The Big Con

Two Hungarian con men go after my mom

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True story, one that happened two days ago, and that I heard from my mom on the phone last night:

My mom lives in a brutalist high-rise building in Zagreb, Croatia.

She goes outside the building two days ago to throw out the trash.

A car pulls up. There are two guys inside. They roll down the window and start speaking to my mom as she is throwing out the trash.

They explain they are Hungarian. And indeed, they are speaking Croatian with the CHAR-acteristic HUN-garian ACC-ent.

“Are you retired?” one of the guys asks.

My mom says yes.

“Great,” he says. “In that case we have a gift for you.” He hands my mom a brochure. It shows fancy sets of kitchenware.

As my mom is looking over the brochure, the other guy gets out and opens up the trunk of the car. “Come take a look” he says.

It’s like a treasure chest in there. There are silver-plated pots, pans, cutlery, knives, all in opened boxes.

The Hungarians explain they were just showing off their wares at a trade show at the big fairgrounds across the street.

“Now we are going to the airport,” they say. But before they go, the boss has tasked them with giving away the samples before they fly out, and to give them away to retired people.

“Would you like?” they ask. “It’s our gift to you. The only condition is you cannot sell these expensive pots and pans, but just use them yourself. By the way, the boxes are heavy. We can take them to the elevator for you.”

My mom is wary. But it looks like treasure.

And here the con men get ahead of themselves. “It’s all free,” they repeat. Just as a token, as something they can show to their boss to prove they have given the stuff away as promised to someone retired, all they ask for in exchange is any bit of old gold. An earring, a small gold chain.

My mom says she has no gold. (I happen to know this is a lie. She has some gold earrings.)

The con men say how one woman in the neighborhood has just given them some gold teeth from her dead husband. They take out a little medicine bottle and actually show the gold teeth.

“I don’t have any gold,” my mom repeats, “and I don’t need the pots and pans.”

“Everything is ok,” the guys insist. “This is a wonderful present!”

“Why not give it to somebody else?” my mom asks.

“We don’t have time,” the con men say. “We have to get to the airport. If you don’t have any gold, do yo you have any new euro? Just one green one? Just so we can prove to our boss that we’ve given the samples away?”

My mom says she’s not interested. She turns and leaves. One of the Hungarians curses under his breath. And the two drive off.

When I talked to my mom, she was mystified by this encounter. “I don’t understand the logic of this offer,” she said.

I don’t either. I don’t know whether these guys were really looking to trade pots and pans for gold… or if they were just looking to rob people of gold without giving over anything… or if they were using this “wonderful present” as a kind of in to get into people’s houses and to properly rob them, way beyond just an old necklace or some gold teeth.

Clearly, this con is a little ham-fisted, and it didn’t work.

But a lot of the elements of a successful con are there. You can find them with a careful reading of the story above, and if you are enterprising, you can apply them to a successful and legitimate business. In the words of David Maurerer, author of The Big Con, the authoritative record of the golden age of con men:

“If confidence men operate outside the law, it must be remembered that they are not much further outside than many of our pillars of society who go under names less sinister. They only carry to an ultimate and very logical conclusion certain trends which are often inherent in various forms of legitimate business.”

Maybe you find this idea shocking or repulsive.

If so, the best I can tell you is to stop reading now. Because I agree with Mauerer. I think there’s a lot to be learned from con men, without crossing over into the illegal or immoral territory in which they operate. A lot that can be applied, profitably, to various forms of legitimate business.

In fact, that’s one of the core ideas behind my new 10 Commandments book, which deals with the commonalities to be found among con men… pickup artists… door-to-door salesmen… copywriters… hypnotists… stage magicians…. and more.

For 10 logical conclusions extracted from all these disciplines:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

A lesson for con men, car salesmen, and possibly, client-hungry solopreneurs

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A while back, I was listening to a fun episode of the James Altucher podcast.

James was interviewing the world’s most successful gambler, Billy Walters, who has won hundreds of millions of dollars by betting on sports. For the past 36 years straight, Walters has had a winning gambling record.

There’s apparently glamour associated with sports betting, which I wasn’t aware of. As a result, much of Walters’s story focuses on that.

But what I found curious is that, even before Walters became a successful betting pro, he was an unsuccessful betting amateur. He used to bet and lose millions of dollars of his own money, which he earned as a first-rate car salesman.

