Confidence trick facts for kids

A confidence trick, often called a con or a scam, is a way someone tries to trick another person. The goal is usually to get money or something else valuable from them. The person doing the trick is called a con artist or scam artist. The person being tricked is called the mark.

Sometimes, a con artist works with a helper called a shill. The shill pretends to be just another person, but they are actually working with the con artist. They might act like they believe the con artist to make the mark trust them more.

Some well-known confidence tricks include:

• Three Card Monty: This trick uses three playing cards. One card is a queen, often called the lady. The con artist shows the cards, then places them face-down. They shuffle the cards around quickly. Then, they ask people to bet money on which card is the queen. At first, people might not want to bet. So, the shill places a bet, and the con artist lets the shill win. This makes others want to play. But the con artist uses quick hand movements, called sleight of hand, to make sure the mark always loses.
• The Spanish Prisoner scam: This trick is similar to the Nigerian money transfer fraud. The con artist tells the mark a story about needing help to get a lot of stolen money out of a secret place. They promise the mark a share of the money if they help. The trick is that there is no money. The con artist just wants the mark to give them money, often for "fees" or "expenses."
• Pig-in-a-poke: This old trick comes from the Middle Ages, when meat was hard to find. A con artist would sell a "suckling pig" in a bag, called a "poke." But instead of a pig, the bag actually held a cat! If you "buy a pig in a poke," it means you buy something without checking it first. This is also where the saying "let the cat out of the bag" comes from, meaning to tell a secret. "Left holding the bag" means you end up with nothing for your effort.

Famous Con Artists and Their Tricks

Many people have become known for their clever, but dishonest, tricks. Here are a few famous con artists:

• Lou Blonger: He organized a huge group of tricksters in Denver in the early 1900s.
• Louis Enricht: This US chemist claimed he could make a replacement for gasoline.
• Victor Lustig: He was famous for trying to sell the Eiffel Tower in Paris!
• Gregor MacGregor: This Scottish conman tried to get people to invest money and move to a country called Poyais, which did not even exist.
• George Parker: He was known for selling famous New York landmarks, like the Brooklyn Bridge, to unsuspecting people.
• Charles Ponzi: He created the famous pyramid scheme, where early investors are paid with money from later investors, until the whole thing collapses.
• Franz Tausend: A German who pretended to be an alchemist, claiming he could turn cheap metals into gold.
• Joseph Weil: Also known as the Yellow Kid, he was a very clever con artist. His stories helped inspire the movie The Sting.
• Billie Sol Estes: He was paid for millions of bales of cotton that never existed.
• Tino De Angelis: He sold rights to huge amounts of soybean oil that was supposedly stored in tanks. But it was mostly water with just a thin layer of oil on top.
• Frank Abagnale: He famously pretended to be many different professionals, like a pilot, a doctor, and a professor.

Images for kids

• 

  A political cartoon by JM Staniforth. It shows Herbert Kitchener trying to raise money for a college in Sudan.

See also

In Spanish: Estafa para niños