Scammers, scams, and scammery. The greatest cons in history.
October 6, 2007 3:17 PM   Subscribe

[ScamFilter] What are some of your favorite cons, frauds, heists, scams, bamboozlers, con-artists, swindlers, cheats, bilkers, defrauders, embezzlers, and/or crooks.

After reading yesterday's post on Loud Pearlman's unbelievable life of graft and scam, I was hoping to query the hive-mind about some other examples. The more ingenious or far-fetched, the better.
posted by willie11 to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: this is a what's your favorite X chatfilter post.

 
previously
snopes and more snopes
The Straight Dope is another good place to look
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:28 PM on October 6, 2007




The ZZZZ Best story was very interesting.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:28 PM on October 6, 2007 [1 favorite]


For historical cons, you might enjoy The Big Con by David Maurer (Amazon or your local library).
posted by hattifattener at 3:35 PM on October 6, 2007


Response by poster: Drats, I meant Lou Pearlman. And for those who didn't catch it, here's a link to the post and the article.
posted by willie11 at 3:42 PM on October 6, 2007


The pigeon drop.
posted by jayder at 3:48 PM on October 6, 2007


Also this thread has some nice references.

And of course, these Mefi tags have a bunch of good stuff:
- scam
- scams (quite different posts tagged with 'scam' and 'scams', oddly)
- fraud (you might especially like this New Yorker article about massive old-wine fraud)
- tales of conmen
- more tales fo conmen
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:53 PM on October 6, 2007


Con man Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower for scrap -- twice.
posted by futility closet at 4:03 PM on October 6, 2007


There's a long list of Ponzi schemes (including, of course, the original) on this Wikipedia page.
posted by cerebus19 at 4:05 PM on October 6, 2007


James Addison Reavis, the so-called Baron of Arizona, forged a pile of documents giving him claim to 18,000 square miles of land in the Southwest.
posted by xil at 4:06 PM on October 6, 2007


Christopher Rocancourt
posted by generalist at 4:08 PM on October 6, 2007


Seventh grade. A week prior, we'd turned in our term papers, which were now sitting, graded, on the teacher's desk. We students were sitting at our desks, waiting for class to begin. The teacher was out in the hall, talking to somebody.

One of the kids, a boy named Dan, pulled his paper out of his backpack. He's only just finished it. In front of the whole class (except for the teacher), he ran up to the teacher's desk and stuffed his paper into the middle of the stack of graded papers. Then he rushed back to his own desk and sat down.

The teacher came in and said, "I've graded your papers and I'm going to return them to you. But first, I'm sorry to say that I never received a paper from Sally, Michael, Dan and..."

Dan shot up and said, "WHAT?!? I turned one IN. I KNOW I turned one in!"

The teacher, nobody's fool, said, "Sure you did, Dan."

Dan grew indignant. "You don't believe me? I'm telling you that I TURNED IT IN!"

The teacher sighed. "Well, if you turned it in, then you find it in that stack on my desk. Go on."

Dan looked a little less sure of himself. Slowly, he walked up to the teacher's desk and flipped through the stack of papers. For a second, he looked like he was going to give up. Then, suddenly, he pulled a paper out of the stack and waved it about. "Here it is! I knew it! I KNEW it! I knew I turned it in. I TOLD you!!!"

The teacher's eyes went wide. "Oh! It IS your paper. Goodnes, Dan. I don't know how I missed it. I owe you a big apology. I'll have to grade it tonight and get it back to you tomorrow. I hope that's okay."

This entire performance was delivered in front of 25 kids who knew what Dan had done. Any one of them could have ratted him out. Dan was counting on the "schoolkid code of ethics." It didn't let him down.
posted by grumblebee at 4:08 PM on October 6, 2007 [1 favorite]


joseph yves limantour, the man who tried to steal san francisco, armed with a forged mexican land grant, and very nearly succeeded.
posted by bruce at 4:26 PM on October 6, 2007


Frank Abagnale Jr. of Catch Me If You Can fame.
posted by mpls2 at 5:05 PM on October 6, 2007


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