Speaker 1: Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2: What's that? Will?
Speaker 3: Did you know that the con and con artist is
Speaker 3: actually short for confidence, so it's confidence artist or confidence
Speaker 3: man as they were first known.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually did, but I never understood why.
Speaker 3: Well, the confidence part actually comes from one con man
Speaker 3: in particular. His name was William Thompson, and he was
Speaker 3: the very first person to be called a confidence man.
Speaker 3: So he was this swindler in old New York, and
Speaker 3: one day in eighteen forty eight he hit upon a
Speaker 3: new type of scam that quickly became his go to.
Speaker 3: He would dress in his best clothes and politely approach
Speaker 3: other well to do looking gentlemen on the street. Then
Speaker 3: he would strike up conversations with the strangers and feed
Speaker 3: them some sort of story about desperately needing.
Speaker 1: A pocket watch for the day.
Speaker 2: Pocket.
Speaker 3: Finally, he would ask, have you confidence in me to
Speaker 3: trust me with your watch until tomorrow?
Speaker 2: What a line, and it's all it's hard to believe
Speaker 2: anyone fell for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I might try it out, but you know, people
Speaker 3: did fall for it. And Thompson walked off with hundreds
Speaker 3: of fancy watches, so many that newspapers began reporting about
Speaker 3: this confidence man who played.
Speaker 1: The city's streets. It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: So with that in mind, we're going to dive into
Speaker 3: the fascinating history of con artists and try to understand
Speaker 3: a little bit about why everyone has a soft spot
Speaker 3: for them. So let's get started. Hey, their podcast listeners,
Speaker 3: welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
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Speaker 1: All right, So let's get started. On today's show.
Speaker 3: We're talking about con artists, those enterprising flim flammers of
Speaker 3: the world. We've made lifelong careers out of scamming the public,
Speaker 3: and we're going to try to pinpoint the golden age
Speaker 3: of conmen and see if we can figure out how
Speaker 3: to avoid being duped ourselves. We'll also dig into the
Speaker 3: psychology of con artists to see how they manage to
Speaker 3: win a target's trust and even sometimes their hearts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that might sound ridiculous at first, like this
Speaker 2: idea that con men win people's hearts. But the more
Speaker 2: we looked into the topic, the more convinced I became
Speaker 2: that a lot of us have a big soft spot
Speaker 2: for con artists. I mean, first of all, which other
Speaker 2: class of criminals do we regularly describe as artists? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty big compliment for someone who's trying to
Speaker 2: rip you off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we'll check out what's going on there, and
Speaker 3: of course we'll also take some time for a couple
Speaker 3: absurd quizzes along the way. Want to give the rundown
Speaker 3: of who's joining us today?
Speaker 1: Mango?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. So today we're talking to Maria Konnakova, a
Speaker 2: journalist and psychologist. She's also the best selling author of
Speaker 2: The Confidence Game. Maria spent years exploring the ins and
Speaker 2: outs of famous cons for a book, including why they
Speaker 2: work and why we keep falling for them, And so
Speaker 2: we're gonna have her on the program. We're also gonna
Speaker 2: be talking to Patrick Hoffman, this incredible crime novelist who's
Speaker 2: also a licensed private investigator.
Speaker 3: You know, before doing our research for this episode, I
Speaker 3: actually didn't know that con artist was short for confidence artists,
Speaker 3: and before the public upgraded them to artists status, they
Speaker 3: were simply known as confidence men.
Speaker 2: What I really like about the story of William Thompson
Speaker 2: is how well it sets up everything you really need
Speaker 2: to know about con artists and why we admire them.
Speaker 2: So think about how they can persuade all sorts of
Speaker 2: different people into giving up everything from like a watch
Speaker 2: to their life savings. And that's all just using their
Speaker 2: words in charm like they're almost improv actors with like
Speaker 2: looser morals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and while the end result is deplorable, of course,
Speaker 3: the process itself, I mean, it takes real talent to.
Speaker 2: Pull this off, definitely. So con men are incredibly perceptive,
Speaker 2: which helps them read people quickly in order to come
Speaker 2: up with just the right story to like hook a
Speaker 2: particular person, which is why in addition to thinking them
Speaker 2: as like skilled artists, many researchers also consider them really
Speaker 2: good psychologists. And so you can think about it, they
Speaker 2: never actually steal something from you directly. Most of the
Speaker 2: time they're manipulating you into like handing over what you.
Speaker 3: Have, right, And that's exactly what we see with Thompson.
Speaker 3: I mean, his question have you confidence in me? Is
Speaker 3: really targeting the stranger sense of pride or their civility.
Speaker 3: I mean he's basically asking, are you truly a proper
Speaker 3: gentleman as your appearance suggests? Are you the type of
Speaker 3: person who assumes the worst of their fellow man?
Speaker 2: And it works. I mean, most people hate disappointing others,
Speaker 2: especially if doing so makes them seem greedy or distrustful,
Speaker 2: So we all feel that urge to save face even
Speaker 2: with a total stranger.
Speaker 3: Well, and the other thing that we really love is
Speaker 3: a bargain, and con artists are very well aware of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of my favorite examples of this is
Speaker 3: George C. Parker. This was the guy you may remember
Speaker 3: that sold the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week for decades.
Speaker 2: I love him so much.
Speaker 3: Yes, So here's what Parker did so shortly after the
Speaker 3: bridge was completed in eighteen eighty three, he decided on
Speaker 3: a whim to try and sell the bridge to unsuspecting
Speaker 3: tourists and immigrants. These were folks who were new to
Speaker 3: the city or maybe even the country, but they'd heard
Speaker 3: about what amazing opportunities were available here. So when Parker
Speaker 3: approached them with this deal of a lifetime, the victims
Speaker 3: assumed they just stumbled into one of these lucky breaks
Speaker 3: they'd heard so much about.
Speaker 2: But still, I mean, like buying the Brooklyn Bridge like
Speaker 2: that seems like such a tough thing to sell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he managed to do it again and again.
Speaker 3: This is how good he was at this, and sometimes
Speaker 3: for as much as fifty thousand dollars. So his routine
Speaker 3: was to introduce himself to a mark as he called them,
Speaker 3: and as the owner of the bridge, and then offer
Speaker 3: them a job running the toll booth he was about
Speaker 3: to build on it. From there, he would play up
Speaker 3: the fact that he was really more of a builder
Speaker 3: than a businessman, and that he'd be much happier to
Speaker 3: leave the toll taking to somebody else, and then he'd
Speaker 3: just move on to his next construction project. If only
Speaker 3: he could find an investor to take the Brooklyn Bridge
Speaker 3: off his hand.
