The Art of the Con

by R. Paul Wilson

  Short cons become more sophisticated as scammers learn how to manipulate people into performing actions based on their normal routine. The art of “change raising” is a perfect example of this.

  Change Raising

  Despite what many of us believe, human beings aren’t very good at performing several tasks at the same time or analyzing multiple pieces of information at once. Without the opportunity (or inclination) to separate actions and give them the proper attention, people naturally estimate and make assumptions. Being able to predict or manipulate these actions is one of the hustler’s most powerful tools.

  Change Raising is an old-school scam played on small businesses, bars, or stores where cash is exchanged in return for goods or services. The hustler makes a small purchase, and when he gets his change, he then engages in a series of interactions with the cashier meant to distract him from giving the correct change. During this transaction, the cashier unwittingly hands over more money than intended. This is a difficult scam to explain in print as it is supposed to be confusing! Performed live, it looks like a magic trick and can be extremely difficult to reconstruct.

  I’m going to describe exactly how I would pull this scam, from my perspective as the hustler:

  In a small casino, just off the Nevada freeway, I walk to the cashier’s cage with two fifty-dollar bills in my pocket. I take out one fifty and ask the cashier to break it into ten five-dollar bills. She takes my money and deals out ten fives, which I take to my pocket, but as she’s about to put my fifty into the drawer, I stop her and ask, “do your slot machines accept fifty-dollar bills?”

  “Sure they do,” she says.

  “Then I’ve made a mistake. I don’t want to feed all of these into the machine one at a time!”

  I pass her the stack of five-dollar bills and take back the fifty, but when she counts the fives, there’s a problem.

  “You’ve given me too much. This is ninety-five dollars!”

  Sure enough, I’ve given her nine five-dollar bills and the fifty that was in my pocket, leaving one five-dollar bill in the same pocket.

  I now take the stray five-dollar bill from my pocket and say, “Do the machines accept hundreds?”

  “Yes, of course.” She replies.

  “If I give you this five, how much is that in total?”

  Ninety-five plus five is obviously one hundred. When she confirms this, I say, “in that case, just give me a hundred-dollar bill. Sorry to waste your time!”

  She hands me a hundred in return for the cash in front of her, counting to make sure she hasn’t made a mistake. She has, but unless she’s familiar with this scam, has been properly trained, or immediately counts all of the cash in her drawer, the truth won’t become apparent until the end of her shift when she will be fifty dollars light.

  Put simply, I walked up with two fifty-dollar bills and left with a fifty and a hundred.

  Confused? You should be. Change raisers are experts at keeping their mark focused on the wrong thing at the wrong time. I’ve even seen footage of a scammer repeating this con several times with the same clerk, until his cash drawer is hundreds of dollars light.

  Here’s how it works:

  I have two fifty-dollar bills and receive ten fives in exchange for one of my fifties, but before my original fifty-dollar bill goes to the drawer, I change my mind and apparently trade the stack of five-dollar bills back again, taking my original fifty from the clerk and pocketing it.

  The money I just handed to her is actually too much because I’ve secretly exchanged one five for my other fifty-dollar bill, so that when the cashier counts, she tells me I’ve given her too much.

  The correct way to resolve this would be to give me back the fifty in exchange for the stray five-dollar bill, but instead, I let her keep that fifty and add the remaining five so that the cashier is holding one hundred dollars.

  The correct course has not changed, she should still only give me fifty dollars, but it now seems logical to give me a hundred-dollar bill in exchange for the hundred dollars she is holding.

  The cashier doesn’t realize that she’s already given me fifty dollars in exchange for that cash, which I quickly removed to my pocket, and that she only needs to give fifty dollars more to make it right.

