Just received word that BBC3 in the UK is showing a series called “The Real Hustle Around The World”
Robert Webb takes an entertaining look at the six different countries that have made their own versions of the hit show The Real Hustle. Featuring the best and worst scams from Russia, America, Israel, Belgium, Germany and Australia.
If you get a chance to watch it, you might just catch me, Adam and Clare, swindling suckers in Sydney.
If you enjoy it, please email Channel 9 and ask them to show the full Australian series.
Swindling dancers with a fake audition. Notice the neckerchief.
I had an email this morning from a TV show in the UK wanting some history on the Melon Drop. The Melon Drop is a classic scam perpetrated against Japanese tourists.
The tourist is tricked into accidentally breaking a melon which they are forced to pay for. Since Melons are often quite expensive in Japan, the victim pays over-inflated prices for the cheap fruit.
‘The Melon Drop’ has become short hand for any similar scam. Here is my reply:
Hi –
You’ve asked a bit of a loaded question there!
The idea of tricking a victim into ‘accidentally’ breaking an item is as old as time. It was particularly popular in the middle ages.
However, ‘The Melon Drop’ involving Japanese tourists and expensive fruit is far more popular as a story than it is as an actual real-world scam.
Most of the reports are anecdotal rather than from verifiable sources. I can tell you the following…
It most likely started in San Francisco in the early 1970s. After the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Japan lifted the country’s strict post-war travel restrictions, allowing Japanese citizens to travel abroad far more easily. The Japanese have had a long history of ‘travel for pleasure’, stemming back to the seventh century, and huge numbers of middle- and upper-class Japanese were eager to travel for the first time.
A large number travelled to San Francisco, which has always attracted Southeast Asian people going back to the gold rush in the 1800’s. The modern Fortune Cookie comes from San Francisco, and the city is one of the few in the US to have a “Japantown”.
Most of my resources suggest that it was here that the scam first involving melons and Japanese tourists occurred.
A few days back, Australian broadcaster Derryn Hinch admitted in an article in the Herald Sun to being scammed. He called it a
“…clever internet scam that made those Nigerian banking fraudsters look like amateurs.”
It wasn’t.
Essentially, Hinch sent $4000 to a New Yorker who had offered to rent him an apartment for a few weeks. The scammer didn’t really own the apartment and took off with his money.
Never, ever send a stranger money via Western Union. Using Western Union is like having unprotected sex. (now you have images of Hinch having sex). It’s convient and easy but, eventually it will end up getting you in trouble.
Swindling dancers with a fake audition. Notice the neckerchief. 
