The Big Con (15 page)

Every reader probably feels sure that
he
is proof against con games; that his native horse-sense would prevent him from being made a victim, that these tricks which seem so patent in print would never ensnare him. Perhaps so. But let him remember that competent con men find a good deal of diversion in “playing the con” for one another, and that many a professional has suddenly realized that he is the butt of a practical joke in which all the forces of the big con have been brought to bear upon him.

Now, confidence men do not go about burdened down with bales of script written out in advance to take care of every situation which may develop. They do not write out anything. But they know from experience the situations which are likely to come up, and know their lines letter-perfect for those situations. Then there are a number of stock variations which can be used if the office is given by the insideman. All the players know these variations by rote, and can swing into their routine at the given signal.

These variations aside, all big-con games fall into the same general pattern, the fundamentals of which were outlined in the early pages of this book. The rather remarkable but well-established fact is that men who have been beaten once will come back again—and again, and again. Truly, “you can’t knock a good mark.”

People who read of con touches in the newspaper are often wont to remark: “That bird must be stupid to fall for a game like that. Why, anybody should know better than to do what he did ….” In other words, there is a widespread feeling among legitimate folk that anyone who is the victim of a confidence game is a numskull.

But it should not be assumed that the victims of confidence games are all blockheads. Very much to the contrary, the higher a mark’s intelligence, the quicker he sees through the deal directly to his own advantage. To expect a mark to enter into a con game, take the bait, and then, by sheer reason, analyze the situation and see it as a swindle, is simply asking too much. The mark is thrown into an unreal world which very closely resembles real life; like the spectator regarding the life groups in a museum of natural history, he cannot tell where the real scene
merges into the background. Hence, it should be no reflection upon a man’s intelligence to be swindled. In fact, highly intelligent marks, even though they may tax the ingenuity of the con men, respond best to the proper type of play. They see through the deal which is presented, analyze it, and strike the lure like a flash; most con men feel that it is sport of a high order to play them successfully to the gaff. It is not intelligence but integrity which determines whether or not a man is a good mark.

Stupid or “lop-eared” marks are often played; they are too dull to see their own advantage, and must be worked up to the point again and again before a ray of light filters through their thick heads. Sometimes they are difficult or impossible to beat. Always they merit the scorn and contempt of the con men. Elderly men are easy to play because age has slowed down their reactions.

Most marks come from the upper strata of society, which, in America, means that they have made, married, or inherited money. Because of this, they acquire status which in time they come to attribute to some inherent superiority, especially as regards matters of sound judgment in finance and investment. Friends and associates, themselves social climbers and sycophants, help to maintain this illusion of superiority. Eventually, the mark comes to regard himself as a person of vision and even of genius. Thus a Babbitt who has cleared half a million in a real-estate development easily forgets the part which luck and chicanery have played in his financial rise; he accepts his mantle of respectability without question; he naïvely attributes his success to sound business judgment. And any confidence man will testify that a real-estate man is the fattest and juiciest of suckers.

Businessmen, active or retired, make fine marks for big-con games. In fact, probably the majority of marks fleeced by the big-time confidence men are businessmen. Their instincts are sound for the confidence
game, they respond well to the magnetic personalities of roper and insideman, and they have or can raise the necessary capital with which to plunge heavily. “In prohibition days,” notes one con man whose identity cannot be revealed, “a businessman turned bootlegger was a prize package. You couldn’t miss. Do you remember that big bootlegger from Cincinnati? R—– was his name. He got tangled up with a government dick while he was in stir at Atlanta. He blew $200,000 against the pay-off. After beating him out of that money, we turned him over to a faro-bank mob from Chicago and they gave him the best of it for about fifty G. They gave him the last turn. There were hundreds taken the same way. It was a perfect in to the mark.”

Bankers, executors in charge of estates, trustees and guardians in charge of trust funds sometimes succumb with surprising alacrity. To the con men, anyone who has access to funds with which he might speculate is a potential mark. Even church funds frequently find their way into grifters’ pockets. Several years ago Big W—– roped a pious and respectable church trustee from New Britain, Connecticut. Gondorff was said to have played him against the big store and he was reputed to have yielded over $300,000. Ironically enough, the con men were acquitted—or rather Gondorff was acquitted and his roper took it on the lam and was never tried—but the church trustee got a good stiff jolt in prison for misappropriating funds. “He was a very religious man,” said Gondorff, dryly, “but I guess the temptation for the dough was too much for his scruples.”

Religious scruples often seem to fail a mark at the crucial moment. One confidence man who has contributed liberally to this study attributes his facile knowledge of the Bible to the long nights spent in solemn prayer with devout marks who sought moral support from a Divine Providence which, so it might appear to
the pious mind, may sometimes select confidence men as instruments of vengeance against one who covets his neighbor’s goods.

