How con artists get their marks
You may not have heard of Fred Demara, a.k.a. the Great Imposter, who was one of the greatest con artists of all time. But his story holds an important — and entertaining — lesson.
His bizarre career reached a rather ghoulish apotheosis during the early 1950s when he passed himself off as a surgeon on a Royal Canadian Navy vessel called the Cayuga.
And the really chilling part of the story is he was quite good at slicing and dicing our wounded seamen and, indeed, when he was eventually exposed as a total fraud the ship’s captain was in more or less complete denial, insisting he re-employ “Dr. Cyr” immediately.
Demara is just one of an extraordinary collection of grifters who populate Maria Konnikova’s quite fascinating exploration of the world of professional scammers and their marks in The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time.
A psychologist and contributor to the New Yorker magazine, Konnikova has the academic bone fides to give this book analytic heft, but what I found most engaging were her short-form portraits of the villains and their victims. At times you scratch your head in utter disbelief that some folks are just so “gullible.”
Take the story of a woman named Debra Saalfield who one day passes the salon of a psychic called Zena, a.k.a. Sylvia Mitchell. Recently dumped by both her employer and her boyfriend, Debra is, well, desolate, and Zena, employing the one indispensable tool of a good con artist — intuitive psychology — picks up the vibe, pronto.
Minutes into the “consultation,” Zena/ Sylvia suggests Debra suffers from a serious affliction: too big an attachment to material possessions. But don’t fret, dear, there’s a cure: “Hand over $27,000 as an exercise in letting go of wealth. Sylvia promises to keep it in a jar. And she could have it back anytime she so desired.”
Amazingly, Debra complies. But with a serious case of “mark’s remorse” next morning, she heads to her bank to find the cheque has cleared — and Zena/Sylvia is in no mood to pony up.
The Confidence Game is chock-a-block with such mind-numbing scams, as well as Konnikova’s psychological explanations for why such transparent frauds seem to succeed so effortlessly.
Konnikova concludes that grifters, like priests and prophets, will always be with us because they’re in the biz of selling hope. “It is our need to hold onto belief — logic be damned — that continues to fuel the great cons of the world.” Robert Collison is a Toronto writer and editor.