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The modus operandi of the American confidence
man, but the writing is quite ponderous and the opening pages fail to
deliver the inherent excitement of the topic.

ETYMOLOGY: The term "confidence man" itself is an American term.  It appeared
in 1849 in the New Orleans Picayune, and was the title of an obscure Herman
Melville novel 1857.  The OED attests to its use in England only in 1884.

Quick Swindler to Big Con

Chapter 1 relates the rise of the con man from a quick swindler into the "big
con" where he operates out of a store filled with shills and other actors.
The story of the main scams are described in vivid detail only in ch.3, "The
Big-Con games".  The main ones are:

* The wire:  A Westen Union telegraph store is set up.  The man running the
  store is introduced to the mark.  He is disgruntled, and has a scheme to
  delay the horse-winning telegrams for a few minutes while he passes on the
  info to his cronies to enable a sure-fire win.  (p. 31-47)  Other stores
  involving betting on fights (fight store) etc are also operated similarly.

* The Pay-off: Here the con-men are working for a syndicate that fixes races.
  The confidence is transferred in a "switch" from the "roper" (who first
  befriends the mark) to the "insideman" (who is running the con system).  In
  the end, they hate the roper, who may be shot dead by the insideman. Then
  the mark (who is implicated in the murder) hides and the insideman leaves
  the country. (p.47-70)

* The rag: A similar version, but running on stocks now, instead of
  horses. Non-store versions may involve a dying man who owns lots of stock,
  that he's forced to sell for cheap, but the big cons require a full, rich,
  brokerage operation. (p.70-85)

This book was the basis for the movie Sting, although this was not
acknowledged by the producers, who had to pay restitution after failing to
show any other source outlining the con jobs of Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman).

Unlike other criminals, the Big Con artist is not a thief, because their
greedy targets really give them the money for carrying out a criminal heist.
Finally, when the scheme fails, they do not even realize that they have been
swindled, and even if they do, no cases can be filed, since their enterprise
was also illegal.

The movie the Sting was based in part on Professor David Maurer's The Big Con,
a study of street slang of the American confidence men of the early part of
the last century.

Textbook on Con man slang

Maurer's The Big Con was first published in 1940 and updated and republished
later as The American Confidence Man. The book began as a linguistic textbook
on the slang of street grifters, but became a manual on how the big time
confidence scams are actually played out.

A professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, Maurer
explained that, "My approach is simple. I determine who the good
professionals are, secure their assistance, and work with them much the same
as an anthropologist might work with an American Indian tribe he is
studying."

"I have scrupulously refrained from passing any judgments with a moral bias,"
Maurer said. "My only aim is to tell for the general reader, the story of
American confidence men and confidence games, stripped of the romantic aura
which commonly hovers over literature of the modern big-time criminal." 17.
After the book was published Maurer continued teaching English classes for
the next few decades, until the movie "The Sting" came out in the early
1970s. When he saw the film Maurer felt like he was stung.

Maurer recognized that the movie "The Sting" was based on his story of The
Big Con, and eventually got a court to agree that his book was the basis for
the screenplay, and used without credit, authorization or restitution.
However reluctantly the movie studio had to recognized and compensate Maurer
because they could produce no other published work that mentions one of the
movie's main protagonists Henry Gondorf (Played by Paul Newman). 18.
Gondorf was not a fictional character, but a real life person and subject of
Maurer's book. Gondorf, according to Maurer, was a bartender and Big Con
artist who operated big con jobs in the 1920s in Chicago, Atlantic City and
New York, running the type of Big Con "stings" portrayed in the film. 19.

Unlike small con swindles, which usually take a sucker for whatever he has on
him, the Big Con games bilked greedy and ripe victims for much larger sums,
and the proper execution of the con depends upon a controlled theater, actors
performing complicated schemes and the cooperation (pay off) of the local law
enforcement.

