How to Win at Life by Cheating at Everything

by Mark Perez

  A braggy and obnoxious thrift-store letterman’s jacket.

  A doctored transcript that makes you physically ineligible to participate.

  Phony newspaper clippings any asshole can doctor for you at Kinkos.

  An arm cast. And add some fake signatures to it. That’s always a nice touch.

  The last item is only necessary when you end up staying a little longer than you had anticipated, as I did at West Beach Polytechnic High School (nope). By the time wrestling season came around, I just slipped that baby on my arm, told my story about saving some old bat from some demented hobo on angel dust, and rode the bench in comfort and style. Admittedly in the present day, with social media being the bastion of bragging and bloviating that it is, this will be a little more challenging, but still doable. Firstly, you need to create a fake high school from which you transferred. “How does one fabricate a high school?” you say. Well, you don’t. You hire a Pakistani kid from Geek Squad (or any other compu-tech equivalent) to construct a phony school website for you. Where you are not only the wrestling champ and class president, but also the lead in West Side Story and a member of the National Honor Society. (Important note: Keep a computer nerd on the payroll. Recruit a genius techie with enough incentive, and they can pretty much hack you into the institution of your choosing.) Which brings us to our next chapter…

  GET A DEGREE VIA DEGREES OF BULLSHITTING

  After pseudo-graduating from high school, my ambition led me to pretend-matriculate at a prestigious college of my liking. Of course, if you just want a diploma to proudly display on your wall so your new girlfriend doesn’t know you’re actually a fucking idiot, there are at least three hundred sites on the Internet, right now, that can replicate a pretty decent one in less than ten minutes. All for around thirty bucks. But these are good for only the most rudimentary of scams, like if you gambled away your tuition for four years and have nothing to show your ignoramus parents. Or if you’re applying for some low-level sales job that requires a four-year degree. (Low-level jobs never check up on that stuff. That’s why they’re “low-level” jobs.) However, if you were like me and you wanted to engage in the entirety of the collegiate experience (minus the studying and the learning and shit), there is another way.

  You see, I wanted to expand my mind and broaden my horizons (and refine my art of working the hustle on the young and the very dumb). And since my old man was still locked up, I figured I had some time to kill before our inevitable reunion. So I picked a very prominent school by the name of Harvard College (not Harvard), and I decided to take the first step toward the next chapter of my life. Tops on my to-do list was, of course…getting accepted. And as I didn’t officially exist, this was the fundamental problem I would have to resolve before I could set foot on the historic campus of Yale University (not Yale).

  There are numerous ways to get accepted into college when you have no business doing so. First and foremost, you need to decide what your goals are. Do you want to get laid? Do you want to get a prestigious degree? Do you want to avoid the government (bail, draft, etc.)? U.S. News & World Report has lists for everything. Therefore, it’s necessary to know exactly what you’re looking to get out of your collegiate experience before you head down this road. You don’t want to waste your precious time beating a system you have no real interest in getting anything out of.

  As far as I was concerned, I was doing all of this to impress my dad. Prove something to the son of a bitch. Because wherever he was, I knew he would have been proud of me for what I was about to pull off. Not for getting into Cornell (not Cornell), which is an accomplishment in its own right. But rather, for getting into Cornell without having any of the prerequisite grades or accomplishments necessary for actual acceptance there. He would have been most proud of me for NOT belonging there. In fact, I think he would have gotten a kick out of that. And, as pissed as I was at him, I would have gotten a kick out of him enjoying it, too. Anyway, enough of the sentimental reminiscing. This isn’t a book about self-realization or any of that hippy-dippy horseshit. Let’s get back to how I did it.

  One of the best and most often executed ways to start is to…

  GET A FAKE IDENTITY

  This is a quick go-to. Tons of students use fake IDs to forge their way into colleges every year across this great nation. And while this fact may piss off some of you college graduates out there, if you’re being really honest with yourself, you know that the true assholes are those of you who busted your asses with SAT prep courses and ROTC classes and all that other pointless nonsense you did to stack your résumé. Because the truth is something you’re too young to realize at the time: the whole thing is a charade and not nearly worth the time you invest in it. So to avoid all the effort of building a great college résumé, just have your payrolled computer whiz kid fabricate one to rival the best and brightest of American kids. And also every single Indian kid between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. (Note: This next section is something that you can use in the future, even after you falsely graduate. So pay attention.)

