[djmcmath]

Con work is much easier than you might think. A friend of mine, on a whim, set up a completely false web site pretending to be a business start up. He built a neat little page which would allow you to give the new business money as an investment, registering your investment and sending you a neat confirmation e-mail and everything. An afternoon's work for a computer geek, of course.

Then he started calling banks. He figured it would take him all afternoon to find someone dumb enough to give him money, but it only took 5 banks before he found one. "Yes, that's right, we're asking for investments as small as $5000 from a variety of sources in order to help get our business off the ground. Thank you for your support, Mr. Bank Director."


Another classic scam is the old Violin Scam -- a con artist offers up his violin as collateral against the price of dinner while he goes to get payment from his hotel room, or the nearby ATM. While he is away, a second con approaches him about the violin. "It is as I suspected -- it is an original Strad! That violin is worth a fortune, my friend! I would wait for the owner to return, but I have a flight to catch -- please give him my card when he returns!" And he's off. When the first con comes back, the owner, if he is a good man, simply gives the man the message. If, however, he is greedy, he offers to buy the violin, losing everything in the process.

Ultimately, any good scam will rely on the mark's greed to succeed.