The Scam The mark is presented with an ordinary looking lock. The swindler shows him how the look is easily opened and closed with a key.
The mark is then persuaded to bet on whether or not he thinks he can open the lock himself. Being a proud individual, he takes the bet…and can not open the lock.
There are various ways for the swindler to gaff the lock. The simplest way is to create a gravity lock, one in which all of the springs have been removed. Turned face down, the pins of the lock all fall into place and only the correct key will open the lock. Down face up and pins all fall away so that any key will open the lock.
David Maurer, in The Big Con, briefly describes the Slough being played as a con game with three keys or three locks and the mark having to match the key to the lock.
Variations In The Shiv, a locking knife is used. Only the con man knows how to unlock the knife or knives.
Case Study The Texas criminal reports: cases argued and adjudged in the Court of Criminal Appeals of the State of Texas
JAMES MCFARLAND V. THE STATE.
No. 2642. Decided June 24, 1903.
1. —Swindling.
Defendant and a confederate had two locks, one of which could be opened and the other could not. They induced the prosecutor to bet that he could open the one shown him, which was the one that could be unlocked. After the bet was made they, without the knowledge of prosecutor, exchanged the locks, and he failed to open the one handed him, which could not be unlocked. Held, a clear case of swindling.
2. —Flight After Arrest.
On a trial for swindling it was competent to prove that defendant, after his arrest, jumped out of a window and fled. The evidence was not inadmissible because defendant was in arrest and unwarned.
3. —Evidence—Fruits of Crime.
Where a party in arrest is found in possession of the fruits of his crime, it is a physical fact, and admissible in evidence against him and those who acted with him in the crime; and the question of warning is not in such a case, it not being a confession or admission.
Appeal from the District Court of Tarrant. Tried below before Hon. M. E. Smith.
Appeal from a conviction of swindling; penalty, five years imprisonment in the penitentiary.
The amount obtained by defendant and his confederate, by means of the swindle, was $175.
The opinion sufficiently states the case.
No briefs for either party found with the record.
Howard Martin, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.
DAVIDSON, PRESIDING JUDGE.—The indictment charges appellant with swindling by means of a trick lock; and it is shown that he and Barnett acted together in swindling Murphy. The evidence discloses the swindling occurred in Fort Worth on Saturday morning, about 8 or 8:30 o’clock; that the parties by their devices, representations and acts induced the injured party to bet with one of the two conspirators that fee could open one of the locks. It seems they had two, one of which could be opened and the other not. After inducing him to make the bet, the locks were changed without his knowledge, and, of course, he failed to open the lock. This shows a clear case of swindling, so far as the State’s evidence is concerned. In a day or two after the alleged offense, the parties were arrested. While en route from the place of arrest to the city hall, Murphy testified that he followed the officer and defendant and Barnett; that they entered the city hall before his arrival; that they had not seen him until he entered the city hall; when he entered, they were sitting on a bench in the police office, and as he entered the door, both looked at witness, and one of them said “Jesus Christ,” and both of them immediately ran and jumped out of the window and fled. Witness chased Barnett and caught him, and an officer chased and caught defendant. This evidence was objected to because appellant was under arrest and not warned as required by law. The court qualified this bill by stating that on objection he excluded the expression used by one of the defendants, and in the charge instructed the jury to disregard that expression. It would seem from this that the testimony in regard to jumping out of the window and flight from the city hall was left before the jury. In this there was no error. Buchanan’s case, 41 Texas, Crim. Rep., 127; Waits’ case, 13 Texas Crim. App., 169.
Witness Murphy was further permitted to testify: “After Officer Newby arrested defendant and Barnett, I followed along behind the three on the way to the city hall; I saw Barnett put his hand in his pocket and raise the flap of his coat pocket as if he was fingering with the flap of his pocket; after we arrived at the city hall, I saw the officers search Barnett, and saw them find in the flap of the pocket, between the linings of the flap of the coat pocket, a pair of locks, the same locks as those used by them on the morning of October 4, 1902, the time they got my money; there was a small hole in the lining of the flap of his coat pocket; the officers got the locks out of the of locks, the same locks as those used by them on the morning of October 4, 1902, the time they got my money; there was a small hole in the lining of the flap of his coat pocket; the officers got the locks out of the hole.” Objection was urged because appellant was under arrest at the time these matters occurred and was not warned; and on the further ground that defendant was not responsible for any of these acts; that if a conspiracy had previously existed between them to swindle Murphy these acts were long subsequent to the consummation of such conspiracy.
Take As a short con, only a few dollars can be taken.
The Melbourne Magic Festival is in full swing and I’ve just finished a week of my one man show ‘Scamapalooza’.
Sharing a dressing room with various rabbit pullers, box jumpers and dove wranglers as got me thinking more and more about the role of magic in scams.
Many of the tools in the magician’s tool kit come from the world of swindler. The second deal, the pass, the topit and the cups & balls all started as swindles before becoming conjuring tricks and methods.
