The Big Con by David Maurer Read Free Book Online Page A

increasing power and effectiveness of the Federal Government since 1930, the con men have had a hard time of it. Whenever a victim’s check passes through the mails the con men are laid open to possible prosecution and almost inevitable conviction, for once the government prepares a case thoroughly enough to bring it to trial, the fix is of little avail and it is almost a foregone conclusion that a federal jury will convict.
    In view of these facts, many of the best operators are moving their stores to Cuba, Mexico, South America, Canada and Europe, where wealthy Americans traveling or living abroad supply a perennial crop of victims, not to mention the equally susceptible natives. Well-established stores now operating in Rome, Berlin, Brussels, London, Havana and the Argentine do a large volume of business which is increasingly international in character. However, the domestic stores still operate very profitably and show no tendency to disappear under the sporadic enforcement drives which are directed at them.
    * These facts were verified by Postal Inspector Graham, the nemesis of modern con men, who supplied them to District Attorney Philip Van Cise during the Denver investigation. They are reprinted here by special permission of Colonel Van Cise.

3
The Big-Con Games
1
The Wire *
    Of the three modern big-con games, the rag, the wire and the pay-off, the wire was invented first. Without it, the rag and the pay-off probably could not have developed. By 1910 it had spread all over the country and scores of $200,000 and higher were being talked of. While it has now waned in popularity in favor of the rag and the payoff, it is still played with very good success.
    The name for the game is an abbreviated form of wire-tapping, from which the idea for the swindle was developed. During the late 1880’s and the 1890’s there were certain unemployed telegraph operators who traveled over the country looking for some gullible race-fan who could be induced to lay out rather large sums of moneyfor the expensive equipment which they represented as being necessary to tap telegraph wires and obtain advance information on the results of a race, hold up these results until the race-fan had time to place a bet with a book-maker, then advance the post-time and forward the results—with very happy consequences for the fan who had meanwhile bet on the winner. No doubt some of them did do what they claimed to be able to do, in which case they shared the profits with the fortunate fan. But many more acted only in the rather crude capacity of tout. They studied the form-sheets to find likely-looking horses, convinced the fan that they could tap the wires, and hoped for the best. If the horse won, of course they shared in the profit; but most of them depended for their profit upon the exorbitant fees which they obtained from the fan in advance in order to buy tools and equipment necessary for wire-tapping. This was known as “expensing” and became a small-time racket. Because it lacked the professional touch, it might well have gone the way of many similar rackets.
    However, at this time there were swarms of professional grifters who worked the country over with many types of confidence racket, the immediate ancestors of the present-day big-time games. The idea of a big store, stimulated by old Ben Marks’ original experiment and the subsequent success of the fight store, was being applied to many con games with great success. There were mitt stores and monte stores and fight stores and wrestle stores. The big-time grifters of that day blinked in pleased surprise. Why hadn’t someone thought of it before? Why not a
wire store?
In other words, why not apply the tried and proved principles of confidence work to the rather clumsy touting efforts of the telegraph operators? If an unemployed telegrapher could get the mark’s confidence well enough to extort “expenses” from him, what could any expert insideman do? Once the mark was