  BECOME A MISSING PERSON

  2,300 missing persons are reported in the US every day. And one would assume that at the very least, a small percentage of those poor fuckers did pretty well in high school. Calm down—I can feel your judgmental glares raining down on this supposedly recycled paper as you read this. “How terrible! I could never do such a thing!” Let me ask you, then, what would you actually be doing that’s so terrible anyway? When I stole his identity, James Bradford (not his real name) had been missing for four years. FOUR YEARS. The odds of him ever accepting the financial aid that was awarded to him in order to go to Brown (not the real school) were less than nil. As a result, while Jimmy was most likely face down in some shallow grave out in the middle of a cornfield somewhere, yours truly was using his name to snap a passport picture and take over where that unlucky bastard left off. (Note: If a college-age kid already has a passport picture, 95 percent of the time it will be of them as a child. Translation: you’re all good in the “you don’t look anything like Jimmy” department.) And think about it—not using the money would have been the real tragedy, if you ask me. So just like that, I was off to the races, ready to fulfill some other person’s unfulfilled destiny, headed straight for the hallowed halls of Cornell (nope).

  But if you still find this practice too distasteful to engage in, (1) you’re a total pussy, and (2) there are other methods to use.

  BUY AN IDENTITY

  Ten million dumbasses get their identities stolen every year. And that shit doesn’t just happen by osmosis. Somebody is making money off the hustle. Somebody is always making money off the hustle. Because if there’s a need, consequently, there will be a black market to meet that need (see the failed “war on drugs”). Anyway, that’s where you come in. First thing on the agenda: you have to hang out by the border. Any border. Texas. Arizona. Hell, even Niagara Falls, if you can believe it. Troll a few bus stops and train stations and you’re bound to run into somebody who will sell you a birth certificate and an accompanying Social Security number, Patriot Act be damned. And people often use this information for buying cars, procuring home loans, getting jobs, and, in your case, applying to get into Duke (uhn-uhn).

  FABRICATE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  Let’s assume that you want to get into an Ivy League school. You’ll need to have a pretty impressive academic record. This means top SAT scores, straight A’s on your transcripts, and a slew of obnoxious extracurricular activities to set you apart from the rest of the multitude of dorks looking to fill your spot. Unfortunately, as it turns out, being an overachiever is a total pain in the ass. So when it does come to the “achievements” part of the application, you’re gonna really have to go balls deep.

  Now, you’re probably asking yourself three things, “Won’t they verify the information in my application to make sure that it’s accurate? What if I get in trouble for falsifying official documents? Why did God make me such a gigantic pussy?”r />
  Would you please quit your whining already? The dirty little secret universities don’t want you to know, the reason students are able to fake their way into esteemed colleges all across the country each year: admissions officers don’t have the time nor the inclination to scrutinize every single applicant as closely as they should. Because, as a wise woman said recently on the news, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

  Generally speaking, most universities have tens of thousands of undergraduate applications to screen every semester. TENS OF THOUSANDS. And there’s just not enough manpower or resources to verify that all of the information provided is authentic. So, unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—most universities rely on the “honor system” (ha ha ha). And since most admissions officers are gullible, apathetic, and/or both, they generally take you at your word more often than not. Which is exactly what the university gets for paying some working stiff well under forty Gs to be the gatekeeper of their self-righteous institution of higher learning (an institution with endowments generally north of twenty billion, by the way—think on that shit for a hot second when you think the system ain’t rigged).

  Here’s the analogy: when you toss some poor valet the keys to the kingdom, without paying him a wage relative to a decent standard of living, don’t be surprised when Pedro drives your shit right into a wall and hightails it for the border.

  BLEND IN

  After you get accepted, the next step is to not stick out like the dumbass that you actually are. Nothing can ruin your day more than the FBI showing up in the middle of your Intro to Stats class holding a warrant for your arrest. And believe it or not, getting in is the easy part. Staying in is where it becomes more difficult. Eventually, nearly all the students who fake their way into college get caught, and commonly, the reason they get caught is because they’ve failed to integrate into their environment well enough. Dissolving, unnoticed, into the sea of student humanity. And there’s a good reason for that. Most of these kids actually deserve to be there. Fucking dorks. So, there are a lot of ways you can screw up, such as…

  GETTING GREEDY

  Look, I’m all for milking a moment. But there’s something in The Game we call gilding the lily. That means when you’re deep into a scam, you can sometimes forget that the world you’re in isn’t the real world. Your life becomes so normal inside of the lie that you forget it’s a lie to begin with. And you start to unknowingly perpetrate scams inside the scam. This is a big no-no and something for which you should be on high alert.

  For example, if you’ve made it into Stanford by hook and by crook (more crook), you need to keep a low profile. The last thing you need to do is to draw attention to yourself by trying to get the president emeritus’s endorsement for the Rhodes Scholarship or by starting Stanford’s very first Yurok Indian Service Fraternity. Gilding the lily is a huge red flag to the powers that be. The school will then be forced to take a closer look at your background and credentials, which we’ve already established to be total horseshit, and this will inevitably lead to you getting pinched.

  NOT ACTING LIKE A STUDENT

  If you’re a grifter, there is nothing worse for business than looking like a grifter. If you’re in college, and all of your dorm mates are always studying, while you’ve never had the good sense to, at the very least, carry around a bunch of books, then you should get pinched. Because you, sir, are a dumbfuck. Just buy a backpack, for chrissakes. Fill it with books, or dirty laundry, or cinder blocks for all I care. Then head out to the library, put a titty mag inside some boring text about French Impressionism, and just…play the part. It’s not that difficult. But little mistakes, like not knowing when spring break is, are scammer colds that can quickly develop into full-blown hustle fevers. And as we all know, fevers can kill you.

