an internet scam.
(18:54):
The prints of some country in Africa usually has this
large sum of money and somehow we got your email
address and you were the lucky guy that can get
a portion of it because the money will be freed up.
We just have some problems within our own country with
customs or whatever. Yeah, we we we have a bunch
(19:14):
of money. It's locked up. We need some of your
money to unlock it exactly to bribe people to pay
whatever fees all that stuff. Um. The thing that I
was surprised about is that this this one the Nigerian
money transfer a k A Advanced fee fraud a k
a A four nineteen scam because section four nineteen of
Nigerian I guess federal code deals with fraud. It be
(19:39):
very frequently becomes a long con. Yeah, that's what I was.
I didn't know about that either. Actually. Yeah, so like
once you have given these people your money, they're like, Okay,
well let's see what else we can get out of you,
and um, something got held up at the border, so
we need more money for more bribes, or we need
your social Security number because the bank is asking for it.
(20:00):
And it just keeps going on and on. And then
the insidiousness of the long con is once you're once
you've bought into something and and you're invested for a
substantial amount, it becomes increasingly difficult to walk away. And
it's always just tantalizing. Lee right there, if I pay
just a little more money and I'm gonna get everything
back and then something and it just never pays out
(20:23):
like that because you're being conned. Yeah, and the reason
we didn't know this is because we never fell for
the beginning of the Nigerian UH con. But you know,
I make fun of it a little bit because I
thought everybody on the planet knew about this. But it
still happens, I'm sure, and it probably happens to you know,
like your grandmother. And that's so sad, so wrong in
(20:44):
so many ways. This It's like it's like stealing like
half of the value of somebody's four own k or
something overnight, or um issuing a mortgage to somebody when
you know they can't pay it back because you're just
gonna foreclose in their house and sell it, you know what.
Another it's I wouldn't call it a con. But have
you ever seen, um that guy that sells the UH
(21:07):
learn how to email with this dvd? Have you seen that, dude?
I think I know who you're talking about. Yeah, it's
very stress the white guy with silver hair. Yeah, it's
very rudimentary. Things like learn how to access the internet
or learn how to operate email. We'll see you these DVDs.
They're legit. I'm sure the DVD show you how to
email someone, but it's a it's a shipping scam. Essentially, Okay,
(21:32):
we should probably see O way here, like, is this
an actual scam? It is, Here's what happens. How about this.
I will tell you what happens, and then you, the listener,
can decide whether you think it's a scam or you
the lawyers of this guy explain it to us in
court while you're seeing us. What you see when you
see these commercials is pay eight nine for the set
of DVDs that teach out to email. Shipping is money
(21:56):
back guarantee. So what happens is if you're not satisfied,
you get your money back. You have paid to ship
a DVD. The DVD is ship to via media mail,
which is slow and very very cheap. You can probably
ship a DVD for like ten cents via media mail.
So he's making even if they return the thing and
(22:18):
he gives him their money back, he's he's made the
difference of the shipping. So basically, this guys making money
no matter what scam or not a scam, probably not
because you're getting sea. The guy's providing the service that
he's saying he's providing. That's right, so he guarantee stands.
I reverse my stance. I call that man the smartest
(22:39):
man on the planet. I don't know about that. All right,
he's somewhere in between, and we might cut all this
out even yeah right, Um what else? Oh chuck? What
about um home improvement? Yeah you know, man, I was
just working on this house down the street. I was
putting a roof on it, and we got all this
extra material and I'm gonna have to return it. But
(23:00):
I could give you a heck of a deal. Here's
all my money the end. You've been scammed? Yeah, um,
that's ah that. There are two kinds of home improvement scams.
One that are perpetrated by actual like contractors, where they
basically sell you shoddy work or something like that, or
(23:20):
another frequent one is where they do the work, get
halfway through, say tear your whole roof off, put half
the roof back on, and say I'm gonna need more money,
and what can you do at that point? You're over
a barrel. Yes, that's a scam. Or they might do
shoddy work and have you signed a contract that has
something like some clause in where if you don't make
(23:44):
the payments, if you don't pay them in full, they
can put a lean on your house and basically take
it from you. Um, so you have to pay them
for shoddy work no matter what happens. There's also scams
perpetrated by people who are not contractors, like, um, there's
there's one that's like, uh, they'll re asphalt your driveway
and this group of guys will just basically paint your
(24:05):
driveway black and be like give us our money. Um.
That's they're not actually contractors, their painters really. Yeah, and
since you mentioned it, um, the guys who approach you
in the grocery store parking lot to fix your dents,
they are not auto body specialists. Um, that just happened
to be there with all their materials. They have their materials.
And I'm really really sorry to say that my wife
(24:29):
felt for that. Her old Honda Accord that I drove,
or I'm sorry, Honda Civic that I drove until recently
had two of the worst smeared bondo jobs I've ever
seen in my life. Because she was going into the
grocery score and guys like I can fix that for you,
like I saw just while you're shopping. I saw him.
I never mentioned him, yell for it, and I try
(24:51):
not to give her too much of a hard time.
But she's like, well they seemingly honest. Well they gained
your confidence. Awesome, that's a con there. Um. You could
also have the fake home inspector who supposedly is an
official of the city, state, municipality, county, um, who's just
dropping by an announced at your house and for a
(25:12):
surprise inspection, and it's going to find eight things wrong
with your house that don't meet code, right, but really
do because this person is not legitimate but has a friend. Yeah,
has a friend. You can do it for pretty cheap. Well,
it's gonna be terrible work, unnecessary work, and expensive work.
I got one for you. Yeah, if you ever see
the words uh, debt removal or debt erased, just walk away.