  Performing one transaction at a time protects the cashier and her employer from this con. By keeping the cashier focused on the money in her hand, the hustler cons her into giving an additional fifty dollars. The fifty-dollar bill I put into my pocket after handing back the ten bills should have stayed on the counter and have been included in the cashier’s calculations. Instead, I removed it and allowed her to forget about it. Essentially, fifty dollars is stolen in the middle of the con; even if the cashier realizes this, it’s easy to pass it off as a mistake. Unless she already knows the con and calls security.

  A hustler once told me how a cashier took back the bills, handed over the first fifty, and then counted them as just fifty dollars. She deliberately kept the added fifty for herself, smiled at him, and said, “thanks.” She knew exactly what he was trying to pull and ended up robbing him from the safety of her cage.

  Major Las Vegas resorts train their staff how to spot this type of con. Large companies have implemented strict procedures that staff will not break, no matter how hard someone tries to make them. Change raising, in all its forms, relies on distracting the victim with a procedure that encourages them to perform two transactions at the same time. The hustler interrupts the first transaction before it is completed, then introduces a second transaction. In the case above, the cashier should have put my original fifty-dollar bill into the drawer and finished that exchange before taking back the ten bills and counting them. This way that original fifty would not remain in play and could not be spirited into my pocket while she counted the other bills. Put simply, she should have just counted my money and given me change, but this scam works because it makes the mark count, give, give, count and then give again!

  Tricks and Traps

  Entire books could be written (and have been) to record all the short cons that exist. In essence, they are well-constructed tricks designed to trap people into losing something through seemingly normal, everyday actions. Unlike a con game, where bait is used to attract and focus the mark, a good short con is most effective when it appears to be invisible, ordinary, or accidental and does not arouse suspicion until it’s too late.

  Short cons where the hustler hooks the mark and draws him into a trap are rare, but they certainly exist. One of my favorite examples is the old Put and Take spinning top, a tiny plastic spindle with several sides with either the letter “P” or “T” over a small number or the letter “A.” The game is simple—it’s based on the dreidel game played by Jews on Hanukkah—and can be played by any number of suckers. Everyone begins by dropping a dollar into the pot, then each take turns to spin the top, which decides whether they put more money into the pot (P) or take money from it (T). If “P3” comes up, three dollars must be added and if “T3” appears then three dollars are removed by that player. “PA” is an unlucky roll since the player must now match everything in the pot, doubling its value. “TA” would win the pot outright and the game would begin again with a fresh round of dollar bills.

  This type of con depends on a gaffed top that looks entirely normal but has been specially molded to land on certain sides depending on the direction that the top is spun. This means that a spin in one direction wins most of the time and a spin in the other direction loses most of the time. Since most people spin the top clockwise, the hustler simply needs to spin counterclockwise in order to win.

  Such a simple swindle needs only a few people to generate more than enough action to make it worthwhile. These tops usually sell for hundreds of dollars and come with an honest top and a gaffed duplicate that appears identical to the untrained eye. Professionals would often buy dozens of honest tops so they could apparently leave the one they’d been playing with behind so the suckers would still be playi
ng long after the hustler was gone.

  This is an old scam and extremely rare today, but I know a few people who make professional cheating devices, and they’re still selling the occasional set of tops to non-collectors who are almost certainly using them to steal. As a short con, I regard this as something of a classic. The grifter enters a bar, and after a little flimflam, gets enough action to start a game before leaving with all the money. This is the simplest version of the game, but there’s a devilish twist that turns this scam into a double-whammy.

  After the first game, the hustler waits until everyone leaves and then confesses to the owner of the bar that the top is gaffed. Apparently drunk, the con man convinces his mark to buy the top so he can win back what he lost and make a lot more besides. A few days later, another grifter enters the same bar and acts like a chump until the owner offers to play the put and take game for money. The owner then gets cleaned out again in an apparent run of bad luck, completely unaware that his spinning top has been switched for one that works in the opposite direction!