Speaker 2: This which is so devious, I know.
Speaker 3: And some victims didn't even realize they'd been had until
Speaker 3: months later. Some continued paying the bridge in monthly installments.
Speaker 3: I love that when I read about this, only to
Speaker 3: learn the truth from police after they were trying to
Speaker 3: construct toll booths on the bridge that they supposedly owned.
Speaker 2: So obviously this went on for a long time. But like,
Speaker 2: how many years was he selling the bridge for?
Speaker 1: You're not gonna believe this.
Speaker 3: So Peter ran these landmarks selling scams like this from
Speaker 3: I think it was the eighteen eighties all the way
Speaker 3: until nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: We're talking almost fifty.
Speaker 3: Years when he was finally arrested, and then he was
Speaker 3: sentenced to life and sing sing prison. And although his
Speaker 3: specialty was selling the Brooklyn Bridge, he dabbled a little
Speaker 3: and selling other New York City landmarks like the Metropolitan
Speaker 3: Museum of Art. I think he tried to sell the
Speaker 3: Statue of Liberty a few times, even Grant's Tune, which
Speaker 3: he sold while posing as the General's grandson.
Speaker 1: This guy's crazy, but it was so good at this.
Speaker 2: I love it, but it really makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 2: who is falling for these schemes. It sounds like these
Speaker 2: marks were pretty naive. But also like bumping into the
Speaker 2: owner of like a world famous museum and then buying
Speaker 2: it off him for like a pittance, that that just
Speaker 2: sounds so dumb.
Speaker 3: I do think we have to be a little bit
Speaker 3: careful here, But most experts agree that what makes the
Speaker 3: perfect mark really doesn't have anything to do with how
Speaker 3: intelligent or wealthy or gullible you are. So instead, psychologists
Speaker 3: say that it's where you are at a certain point
Speaker 3: in your life that makes you more emotionally susceptible to
Speaker 3: con So you know someone who's going through a transition
Speaker 3: in life, whether it might be something good, Let's say
Speaker 3: you've gotten a job promotion, or you've just had a
Speaker 3: child born, or on the other end, something negative that's happened,
Speaker 3: if you've experienced the death or maybe a recent divorce.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are the people.
Speaker 3: That are more likely to latch onto an opportunity that
Speaker 3: would otherwise seem too good to be.
Speaker 2: True, which is interesting. I mean, in Parker's case, it
Speaker 2: seems like he was targeting immigrants because he sensed their
Speaker 2: emotional vulnerability and starting over in a new country. But
Speaker 2: I always assume con artists pick their marks based on
Speaker 2: like how people were dressed or how they carried themselves,
Speaker 2: the way Thompson always went after these genteel looking strangers
Speaker 2: for his watch scam.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean, I think appearance and body language
Speaker 3: definitely play a part, but it doesn't seem like the
Speaker 3: deciding factor. So, for instance, Parker adjusted the amounts he
Speaker 3: would accept for the Brooklyn Bridge based on how wealthy
Speaker 3: a particular mark looked. The most he got from a
Speaker 3: single mark was, of course, that fifty thousand dollars that
Speaker 3: we mentioned earlier, but he also sold the bridge.
Speaker 1: For lower amounts.
Speaker 3: You know, some people got a real discount, like five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars or even fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: They got to buy the entire Brooklyn Bridge for fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, I might take that chance.
Speaker 3: So he would choose his victims based on, you know,
Speaker 3: what he spotted, if he saw these telltale signs that
Speaker 3: their lives were in upheaval. But other factors still informed
Speaker 3: the specifics of how everything played out.
Speaker 2: So I guess that's the beauty of selling something that
Speaker 2: you don't actually own, right, Because any price can be
Speaker 2: the right one, right, But what strikes me is how
Speaker 2: much effort and adaptability go into these cons Like, is
Speaker 2: it wrong that I find all of this kind of impressive?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, right or wrong, you wouldn't be alone
Speaker 3: in that kind of feeling. So when Parker went to prison,
Speaker 3: he was treated like a celebrity, not only by his
Speaker 3: fellow inmates, but even by the guards.
Speaker 1: They were there.
Speaker 3: I mean, everyone loved hearing about his exploits and how
Speaker 3: he was able to sell such a crazy premise over
Speaker 3: and over.
Speaker 2: Again, which actually backs up a study I came across
Speaker 2: in Scientific American that suggests we view unethical behavior less
Speaker 2: harshly if it also happens to be creative. So, for example,
Speaker 2: you tend to disapprove more strongly of someone who robs
Speaker 2: a man at gunpoint than someone who swindles money from
Speaker 2: them through this sort of like creative method. And it's
Speaker 2: almost like you feel bad for being duped, but you
Speaker 2: also have to imploud the ingenuity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Even though the guards that Sing Sing believed Parker had
Speaker 3: behaved unethically, they really couldn't help but admire his creativity
Speaker 3: and boldness that he displayed through all of these crimes
Speaker 3: he was committing exactly.
Speaker 2: And while that kind of thinking is apparently pretty common,
Speaker 2: it's also somewhat worrisome for society.
Speaker 1: Well why would you say that?
Speaker 2: Well, so Francisco Gino, one of the researchers who worked
Speaker 2: on the study, put it this way. Quote. It seems
Speaker 2: that people view creativity as a positive, valuable trait that
Speaker 2: provides creative cheaters with a halo that makes their transgressions
Speaker 2: more palatable and more socially contagious. So because the creativity
Speaker 2: of a con is valued and appreciated by the public,
Speaker 2: we're actually more likely to imitate that kind of behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I can see the danger there, and
Speaker 3: it's certainly worth reminding ourselves that we are talking about
Speaker 3: ruthless people. I mean, these are ones who are knowingly
Speaker 3: wreaking havoc on others' lives for their own financial gain.
Speaker 3: But while we can do our best to avoid outright
Speaker 3: celebrating con artists, I really doubt we'll ever be able
Speaker 3: to avoid admiring them, at least a little totally.
Speaker 2: And that's something our author Maria Kuonikova touches on in
Speaker 2: her work. In an interview with The Guardian. She said, quote,
Speaker 2: of course you have a grudging admiration for them, because
Speaker 2: they're really really good at what they do. The name
Speaker 2: con artist really does capture it. They're artists, and I
Speaker 2: have an admiration for all artists.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, now seems like the perfect time to check
Speaker 3: in with Maria and get the lowdown on the works
Speaker 3: of some of her all time favorite con artists.