(25:36):
I didn't even know this exists. Oh yeah, man, you
look around their signs on telephone poles that say, you know,
debt removal. We can remove your debt, which means they'll
hand you a document that says your your debt has
been erased. And that's literally all it is is a
piece of paper that says we've erased your debt, but
you've bought it. Yeah, well you've bought that piece of paper,
(25:57):
and imagine, sadly some people have probably taken that piece
of paper into like a bank and said, but no, look,
it says here that my dad has been raised not
so yeah, I'll bet there's a lot of discomfort in
that first few moments where the person is trying to
convince the banker that they don't have any debt any longer.
This thing just make this whole podcast makes me feel bad. Um.
(26:18):
We mentioned mortgage refinance scams, where basically you find somebody
who has some equity, a lot of debt, and not
a lot of income, and you issue them a refinance,
a mortgage refly, and you have to be an actual
banker to do that, and they do it. They do
it because they want that house. You might be signing
(26:39):
away your house. Yeah. Um. And also there's um bankers
who have been known to slip clauses into the fine
print of a home mortgage loan or refly that says,
these people can have this house, by the way, and
you're just sleying over your house for nothing, which I
don't understand how somebody could get away with that, I know.
(26:59):
And then, of course, Chuck, I think we're at the
public service announcement Part how to avoid the con Yeah,
first and foremost, don't be greedy. Yeah, don't be greedy.
If it looks too good to be true, then it's
you're right on the money there. Don't trust anybody, especially
if you're an elderly person. You never get something for nothing.
(27:21):
That is not how the world works. It is never
worked that way. It will never work that way. If
someone is promising you large amounts of money for very little,
uh what you considered very little money, that it's just
it's wrong. Solicitations are usually basically that's a horrendous business
model in this day and age. So if a company
is still using door to door cold visits, they kind
(27:45):
of deserve to go out of business. So you can
go ahead and assume that either one you don't want
to do business with that company that's soon going to
go out of business because they're using a business model
from the fifties or a marketing model from the fifties,
or that these guys are actually on artists and they're
not really going to sell you a security system and
they're actually probably just casing your house to break into
(28:06):
it later. Yeah, maybe, so you need to look out
for other signs like if you meet a nice man
who's got a great deal for you, and he gives
the business card and it says Jim Smith po Box
fourteen and that's all it says on it. Hand it
back to him, walk away, ask for information, ask for
their driver's license, let them see you taking down their
(28:28):
license plate number. Yeah. And you know, if you're asking
them all these questions and they're legit, then they're gonna
be like, sure, man, here they will be. It's gonna
be a little uncomfortable because you're basically saying like, I
don't trust you. You have a little too much pain
on your jeans or whatever, so I don't like the
look of you, but I'm willing to see what you
do when I do this to you. Now, squirm uh.
(28:49):
And if they don't squirm, then you know you might
be able to trust them right right. And if they're
if they really need that decision fast, if you say
something like you know what, this sounds really good, but
give me about a week or so, they're like, no,
no, no no, no, this deal ends today. Yeah, there's very
likely there's not any deal that ends today when there's
lots of money involved. Um. And then chuck. If you
(29:12):
have been conned. The the point of con artists confidence
is that you'll feel too embarrassed and foolish to tell anybody,
so they'll be able to keep operating in virtually the
same place for a while. Right, So you want to
actually go and tell somebody, Go tell the popo, Tell
(29:34):
the popo. Tell call up that that annoying guy on
the local news that goes and sticks microphones and people's faces.
Maybe he'll help you out. You know, there was a
guy named Count Victor Lustig who managed to sell the
Eiffel Tower twice. A pretty good story because the first
guy was too embarrassed to tell anybody that it had happened.
(29:57):
But basically, about fifteen years after the World Air in Paris,
the Paris Exposition that saw the raising of the Eiffel
Tower um the comp the city was like really having
trouble paying to keep it maintained. So it was kind
of it wasn't just completely unbelievable that the city would
hire an agent to secretly shop around the right to
(30:21):
to tear it down and use the steel for scrap.
It was originally supposed to be temporary, right it was?
Who knew? I don't know. So he would take people
in a limousine and make a big fancy show about
it to him up to the observation deck and show
him that the medals that they were going to be bought.
And somebody paid out. This one guy paid out. Um.
(30:42):
Andre Poissant was a steel dealer who paid out for it,
and was too embarrassed to tell anybody. And so Lustick
did it again a month later. Um, and it was
lucrative both times. I liked the guy's first scamp. He
created a machine that they clee turned out blank paper,
(31:04):
right printing machine. He built it as a printing machine
that could print on bills, and basically what he did
was he stuck two hundred dollar bills in. The problem was, um,
the machine could only spit a hundred dollar bill out
every six hours. So even if you had the time
to spend twelve hours staring at this machine, you're going
(31:25):
to see it spit out two hundred dollar bills just
waiting on that third right. Um. So people paid I
think um, three thirty thousand dollars for a machine like this,
and he he was a very smart man, very smart
unethical man. Yeah, because you'd make that thirty grand back
(31:46):
divided by six hours, or divided by a hundred divided
by six. So that's how long it would take or
time six whatever, eighteen hours eight I think eighteen hundred
(32:08):
hours or dight it's a variation of eighteen. What fun
would it be to get a calculator? Oute? You know? So? Um,
I guess that's it. Yeah, well we we should list
some movies here, yeah, um, because I love a good
con artist movie, The Staying classic, I've not seen it,
House of Games. David Mammitt not seen it classic. Uh,
(32:30):
catch me if you can. We've talked about that confidence
I saw that one. I didn't see that one. Was like, okay,
definitely a you'd watch it on a Sunday afternoon. Eddie
Burns Yeah, uh, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one of the
great comedy conn one of the great movies ever. Absolutely
if you're into Mammitt, of course you gotta go with
the Spanish Prisoner, so he wrote to huh he wrote
(32:53):
the Spanish Prisoner and House of Games Yeah, yeah, okay,
and Glen Garry Glen Ross, which is not a con
man movie, and State in Maine another great movie. Yeah,
I'm a big Man, a fan stick man. I'd say
it's um slightly slicker than confidence. Confidence. Yeah, my favorite.
