Con Games Research Articles

The Confidence Game: Madoff and the 17th Floor Ensemble

This is the third in a series of five articles focusing on how Bernard Madoff’s confidence game (con game) worked. This paper looks at more of the activities of the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS) employees who were Madoff’s accomplices. Not surprisingly, deception was rampant at the BLMIS IA (investment advisory) business where criminal activities continued for decades. An examination of other con games shows clearly that pretending, misrepresenting, and dissembling were hardly unique to Madoff’s con.

The Confidence Game: Of Others and of Bernard Madoff

This is the first in a series of five articles focusing on how Bernard Madoff’s confidence game (con game) worked. This paper first examines three con games in order to isolate their common elements. What went on in Madoff’s offices is generally what goes on in most con games: extensive preparations, elaborate props, pretense, victims convinced that they have much to win and little to lose, greed, and the ability to disorient and fool. Little in Madoff’s world was what it seemed to be.

Web of deceit: misinformation and manipulation in the age of social media

For all its amazing benefits, the worldwide social media phenomenonepitomized by such sites as Facebook, Myspace, eBay, Twitter, and craigslisthas provided manipulative people and organizations with the tools (and human targets) that allow hoaxes and con games to be perpetrated on a vast scale.In this eye-opening follow-up to her popular 2002 book, Web of Deception, Anne P. Mintz brings together a team of expert researchers, journalists, and subject experts to explain how misinformation is intentionally spread and to illuminate the dangers in a range of critical areas.Web of Deceit is a must-read for any internet user who wants to avoid being victimized by liars, thieves, and propagandists in the age of ubiquitous social media.

Text, lies and electronic bait: An analysis of email fraud and the decisions of the unsuspecting

Despite the preponderance of advance fee fraud scams, many in society still fall victim to such con games. The internet has provided scammers with an opportunity to perpetrate fraud on a global scale. In particular, the 419 email scam has become a popular tool used by scammers to entice their victims. Our purpose is to establish rhetorical moves that exist in these 419 messages, and then analyze the intention of the scammers behind each move — a scam must shake the potential victim out of the status quo behavior. In other words, how is the content of particular moves able to facilitate change in a potential victim’s mind, goading him or her to unwise action? After examining each move in light of features considered necessary for mind change, it was determined that the scammers are most concerned about building solidarity with the mark and playing to a mark’s egocentrism, both of which keep the mark from making well-informed decisions.

Road Show (review)

Reviewed by: Road Show Alisa C. Roost Road Show. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman. Directed by John Doyle. Public Theater, New York City. 6 December 2008. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman have collaborated on three of the most unusual musicals—Pacific Overtures, Assassins, and Road Show—all of which deal with the negative impact of elements of the American Dream, a theme Sondheim has interwoven into many of his shows. Sondheim and Weidman and their directors also have experimented with techniques unusual for the commercial musical stage, including Brechtian alienation and traditional Japanese theatre conventions. Pacific Overtures explores the effect on Japan when the United States demanded access to trade. Featuring two Japanese characters influenced by American culture, it allows the audience some of the traditional pleasures of emotional identification. Assassins, a meditation on the dark side of the American Dream, examines the motivations of presidential assassins. The main characters reveal their passionate and intellectual underpinnings, thus giving the show surprising moments of emotional resonance. A few group numbers delve into the societal conditions the motley characters share, but the beauty of the individual solos is more chilling. When John Wilkes Booth sings his magnificently evil thoughts, the moments create a weird dissonance between his passionate commitment (and the beautiful music) and his horrific acts. Unusual in its subject material, Assassins is one of the more successful uses of Verfremdungseffekt in the American musical theatre: enticing audiences into identifying with the passions of the characters, and then being utterly repelled by that identification. [End Page 624] Click for larger view View full resolution Michael Cerveris (Wilson) and company in Road Show. (Photo: Joan Marcus.) Road Show tells the story of two antagonistic brothers at the turn of the last century as each pursues his own version of the American Dream. Road Show has had three major incarnations with three different directors. In 2000, the show (then known as Wise Guys and directed by Sam Mendes) applied a light touch; Nathan Lane and Victor Garber sparkled with vaudevillian humor and witty repartee. The various issues relating to the dark side of the American Dream percolated without a particularly didactic edge, while humor, wit, and charisma drove the show. The second act had not been finished by the beginning of the run, leaving only delicious possibilities. With a phenomenal cast in an unusually small theatre, Wise Guys allowed Garber and Lane to pull the audience into their camaraderie. Their charisma may have overshadowed the work itself, but, to my mind, it remains the most successful version of the show. In 2003, Harold Prince collaborated with Sondheim on Bounce, for which a cast album is available. In the post-9/11 environment, the show became larger, with more focus on the broad scope of the brothers’ lives without focusing on a specific theme. Strongly plot-based with little character introspection, the Mizner brothers had more romance (heterosexual for Wilson, homosexual for Addison) and more of a happy ending. The show touched on a variety of themes: sibling rivalry, dueling visions of the American Dream, artistic passions, and the interplay of various forms of capitalism with art and con games, but it never explored any single theme to satisfaction. In 2008, John Doyle directed a sparse production of the piece, now titled Road Show, tightly focused on the economic themes. Serendipitously timed, the show premiered in the midst of the economic meltdown. Early in the show, the boys’ father tells his sons that their choices will be “determining what kind of nation we’ll be,” forging a life from the riches of nature and their own determination. Wilson (Michael Cerveris) embodies the “cocaine-fueled con game” of unregulated capitalism under the Bush administration, dabbling in anything that could gain him wealth or notoriety, feeding his drug habit and ego. The Boca Raton housing crisis, a major plot point in the show, comments on our recent disastrous economic bubbles. In sharp contrast, Addison Mizner (Alexander Gemignani) serves as an archetype for what many see as the upside of capitalism; his round-the-world tour is a subtle history of Western colonialism, for he visits only former colonies. Unlike his country...