Speaker 2: What do you say? I'm all for it.
Speaker 3: So our guest today has been studying con artists for years.
Speaker 3: She's the author of Mastermind and The Confidence Game and
Speaker 3: the host and creator of a terrific podcast from Panopley
Speaker 3: called The Grift.
Speaker 1: And I am addicted to this show.
Speaker 3: I've listened to I think six of the episodes now
Speaker 3: and plan to listen to the others. But Maria Kanakoba,
Speaker 3: welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 3: All Right, Well, you know, as I was saying, I've
Speaker 3: been listening to the show and it's really really interesting
Speaker 3: and it's fun to kind of follow these common characteristics.
Speaker 3: Not that every con artist is the same.
Speaker 5: So I think one thing that people make the mistake
Speaker 5: of thinking is that you know, con artists are basically
Speaker 5: people who take advantage of other people, of other human beings.
Speaker 5: That's the mindset of a non con artist. Con Artists
Speaker 5: don't think if they're victims as humans really So there's
Speaker 5: even a term in con artist parlance. It's called the mark.
Speaker 5: So who is your target? It's a mark because as
Speaker 5: soon as you feel any sort of real human attachments,
Speaker 5: then you start feeling guilty, You start having payings about
Speaker 5: what you're doing to this person, You start thinking about
Speaker 5: emotional consequences, and then you're really crappy con artists because
Speaker 5: you're not able to take advantage of this person, and
Speaker 5: you're not going to be able to keep doing this
Speaker 5: because your conscience is going to catch up with you.
Speaker 5: In fact, there was one hilarious well I thought it
Speaker 5: was a pretty funny story that I came across when
Speaker 5: I was doing research. There's a very common scam, the
Speaker 5: IRS scam, where you get a phone call someone says, hi,
Speaker 5: we're from the IRS. We found that you didn't pay
Speaker 5: enough taxes. You owe you know, two thousand dollars or
Speaker 5: whatever it is, plus this speech. If you don't pay
Speaker 5: it right now, you're going to have to go to
Speaker 5: jail and all these bad things are going to happen,
Speaker 5: and people get really scared because people are scared of
Speaker 5: the irs, they're scared of taxes, and oftentimes de'll panic
Speaker 5: and they'll end up giving money to the con artist.
Speaker 4: This particular time.
Speaker 5: Guy calls and starts with the usual spiel, you know,
Speaker 5: you owe a lot of money on back Texas. The
Speaker 5: woman and hiss calling starts bawling. I mean, this woman
Speaker 5: gets hysterical. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 4: I'm pregnant.
Speaker 5: You know, we own a store that we can't really
Speaker 5: keep our payments up on. You know, I'm about to
Speaker 5: have this baby. What am I going to And she
Speaker 5: just keeps going, I'm going and the corn artist just says, lady, lady, stop,
Speaker 5: it's a cone nicely done. So that particular guy probably
Speaker 5: not a very successful con artist.
Speaker 3: You know, when I think about psychics or fortune tellers,
Speaker 3: you know, I really had more of this image that
Speaker 3: people go and they throw down twenty dollars or thirty
Speaker 3: dollars to have their fortune told and then that's kind
Speaker 3: of the end of it. And yes, maybe they're ripped off,
Speaker 3: But I didn't really realize how deep some of these
Speaker 3: scams go oh, and you tell the story of this
Speaker 3: one poor college student who ended up getting scammed for
Speaker 3: you know, I think it was like one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty thousand dollars or something, just extraordinary like that. But
Speaker 3: in that episode you talk about the ability of a
Speaker 3: con artist to get what you describe as a cold
Speaker 3: read on someone.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, it's a skill that I think psychics specifically really
Speaker 5: have down to just this science almost and con artists
Speaker 5: have had it too. More broadly, and actually a lot
Speaker 5: of professions rely on it, you know, sales marketing. The
Speaker 5: better you are and is, the better you are able
Speaker 5: to sell. And the essence of it is being able
Speaker 5: to not only profile someone by looking at them, but
Speaker 5: get a lot of information from how they're dressed, what
Speaker 5: they sound like, what words they use, what they're saying,
Speaker 5: what their face is like, what their emotional bearing is.
Speaker 5: So every single moment, every single day, we are just
Speaker 5: throwing off ques to people.
Speaker 4: So you walk into a.
Speaker 5: Psychic realm right away, that's one huge clue. You are
Speaker 5: at a psychic's place. What kind of person goes to
Speaker 5: see a psychic?
Speaker 4: Why are you there?
Speaker 5: Maybe you're there on a lark and you think this
Speaker 5: is very funny, and yet you did it anyway, so
Speaker 5: that already says something. Maybe you look really upset. A
Speaker 5: lot of people go to psychics and they're upset. So
Speaker 5: right away we know that something happened in your life.
Speaker 5: What kind of a watch are you wearing? What kind
Speaker 5: of clothes are you wearing? What kind of bag are
Speaker 5: you carrying with you? If you're a female, are what
Speaker 5: question did you ask the psychic. The psychic is also
Speaker 5: able to ask you some preliminary questions right away and
Speaker 5: phrase them in a way that makes you not realize
Speaker 5: you're giving off information. For instance, if I sit down
Speaker 5: at a psychic, if like you can say, oh, you're
Speaker 5: not from around and here are you, which seems like
Speaker 5: she is leading into my soul and knows that I
Speaker 5: somehow find so far away. But think about how ambiguous
Speaker 5: that question is, and I'm going to give her a
Speaker 5: lot of information right away. And by the way, one
Speaker 5: thing that really helps psychics out is that we are
Speaker 5: a lot less.
Speaker 4: Unique than we like to think.
Speaker 5: Every single person likes to think that there's no one
Speaker 5: going through what I'm going through. No one knows what
Speaker 5: it's like to be me.
Speaker 4: And that's true as.