It was The Grifters Stephen Frears movie, which he didn't
(33:15):
get through, and then The Hustler, which proceeded this thing,
and then of course the number one confidence movie of
all time, The Baltimore Bullet. Have you seen it? No? Okay,
I hadn't even heard of it until today, but it's
got a great movie poster and its starred Mr James Cockburn.
(33:37):
Can't go wrong there, now, you can't. If you want
to learn more about cons basically, you should print out
this article and carry it with you all times, so
if a stranger comes up to you and um, you
suspect their conning you, you can use it for quick
and easy reference. You can just pull it out and
unfold it and be like, oh, an envelope full of money.
I know what's going on. Come with me, sir. I'm
(33:58):
placing you under citizens arrest. You can type con artists
into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot
com and by the way, Chuck, citizens arrest, what do
you think? We've got a lot of requests and I
don't know how that works. Let's do it. I've tried
it a bunch of times and I just get beat up. Um.
Since I said search bars, how stuff works, dot com, etcetera,
that means that it is time for listener maw. Josh,
(34:23):
I'm gonna call this a plea for joining our show.
You're Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I've been listening to
and enjoying your podcast for about a year now. I
wanted to thank you for reinforcing the crumbling concrete of
my sanity with your rebar of knowledge. That's why I
read this one. I just like that sentence. I'm twenty
six years old and for the last three years have
been working in a windowless office, endlessly shuffling paperwork. Your podcast,
(34:47):
with its breadth of subjects, with the D with the
D and cheerful banter, has allowed me one glimmering sliver
of anticipation every day I have to drag myself into work. Uh.
Despite your insistence that you have submitted clumsy podcast in
the past, I have found something endearing and enjoyable and
every one of them. Your inclusion of pop culture references,
(35:09):
asides in jokes and personal anecdotes is what distinguishes you
from more mediocre podcast. So who knew that is nice? Um,
if all this flattery didn't tip you off, I was
going to suggest one minor change, however, possibly the addition
of a hip, young, smart alec looking for a career change.
I can assure you I have a voice and face
made for radio, and sensibilities and overall coolness to mesh
(35:33):
seamlessly with this new fangled medium. So he's basically saying,
kind of be on your show as the third team member. Okay,
I thought Jerry was the third team member. Well, the
third podcast or fourth team member. Um, thanks so much
for putting out a consistently great show. I'm a loyal listener.
I will upgrade myself to fanatical if you can explain
(35:55):
open source computing in thirty minutes, Sincerely, Matthew G. So, Matthew,
I can say two things. We will neither explain open
source computing in thirty minutes, nor will we accept your
gracious offer to join us as a third podcaster. What
(36:18):
are you saying I should not? Do you want him
on the show? No? Okay, yeah that's what I'm saying.
I'm trying to break it to him easy that the
position has been filled it's there's there are no openings here.
I don't we are what's called a comic dietd yes,
I don't know how we could ever become a triad,
even for a single episode if it wasn't an interview.
(36:40):
We had Strickland in here. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right.
But he's not funny, so that's not that's no threat
to our comic diet. And he can explain explain open
source computing. Well, let's just get Strickland in here again. No,
just give this guy to Strickland. All right, done either way?
Those just you and me, right, that's right, Okay, thank
you Matthew. Gee though, for your spunks, can we like that? Yes? Um,
(37:05):
if you have ever been conned, we'd like to hear
about it, right chuck, Yeah, it's sad, but yeah, let's
hear it. Okay, Well we can share with people. How
about this? Why don't you go share your cons on
the Facebook page so everybody can look out for the hottest, newest,
hippest cons going on. Um, we're at Facebook dot com
slash stuff. You should know. You can reach us on
(37:26):
Twitter at s Y s K podcast and you can
send us plain old fashion email at stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for moral this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
(37:47):
icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it
today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve cameras. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes this stuff. You shouldel guest producer Casey in
the house. Yes, it just sounded like you did, because
welcome Casey. That's pretty good. Thank you. Yeah, Chuck. Um.
Have you ever heard of again named Gregor McGregor. That's
not a name, it is a name, you know. I
(00:40):
once lived with a guy named John Johnson in college.
Choose a college roommate. Gregor McGregor had um an evil
sense of humor, or else just was driven by greed.
But at the beginning of the nineteenth century he fashioned
himself as the Prince of paw Wa Poia. Did he
make up that name? Completely? P o y o I
(01:03):
s completely non existent place? No. Not only was it
a non existent like places in a non existent country,
it was a non existent island supposedly off of Honduras
that he supposedly owned because he was supposedly the prince
of this place. This is at a time when you
could basically say, hey, you want to go colonize this
this um country called Poi wa Um that's rich with
(01:27):
oil and um, well probably not oil at the time,
but rubies and gold and timber and all this stuff.
And you guys will be the first settlers there. So
you're going to be in on the bottom of this
and you're going to make tons. And the guy basically
went around selling stock the right to go colonize this
(01:48):
this place that didn't exist to the English, and I
imagine to the English, two d and fifty settlers traveled there.
Two hundred died on the journey looking for this place
that didn't exist because they got the coordinates and there
was nothing there and they were all exact, not necessarily.
(02:08):
While these people were off, he moved Gregor McGregor moved
on to France and was doing it again. Finally, about
fifty of these people come came back, and they still
couldn't believe that this guy made this up. That some
of them testified on his behalf when he was finally
caught and tried as a con man, sounds like had
(02:31):
a lot of confidence. He got the confidence of the
two and fifty settlers and then some Actually during his trial,
this guy was so audacious that um he was still
selling stuff too. He was still selling stock and and
and um rights land rights to this place to like
local nobility, whoever he could get to buy it. Sounded
(02:53):
like a skilled con man. He is a con man.
