Confidence tricks

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 61. Chapters: Confidence trick, Pyramid scheme, Ponzi scheme, Cold reading, List of confidence tricks, List of Ponzi schemes, White van speaker scam, Strip search prank call scam, Great Reality TV Swindle, Enzyte, Hongcheng Magic Liquid, Three-card Monte, Art student scam, Work-at-home scheme, Miracle cars scam, Scams in intellectual property, Fortune telling fraud, Hustling, Black money scam, Shell game, E-mail fraud, Pig in a poke, Clip joint, Reloading scam, Hot reading, Television Preview, Spanish Prisoner, Mock auction, Thai gem scam, List of e-mail scams, Moving scam, Shyster, Vanity gallery, Slavery reparations scam, Badger game, Patent safe, BioPerformance, Coin rolling scams, Children of Lieutenant Schmidt, El Gordo de la Primitiva Lottery International Promotions Programmes, Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, Cramming, Embarrassing cheque, Thai tailor scam, The switch, Green goods scam, Pigeon drop, Sucker list, Bogus escrow, Fiddle game, Azeztulite, Welsh Thrasher faith scam, Kansas City Shuffle, Thai zig zag scam, Bride scam, Drop swindle, Salting, Sandbagging. Excerpt: This list of confidence tricks and scams should not be considered complete, but covers the most common examples. Confidence tricks and scams are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the "con artist" or simply "artist", and the intended victim is the "mark". Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied; these include fake franchises, real estate "sure things", get-rich-quick books, wealth-building seminars, self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters, fortune tellers, quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals, Nigerian money scams, charms and talismans. Variations include the pyramid scheme, the Ponzi scheme, and the Matrix sale. Count Victor Lustig sold the "money-printing machine" which he claimed could copy $100 bills. The client, sensing huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price (usually over $30,000). Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce just two more $100 bills, but after that it produced only blank paper, as its supply of hidden $100 bills would have become exhausted. This type of scheme is also called the "money box" scheme. Salting or "salting the mine" are terms for a scam in which gemstones or gold ore are planted in a mine or on the landscape, duping the greedy mark into purchasing shares in a worthless or non-existent mining company. During gold rushes, scammers would load shotguns with gold dust and shoot into the sides of the mine to give the appearance of a rich ore, thus "salting the mine". Examples include the diamond hoax of 1872 and the Bre-X gold fraud of the mid-1990s. This trick was popularized in the HBO series Deadwood, when Al Swearingen and E. B. Farnum trick Brom Garret into believing gold is to be found on the claim Swearingen intends to sell him. The Spanish Prisoner scam-and its modern variant, the advance-fee fraud or "Nigerian scam"-take advantage of t