How do you make millions of dollars selling cars, back in the 1970s, in Kentucky?

Walters managed it because, as he said, “I did things that most people weren’t doing in those days.”

“Like what?” James Altucher immediately asked.

Walters obliged:

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Well, every customer I sold a car to had a criss-cross directory. I got the identification of all of their neighbors. I would contact them either directly or I would send them a postcard and introduce myself and point out to them that I’d sold Mr. Smith his car, and who I was, and we were running a sale, and I would encourage them to come down.

Every customer I sold a car to, I turned into a referral source. I paid them a referral fee, a substantial referral fee.

I stayed in touch with them. I created personal relationships with them.

I would go to the local newspaper each day. People would have their cars, and they’re listed. ‘For sale, take over the payments.’ Well, they weren’t going to start walking. They wanted to sell their car because they could no longer afford it. So I would bring them in, sell them a less expensive car, take their car in trade and then reduce their payments.

When there was nothing else going on, I would just pick up the phone and start calling people with the same prefix as the area of Louisville I was working in. I would just cold call people.

​​And sometimes they’d slam the phone on me, but sometimes they’d get into an easy conversation. I would introduce myself, tell them that we’re running this sale, tell them where we are located, and as a result, I sold a lot of cars and made a lot of money.

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This brought to mind something I read in The Big Con, all about the world of con artists back in 1930s and 40s.

A top roper — a con man who had to go out into the world and bring in the marks — was asked what it takes to be a first-rate con man. He replied:

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I couldn’t say what you must have to be a good roper, but I can tell you some of the traits you better not have. Never permit yourself to be bored. If you gander around you will always find some mark you can trim. But some heel-grifters think it is smartly sophisticated to appear languid or condescendingly wise. That is really stupid. Tie into any mark. He may have it in the jug.

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I’m sure you don’t want to be a con man. And you probably don’t want to be a car salesman.

But you might be a copywriter, or designer, or coach, or you have another business that depends on a steady flow of client leads.

Cold calling works, as a last resort.

But Billy Walters above gave you four other great recommendations to keep you from being bored, long before you have to resort to cold calling.

And the bigger point is:

The trick to winning this game, that game, and pretty much every game, is to stay busy. Not to put on a stupid air of appearing languid or condescendingly wise.

​​And if you’re staying busy, you might as well do things that are known to work.

Maybe you’ve heard that having your own email newsletter works wonders for business.

​​Maybe you’ve even heard that doing it daily is better than doing it weekly or monthly.

But did you know that daily emailing can also keep you from being and looking bored, ever again?

In case you don’t have a regular email newsletter, or you’re not writing daily, and and you want a simple system for how to write effective emails, keeping you busy day in and day out, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

What a first-rate roper needs

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The “big con” requires two central con men. One is the insideman; the other is the roper.

The insideman has the “opportunity” to get something for nothing, which is what ultimately seduces and dooms the mark.

The insideman stays put and waits for the roper, who goes out into the world and “ropes in” the mark.

A good roper needs to have: the gift of the gab; surface knowledge of lots of topics; the ability to pretend and act; a magic quality known as “grift sense”; and the willingness to withstand the high stress of constantly being exposed while trying to scheme and swindle himself into a mark’s confidence out in the wild.

That’s what it takes to be a good roper. But what does it take to be a first-rate roper?

David Mauerer, a professor of linguistics and author of The Big Con, asked this question to two big-con ropers back in the 1930s. here’s what one of them said:

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Will-power is the most important asset a con man can have. Have you ever watched a grifter who stayed in one position all his life and never advanced? It is pitiful to see how much mental energy he uses up getting nowhere. If he is a smack-player, he won’t try to get up any higher in the racket. Most failures wear themselves out with futile grifting and worry about keeping out of the can. They work themselves into a fever because they haven’t the will-power to stop and organize themselves for efficiency and try to get a big mark for the big store.

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(The “smack,” by the way, is a short-con game, as opposed to the big con, which is at the top of the confidence game hierarchy. Short-con games like the smack have lower stakes, lower earnings, and less prestige among grifters than the big con.)

Now, maybe don’t want to take any kind of business advice from criminals.

Fair enough. I can’t fault you, and I won’t try to persuade you otherwise.

Personally though, I found the above quote made me stop and think. To me at least, it applies even outside the world of confidence men.