And like you said, Cohn is short for confidence. Most
people knew that, but turns out that's not true. I
just told Lizzie that and she went really well, if
she probably wasn't paying attention, you never know, So, Chuck, Josh,
I think it's high time, after all these requests, that
we've gotten to do how common work that we do?
(03:16):
How common work? Yeah, this was on the Facebook page
of the day. I should have written down the name.
So apologies to whoever put this on our Facebook wall
mid April. Yes, this is for you. And we've done
at least one before, we've done Ponzi schemes. Yeah, and
that'll pop up here. Yeah, but this is like an overview.
There's a lot of different cons going on at any
(03:39):
given time all around you in the world that you
take as real and genuine. You're actually being conned an
average of eight to twelve times a day. Studies show
connart Is Josh are deceptive, their liars, their cheaters, They
trick people. They're probably pretty smart. They take advantage of
(04:00):
your weaknesses. If you're lonely, if you're not too smart
like cats, if you're elderly, and unfortunately a lot of
times they prey on the elderly. Yes, if you're in
poor health, or if you're just plain ignorant and dumb,
or and this is a very very um important point.
If you are greedy, well, yeah, greed, they can't. Well
(04:22):
what's the saying, you can't cheat an honest man. Yeah,
that's as true as true it gets, my friend, it
is um. There's there's such thing as something for nothing.
And if you are greedy, um, you are likely going
to fall prey to a confidence scheme because you're going
to go against your better judgment. And once you take
that step, you've just become ensnared in one of the
(04:45):
eight to twelve cons that are taken on you every day.
It reminds me of the movie Wall Street. You know,
Charlie Sheen got swept up in that greed and they
weren't cons. I thought was shy La boof but here,
but there was inside trading going on. But remember Sheen's father,
Martin Sheen played his father in the movie. Yeah, remembering Hotshots.
(05:05):
They passed one another in the river and go I
love you in Wall Street. That's true. I forgot about that.
But um, the father was honest. He was an honest man.
He couldn't be conn he couldn't be bought. He's like, no, no, no, son,
you can't get something for nothing. Yeah, you gotta use
elbow grease and you're strong back to make your money. Yes,
(05:26):
And what happened, Charlie Sheen went to jail. Martin Sheen
did not. And look at Charlie. Now, yeah, he's psychotic.
Let's talk about con man, So, chuck one of the
hallmarks of the confidence man or woman or woman. That's
a really good point because, um, that's they're just as
(05:46):
likely to be a con person as a man. Yeah.
A woman will more likely play on a man's lust, yes,
to get his money, whereas a man will do other things. Yeah,
because women aren't stupid enough to fall for that. Um.
And that's a good point. Although a gay con artist
could still pull it, pull it over because you're still
(06:09):
working the man. Chuck. One of the hallmarks of con
people is that they travel frequently, mainly because they don't
like to be chased by mobs with pitchforks and torches.
Although they frequently are right, so um, to kind of
explain or excuse this frequent travel, they may say that
(06:30):
they have a job that causes them to or they
may actually have a job that that gives them a
reason to travel, Like you could be a traveling salesman,
but really you're a connarst, but you really do have
a job as a traveling salesman, Like, um, have you
seen Paper Moon your favorite movie? Yeah? They were always
just sort of from town to town, right, yeah, Bible salesman.
(06:52):
That's right, traveling Bible salesman. Although the whole thing was
a con and she was the cutest darn little con
artists I've ever seen. She was awesome. Uh. You could
also be a carny, which I think partially explains why
a lot of people don't trust carnies. You think you
ever see the famous Simpsons episode with um, oh, what
was the guy's Jim Varney as the Carney He and
(07:14):
his son ultimately got got by Homer in Bark they did, casey,
can you verify that alright, he's a Simpsons guy, Josh.
If you want to throw some other cool nineteen twenties
style terms out there that get on the trolley, Yeah,
you can call him a flim flam man, sham, modest,
(07:36):
a shy sta, a bunk o man, a grift, swindler, hustler, bamboozla.
Grifter is my favorite. It's my favorite too. It's a
good one. It's it's let's call him grifters because it
sounds like you do not mess with this person. Grifter
is it sounds to me like a professional. Yes, you know.
And the awesome movie The Grifters from Stephen Freers is
(07:57):
what I think one of the top three con man
movies all time. Did you like that one? I made
it halfway through The Grifters it we'll talk about the
movie part in a minute. So there are um, you know,
we talked about Ponzi schemes before. That is one of
many types of cons. And there's actually under the umbrella
of con cons, there are sub umbrellas types of cons,
(08:21):
and then under those are actual different cons. That is
the granular level we're going to get to on this. Yeah,
and there's there's all kinds of cons. But it is
funny how many of them are just variations of the
same con. Yes, for example, street cons, let's talk about
some street cons. Street cons are generally characterized by um,
(08:41):
the the the the traits that they happen in public.
They happen quickly and usually for a fairly small take
a couple hundred bucks or less. Dude, if you can
make a couple hundred bucks in a street con and
in fifteen minutes, you're doing pretty well for yourself. But
you shouldn't be doing that at all. Legal. That's wrong, immoral, unethical,
it really is. I mean, that's it's it's it's fooling
(09:02):
someone out of their money. It's kind of the worst
thing you could do. I almost respect the the guy
who like hits you over the head and sticks your
purse a little more. I don't like that guy either. Yeah,
you're right, they're both jerks. All right, So let's talk
about some street cons. Okay, what about Chuck the pedigree dog.
And by the way, this article has the most super
(09:23):
superfluous illustrations of any article on how stuff works at all. Yeah,
there's very apt descriptions, and then there's some illustrations of
the apt descriptions, and this is written by the grabster.