Speaker 5: Far as it goes. However, we all all fit into
Speaker 5: these overarching themes. You know, a lot of people who
Speaker 5: are going through similar emotional problems are actually more alike
Speaker 5: in a lot of surface ways, surface ways that make
Speaker 5: people then open up on those idiosyncrasies. And so as
Speaker 5: long as you can get those surface patterns down, people
Speaker 5: think that you understand them, people think that you know
Speaker 5: what it is like to be them, and people become
Speaker 5: much more willing to give you a lot of information
Speaker 5: that they wouldn't normally give out to a stranger.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: So one of the things you mentioned on your show
Speaker 2: is that carnivals are our first interaction with con artists,
Speaker 2: and I kind of love that idea. I'd never really
Speaker 2: thought about it that way, and could you talk a
Speaker 2: little more about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was actually really I was really upset to
Speaker 5: find it out because I have such vivid, wonderful memories
Speaker 5: of going to my first carnival as a kid and
Speaker 5: really really wanting to, you know, win those games and
Speaker 5: win those stuff animals. And it turns out that there
Speaker 5: are quite literally con artists in carnivals because a lot
Speaker 5: of carnival games are crooked, and a lot of carnivals
Speaker 5: are completely crooked. So basically all of those games where
Speaker 5: there it's you know, trying to pass a circle over
Speaker 5: some metal thing without touching the metal, or trying to
Speaker 5: get you know, a ball into the jug into the
Speaker 5: milk jug or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: You know, there there are tons.
Speaker 5: Of these that they're rigged, and so you can't win
Speaker 5: unless the person operating the game wants you to win,
Speaker 5: and they do that to kind of rope people in
Speaker 5: and get more money. And the more expensive the game,
Speaker 5: the more likely it is to be rigged. And it's
Speaker 5: really they do it in this really sophisticated way where
Speaker 5: they can unrig the game very quickly, so if they
Speaker 5: see that there's law enforcement, if they see that, if
Speaker 5: anything seems suspicious, they'll press the love press a button,
Speaker 5: you know, turn something over, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: the game is totally on the up and up and
Speaker 5: no one can see that it's once upon a time rigged,
Speaker 5: which is very sneaky and prevents them from being caught.
Speaker 5: And on a broader basis, I think that even if
Speaker 5: a carnival isn't rigged, carnivals magic shows when they're all
Speaker 5: based on deception. The good news is that when you're
Speaker 5: going into a magic show, you want to be deceived.
Speaker 5: They're going for entertainment, and then a carnivals they're also
Speaker 5: going to entertainment. And if you go into Unity side shows,
Speaker 5: House of Words, how Mirrors, all of those things, you
Speaker 5: know that there's going to be a loosen and distortion
Speaker 5: involved and you willingly take part in that. And I
Speaker 5: think that we kind of love that as human beings.
Speaker 5: It's really fascinating to suspend belief. I think it's white
Speaker 5: with a Hollywood and movies and all these things, and
Speaker 5: it's that instinct which then allows con artists to take
Speaker 5: advantage of us.
Speaker 3: Maria, I'm so glad that we conned you into to
Speaker 3: being on our show today.
Speaker 1: I hope all of our listeners.
Speaker 3: Will check out The Confidence Game as well as the
Speaker 3: terrific podcast The Grift.
Speaker 1: But Maria, thanks so much for being on Part Time Genius.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys so much for having me. It was
Speaker 4: a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
Speaker 3: some of the most outlandish con jobs in history and
Speaker 3: the no account scoundrels who managed to pull them off
Speaker 3: with style. So Mango, we've already covered a couple of
Speaker 3: notable con men for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Speaker 3: You Know, there was one thing I noticed while doing
Speaker 3: the research for this show is just how many famous
Speaker 3: scams took place during that time period. And it kind
Speaker 3: of got me wondering when was the golden age of
Speaker 3: conmen and what were the conditions of that time that
Speaker 3: allowed them to thrive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd said, late eighteen hundreds are probably the best
Speaker 2: contender for a golden age of conmen, at least here
Speaker 2: in the States. I read this interview on MPR with
Speaker 2: Amy Redding, the author of a book on the history
Speaker 2: of con jobs. It's called The Mark Inside, and she
Speaker 2: says the nineteenth century was the perfect time for con
Speaker 2: artists because the world was both smaller and bigger at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: Wait, how does that work?
Speaker 6: And bigger?
Speaker 2: Well, the US was expanding west, so there was this
Speaker 2: age of exploration going on that had all kinds of
Speaker 2: people striking out for places where the rules of society
Speaker 2: weren't firmly established yet, and they also didn't have a
Speaker 2: real way to get in touch with the rest of civilization.
Speaker 2: If they ran into trouble. In fact, Denver was kind
Speaker 2: of the perfect city for this, and why Denver Well
Speaker 2: to sharper's and conmen. The city was actually called the
Speaker 2: Big Store just because it was such an easy place
Speaker 2: to run cons. And in fact, there was a fixer
Speaker 2: in town, this guy named Lou Blonger, who owned a
Speaker 2: local saloon. Like he paid off the Denver sheriff, and
Speaker 2: he had five hundred con men on his payroll. Basically,
Speaker 2: if you ran a con in town, you had to
Speaker 2: give him fifty percent, but in return, if you ever
Speaker 2: had a problem with the law, he'd make a phone
Speaker 2: call and settle it for you. He ran the town
Speaker 2: for like forty years up until the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 2: as a result, all these amazing cons were invented in Denver.
Speaker 1: Wow, Lou really had to go there.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't just Denver, of course, sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, the con business was bustling everywhere, and as
Speaker 2: Amy puts a quote, it was easier for itinerant swindlers
Speaker 2: to move from town to town, practicing the same small
Speaker 2: cons within a given region without getting caught. So pretty
Speaker 2: much is the plot of the Music Man.
Speaker 3: That's what I actually what I was gonna say, and
Speaker 3: I was reading about this one eighteen hundreds con artists
Speaker 3: who followed the exact plan to a t. It was
Speaker 3: this guy named Lamartine who traveled through Ohio in the
Speaker 3: spring of eighteen fifty nine, and he would pretend to
Speaker 3: attempt suicide in every town he stopped in. He worked
Speaker 3: out this whole routine where he would show up and
Speaker 3: book a hotel. He would look all depressed, and then
Speaker 3: he would call for a clergyman and point to an
Speaker 3: empty bottle of loudness.
Speaker 1: While lying next to a suicide note. How terrible is that?
Speaker 2: Which sounds like guess convincing enough, but how did any
Speaker 2: of that line in his pockets?
Speaker 3: Well, he figured that his sad plight would evoke pity
Speaker 3: from you know, good Samaritans in town who happened to
Speaker 3: hear about him, and they would turn up at his
Speaker 3: bedside with gifts of cash to help raise his.
Speaker 1: Spirits and get him back on his feet.