The Color of Confidence: Racial Con Games and the Logic of Gold

The Color of Confidence: Racial Con Games and the Logic of Gold

Oscar Micheaux: the great and only: the life of America's first black filmmaker

Micheaux's saga is unique among Hollywood backstories. The son of freed slaves, he grew up in the homesteading communities of South Dakota. After working as a Pullman porter, he was inspired by Jack London to write fiction, and soon began an entrepreneurial career successfully publishing a series of his own autobiographical novels. Then, in 1919, he formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories. He would go on to produce or direct twenty-two silent and fifteen sound films in his lifetime, becoming the king of the race cinema industry at a time before black-produced films could be shown in white-owned theaters.Part visionary, part raffish Barnum-like showman, Micheaux would buck the odds throughout his life. He made a fortune and lost it again, launching repeated con games that were followed by public arrests and bankruptcies. He also eagerly took credit for the work of others - including his unsung-heroine wife; in his desperate later years, as McGilligan reveals here for the first time, he even sunk to plagiarising his final novel. In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing his birthplace, his tangled personal life, the circumstances of his tragic death. The result is an epic that bridges a fascinating period in American and cultural history.

THEFT ON CAMPUS: AN ANALYSIS OF LARCENY-THEFT AT AN URBAN UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT Larceny- theft is the most frequently reported index crime in the United States, in virtually all 50 states and on most college campuses. Larceny-theft, (herein after referred to simply as theft) is the unlawful taking of property in which no use of violence, force or fraud occurs. It thus differs from embezzlement, “con games”, forgery or similar crimes. In 1993, 7.8 million of the 14.1 million index crimes reported in the Uniform Crime Report were thefts (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1994). Review of state by state data reveals that theft is also the most prevalent index crime in each of the 50 states (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1994:68-78). More germane to the focus of this paper is that theft is also the most frequently reported crime at all but eight of the 431 college and universities which reported crime data for inclusion in the Uniform Crime Reports in 1993, (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1994:158-167). This pattern of the prevalence of theft among index crime statistics has...

Postmodern Theatric[k]s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama

Postmodern Theatric(k)s focuses on the voices that have emerged from American experimental theater of the 1960s, voices shaped by the culture of television, film, Pop Art, and rock music. Increasingly, these writers have brought a distinctly new approach to the use of monologue. Deborah Geis argues that in place of the psychological revelation of the Shakespearean soliloquy, these postmodern monologues play tricks by altering, suspending, or rupturing the narrative progress of a play. Character development through monologue is replaced by parody, theatricality, and con games. For some recent performance artists, the notion of character itself explodes, as monologue permits the performer to play at blurring the fictional and the autobiographical.The author begins by tracing the changing role of monologue from classical drama through the early modernists; she also pinpoints the connections between the off-Off- Broadway theater of the sixties and new uses of monologue. The focus then turns to several key American playwrights, including Sam Shepard and David Mamet. Geis shows how monologue, as a technique for giving voice to previously silenced speakers, has played a crucial role in works by feminist and African-American dramatists like Maria Irene Fornes and Ntozake Shange. The author closes with an examination of the works of Spalding Gray and Karen Finley, two performance artists whose monologues display unique efforts at boundary-crossing.As the first study of its kind on monologue in theatrical narrative and as a discussion of recent American playwrights from a comparative critical perspective, Postmodern Theatric(k)s will be of interest to specialists in dramatic theory and criticism, specialists in performance studies, and theater practitioners. The volume will also appeal to readers interested in literary theory, cultural studies, feminism, and performance art.Deborah Geis is Assistant Professor of English, Queens College, City University of New York.