We should point out that's all the fun articles the
pedigree dog, but you can insert dog with violin or
really anything of value that you can trick someone into
(09:46):
thinking is valuable. So go, let's hear it. Okay, So
let's say that you are a shop owner and some
guy comes in with the dog and says, hey, can
you hold this for me for a minute. I gotta
go down the street and place a bet, or I
gotta go down the street and robin another store. Just
be thankful it's not your store. And the store owner goes, sure,
I'll watch your dog dogs. Yeah. Uh So the first
(10:08):
guy comes out and it goes out, and then the
second con man comes in, unbeknownst to the owner, related
to the first guy, at least in a business sense,
and he goes, wow, where did you get that dog?
That's like a very rare pedigree dog worth thousands and
thousands of dollars? Can I buy it from you? And
the owner says maybe, so come back in twenty minutes,
(10:31):
I'll see if I can buy this dog from the owner.
That's the greed that they play on the bartenders thinking, hey,
I might gonna make a few bucks here exactly, UM,
or the store owner, I want to say bar owner
either way. UM. So the first guy comes back, the
owner of the dog comes back, and UM finds that
the owner of the store wants to buy the dog
(10:52):
from him. Says, oh, I guess so, all right, I'll
sell it to you for two grand. The owner UM
pays the two grand, and the second guy never comes
back to buy the dog from him, And so the
owner of the shop all of a sudden is out
a couple of grand and they have a mutt on
their hands. Yes, the dog was never pedigree it. The
(11:13):
dog is a real loser here too, I might point out, Yeah,
because you know, the guy's probably not gonna be like,
oh well, I'll love him anyway. He's probably gonna kick him,
put him out on the street. And plus his name
is Jason. Who names their dog Jason? Right now, that's
so weird. The pigeon drop. That's another old school con Uh.
This works. Let's say you're hanging out on the street
(11:35):
and you spot something that you have placed there. Uh.
Let's say it's a money bag from a local vendor.
They dropped it on the way to the deposit thing.
And a good way to make this work is if
you can get the other person to notice it first.
That way, they don't feel like they're being conned because
they spotted it. Then you say, all of a sudden,
(11:56):
you realize, hey, both of us are looking at this
thing that says, um, you know the savings and loan,
and it's got a little money spilling out of it.
That's the most generic thing I can think of. And
they said, you know what, let's um, let's let's split
this up and see here's where an honest man can't
(12:18):
be cheated. Yeah, comes in for sure, because if you said, well,
maybe we should also just try to take you to
this bank first, the cons over it is. But let's
say you are a greedy guy and you're gonna go
along with it. What happens, well, the second car con
artists might show up and say, hey, listen, I saw
this too, so I want my fair share. There's no
(12:40):
easy way to solve this, So why don't in good faith,
why don't we all put some money in an in
an envelope, show good faith we're all financially on the
up and up, and then the money is in there
a little side of hand goes on and the original
dude ends up with an envelope full of coupons. This
one I don't get. You don't get it. I don't
like it, and I don't get it. First of all,
(13:01):
slide of hand. That is not a good con that's
not solid. If it involves basically like magician ship, well
that's what three card money is, agreed. The other thing
I don't like about it is why not just split
the money up three ways? Why would you put money
up to split money? That's the dumbest thing I've ever
heard in my life. I'm actually angered by that, you know.
(13:22):
I agree. Another way to do it, though, is if
it's say it's a ring or something like that, then
it makes sense to put up money. Because one of
the khan men says, well, actually, I do have a
little training in um diamond appraisal, and this thing is
probably worth about five grand. Um. I can't go upon
it or anything like that, or there's no way we
can go upon it. Right now? Do you want to
(13:44):
buy my share something I'll you know, for five bucks
or whatever. The guy who's being conned the target um says, well, yeah, sure, here,
I'll here's five hundred bucks and I'll take the ring
and go on my merry way. That makes more sense.
That make more sense. Putting up money to split a
bag of cash is dumbest thing I've ever heard. Well,
it's a con, and if you have fallen for that con,
that might make you one of the dumber rubes of
(14:06):
the world. If you have, send us an email so
we can come to your house and hit you in
the hea of the tag hammer. In the case of
the ring, obviously the original person ends up with some
sort of diamondoid and uh out whatever amount of money
they're stupid enough to give up. That's the pigeon drop.
I feel mean saying stupid and dumb, but honestly, if
you give up cash like that, then on the street
(14:29):
we'll say naive. Okay, alright. Three card money we mentioned that.
That is more magicianship. That is my friend Jim used
to do that in high school. Jim was really good
at three card money, and he would just do it
among friends in the cafeteria at school, so it's not
like he hit the streets. But that's when you have
three well, that's true. That's when you have the three
cards and one of them um, they said Ace of Spades,
(14:51):
but I've always seen it as the Queen and queen,
you know what I mean, exactly find the queen and
you get the Jim did all that stuff that candy
stripe that matter to the mac. That's one of the
things that he would say. So you know, it's like
the shell game and you're moving these cards around such.
I mean they have it on the big board at
baseball games. You know, follow the braves and you know
(15:14):
they do the quick switchero at one point, and you
can't tell I actually know how to do that. I'm
just not very good at it. Well. I know the
trick though. It's like you put one both of them
in one hand and do one of these and you
drop the one that you're not supposed to drop. And
so once you lose track of it, then unless you
guess you know, luckily, you're not gonna know where the
queen is. I always just assume one was sticky. Now
(15:38):
you're just you're just good at it. And there's also uh,
as we've mentioned, the other cons usually other con artists
are not usually a lot of times they'll they'll be
in working concert with you, so like they'll come up
and win a couple of rounds while people are watching,
and they'll say, Hey, well that guy just want a
couple of times I can do this this This must
be a legit game card mine. Yeah, exactly. Um. So
(16:03):
those are just three of many examples of street cons,
which are all um short cons is another way to
put them to they fall under another sub umbrella of
short con. That's right, there's no long street con as
far as I know, I don't think so. Um business
and internet cons. These can trapes into the long con
(16:24):
genre of confidence tricks, but for the most part, they're
usually fairly quick. For example, the pumping up scheme. Right,
I've never heard of this one. Pyramid schemes we covered
with the podcast. And should we get how detail do
we need to get here? With the pyramid scheme, I say,
we just go back and listen to Ponzi? Okay? Is
(16:46):
that we should do? Yeah? You should give him another
Ponzi though it's a Ponzi scheme where you basically there
is nothing exchanging hands many times, and you recruit people
under you to give you money, and they recruit people
under them to give them money. And the only people
who ever actually get a payout or the fear very
(17:07):
few people at the top of the pyramid. It's an
unsustainable business model if it actually is a business at all. Sometimes,
like Ponzi's original scheme wasn't a scheme. It was basically
buying and selling like postage stamps because there was an
exchange rate associated with the back of the time. But
um he started taking new investors money because the investment
(17:29):
wasn't paying off like a thought, and giving it to
old investors. And that's the creation of the Ponzi scheme.
