Never Fall for the Con Artist (Never Fall Series)

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You learned what works. I played the heartstrings; I intimidated; I made people feel bad for me. Whether it was manipulating my three older sisters or convincing the neighbor lady that I needed one more ice-cream bar from the Mister Softee truck, I always knew what to say. And as I got older, I got better. In , I got a chance to apply these gifts of persuasion in the workplace.

I went to work for a Florida company that sold prepaid-calling-card vending machines. At first I thought it was a real job. But it seemed like a lot of customers were calling back to complain. In fact, they all called back to complain.

Believe it or not, for a long time I thought every business was like this. Gradually, it dawned on me that this was the dark side of corporate America. I first tried heroin when I was 22, and became instantly addicted. For the next 15 years I would move in and out of rehab centers and in and out of fraud boiler rooms. Drug addiction gave me the two characteristics all scam operators want in a closer: If you are strung out and in need of a fix, you will do anything to feed your habit.

This may explain why the owners of many of these scam operations in South Florida recruited their boiler room staff at local Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Who's a better talker than an addict? Who is more manipulative than an addict? Who is more desperate for money than an addict? Addicts hustle; that's what we do. So you couple that with my experience selling over the phone in Florida and you have the perfect storm.

I'm a hustler from New York and an addict.

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These boiler rooms were dying to hire me. This was lesson number one: Assume a false personality or social mask that makes it easier to pull off the deception. Swindling is really acting, and you play a character who will help you appear legitimate, confident and successful … even when you are not. I've trained hundreds of salesmen who worked in scam boiler rooms. And I always told them to picture themselves with the big sprawling office, sitting behind the mahogany desk, with the family portrait on the credenza. Your autographed football and jerseys are hanging on the wall, along with awards and several pictures of you posing with famous actors.

The pool table is across the room on the left-hand side. You are this bigwig whom everybody wants to talk to. The idea is to build up confidence, so that when you ask for the money you won't show one lick of fear or hesitation or doubt that this isn't, hands down, absolutely the greatest decision this client is making for his or her family and future. The persona explains how a barrel of dented-can drug addicts can persuade successful businesspeople to write big checks without reading the paperwork. On the outside you will see nothing but charm, an engaging personality and swagger.

On the inside lies a predator.

There is no conscience in this business. It's every man for himself, and the goal is to acquire as much money as possible. The business needs to have a persona, too, to look legitimate and trustworthy. So we'd run television commercials and hire famous actors to appear in them.

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The first day we ran that ad, it generated more than 10, phone calls. I guess people see an Adam West or an Ernest Borgnine we also hired him on TV and assume the product he's selling is the real deal or he wouldn't be selling it.

But the celebrity's contract frequently states that he or she cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the claims in the script. The celebrity probably doesn't know that people are getting ripped off; he may know nothing at all about the business. He just comes in, reads his part and leaves. Think about the first time you fell in love or a time when someone cut you off on the freeway and you were seething for hours. Were you thinking clearly? Those who believe they'd never fall for a scam don't realize it's not about how smart you are; it's about how well you control your emotions.

Fraud victims are people with emotional needs, just like the rest of us. But they can't separate out those needs when they make financial decisions. That's what makes them vulnerable. As a master closer, I made it my first objective to get the victim "under the ether. Once I have gotten you into this condition, it doesn't matter how smart or dumb you are. Ether trumps intelligence every time. To find a client's emotional need, I'll ask a bunch of personal questions.

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Then I'll throttle up the pressure by focusing on that need. That's got to be tough. If you apply logic, the answer is: I don't even know who you are. The other pathway to the ether is simple greed: I just promise people they can make a ton of money. I'm often asked how I could have ripped off senior citizens.

The answer is that con men target people who have money, and a lot of seniors are sitting on fat nest eggs. It's the Willie Sutton rule: He robbed banks because that is where the money was. But there's more to it than that. I think older people are easier to scam, because their emotional needs are closer to the surface.

They aren't afraid to tell people how much they care about their kids and grandkids. They aren't afraid to share their fears about the unstable financial markets and how much they worry about being on a fixed income. These fears are real. And every one of them is a bullet for my gun.

My scam career was focused on investments like phony oil and gas deals , bogus business opportunities and gold-coin scams. Edit Cast Series cast summary: Letty Raines 20 episodes, Juan Diego Botto Javier 20 episodes, Terry Kinney Estelle 20 episodes, Nyles Steele Jacob Raines 20 episodes, Joey Kern Rob 15 episodes, Sherri Robinson Ava Pereira 10 episodes, Juan Riedinger Edit Storyline Letty Raines is a thief and con artist whose life is always one wrong turn, one bad decision, from implosion.

Edit Did You Know? Trivia Juan Diego Botto Javier dislocated his right shoulder on the 3rd day of the shoot and so in many of the car sequences Michelle Dockery Letty had to manually shift the gear lever from the front passenger's seat just out of view of the camera.

A veteran scammer reveals how he made millions ripping off unsuspecting investors

Connections Referenced in The Simpsons: Frequently Asked Questions Q: Where can I find a song I heard during the show? Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report this. Audible Download Audio Books. Letty Raines 20 episodes, Javier 20 episodes, Estelle 20 episodes, But it fits the psychological quirks of these masters of deception. It makes them not just happy to talk to her, but downright eager because they are so proud of their skill and their craft. Konnikova first had the idea for her book while watching House of Games , a David Mamet movie in which a psychiatrist becomes embroiled in an elaborate long con.

Intrigued, she began looking into the psychological literature on con men. She quickly saw that our perceptions of confidence men were riddled with misunderstandings. The Confidence Game surveys con artists from all different walks of life. She covers Ferdinand Waldo DeMara Jr, who pretended to be everyone from a surgeon to a prison warden. She also looks at the psychic Sylvia Mitchell, who was convicted on 10 counts of grand larceny in She also looks at small-time street hustlers who entice people with the prospect of riches from three-card monte.

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