The controlled theater is called the Big Store, which developed from the
Dollar Stores, where back rooms promoted small time short cons (ala Three
Card Monte). Maurer defines a Big Store as "An establishment against which
big-con men play their victims. For the wire and the pay-off, it is set up
like a poolroom which takes race bets. For the rag, it is set up to resemble
a broker's office. Stores are set up with a careful attention to detail
because they must seem bona fide. After each play, the store is taken down
and all equipment stored away in charge of the manager."

The "Sting" is the point at which the Mark is separated from his money.

Maurer, who interviewed many of Gondorf's friends and fellow con-artists,
explained that the purpose of the Big Con is to convince the Mark to deliver
cash in a scheme that goes astray, with the Mark separated from his money but
none the wiser to the real scheme. Big Con artists didn't consider themselves
thieves because their greedy targets really give them the money.

Everyone in the con, except the Mark, is an actor, each having a name and a
role to play. There is the Manager who sets up the store, the Roper, who is
also known as the Outside Man, who identifies the Mark, brings him to the
store, and assists in fleecing him. The Mark is a victim, or intended victim,
someone with money from out of town. The local Dicks (Cops) are on the Take
when the Fix is in, and paid off under the stipulation that local citizens
wouldn't be taken as Marks.  The Roper identifies and brings the Mark to the
Inside Man, who Maurer identifies as "The member of a con mob who stays near
the Big Store and receives the Mark whom the Roper brings. Inside men are
highly specialized workers; they must have a superb knowledge of psychology
to keep the mark under perfect control during the days or weeks while he is
being fleeced."

    As Maurer puts it, "Big-time confidence games are in reality only
carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast except the mark
knows his part perfectly. The inside man is the star of the cast; while the
minor participants are competent actors and can learn their lines perfectly,
they must look to the inside man for their cues; he must be not only a fine
actor, but a playwright extempore as well…"

    [Please note that David Atlee Phillips, one of Linebarger's star
students, was also an amateur thespian who was a member of an acting troup in
Havana that also included Wayne Smith, who spoke at COPA conferences and
organized the meetings between COPA members and Cuban intelligence in Rio and
the Bahamas.] 20.

    When the deal goes down, everyone in the Store is part of the Sting
except the Mark, who is given the convincer, then separated from his money in
the sting, and then given the shut out, made to feel like its good that he
got out without getting arrested or killed. After the best Stings, the Mark
doesn't even realize what really happened.

[relates the Sting to the JFK murder - that someone with CIA connections
operated a scam that led to JFK's assassination.  The CIA agents were taught
psychological tactics by the legendary Paul Linebarger.]

    When General Odom told Powers that counter-intelligence agents operate
"like the Sting," he meant that the best covert operations are conducted very
much like the Big Con confidence schemes, as Paul Linebarger taught them.

    In looking at what happened at Dealey Plaza as a Big Con job, it seems
that both Kennedy and Oswald, the accused assassin, were set up as Marks. The
Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), owned by D.H. Byrd, an avid Cold
Warrior, was set up like a Big Store, totally under control of the confidence
men who ran the operation. 21.

    JFK was the Mark who was hooked and brought to the Big Store by the
Outside Man. Whoever the Inside Man was, he was very good, and like Gondorf
and Linebarger, has remained behind the scenes, so far. We can be sure
however, that whoever was behind the Dealey Plaza operation, he was a student
of Linebarger.

   When Paul Linebarger gave his lectures to young CIA officers, he warned
them that these techniques should never be used domestically, or it would
totally destroy our form of democracy.

[In the introduction to his book Intelligence Wars – American Secret History
From Hitler to Al Qaeda, Thomas Powers relates an interesting conversation he
once had with General William Odom at a party hosted by former CIA
intelligence officer Haviland Smith. 13.
    While mingling and sipping cocktails at the party, Powers asked General
Odom how the CIA could have uncovered and infiltrated Al Qaeda before 9/11.
    General Odom, the former Army Chief of Staff and director of the National
Security Agency, looked at Powers, smiled and said simply - "Like the Sting."
    In his classes Linebarger however, didn't just use his own book
Psychological Warfare, but for examples of how successful covert operations
are planned and executed he had his students read The Big Con, by David
Maurer. 12.  ]