It's the people on the bottom pass money upwards, so
only the people in the first couple tears actually can
make money, that's right, Josh. And the way they get
you in is they tell you that you're one of
the top people. It's like, even if you have suspicions
(17:51):
like this pyramid scheme, they're like, it totally is, but
you're one of the top three, so you're in, right,
which makes you a greedy jerk exactly playing on your
greed once again, multi level marketing, Josh. A lot of
times that's basically a pyramid scheme. There are some legitimate
companies like the Pampered Chef or Tupperware or um am way.
(18:13):
But and it is legitimate. I mean they can be,
but they have a pyramid structure. They're just not They're
not a m it's not grif. Yeah. But if you
start poking around and they're a little vague about the
product and stuff and payouts and things like that, then
it's probably not legit pyramids, right, not one of those companies.
But yeah, if you start asking questions, if you ever
(18:33):
started asking questions of a somebody who wants to you
to buy into their franchise and they start sweating and
getting all kg yes, walk away. Yeah, it's a good sign. Yeah.
Do we really need to talk about the Nigerian money
transfer at this point? I would think our listeners are
wise to this, but it still happens. It's an internet scam.
(18:54):
The prints of some country in Africa usually has this
large sum of money and somehow we got your email
address and you were the lucky guy that can get
a portion of it because the money will be freed up.
We just have some problems within our own country with
customs or whatever. Yeah, we we we have a bunch
(19:14):
of money. It's locked up. We need some of your
money to unlock it exactly to bribe people to pay
whatever fees all that stuff. Um. The thing that I
was surprised about is that this this one the Nigerian
money transfer a k A Advanced fee fraud a k
a A four nineteen scam because section four nineteen of
Nigerian I guess federal code deals with fraud. It be
(19:39):
very frequently becomes a long con. Yeah, that's what I was.
I didn't know about that either. Actually. Yeah, so like
once you have given these people your money, they're like, Okay,
well let's see what else we can get out of you,
and um, something got held up at the border, so
we need more money for more bribes, or we need
your social Security number because the bank is asking for it.
(20:00):
And it just keeps going on and on. And then
the insidiousness of the long con is once you're once
you've bought into something and and you're invested for a
substantial amount, it becomes increasingly difficult to walk away. And
it's always just tantalizing. Lee right there, if I pay
just a little more money and I'm gonna get everything
back and then something and it just never pays out
(20:23):
like that because you're being conned. Yeah, and the reason
we didn't know this is because we never fell for
the beginning of the Nigerian UH con. But you know,
I make fun of it a little bit because I
thought everybody on the planet knew about this. But it
still happens, I'm sure, and it probably happens to you know,
like your grandmother. And that's so sad, so wrong in
(20:44):
so many ways. This It's like it's like stealing like
half of the value of somebody's four own k or
something overnight, or um issuing a mortgage to somebody when
you know they can't pay it back because you're just
gonna foreclose in their house and sell it, you know what.
Another it's I wouldn't call it a con. But have
you ever seen, um that guy that sells the UH
(21:07):
learn how to email with this dvd? Have you seen that, dude?
I think I know who you're talking about. Yeah, it's
very stress the white guy with silver hair. Yeah, it's
very rudimentary. Things like learn how to access the internet
or learn how to operate email. We'll see you these DVDs.
They're legit. I'm sure the DVD show you how to
email someone, but it's a it's a shipping scam. Essentially, Okay,
(21:32):
we should probably see O way here, like, is this
an actual scam? It is, Here's what happens. How about this.
I will tell you what happens, and then you, the listener,
can decide whether you think it's a scam or you
the lawyers of this guy explain it to us in
court while you're seeing us. What you see when you
see these commercials is pay eight nine for the set
of DVDs that teach out to email. Shipping is money
(21:56):
back guarantee. So what happens is if you're not satisfied,
you get your money back. You have paid to ship
a DVD. The DVD is ship to via media mail,
which is slow and very very cheap. You can probably
ship a DVD for like ten cents via media mail.
So he's making even if they return the thing and
(22:18):
he gives him their money back, he's he's made the
difference of the shipping. So basically, this guys making money
no matter what scam or not a scam, probably not
because you're getting sea. The guy's providing the service that
he's saying he's providing. That's right, so he guarantee stands.
I reverse my stance. I call that man the smartest
(22:39):
man on the planet. I don't know about that. All right,
he's somewhere in between, and we might cut all this
out even yeah right, Um what else? Oh chuck? What
about um home improvement? Yeah you know, man, I was
just working on this house down the street. I was
putting a roof on it, and we got all this
extra material and I'm gonna have to return it. But
(23:00):
I could give you a heck of a deal. Here's
all my money the end. You've been scammed? Yeah, um,
that's ah that. There are two kinds of home improvement scams.
