Modus Operandi by Mauro Corvasce (universal ebook reader txt) 📕

on stage with these talents, many of them would have earned far more fame and more fortune than

they did as con artists and sidewalk swindlers.

The key to success in this game is to have crowds, crowds, crowds, because they have money, money, money. On the streets of New York at any given time you can see thousands of these shell game operators working the streets and sidewalks. What makes this game so enticing to tourists and people who do not know about it is the fact that crowds are lured into it. The operator counts on the crowds and their noise.

The booster will scream exuberantly that he has won ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred dollars, thereby attracting a crowd. As we all know, people like to know what's going on to attract a crowd. So, what do we do? We go to the head of the crowd to see what is going on, see the money that is being exchanged, see how easy it is to win (at least for the booster), and offer to give it a shot. The suckers get caught up in the fast pace and large crowds involved in these games.

The police frequently are asked by local merchants to move these con artists along, as they create such crowd problems that regular customers can't enter a store. When the police are seen coming down the block, either with their sweep vans or on foot patrol, the shell game operator simply packs up his milk crates, stuffs his cardboard box into one of the milk crates, drops his lucky pea into his pocket and moves on. Usually, his shop is set up another thirty feet down the block.

Three Card Monte

Three Card Monte may not be as old as the shell game but it is every bit as popular. You encounter it most often today among people waiting for buses, trains and planes. Wherever people have time to kill, a Three Card Monte operator finds enough suckers to make the time profitable for her. This game is similar to the shell game, the only difference being three playing cards instead of walnut shells and a pea.

For instance, if three aces are used —hearts, spades and clubs—they are shuffled around the table in the same manner as the shells and the operator invites the onlookers to pick out the ace of clubs. If she operates with a shill (or booster), she will allow the shill to win a few bets to gain the confidence of the crowd. Sometimes the confederate is given an opportunity to mark the cards so that everybody but the operator knows which one is marked.

After the shill and some of the outsiders win a few bets on the marked card someone is induced to put up a really big bet. But when the sucker turns up the marked card it is not the ace of clubs but the ace of spades. Obviously this is a good example of palming and the game should really be called Four Card Monte. Certainly, four cards are involved though the sucker doesn't know it.

Three Card Monte has many variations, but the best that we have ever seen was worked by a sole operator who used to hang around Penn Station in New York City. He used no marked cards, no shills and he paid off when he lost; after all, he had a two to one advantage so he could plan on winning two-thirds of the time. But to make doubly sure he won, he had a way of shuffling the cards flat on the table that confused anybody who tried to keep his eye on the right card.

Bank Con Artists

Not many years ago, and within the memory of many people, a person who wanted to open a checking account was required to furnish references and one of them was expected to be some type of bank reference. Things are different today. Bankers, pressured by competition and statistics, open checking accounts without any investigation of the applicant or verification of his or her claims to previous banking and business connections. The pressure of competition is obvious; there are almost as many banks as there are drugstores, more banks than bookstores, and their advertising has changed from being institutional to being modern and slick. They spend more money advertising for new accounts than they lose on bad ones. What they don't take into consideration is that their advertising invites swindlers.

There is an old saying among bank management: "Strangers are not always crooks, but crooks are usually

strangers." The most common type of bank swindle by con artists is the split deposit con. Many times a con will open an account under a fictitious name and place a small amount of money in the account, usually fifty to a hundred dollars. After the account is opened, they receive various paperwork and documentation. Frequently, the con will visit the bank making small deposits of ten or fifteen dollars or depositing a check for fifty dollars and asking for twenty dollars cash back. This is to build up the confidence of the people in the bank so that he or she is easily recognized as being a bank customer.

One of Joe's investigations involved a woman, who through a split deposit transaction, deposited a check at her bank for $7,550. She deposited $4,050 to her account and asked for cash back in the amount of $3,500. At another bank she obtained $3,650 cash in a similar transaction. The following Monday, she cashed checks on her accounts for $1,500 at each bank. The total take for one week was $10,150, which is not too bad when you consider that most people do not make that in six months.

The split deposit scam is very easy to do because it plays on the confidence of the teller. When a teller sees that a person is depositing a check for around seven thousand dollars into an account and is only asking for a portion back, they presume the