Speaker 3: So Lamartine, you know, he made his way all across
Speaker 3: Ohio like this. He might raise thirty or forty dollars
Speaker 3: per town, and then he'd disappear again with a free
Speaker 3: pass on the railroad. To commit suicide at some other place.
Speaker 2: Which is unbelievable. So, speaking of trains, one of my
Speaker 2: favorite convent is Elmer Mead. He's this legend and he
Speaker 2: ran this amazing con called the Magic Wallet, which we
Speaker 2: should talk about some other episode. But my favorite con
Speaker 2: that he came up with is the fixed foot race.
Speaker 2: And basically, people used to bet on races at the time.
Speaker 2: So he'd searched like a nearby town for an upstanding
Speaker 2: rich man who also happened to be a gambler, and
Speaker 2: he'd lure them to another town on the promise that
Speaker 2: he had a sure bet on a foot race. So
Speaker 2: he'd give the gambler this tip and then find someone
Speaker 2: to bet against him. And we're talking massive amounts of
Speaker 2: money here, right, So he'd get a friend to put
Speaker 2: up like fifty thousand dollars betting against the rich guy's
Speaker 2: ten thousand dollars, and then the race would start, and
Speaker 2: inevitably the rich guy would be winning by a long shot,
Speaker 2: and he'd be delighted, right, I mean, his racer would
Speaker 2: be way out ahead, and he'd just be thinking about
Speaker 2: all the money he was going to collect, and then
Speaker 2: suddenly the cops would bust in, Oh wow, and Mead
Speaker 2: would yell to all the gamblers to scramble. He'd run
Speaker 2: his rich friend to a train station, put him on
Speaker 2: a train, and then make all these promises. And sometimes
Speaker 2: he'd even telegraph him at the next station saying the
Speaker 2: cops were on the hunt and to keep going. Then Mead,
Speaker 2: who had contracted with the racers, the gamblers and the
Speaker 2: local cops to raid the place, he'd split that ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars amongst them, and he'd go from town to
Speaker 2: town doing this.
Speaker 3: Oh what's amazing to me is how how much work
Speaker 3: some of these scams take.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But I think we found another characteristic of con men
Speaker 3: that probably helps endear us to them, and that's that
Speaker 3: they're entrepreneurs. I mean, we appreciate that can do spirit
Speaker 3: in America, even apparently in situations like this, when bending
Speaker 3: the rules to get the job done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Amy Reading actually has a great quote about
Speaker 2: common Let let me find it. She says, a con
Speaker 2: artist is, like quote, the bad boy cousin of the
Speaker 2: self made men, and a direct descendant of mythic anti
Speaker 2: heroes like cowboys or noir detectives who exploit the ragged
Speaker 2: edges of the modern world. So, I mean, just like
Speaker 2: cowboys or with detectives, we admire con artists because they
Speaker 2: represent this sort of lawless way of living that doesn't
Speaker 2: answer to any of the traditional authorities that sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: make people feel small or powerless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty interesting, and I guess con artists makes
Speaker 3: sense as another kind of American archetype of the Old West.
Speaker 3: You had cowboys or frontiersmen, you know, rail riding hobos,
Speaker 3: and especially when you look how far back they go
Speaker 3: in our nation's history and how prevalent they still are today.
Speaker 2: So I think one of the best examples of how
Speaker 2: intertwined con artistry is with the US past and present
Speaker 2: is actually the Nigerian email scam. And I know, if
Speaker 2: it's an email scam from Nigeria, how does it say
Speaker 2: anything about US history? But that's the thing. Those emails
Speaker 2: are actually a modern version of a classic con that
Speaker 2: dates all the way back to the French Revolution.
Speaker 3: Well, and to be clear, you're talking about those spam
Speaker 3: emails we see all the time about a Nigerian prince
Speaker 3: or something who supposedly has a huge fortune and willing
Speaker 3: to share it if you just provide a small upfront
Speaker 3: fee so he can then safely move the funds out
Speaker 3: of his country.
Speaker 1: That's what you're talking.
Speaker 2: About, right exactly. So they're sometimes called the four one
Speaker 2: to nine scams because that's the legal designation for fraud
Speaker 2: in Nigeria. But the truth is that advanced fee scams
Speaker 2: like this are way older than email and weren't originally
Speaker 2: connected to Nigeria or it's princes.
Speaker 3: Well, you said they started with the French Revolution.
Speaker 2: And so that's when we see the first recognizable version
Speaker 2: of this con The Boston Globe did this great report
Speaker 2: on the scam a few years by, and they broke
Speaker 2: it down like this quote. A letter arrived describing and
Speaker 2: an aristocrat and exile, say the Marquis de whomever, who,
Speaker 2: in escaping from revolutionary violence, had thrown a chest full
Speaker 2: of jewels into a lake. His faithful servant, now writing
Speaker 2: this heartfelt letter, had come back to retrieve it and
Speaker 2: unfortunately ended up in prison. With just a little help
Speaker 2: from you, a fellow Frenchman, to aid in the servant's
Speaker 2: bail or escape, you'd earn a portion of the loot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is pretty much exactly the same as the
Speaker 3: Nigerian prints email so when did the scam make its
Speaker 3: way straightside?
Speaker 2: So it caught on like wildfire. About a century later,
Speaker 2: during the Spanish American War, the scam became known as
Speaker 2: the Spanish Prisoner letter and was later modified for use
Speaker 2: all over the world. It only popped up in Nigeria
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties when paper letters began circulating there
Speaker 2: promising easy money from the nation's oil boom.
Speaker 5: Nah.
Speaker 3: And then came the Internet, of course, which really just
Speaker 3: seems perfectly suited for a scam like this. I mean,
Speaker 3: not only do you save a bundle on postage, but
Speaker 3: then you're suddenly able to reach millions of people all
Speaker 3: over the globe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no doubt technology is in the scamma Boost,
Speaker 2: But I think there's a deeper reason it's managed to
Speaker 2: survive in different forms for so many hundreds of years,
Speaker 2: and it's that at its core, the scheme relies on
Speaker 2: people's willingness to become small scale war profiteers, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty ugly side of humanity to prey on. Though
Speaker 2: it's probably the fact that it works so well that's
Speaker 2: even more upsetting.
Speaker 3: It's a really good point, and it actually kind of
Speaker 3: gets me thinking, you know, maybe there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of con artist.
Speaker 2: In all of us, which is definitely something worth pondering.