One that are perpetrated by actual like contractors, where they
basically sell you shoddy work or something like that, or
(23:20):
another frequent one is where they do the work, get
halfway through, say tear your whole roof off, put half
the roof back on, and say I'm gonna need more money,
and what can you do at that point? You're over
a barrel. Yes, that's a scam. Or they might do
shoddy work and have you signed a contract that has
something like some clause in where if you don't make
(23:44):
the payments, if you don't pay them in full, they
can put a lean on your house and basically take
it from you. Um, so you have to pay them
for shoddy work no matter what happens. There's also scams
perpetrated by people who are not contractors, like, um, there's
there's one that's like, uh, they'll re asphalt your driveway
and this group of guys will just basically paint your
(24:05):
driveway black and be like give us our money. Um.
That's they're not actually contractors, their painters really. Yeah, and
since you mentioned it, um, the guys who approach you
in the grocery store parking lot to fix your dents,
they are not auto body specialists. Um, that just happened
to be there with all their materials. They have their materials.
And I'm really really sorry to say that my wife
(24:29):
felt for that. Her old Honda Accord that I drove,
or I'm sorry, Honda Civic that I drove until recently
had two of the worst smeared bondo jobs I've ever
seen in my life. Because she was going into the
grocery score and guys like I can fix that for you,
like I saw just while you're shopping. I saw him.
I never mentioned him, yell for it, and I try
(24:51):
not to give her too much of a hard time.
But she's like, well they seemingly honest. Well they gained
your confidence. Awesome, that's a con there. Um. You could
also have the fake home inspector who supposedly is an
official of the city, state, municipality, county, um, who's just
dropping by an announced at your house and for a
(25:12):
surprise inspection, and it's going to find eight things wrong
with your house that don't meet code, right, but really
do because this person is not legitimate but has a friend. Yeah,
has a friend. You can do it for pretty cheap. Well,
it's gonna be terrible work, unnecessary work, and expensive work.
I got one for you. Yeah, if you ever see
the words uh, debt removal or debt erased, just walk away.
(25:36):
I didn't even know this exists. Oh yeah, man, you
look around their signs on telephone poles that say, you know,
debt removal. We can remove your debt, which means they'll
hand you a document that says your your debt has
been erased. And that's literally all it is is a
piece of paper that says we've erased your debt, but
you've bought it. Yeah, well you've bought that piece of paper,
(25:57):
and imagine, sadly some people have probably taken that piece
of paper into like a bank and said, but no, look,
it says here that my dad has been raised not
so yeah, I'll bet there's a lot of discomfort in
that first few moments where the person is trying to
convince the banker that they don't have any debt any longer.
This thing just make this whole podcast makes me feel bad. Um.
(26:18):
We mentioned mortgage refinance scams, where basically you find somebody
who has some equity, a lot of debt, and not
a lot of income, and you issue them a refinance,
a mortgage refly, and you have to be an actual
banker to do that, and they do it. They do
it because they want that house. You might be signing
(26:39):
away your house. Yeah. Um. And also there's um bankers
who have been known to slip clauses into the fine
print of a home mortgage loan or refly that says,
these people can have this house, by the way, and
you're just sleying over your house for nothing, which I
don't understand how somebody could get away with that, I know.
(26:59):
And then, of course, Chuck, I think we're at the
public service announcement Part how to avoid the con Yeah,
first and foremost, don't be greedy. Yeah, don't be greedy.
If it looks too good to be true, then it's
you're right on the money there. Don't trust anybody, especially
if you're an elderly person. You never get something for nothing.
(27:21):
That is not how the world works. It is never
worked that way. It will never work that way. If
someone is promising you large amounts of money for very little,
uh what you considered very little money, that it's just
it's wrong. Solicitations are usually basically that's a horrendous business
model in this day and age. So if a company
is still using door to door cold visits, they kind
(27:45):
of deserve to go out of business. So you can
go ahead and assume that either one you don't want
to do business with that company that's soon going to
go out of business because they're using a business model
from the fifties or a marketing model from the fifties,
or that these guys are actually on artists and they're
not really going to sell you a security system and
they're actually probably just casing your house to break into
(28:06):
it later. Yeah, maybe, so you need to look out
for other signs like if you meet a nice man
who's got a great deal for you, and he gives
the business card and it says Jim Smith po Box
fourteen and that's all it says on it. Hand it
back to him, walk away, ask for information, ask for
their driver's license, let them see you taking down their
(28:28):
license plate number. Yeah. And you know, if you're asking
them all these questions and they're legit, then they're gonna
be like, sure, man, here they will be. It's gonna
be a little uncomfortable because you're basically saying like, I
don't trust you. You have a little too much pain
on your jeans or whatever, so I don't like the
look of you, but I'm willing to see what you
do when I do this to you. Now, squirm uh.
(28:49):
And if they don't squirm, then you know you might
be able to trust them right right. And if they're
if they really need that decision fast, if you say
something like you know what, this sounds really good, but
give me about a week or so, they're like, no,
no, no no, no, this deal ends today. Yeah, there's very
likely there's not any deal that ends today when there's
lots of money involved. Um. And then chuck. If you
(29:12):
have been conned. The the point of con artists confidence
is that you'll feel too embarrassed and foolish to tell anybody,
so they'll be able to keep operating in virtually the
same place for a while. Right, So you want to
actually go and tell somebody, Go tell the popo, Tell
(29:34):
the popo. Tell call up that that annoying guy on
the local news that goes and sticks microphones and people's faces.
Maybe he'll help you out. You know, there was a
guy named Count Victor Lustig who managed to sell the
Eiffel Tower twice. A pretty good story because the first
guy was too embarrassed to tell anybody that it had happened.
(29:57):
But basically, about fifteen years after the World Air in Paris,
the Paris Exposition that saw the raising of the Eiffel
Tower um the comp the city was like really having
trouble paying to keep it maintained. So it was kind
of it wasn't just completely unbelievable that the city would
hire an agent to secretly shop around the right to
(30:21):
to tear it down and use the steel for scrap.
It was originally supposed to be temporary, right it was?
Who knew? I don't know. So he would take people
in a limousine and make a big fancy show about
it to him up to the observation deck and show
him that the medals that they were going to be bought.