Errata: Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Errata: Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Errata: Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Errata: Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Research Article| July 01 1990 Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games" William F. van Wert William F. van Wert Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (1990) 43 (4): 2–10. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212717 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William F. van Wert; Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games". Film Quarterly 1 July 1990; 43 (4): 2–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1212717 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1990 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Psychoanalysis and Con Games: "House of Games"

Elections and Dilemmas of American Democratic Governance: Reflections

I take as a central dilemma of American democratic governance that while all the adult citizenry have gained the opportunity to vote freely in elections on who the president and members of Congress are to be, they seem to be losing influence on what those officials do on questions of policy once in office. The 1988 election campaigns produced more criticism both of the process of choosing these officials and of the lack of policy mandates than any others in recent memory. This article attempts to organize that criticism under three headings, reflect upon it, and offer some prescriptions for change. The bill of particulars being leveled against the American democracy is, as I would summarize it: First, presidential and congressional election campaigns have become much more like popularity or beauty contests, con games, and television spectacles than a means of choosing the best persons to rule or producing a policy mandate to our highest officials from the voters. Second, voters cannot fix responsibility for successful or unsuccessful governmental policies because of the constitutional separation of powers between the presidency and Congress and because, of the high frequency in the past thirty-four years of different parties controlling the two branches. Third, appointive federal justices with life tenure on the Supreme Court have the power to nullify the policy preferences of voting majorities working through the president and Congress.

In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of Deception in Mark Twain's America (review)

Reviewed by: In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of Deception in Mark Twain's America Richard B. Hauck Forrest G. Robinson . In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of Deception in Mark Twain's America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. 225 pp. $18.50. Robinson defines "bad faith" as "the reciprocal deception of self and other in the denial of departures from public ideals of the true and the just." "Bad" here is relative: certainly we cannot live without tacit social contracts that require a collective suspension of disbelief toward the fictions that hold us together. But Twain also showed us the destructive power of those forms of artful manipulation that are wholly respectable because they help maintain unacknowledged social evils. Not only does this kind of deception take others in; it finally displaces the truth, even for the deceiver himself. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are pillars of the great American tradition of stories that tread the thin line between the entertaining utility and the frightening amorality of con games. Tom and Huck both find ways to use deception to evade the rules of bad institutions. Their techniques have been well schooled by the example of St. Petersburg's leading citizens. At the same time, that education excludes any knowledge of where the line is crossed into participation in deceptions that are neither funny nor conducive to survival. Tom's escapades in his book and at the end of Huck's constitute a scary success story: if society tolerates a "spectrum of unacknowledged and sublimated deceits" as the "price of stability and equanimity," then Tom has worked his way up to his rightful place as the town's representative hero. We agonize over the dark initiation of Huck Finn into the world of deception even as we celebrate his ability to turn cruel deceptions back on the deceivers. He cannot escape assimilating into his own thought all the racist assumptions of mid-nineteenth-century American civilization. We forgive his running away because we are still in that trap and do not know how else to get out: "our impulse to exempt Huck is a symptomatic bad-faith recapitulation of our hero's willful self-deception." This last quotation illustrates one thing that will make Robinson's book interesting to some readers and irritating to others: he uses his textual interpretations to support moralizing. At least he does not preach at us—he lets Twain do that. Devoted mostly to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and incorporating analyses of Twain's later fiction, the book is twice as long as it needs to be; and I am not sure that Robinson has pushed into really new territory, because most of his themes have been worked out in recent times by Hamlin Hill, James Cox, Louis Budd, Gary Lindberg, myself, and many others. But Robinson writes pretty well, and he cuts deep. He has brought the subject into a sharp, true focus. One of the best things I took away is a determination to include Tom Sawyer in my next Twain course. Robinson shows that the novel is held together not so much by the presence of a central character as by that character's ordering of events: [End Page 661] "Tom Sawyer's plotting serves to emplot Tom Sawyer." "Now, that's something like!" Richard B. Hauck University of West Florida Copyright © 1988 Purdue Research Foundation

The day to-day criminality of heroin addicts in Baltimore — A study in the continuity of offence rates

A representative sample of 354 male heroin addicts living in the Baltimore metropolitan area was traced from onset of opiate use to time of interview to ascertain any changes in the frequency or type of offences committed during their years at risk. Five basic measures of criminality were employed: crime-day theft, crime-day violence, crime-day dealing, crime-day con games and crime-day other offences. A sixth measure — composite crime day — incorporated all five crime-day measures. Crime rates per year were derived from these six measures. It was found that the start of addiction was associated with a high level of criminality (255 composite crime-days per year), and that this high rate continued over numerous subsequent periods of addiction. Theft of property was the most common type of crime, followed by drug sales, other offences, con games, and violent offences. In contrast to the addiction periods, criminality decreased over successive non-addiction periods. Thus, the composite crime rate (82 composite crime-days per year) for the first non-addiction period was only 32% of the rate of the first addiction period and this lower rate of criminality decreased markedly thereafter.

False pretense and deviant exploitation: Fortunetelling as a con

This paper presents a dramaturgical analysis of the backstage manipulations carried out by practitioners of the deviant occupation known as fortunetelling. It is generally believed that con games require a dishonest victim, although many practitioners manipulate their impressions with clients who are seeking a service rather than a profit. The group of fortunetellers included in this study are nonbelievers and hence fundamentally misrepresent themselves to their clients. Drawing upon depth interviews with 21 non‐Gypsy fortunetellers, including two key informants, six backstage routines are analyzed. Each routine in the fortuneteller's performance presents the client with a frontstage definition of the activity designed to sell more and more “psychic services.” The implications of the dramaturgical analysis of con games are discussed.