Speaker 2: But before we get into that, how about we break
Speaker 2: for a quiz.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 3: So, our next guest is a private investigator. He's been
Speaker 3: a private investigator for over a decade now, but he's
Speaker 3: also a critically acclaimed author of The White Fan and
Speaker 3: every Man in Menace, and he's here to talk to
Speaker 3: us a little bit about being a PI and many
Speaker 3: of the other things that we have to ask him.
Speaker 3: But Patrick Kaufman, welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: So, Patrick, I understand that you started out as a
Speaker 3: cab driver in San Francisco. I mean, how do you
Speaker 3: go from being a cab driver making this leap to
Speaker 3: becoming a private investigator.
Speaker 6: It's funny. I think cab driving is the perfect background
Speaker 6: to become a private investigator actually, because you're learning a city.
Speaker 6: You know, you go everywhere in the city, you meet
Speaker 6: every type of person in the cab. You learn how
Speaker 6: to talk to every type of society, and that helps
Speaker 6: a lot. When I first moved to San Francisco, I
Speaker 6: was very green coming out of college and you know,
Speaker 6: not really used to dealing with some of the criminal elements,
Speaker 6: and then you drive a taxi for four four years
Speaker 6: in the night in San Francisco, and you get a
Speaker 6: little more street smart and ready to go talk to
Speaker 6: people about some of these criminal cases that I was
Speaker 6: working on.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: So you did this amazing interview in GQ where you
Speaker 2: talked about sort of this relatively mundane thing where you
Speaker 2: go to find and ask someone a question, but then
Speaker 2: there are all these menacing things happening around you. A
Speaker 2: guy wielding a wrench, and like people pulling up and
Speaker 2: watching you from a car. And so I was curious,
Speaker 2: when do you know when to be scared?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I'm scared all the time. Every time
Speaker 6: I go to knock on someone's door. Was a little
Speaker 6: bit nervous. I'm just I'm kind of shy to begin with.
Speaker 6: But I don't know how. You know, you just you know,
Speaker 6: you get a feeling. It's kind of like, uh, pornography,
Speaker 6: you know what when you see it, you know you
Speaker 6: know when you're scared, when you're scared. But always in
Speaker 6: that particular instance, we had a pit bull barking at me,
Speaker 6: and it was a known huge drug selling family in
Speaker 6: Oakland that I was talking to, So it's kind of
Speaker 6: in the back of my mind already off to it.
Speaker 6: Earlier in the day, I had been threatened to be killed.
Speaker 1: I don't want so that's that's that's really wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually you always imagine that private investigators just
Speaker 3: have no fear at all.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to hear this.
Speaker 3: I mean, has there ever been a time or a
Speaker 3: case that you were working on where you really just
Speaker 3: almost said, you know what, I'm not cut out to
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 1: I can't do this work anymore.
Speaker 6: I mean I often feel that way. Actually, you know,
Speaker 6: it's a tough job. But that case that you were
Speaker 6: talking about earlier was one case where I was feeling
Speaker 6: that way a little bit because it was a murder
Speaker 6: case and it was a gang that had done they
Speaker 6: had killed four people and one night just for fun.
Speaker 6: It wasn't even a gang saying it was. They were
Speaker 6: literally just driving around killing people for fun. And I
Speaker 6: was looking for one of the guys in that case
Speaker 6: who hadn't been charged in the case, who was going
Speaker 6: around all of his old family members and knocking on
Speaker 6: the door and asking for him and just by implications
Speaker 6: doing that and kind of suggesting that he's could be
Speaker 6: a snitch or something. So I remember driving across the
Speaker 6: Bay Bridge and thinking, man, this is this guy going
Speaker 6: to get tired of me looking for him. So that
Speaker 6: was definitely one And what keeps you doing it?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: I find the work really meaningful, you know. I think
Speaker 6: st ended up to helping someone who charged in a
Speaker 6: case is a great thing to do. The whole government
Speaker 6: coming down on someone and they can only rely on
Speaker 6: the lawyers and the investigators and the paralagels and the
Speaker 6: people trying to work for them against the power of
Speaker 6: the of the US government or the state government. I
Speaker 6: think it's just a really noble thing to do.
Speaker 2: Which is awesome. And speaking of meaningful, we're gonna give
Speaker 2: you a really meaningful quiz right now.
Speaker 1: What quiz are we playing with Patrick today?
Speaker 2: Mango's. It's called spot the Con because our show is
Speaker 2: all about common and every answer has the word con
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: All right, Patrick, are you ready to play?
Speaker 6: I think so?
Speaker 1: Okay, we got.
Speaker 3: Four questions for you, all right. Question number one, This
Speaker 3: state has a law that, to be officially called a pickle,
Speaker 3: a brind cucumber must bounce. Also, its capital is Hartford,
Speaker 3: name that conque.
Speaker 1: An nenunciate there we go, all right? Number two.
Speaker 3: Since twenty ten, this breakfast meat has had a legal
Speaker 3: church established in its name in Vegas with over thirteen
Speaker 3: thousand congregants. Also strips of its star and a sandwich
Speaker 3: between lettuce and tomato.
Speaker 1: Can you name that con bacon?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got it, all right.
Speaker 1: See no need to be afraid of this quiz, all right?
Speaker 1: Question number three.
Speaker 3: When Wilt Chamberlain scored his one hundred point game, he
Speaker 3: was wearing this classic sneaker brand, but you might recognize
Speaker 3: them by the Chuck Taylor patch on them.
Speaker 1: Can you name that con convert? You got it? Three
Speaker 1: for three. Let's see if you can go for the
Speaker 1: perfect score. Number four.
Speaker 3: When JFK was stranded on the Solomon Islands, he wrote
Speaker 3: a message on the husk of one of these hairy,
Speaker 3: hard shelled fruits.
Speaker 1: And was rescued.
Speaker 3: Name that con This is a hard one. By the way,
Speaker 3: it's hard to find the con in this one.
Speaker 6: Is that coconut?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so. In fact, JFK actually kept his inscribed
Speaker 2: coconut on his desk as the paperweight.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, well, how has Patrick done today? Mango?
Speaker 2: Well, Patrick went an incredible four for four, which means
Speaker 2: we'll be sending him home with a Hardy Boys tote bag,
Speaker 2: the best way to show the world you know who
Speaker 2: the Hardy Boys are terrific.
Speaker 3: Well, I hope all of our listeners will check out
Speaker 3: Every Man a Menace as well as The White Van.
Speaker 1: But Patrick, thanks so much for joining us on Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me, guys, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where today we're talking
Speaker 3: about some of the most notorious bunko artists in the business.
