The Big Con by David Maurer

I know this is a bit of a strange book to start off 2005, but it’s actually a holdover from December when things got a little busy. I can’t even remember who recommended it to me or why, but I have to say it is quite fascinating. The Big Con : The Story of the Confidence Man (amazon, ORL) dates from 1940 and is a riveting look at the confidence racket from the turn of last century. It sounds dated, but many of the things it covers remain constants in the dynamics of grift up until the present day.

And I think this is why it is a bit of a fascinating read. As one of the first books ever written on grifters and their trade, the book not only gives you an inside track on how cons work, the language grifters use and the lives they actually lead.

The confidence man is the aristocrat of criminals in many respects. He never resorts to violence to fleece his victims. In fact, the mark willingly hands over his money to the confidence trickster in both short and big cons. There is a saying amongst grifters that it is impossible to cheat an honest man, and in fact, all confidence scams operate on the principle that grifters are taking advantage of people who believe they are scamming other people in some manner. And that is the root secret of all confidence scams. It targets peoples’ greed. In many cases, the marks have so bought into their own fleecing once the sting comes that they come back again with even more money to get taken once again. It is a fascinating insight into human psychology and why a con can fundamentally operate.

The most fascinating part of the book besides the language used throughout, argot that has either become deeply integrated or passed from modern English entirely, is the actual outlining of how both big and short confidence games work and the different types of grifts that separate marks from their money.

It’s an interesting read and quite entertaining in seeing how short term cons evolved into big cons and the easy evolution from there into the modern day confidence scam.