And somebody paid out. This one guy paid out. Um.
(30:42):
Andre Poissant was a steel dealer who paid out for it,
and was too embarrassed to tell anybody. And so Lustick
did it again a month later. Um, and it was
lucrative both times. I liked the guy's first scamp. He
created a machine that they clee turned out blank paper,
(31:04):
right printing machine. He built it as a printing machine
that could print on bills, and basically what he did
was he stuck two hundred dollar bills in. The problem was, um,
the machine could only spit a hundred dollar bill out
every six hours. So even if you had the time
to spend twelve hours staring at this machine, you're going
(31:25):
to see it spit out two hundred dollar bills just
waiting on that third right. Um. So people paid I
think um, three thirty thousand dollars for a machine like this,
and he he was a very smart man, very smart
unethical man. Yeah, because you'd make that thirty grand back
(31:46):
divided by six hours, or divided by a hundred divided
by six. So that's how long it would take or
time six whatever, eighteen hours eight I think eighteen hundred
(32:08):
hours or dight it's a variation of eighteen. What fun
would it be to get a calculator? Oute? You know? So? Um,
I guess that's it. Yeah, well we we should list
some movies here, yeah, um, because I love a good
con artist movie, The Staying classic, I've not seen it,
House of Games. David Mammitt not seen it classic. Uh,
(32:30):
catch me if you can. We've talked about that confidence
I saw that one. I didn't see that one. Was like, okay,
definitely a you'd watch it on a Sunday afternoon. Eddie
Burns Yeah, uh, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one of the
great comedy conn one of the great movies ever. Absolutely
if you're into Mammitt, of course you gotta go with
the Spanish Prisoner, so he wrote to huh he wrote
(32:53):
the Spanish Prisoner and House of Games Yeah, yeah, okay,
and Glen Garry Glen Ross, which is not a con
man movie, and State in Maine another great movie. Yeah,
I'm a big Man, a fan stick man. I'd say
it's um slightly slicker than confidence. Confidence. Yeah, my favorite.
It was The Grifters Stephen Frears movie, which he didn't
(33:15):
get through, and then The Hustler, which proceeded this thing,
and then of course the number one confidence movie of
all time, The Baltimore Bullet. Have you seen it? No? Okay,
I hadn't even heard of it until today, but it's
got a great movie poster and its starred Mr James Cockburn.
(33:37):
Can't go wrong there, now, you can't. If you want
to learn more about cons basically, you should print out
this article and carry it with you all times, so
if a stranger comes up to you and um, you
suspect their conning you, you can use it for quick
and easy reference. You can just pull it out and
unfold it and be like, oh, an envelope full of money.
I know what's going on. Come with me, sir. I'm
(33:58):
placing you under citizens arrest. You can type con artists
into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot
com and by the way, Chuck, citizens arrest, what do
you think? We've got a lot of requests and I
don't know how that works. Let's do it. I've tried
it a bunch of times and I just get beat up. Um.
Since I said search bars, how stuff works, dot com, etcetera,
that means that it is time for listener maw. Josh,
(34:23):
I'm gonna call this a plea for joining our show.
You're Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I've been listening to
and enjoying your podcast for about a year now. I
wanted to thank you for reinforcing the crumbling concrete of
my sanity with your rebar of knowledge. That's why I
read this one. I just like that sentence. I'm twenty
six years old and for the last three years have
been working in a windowless office, endlessly shuffling paperwork. Your podcast,
(34:47):
with its breadth of subjects, with the D with the
D and cheerful banter, has allowed me one glimmering sliver
of anticipation every day I have to drag myself into work. Uh.
Despite your insistence that you have submitted clumsy podcast in
the past, I have found something endearing and enjoyable and
every one of them. Your inclusion of pop culture references,
(35:09):
asides in jokes and personal anecdotes is what distinguishes you
from more mediocre podcast. So who knew that is nice? Um,
if all this flattery didn't tip you off, I was
going to suggest one minor change, however, possibly the addition
of a hip, young, smart alec looking for a career change.
I can assure you I have a voice and face
made for radio, and sensibilities and overall coolness to mesh
(35:33):
seamlessly with this new fangled medium. So he's basically saying,
kind of be on your show as the third team member. Okay,
I thought Jerry was the third team member. Well, the
third podcast or fourth team member. Um, thanks so much
for putting out a consistently great show. I'm a loyal listener.
I will upgrade myself to fanatical if you can explain
(35:55):
open source computing in thirty minutes, Sincerely, Matthew G. So, Matthew,
I can say two things. We will neither explain open
source computing in thirty minutes, nor will we accept your
gracious offer to join us as a third podcaster. What
(36:18):
are you saying I should not? Do you want him
on the show? No? Okay, yeah that's what I'm saying.
I'm trying to break it to him easy that the
position has been filled it's there's there are no openings here.
I don't we are what's called a comic dietd yes,
I don't know how we could ever become a triad,
even for a single episode if it wasn't an interview.
(36:40):
We had Strickland in here. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right.
But he's not funny, so that's not that's no threat
to our comic diet. And he can explain explain open
source computing. Well, let's just get Strickland in here again. No,
just give this guy to Strickland. All right, done either way?
Those just you and me, right, that's right, Okay, thank
you Matthew. Gee though, for your spunks, can we like that? Yes? Um,
(37:05):
if you have ever been conned, we'd like to hear
about it, right chuck, Yeah, it's sad, but yeah, let's
hear it. Okay, Well we can share with people. How
about this? Why don't you go share your cons on
the Facebook page so everybody can look out for the hottest, newest,
hippest cons going on. Um, we're at Facebook dot com
slash stuff. You should know. You can reach us on
(37:26):
Twitter at s Y s K podcast and you can
send us plain old fashion email at stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for moral this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
(37:47):
icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it
today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve cameras. It's ready, Are you
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Josh Clark
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