  BECOME A TA

  This is what I did. As soon as I got into Princeton (which was not where I went), I found the softest mark (refer to earlier chapter) and looked for vulnerabilities therein. Again, weak spots. You see, a lot of people just choose a major, and then get assigned a professor. Not me—instead I sat in forty-some classes looking for the frailest professor I could find, and then I let that major choose me. (Note: Remember what I said earlier about reverse engineering your life. It is the only guaranteed path to success. If you know where you’re going to end up, then you know exactly where to begin.)

  His name was Dr. Edgar Heatherford (that’s pretty close, actually), and he had been at the university for going on seven hundred fifty years. He was what they call “long tenured,” or what we call in the business “fucking vulnerable.” There is nothing better than a smart person who is losing his faculties. Not for him, I mean. For him, it must suck nuts. I meant for me. The con man. The guy who is going to roll him. Good stuff. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to become close with Edgar. “James, you remind me of myself when I was your age,” he’d tell me.

  “Well, thank you, sir. I could only hope to be as accomplished as you someday,” I’d reply in an English accent (a nice touch, I thought) as I was stealing the exams from his briefcase and selling them to anybody with two hundred dollars and a C-minus average or lower.

  Dr. Heatherford was a nice old man. He cared about me. He really wanted good things for his star pupil, James Bradford, or “Jimmy Boy,” as he sometimes liked to call me (having no idea that the real Jimmy Boy was probably at the bottom of a lake somewhere with a boulder tied around his Nikes).

  “I really like you. You’re going places, son.” You’re goddamned right I am, Doc. You have no idea.

  That old prick never had a chance. Pay attention here, because this is a teachable moment. In order to get ahead in life, certain words should be verboten from your own personal vocabulary. Words like empathy and compassion, or the worst of them all, pity. Ugh, pity. Look, did I feel bad that the once-brilliant Dr. Heatherford was becoming increasingly maladroit? Sure. Since the day my dad bailed on me, Dr. Heatherford was the closest thing I’d had to a father figure. Shit, I really liked the old guy. He was generous. And kind. And being around him so much actually made me miss my old man.

  But did I feel the least bit guilty that I was taking advantage of his elderly naiveté? No, I did not. And why is that? Because it was his own fault. He didn’t know when to quit. When to call it a career. Like the incredible Michael Jordan, pushing forty years old, averaging a pedestrian (for him) 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 assists a game with the Washington Wizards. That shame was on him. Not the younger guy humiliatingly shutting him down on D in front of 18,000.

  One day, I thought, when I’m off my game for one reason or another, and I get apprehended on some stupid rudimentary setup because I can no longer “stay in the zone” like I used to be able to, do you know who I’ll have to blame for that? Me. In fact, part of me would be relieved by it. Impressed, even. And that is because the laws of Darwin are applicable not only to evolution, but to all human interaction. Only the strong survive. Survival of the fittest. Outwit, outlast, outplay. (That last one I got from Survivor, but you get the idea.) Did I like the old fart? Of course I did. Did it keep me from swindling his ass? Not a Slurpee’s chance in hellfire. I took every class he taught. In fact, I took only the classes he taught. And when you know the answers to all the tests beforehand, you tend to do pretty damn well. And I did. Appreciate you, Dr. H! Heaven eventually gained one really smart angel, I’m guessing.

  FINDING YOURSELF BY DEFRAUDING OTHERS

  Aside from getting a phony degree and stealing the dignity of a once-proud old man, I used college as a practice ground for my craft. (Looking back on it now, I see that each and every one of these experiences was leading me to my supreme scam. And the hustle that would change my life forever. But more on that later.) Young people go to college because they are unfit to live and work in the real world. They are something I call middlers, floating aimlessly in that soft spot between youth and adulthood. They’re the perfect unsuspecting group on which a guy can hone his skill
set, this giant phylum of inexperienced dummies still suckling at Mommy and Daddy’s teat, ready and willing to be taken advantage of. And that’s exactly what I did. I went to college to increase my aptitude in that respect. That’s what you’re supposed to do there anyway, right? I just worked on a more practical skill set is all.

  Anyhow, in most of the boring con men books you come across, they spend the entire however-many-pages showing you the basics, teaching you all the cons that have been done for centuries on end, each con getting its own chapter. I find that to be a bit too rudimentary for my liking. Instead, I will use these next few pages to quickly run you through them all. During my go-round in college, instead of working on Spanish, I was working the Spanish prisoner (see below). Instead of studying, I was stacking (prearranging playing cards so that you always get the best hand). And instead of finishing, I was phishing (convincing people to give up their personal information and then, in turn, using that information to fleece them).