But what about the opposite? Can a magic trick become a scam?
In Eric Garcia’s novel, Matchstick Men, the story begins and ends with a magic trick played out as a scam. Two grifters argue you in a diner about the sleight of hand abilities of one of them. The would be magician offers to perform a simple card trick on a nearby sucker.
A card is selected by the sucker and then returned to the deck which is shuffled. The cards are slowly dealt, face up, on the table. The magician/grifter reaches the selected card…but keeps on going. He appears to have missed the card, turning over several more cards. He stops.
“The next card I turn over will be yours.”
The grifter’s friends mocks him again, suggesting he’ll get it wrong.
“Alright…$100 says the next card I turnover is yours.”
With the grifter’s encouragement, the sucker, knowing his card is already turned over, takes the bet. The grifter reaches out, takes the mark’s card from the pile on the table and turns it face down!
Evil magician refuses to pay for clipart.
In one of his television specials, magician Paul Zenon performed a trick on a bartender where a signed and borrowed 10 pound note vanished from his hands and appeared in the bartender’s cash register.
He then reveal the secret. After vanishing the signed note, he drop it on the group. A confederate came and picked up the note and took it to the other end of the bar to another bartender. He then spent 10 pounds on a beer getting 7 pounds change. The second bartender put the note in the cash register where the first bartender found it.
The scam? The confederate paid for the beer and got seven pounds change from the borrowed note! They got they cash and beer for free!
One of my own scam magic tricks also happens at the cash register. Short on change for a tip, I pick up a $2 coin from the bar’s tip jar. I then pick up 5c piece. Waving the 5c over the $2, the coin changes into a second $2 coin. I put the $4 into the jar and walk off. The bartender feels like I’ve given them a $1.95 tip.
In reality, when I pick up the first $2 coin from the jar, I also secretly take a second $2 coin. Using a little sleight of hand (a bobo switch for my magician readers) I appear to change the 5c into $2. When I drop the $4 in the tip jar, I’m just returning their own money to them.
And I walk away with their 5c.
Hey, profit is profit.
Paul Zenon performs a hilarious magic trick that looks like a scam…but isn’t.
Here is an old riddle for you from my previous blog.
Google is cheating.
Imagine you just purchased a Rolex off ebay. It is identical in every way to a Rolex watch. You test the metal content and the gold is real gold, the silver is real silver and the stainless steel is real steel. Unlike the fakes, it weighs exactly the same as a Rolex, down to the gram. The second hand ticks once a second, every second and is perfectly in time with the atomic clock. The watch comes with papers individually certified by the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètresand. The box is sealed with an official Rolex seal.
The ‘Rats and Cats’ scam first appeared as an advertisement in The Lacon Local News - an illinois newspaper in 1875. The paper printed a small advertisment offering the following deal:-
We are starting with a cat in ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens per year. The cats skins will fetch 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5000 cats a day.
Now what shall we feed the cats?
We will start a rat ranch next door with 1000,000 rats. The rats breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat.
Now what shall we feed the rats?
We feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now get this! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the skins for nothing!
You have to remember that this was over one hundred years ago when there were more uses for a cat pelt than just dressing Whitney Housten for court appearances.
Turns out I won’t always love you.
The story was picked up by the AP and run across the US for weeks attracting thousands of would be investors to The Lacon Local News.
However, the business never actually existed. Not because it was scam but because it was a hoax. Willis Powell, the editor of the Lacon, was sick and tired of the various get rich quick advertisements that he was forced to print that he decided to create his own joke version.
It was his way of commenting on the phenomenon without directly biting the hand that feeds him. Of course, it blew up in his face and he vowed to never print hoaxes again.
In 1972, writer Clifford Irving sold a fake autobiography of reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes to publishers McGraw Hill. Despite lie detectors, phone calls from real Hughes and extensive tests by handwriting experts to see if the signature on the contract were really by Hughes, the publishers stood by Irving.
In his account of the hoax, Project Octavio, Irving tried to shift some of the blame onto McGraw-Hill
“A moment in time arrives…when the victim’s willingness may lead him, consciously or otherwise, across the thin dividing line between gullibility and culpability.”
It’s an excuse that con artists from the smallest street hustler to the largest Ponzi schemer uses to excuse their actions and assuage their guilt: - You can’t con an honest man.
It is true that scams, by their very nature, require a certain willingness from the victim. If the victim is not willing, the scam becomes petty theft. The mark must freely hand over the money.
Exploiting the weakness of the mark does not make the mark culpable. Certainly, the mark may be guilty of a crime but not the crime with which we accuse the con artist.
Imagine I tell you I want your help in a card cheating scam. However, the scam is a double bluff and you end up penniless.
Do you deserve to be scammed?
Does being the perpetrator of one crime, make it ok to make you the victim of another?
As a con artist, am I less culpable for my crime because you areparticularly gullible or particularly dishonest?