  Short cons catch the victim out when they least expect it, sometimes (though rarely) after a contrived setup, and in the put and take scam, one con creates the perfect conditions for another. In the magic bar scam described at the beginning of this chapter—where I lit the c-note on fire—a few betchas and a couple of conjuring tricks was enough to create the perfect opportunity for a bizarre proposition. With a crowd of people demanding to see more magic, it was a lot easier to convince the bartender to agree to such a large bet and to honor it after I won; however, even if he refused to pay up, I would have come out ahead. After giving me the hundred, the register was actually short almost two hundred dollars.

  I first learned of this scam from the Eddie Fields book A Life Among Secrets, but I’m assured that the idea is an old one. Fields himself was a successful short con artist, a pool hustler, and a gifted magician who dabbled in psychic readings. He had also been a successful pitchman, and I have no doubt he was able to easily build a crowd in any situation. The secret to this scam is a confederate in the crowd who is the last person to reach under the napkin and confirm that the signed hundred-dollar bill is still there. He secretly palms the bill after reaching under the napkin while I continue on and pretend as if the bill is still inside. As I go through the motions of rolling up the napkin and burning it, all attention is focused on me and the ashtray as my partner quietly walks to the other end of the bar and buys a drink from the other bartender using the signed hundred dollar bill!

  While everyone was watching the napkin burn, the other bartender unwittingly did the dirty work for me by replacing the signed bill in the register before giving my confederate over ninety dollars in change! Assuming that the first bartender honored our agreement, we could actually have walked away with $190!

  This was all for the benefit of the bar owner, who is a dear friend and asked me to pull this scam on his own staff to prove to them how, even under the most impossible of conditions, anyone can be scammed.

  There are an enormous variety of short cons, and they are extremely hard to spot until it’s too late. Unlike a street game or a confidence trick, short cons like distraction steals, change raising, or the dine and dash take advantage of everyday situations and natural reactions. More involved short cons like the magic bar bet or the put and take game are hit-and-run scams that happen so quickly, the mark can barely remember what happened or even how he got caught up in the action.

  I firmly believe that the more we can expose these scams, the more difficult they will become for hustlers to pull off. Training staff to follow procedures is an effective way to defeat change-raisers, but there’s more than one way to “make a take.” A little time demonstrating these scams to all employees who handle cash would give them enough experience to recognize almost any variation.

  Sadly, most people who have enough knowledge to suspect a short con learned the hard way, having fallen victim to a scam in the past. When I pulled the BH wallet scam for The Real Hustle in London, the waitress came running after me once she discovered the ruse. Even after seeing my hidden microphone, she refused to go back to the restaurant without me.

  As she said to me afterward, “I’ve been cheated before and wasn’t going to let you go without a fight!”

  Footnote

  * The Real Hustle was only permitted (by the BBC) to re-enact existing scams, but on Scammed, I was challenged to invent my own versions.

  FEEL THE HUSTLE

  The guy just wouldn’t shut up. This was his local pool hall, he was a well-known character, and our cameras were in the open, supposedly to watch a hustler in action. He incorrectly thought that he was the hustler; in fact, he was playing the part so well I could barely get a word in. As he barked his way around the table, I glanced over to my “girlfriend” Melissa, who was racking balls at a nearby table. My friend Jason England stood nearby, loving every minute as the mark mocked my attempts to play while the camera crew watched every poorly aimed shot I attempted at the table. Finally, after another defeat, the loudmouth threw down a challenge. He’d play for money but would give me enough weight to make it a fair game.

  This meant that I could play with a starting advantage that would even out our obvious skill difference, but I remained uncertain despite the mark’s attempts to bully me into betting. Finally, as I walked back to Melissa, the mark spat the words I’d been waiting for: “I’ll even play your girlfriend, if you’re too scared!”

