The key to most good cons is telling people what they want to hear, which is usually that they can get what they want (probably money) without effort. It worked for Luis in Double Cross when he sold fake secrets to German military intelligence, and it works for him now in LA. He needs patience to exploit DiLazzari’s vanity and restless ambition, his hunger for praise and adventure, and his greed. The greatest of these is greed, but when he buys into the idea that greed is patriotic, he soon sees himself as a leader and a decision-maker in Operation Bamboozle. No longer just an investor, he is now an executive officer.
If this seems unlikely, consider what happened to Stephen Greenspan who, far from being a mobster, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado and is considered one of the world’s experts on financial scams. Recently he published Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. More recently, he lost much of his retirement savings in Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scam, which also duped some of the world’s biggest banks.
Professor Greenspan’s book identifies four aspects of gullibility to financial scams:
1. Situation When so many big names are investing, how can they all be wrong? Vito believes he is joining a privileged club. Good enough.
2. Cognition, or: check the facts. Luis didn’t bother to research James de Courcy’s claim to be a Texas lawyer, and Vito didn’t check whether or not there really was a lottery in Ukraine. Sloppy.
3. Personality Madoff was a charmer. So was de Courcy. So is Luis. How can your friend be cheating you? Unthinkable.
4. Emotion Easy money stimulates excitement, like 1–3 above, and this overrides commonsense. Ask Professor Greenspan. He’s been there; he knows.
Madoff was always riding for a fall; he was always going to run out of money one day. Luis Cabrillo’s scams are more modest, less reckless, and so far he’s been lucky. Whether or not his luck will last, I for one shall be interested to discover,
D.R.
Derek Robinson lives in Bristol, England. He had the benefit of parents who read books, mostly from the nearby public library. The 1944 Education Act helped shunt him through the class barrier with a State Scholarship to Cambridge; his degree is in history. Stints in advertising in London and New York did much to kick the crap out of his writing style. He has written fourteen novels and a bunch of other books, some about rugby. For therapy he plays more squash than his friends, or his knees, think wise.
Operation Bamboozle Page 27