Professional men who have prospered in their work or who have married money also contribute their share of marks. Doctors, lawyers and dentists sometimes yield good results, though most operators do not like to play for lawyers. Even an occasional college professor is played for, with scores which are said to be quite discouraging. Con men feel that professional men as a class are notoriously gullible; they readily fancy themselves as adept at financial manipulation as they are in their own fields of specialization. One dentist from New York state, fortunately having married very well, has been played against the big store more than half a dozen times. He has become somewhat of an institution among grifters. One meets another on the road and asks, “Do you have anything good in tow?” “No,” says his colleague. “Well,” suggests the other, “why not go up and rope that dentist? He’ll always go for twenty grand.”

One would naturally expect bankers to be well aware of the nature of confidence games, and consequently to be too wary to be taken in by them. Most of them are, but some make perfect marks. With a Yellow Kid Weil or a Charley Gondorff on the inside, any one of them will meet his match in wit, financial sagacity and shrewdness. Bankers, if they can be played at all, can be counted on to plunge heavily, for they can dip into bank funds with a view to reimbursing the bank once they have taken their profit. Several instances of that ironical spectacle, one mark roping another, are reported by a mob operating in Florida. When a mark who is brought in expresses a desire to talk the matter over with his banker, he is (under certain circumstances) encouraged to do so. Sometimes, the banker comes back with him, both of them well
heeled for the play. Thus two marks flourish where only one grew before.

Wealthy or retired farmers are putty in the hands of competent operators. Many ropers specialize in retired farmers, ranchers or fruit-growers, and one distinguished confidence man, Farmer Brown, devoted most of his checkered career to nefarious bucolic swindling; his rural make-up, his pastoral manners, his back-country speech, and his unbelievable clothing, reinforced by an open and naïve personality, proved to be deadly to literally hundreds and hundreds of farmers throughout the West and Midwest. In the years following the World War they poured millions into the hands of willing confidence men.

An occasional police officer is taken—though that practice is generally frowned upon by professionals. However, within very recent years a Los Angeles captain of detectives was roped in Europe by Stewart Donnelly, brought to the United States for his money, then moved to Montreal where Kent Marshall played the inside for him. He yielded $38,800 according to Marshall, but that figure does not check with the amount made public in the newspapers. “He wasn’t dumb,” said Marshall, “he just thought he knew all the angles to the big con. He had headed the con-detail for years. It was two weeks after he got back home before he suddenly tumbled that he had been played for the pay-off.”

Other tales regarding the fleecing of police officers float about, but cops seem to react much the same as any other mark. One comes to me from Havana which is interesting because of the method used to rope and tie a Texas sheriff who was vacationing there. He frequented the hotel lobbies, where he did a good deal of boasting about how many thieves and criminals he had shot in the course of his term as peace officer. The grifters in Havana decided to trim him properly. So an expert pickpocket
was commissioned to pick his pockets clean. The grifters tore up his boat tickets for home and gave his wallet to the pickpocket. Meanwhile he discovered his loss and “beefed gun” at a great rate. He yelped about the hotel, telling everyone his tale of woe. Then a smooth roper approached him, listened to his troubles, and loaned him money to go home on. Just before he sailed, he was given the point-out, the insideman told him the tale, and he was given the convincer. He returned to Havana within a few weeks with $80,000 in a money belt. Also, rumor has it that the great fixer, Lou Blonger, was once given a fine trimming on the big con, but I have been unable to unearth any very definite information about it.

Not all marks are men. Since the World War, big-con men have played for women with increasing success. Middle-aged women—married or single—are especially susceptible, for sooner or later the element of sex enters the game. Some ropers are particularly adept at picking up women because they know how to use their personalities, their clothes, their manners, all to the best advantage. Most of them deliberately compromise their victim by inducing her to sign the hotel register for both of them, then sharing a room or suite with her. Thus the con men usually preclude any retaliatory action on her part, for often she is a woman whose position would be damaged by the evidence on the hotel register, regardless of whether or not she had actually been intimate with the roper. One successful roper tells me that he often finds, when he is playing for a man accompanied by his wife, that a little amorous by-play with the wife facilitates the play. “I always treat charwomen like duchesses,” he laughs, “and the duchesses like charwomen.”

But no profession, occupation, race or sex has a corner on the never-failing supply of marks. “Anyone with money,” reflected old Buck Boatwright, dean of modern
confidence men, “is worth playing for. Just bring him in, and I’ll take something from him.”

The mark is wary game. Like most game, he migrates, and his migration is his undoing. The wily roper, armed only with a smooth tongue, a deep disillusion regarding the motives of mankind, and some notes on human psychology which are not to be found in the textbooks, knows how to stalk his quarry.

Although marks may be plentiful, they do not walk heedlessly into the traps of the confidence men. They must be stalked for days and even weeks before the kill. This strenuous field-work is done by the roper, who travels far and wide, in this country and abroad, in his diligent search for promising material.

Ropers employ various methods for flushing their game. But most of them depend solely upon chance and casual contacts to provide them with marks. A con man never meets a stranger. Within a quarter of an hour he can be on good terms with anyone; in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours he has reached the stage of intimate friendship. And so most ropers swing back and forth across the country or ride the passenger liners, knowing full well that sooner or later they will meet their man. And they do. Most marks are gathered into the net on one or another of our transportation systems as a result of what appears to be a most casual contact.