The original “Confidence Man” was a charming crook from the 1840s named William Thompson. His “con” was to strike up a conversation with a stranger, win their trust and then ask an odd question: Did they have enough confidence in him to lend them their gold watch for the day? Yes, people actually fell for that.
And times haven’t changed much. It’s amazing how far some people go to con their unsuspecting friends as well as strangers. Here are five more cunning con men (and women).
1. Charles Ponzi and His Infamous ‘Scheme’
You know you’re an accomplished con man when they name an entire crime after you. In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi duped investors out of an estimated $32 million (around $475 million today) using the infamous “scheme” that now bears his name.
A Ponzi scheme starts with a too-good-to-be-true investment opportunity. In Ponzi’s case, he guaranteed to double his investors’ money in just three months by buying and selling “international reply coupons,” a way to prepay foreign postage on international mail. The details were sketchy, but Ponzi’s early investors struck it rich just like he promised.
That’s why Ponzi schemes are able to fool so many otherwise smart people. They appear to be hugely profitable. The problem with Ponzi’s scheme — and later iterations like Bernie Madoff’s record-breaking investment fraud — is that the money is never invested in an actual security. Ponzi and Madoff simply took the flood of money coming in and paid it back to the early…