Speaker 2: So you're really having fun with all these colorful nicknames
Speaker 2: from common like bunko artists. I think you called him
Speaker 2: no account scoundrels, flim flammers.
Speaker 1: Flym flammers. I like that one.
Speaker 3: I mean, not only are con artists the most well
Speaker 3: regarded of criminals, they're also the ones with the best nicknames. Actually,
Speaker 3: I looked into a few of my favorites to see
Speaker 3: where they came from.
Speaker 1: So let's see.
Speaker 3: There was a bamboozler, which started out as a slang
Speaker 3: word for chie in the seventeen hundreds, might have been
Speaker 3: derived from the Scottish word for bambay or Bombay's, which
Speaker 3: means to perplex. Another good one is bilker, which first
Speaker 3: used in the sixteen hundreds as a cribbage term for
Speaker 3: someone who spoiled another person's.
Speaker 2: Score you love, you love my cribbage.
Speaker 3: References, and later came to be, you know, to mean defrauder.
Speaker 3: But the Hussarus is full of them, swindler, fleecer, sharpie, shyster, smoothie,
Speaker 3: sly boots.
Speaker 2: So there's actually one where I wouldn't mind talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what, what's that one?
Speaker 2: Snake oil salesman?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good. I don't know how I didn't think
Speaker 1: about that one. That should have come up already.
Speaker 2: I know. So the term's kind of become synonymous with convent,
Speaker 2: and it brings to mind ideas of like these old
Speaker 2: timey traveling salesmen hawking fake curles from a covered wagon
Speaker 2: or whatever. But in fact, if you look up snake
Speaker 2: oil in the OED, it's actually defined as a quack
Speaker 2: remedy or panacea.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Why is that surprising?
Speaker 2: Right? So it's because snake oil in itself can actually
Speaker 2: be a legitimate treatment for some conditions.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, forgive me if i'm a little skeptical about
Speaker 3: this mango, But this is an episode about cons after.
Speaker 2: That, so fair enough. But this is actually the real deal.
Speaker 2: Like thousands of the Chinese railroad workers who immigrated to
Speaker 2: the US during the late eighteen hundreds, they actually relied
Speaker 2: on snake oil to reduce inflammation in their joints after
Speaker 2: a long day on the job. It was this medical
Speaker 2: tradition that they brought over from their homeland, a bomb
Speaker 2: made from like the Chinese water snakes omega three rich oils,
Speaker 2: and it was super effective for treating conditions like arthritis
Speaker 2: or bersitis.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: So but wait, you're telling me that snakel salesmen are
Speaker 3: somehow victims of some long running smear campaign.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. They were total crooks. But once words started
Speaker 2: getting out about this Chinese snake oil, these enterprising American
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs or con men as you and I call them,
Speaker 2: started developing their own homegrown versions of the miracle drug.
Speaker 2: And the most famous of these was the salesman called
Speaker 2: Clark Stanley. Have you heard of him?
Speaker 1: No, I haven't.
Speaker 2: He was also called the Rattlesnake King, and he claimed
Speaker 2: to have found a way to put the oil from
Speaker 2: snakes to the same use as the water snakes. But
Speaker 2: Stanley snake oil had two problems, right, So the first
Speaker 2: was that rattlesnake oil is way less effective for treating inflammation.
Speaker 2: It only has a third of the active compound of
Speaker 2: a water snake oil.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, and you said there was a
Speaker 1: second problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the second was that Stanley snake oil didn't
Speaker 2: have any snake oil in all that.
Speaker 1: That's a big problem.
Speaker 2: That's a bigger problem. But this federal investigation in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen found out that his product was mostly made from
Speaker 2: mineral oil and some mix of beef fat and red
Speaker 2: pepper and turpentine. But once the secret was out, Stanley
Speaker 2: was out of the business, and snake oil salesmen have
Speaker 2: ever been linked to that fraud.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, And as you know, we've talked about
Speaker 3: con men as artists, actors, psychologists, storytellers, of course, not
Speaker 3: to mention criminals. But you know, that last story reminds
Speaker 3: me that a con man is fundamentally a salesman. I mean,
Speaker 3: their product is lousier, altogether non existent even But because
Speaker 3: that's the case, con artists are actually some of the
Speaker 3: best sales people ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's that's that tenacity and that
Speaker 2: idea of making it on the strength of your own
Speaker 2: wits that people find so appealing. Like we all love
Speaker 2: an underdog, someone who's figured out this way to work
Speaker 2: the system to their own advantage. So in a way,
Speaker 2: we like hearing about con artists because we get to
Speaker 2: live vicariously through them in these like larger than life
Speaker 2: stories of people who've gotten there is one way or another.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which brings me back again to something we touched
Speaker 3: on earlier. You know, at some level, are we all
Speaker 3: con artists, Because if we're responding to certain characteristics that
Speaker 3: typify con artists, maybe the same kind of duplicitous tendencies
Speaker 3: crop up in all of us, but you know, just
Speaker 3: in a less concentrated form.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that actually sounds a lot like something I read
Speaker 2: about in my research called microcons And these are the
Speaker 2: little white lives we all tell on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: Like it might be an insincere compliment you give to
Speaker 2: loved one, or like an ignored text we make it
Speaker 2: up an excuse for missing. We often stand to gain
Speaker 2: something from these FIBs, whether it's avoiding on wanted confrontation
Speaker 2: or getting like a small reward of some kind. But
Speaker 2: does that mean we should all be lumped in with
Speaker 2: conmen in that same shady category, Like it feels like
Speaker 2: a big leap. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I might be a little bit biased here,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna go ahead and say no to that.
Speaker 3: But I do think you're right that micro cons are
Speaker 3: a thing we all do. But con artists really seem
Speaker 3: to be operating on a whole different level. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a crazy amount of energy and thought that goes
Speaker 3: into being a con artist.
Speaker 2: I read this Economist article by Alison Schrieger, and she
Speaker 2: really nails that difference between con artists and the average person.
Speaker 2: She writes, it's an amazing paradox. A conmen has incredible
Speaker 2: emotional insight, but without the burden of compassion, he must
Speaker 2: take an intense interest in other people, complete strangers, and
Speaker 2: work to understand them, yet remain detached and uninvested. That
Speaker 2: the plan is to cheat these people and ultimately confirm
Speaker 2: many of their fears cannot be of concern.