  “You’d give her the same weight?” I asked, and the mark stopped in his tracks. This hustler had spent so much time and energy bad-mouthing me for the benefit of his peanut gallery, he’d paid no attention to the girl at the next table. As soon as the mark hesitated, it was my turn to drive the train. “Seriously? You don’t want to play a girl?” The onlookers laughed and the “hustler” regained his composure. After a few minutes of backchat, he agreed to give Melissa a starting advantage. Not as much weight as he’d offered me, but it was more than we needed. When Melissa stepped up to the table, I could see that our mark already knew he’d been taken.

  For twenty minutes I had let him showboat for the cameras and his buddies, while Melissa quietly waited in the shadows. As soon as she leaned forward for the break, it was clear Melissa knew what she was doing and the mark recognized her instantly. He had just given points away to Melissa Herndon, known on the professional pool circuit as “The Dragon Lady.”

  Our hustler had been hustled and was forced to bring his A game, which turned out to be considerable; even with an advantage, Melissa barely won the game. Handing over his money, the mark suggested another round, this time starting even. Melissa agreed, and we racked the balls and stood back to watch the show. Melissa had been deliberately holding back her skills—“sandbagging”—to con the mark into a second game, but as it turned out, so had he. With the stakes now much higher, both players fought to the finish when Melissa pulled off a perfect winning shot as the mark chewed his teeth in disgust. “One more?” he asked, but I shook my head. I was pretty certain he had more in reserve and we’d already won enough to call it a day. But as we left the pool hall, Melissa was disappointed. “Why did we stop playing? We could have skimmed that guy all day,” she said. Turns out she had still been sandbagging our mark and was just getting started.

  Not everyone spends enough time in pool halls to fall victim to a hustler, but you can find yourself being pressured by similar strategies in many walks of life. From a car salesroom to unwanted calls from boiler-room investment firms, the tactic used is commonplace: Someone tries to secure a commitment by making you focus on the supposedly positive aspects of a deal, without revealing (or misdirecting you from) its negative aspects.

  It’s worth learning how to recognize situations where one side might have an unfair (but legal) edge over the other; in the gambling world, there’s a particular breed of player who can make a great deal of money identifying flaws in the system.

  The short man in the peaked hat moved
around the table, taking shots without hesitation, each finding its mark with disturbing accuracy. Like a cat prowling for mice in the shadows, “Moves” leaned and turned until he had the perfect line, then quickly fired at the cue ball.

  “I just want to know if they’ve got gamble,” he told me, “otherwise I’m wasting everyone’s time, you know?”

  I sat on a stool nearby as he easily cleared the table, examining a pair of flip-flops that looked perfectly ordinary on top but when turned over, revealed a remarkable contraption. Its purpose was to allow a hustler to control the flip of a coin with 100 percent accuracy.

  This cheap-looking plastic footwear allowed Moves to slide a switch to either the right or left, releasing a quarter onto the floor from underneath his feet. The device was inlaid into a well he had cut into the sole with another cut-out, which was filled with sticky wax. With a flick of his wrist and a snap of his fingers, Moves would spin a coin on the floor, and while it was still spinning, he would stamp his foot onto the coin, trapping it underneath. “If they’re going to bet on a coin toss, they’ll bet on a game,” he explained, and depending on their answer, Moves could reveal the coin to be either heads-up or tails-up since the original coin was now stuck to the sticky wax and the toe switch could dictate which coin was released before lifting his foot. Whichever side of the coin Moves revealed depended on much more than whether the sucker called heads or tails. This was not just a trick to win easy money, it was the opening gambit in a game of hustle.

  Moves is a fascinating character, smart as a whip, charming, funny, and accustomed to making people feel comfortable around him. His personality and demeanor is so disarming that it’s easy to assume you could beat him at anything. The first time I saw him play, I thought that maybe he was all talk and had very little skill at the table. Of course, that was his intention. Anyone can hold back or conceal their real skill, but the hustle is all about making people believe what they’re seeing. The slightest suspicion that a player is sandbagging will send a sucker to the door. As I got to know him better, he started to open up, to reveal more about his approach to the game and to show just how much skill he really had.