Speaker 3: Yeah, without the burden of compassion. That that's an interesting
Speaker 3: way to put it, And it's that kind of effort
Speaker 3: and cold focus that I'm talking about. I mean, we
Speaker 3: aren't detached from the people. We carry out our own
Speaker 3: micro cons on it's usually just the opposite of that.
Speaker 3: And you know, we aren't knowingly hurting folks either, which
Speaker 3: is probably the biggest thing that separates us from con
Speaker 3: artists and also a reason maybe to rethink our love
Speaker 3: affair with the idea of them. You know, con artists
Speaker 3: actively seek to do harm to people and they know it.
Speaker 2: Which is true. But I think you should keep your
Speaker 2: wits about you for this next part because it's about
Speaker 2: time to jump into the part time genius fact off.
Speaker 3: All right, I'll start us off, and we talked about
Speaker 3: George Parker and his selling the Brooklyn Bridge multiple times,
Speaker 3: but it turns out there was a con artist pulling
Speaker 3: a similar stunt in Paris. This was a guy named
Speaker 3: Victor Luswig in the early nineteen twenties, and he decided
Speaker 3: to appoint himself the deputy director of the Ministry of
Speaker 3: Posts and Telegraphs.
Speaker 1: What a title. It sounds official to me.
Speaker 3: So he went around us scrap metal dealers telling them
Speaker 3: that the Eiffel Tower was going to be dismantled, and
Speaker 3: then he took bids on who was going to get
Speaker 3: the medal, and lots of people fell for this. In fact,
Speaker 3: the guy who ultimately won the bid he was too
Speaker 3: embarrassed by the whole thing to report, of.
Speaker 2: Course he was. So I want to do a full
Speaker 2: episode on female con artists online because there are some
Speaker 2: amazing stories. But one of my favorite characters is Sophie Lyons,
Speaker 2: who this writer Jay Robert Nash calls America's first important
Speaker 2: con woman. She started as a prostitute and she married
Speaker 2: her way up, like she married a bank robber. But
Speaker 2: over the years she managed to builk over a million
Speaker 2: dollars out of people while outsmarting the police at every turn,
Speaker 2: like she never got caught. But the thing I find
Speaker 2: most fascinating about her story when she retired in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven, she started writing for the New York World
Speaker 2: and became the country's first society commist.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, all right, Well, one of my favorite con
Speaker 3: artists is Princess Cariboo from the island of Javasu. Back
Speaker 3: in the early eighteen hundreds, this woman began wandering the
Speaker 3: streets of all men Bury, England. She'd be wearing all
Speaker 3: black and was clearly hungry and exhausted, and she was
Speaker 3: speaking a language no one could understand. So a wealthy
Speaker 3: couple takes her in and they try to find somebody
Speaker 3: who can understand what she's saying. Well, in comes a
Speaker 3: Portuguese sailor who claimed to understand her and said she
Speaker 3: was in fact a princess. Now, the story goes that
Speaker 3: she was at sea abducted by pirates, but managed to
Speaker 3: escape and found her way ashore. So Princess Cariboo was
Speaker 3: treated like royalty, or at least like a celebrity, that is,
Speaker 3: until she was eventually found out.
Speaker 2: So I've got one for you. Are you familiar with
Speaker 2: the Nation of Celestial Space.
Speaker 1: I can't say that I am.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a real thing, or at least it was
Speaker 2: in the mind of this Chicago resident, Charles D. Mangan
Speaker 2: So one night, after pondering the ownership of outer space,
Speaker 2: he decided he'd claim all of out of space as
Speaker 2: part of the Nation of Celestial Space, which he founded
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty nine. But here's the weird part, right. Somehow,
Speaker 2: after a lot of phone calls and a lot of harassing,
Speaker 2: he submitted his charter of Celestia to the County Recorder
Speaker 2: of Deeds, and it was actually accepted by the state
Speaker 2: of Illinois. And of course it never got any further
Speaker 2: than that because, like, despite his petitions to the un
Speaker 2: and his appeal to secretaries of state, like.
Speaker 1: No one answered his phone qull it seems impossible. That's
Speaker 1: so crazy.
Speaker 3: All right, You're gonna be shocked when I tell you this.
Speaker 3: But you know those signs you see all over the place.
Speaker 3: They're on telephone polls, highway medians that say you can
Speaker 3: work from home and make tons of money. It turns
Speaker 3: out those are a scam. Ango.
Speaker 1: I hate to tell you that. I know it's hard
Speaker 1: to believe.
Speaker 3: So usually what those scammers do is get you to
Speaker 3: pay some sort of a fee for a starter kit
Speaker 3: of some kind, and then the only way you can
Speaker 3: really make money is to convince your friends or other
Speaker 3: people you know to do the same thing.
Speaker 2: So perhaps the greatest impostor of them all would be
Speaker 2: Ferdinand Demara, who's often known as the great impostor. In
Speaker 2: his nineteen eighty two obituary in the New York Times
Speaker 2: and You're gonna love this, they gave a rundown of
Speaker 2: many of the identities he'd taken on the oh bit
Speaker 2: read quote. At times in his life, mister Damara lived
Speaker 2: as a Trappist monk, a doctor of psychology, a dean
Speaker 2: of philosophy at a small college in Pennsylvania, a law student,
Speaker 2: a zoology graduate, a career researcher, a teacher at a
Speaker 2: junior college in Maine, a surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy,
Speaker 2: an assistant warden at a Texas prison, and a teacher
Speaker 2: in a Maine village.
Speaker 1: That is impressive, I know, But.
Speaker 2: This is the best part, right, Like the identity that
Speaker 2: actually got inbusted was the most impressive one. It was
Speaker 2: when he was a surgeon on the Royal Canadian Navy
Speaker 2: destroyer during the Korean War. He was a surgeon and
Speaker 2: after several wounded men were brought in from combat, it
Speaker 2: was on him to save them, right, And so the
Speaker 2: story goes he had this photographic memory and he'd go
Speaker 2: into a back room, look at a medical book, come
Speaker 2: back and then actually performed the life saving surgery. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was appairly so successful that he was recognized as
Speaker 2: a hero, which actually blew his cover. So still it's
Speaker 2: an impressive run.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that is crazy. But back to what we
Speaker 3: were talking about.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the episode.
Speaker 3: It's so impressive that you almost find yourself cheering the
Speaker 3: guy on total So I have to give it to you, Mango.
Speaker 1: You win the trophy this time.
Speaker 2: Thank you and thank you listeners for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.
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Speaker 3: Do we forget Jason Jason, who the