The key words for me were continuing to “play the smack”… instead of having the will-power to stop and organize yourself so you can get to the next level.

Only you can figure out what it might take to get you there.

Maybe it’s skills… presentation… connections… attitude… experience… or an entire change in approach.

Again, only you can figure it out. And it will take will-power to get you to do so.

Anyways, if by chance you find out that it’s skills that you need, specifically copywriting skills, here’s how you can learn from the people who have made it to the absolute top of the copywriting racket:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Business opportunity for an honest, reliable businessman or woman

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Consider the following classified ad, which ran thousands of times across the US:

“BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY: For an honest, reliable businessman with $20,000 to invest for a large return. References exchanged.”

Now ask yourself…

How does this classified ad make you feel? Take a moment right now to look inside yourself:

Are you suspicious and wary?

Or are you excited, and eager to know more?

Or are you perhaps disappointed, because this business opportunity doesn’t apply to you for some reason?

Perhaps you don’t have $20k to invest? Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a businessman? Perhaps… you suspect you are not fully honest?

Like I mentioned a few days ago, I’m reading a book called The Big Con. It’s about conmen, working complex, months-long schemes some 100 years ago, who took their rich marks for millions of dollars in today’s money.

One way that these “big con” grifters would rope in their marks was by running the above classified ad in local newspapers.

If you dig into the 17 words of the ad above, you will find a surprising amount of deep psychology.

Today, I want to focus on just one of those words. That’s the word honest. From The Big Con:

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But the mark must also have what grifters term “larceny in his veins” — in other words, he must want something for nothing, or be willing to participate in an unscrupulous deal.

If the mark were completely aware of this character weakness, he would not be so easy to trim. But, like almost everyone else, the mark thinks of himself as an “honest man.” He may be hardly aware, or even totally unaware, of this trait which leads to his financial ruin. “My boy,” said old John Henry Strosnider sagely, “look carefully at an honest man when he tells the tale himself about his honesty. He makes the best kind of mark…”

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I’m not sure what my point is by telling you this. I found it fascinating on some level, and I wanted to share it.

Perhaps you can consider it a public service announcement, warning you to take heed if anybody ever appeals to your inherent honesty.

Or perhaps it’s simply to soothe your conscience a bit, and to tell you that if you suspect you are not as honest as you might be, then in fact you’re probably more honest than the norm.

Whatever the case, it’s worth paying attention to business opportunity ads, whether “legit” or entirely fraudulent, like the ad above.

That’s because business opportunity ads appeal to some of the most powerful human drivers, and often get responses like no other copy ever could.

I experienced this first-hand a few years ago, when I first started looking at old business opportunity ads, and when, as a lark, I started introducing some business opportunity language into my own emails.

In particular, I once sent an email in which I claimed to have a new business opportunity, and I invited responses from people who wanted to know more.

I got swamped by replies.

I never followed up on these replies, for reasons of my own. But the demand for that offer is there, and it’s very real.

What’s more, taking advantage of this demand does not require any dishonesty, but would genuinely help business owners who are currently in distress.

Maybe this all sounds fairly abstract. If so, you can find the business opportunity I am talking about described in full detail in the swipe file that goes with my Most Valuable Email course — specifically, MVE #12.

If you actually apply the idea in MVE #12, it could be worth much more to you than the price I charge for the Most Valuable Email training. And you might find other valuable business ideas in that swipe file. As reader Illya Shapovalov, who bought MVE last month, wrote me to say:

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By the way, I printed out the MVE swipe file. Almost every day, I sit down to study and analyze it a bit. But every time, I just get sucked into the content itself! 😂 Learned a bunch of new stuff without even intending to do so. Thanks for that too.

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Here’s your opportunity to to invest for a large return, references exchanged:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The shutout or prat-out

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I’m now reading the Big Con, written in 1940. It’s all about con men playing the big con — not just street hustlers nickle and diming, but elaborate operations involving dozens of men, which took in $25k or $30k or even $50k at a time from a well-heeled mark.

​(​That’s the equivalent to $549k or $659k or $1.1M in today’s money.)

The Big Con is filled with quirky and unfamiliar lingo that describes techniques based on deep and familiar human psychology. One such term is the “shutout” or “prat-out.” From the book:

“He doesn’t know it, but he has been given the ‘shutout’ or the ‘prat-out,’ a clever method of stepping up the larceny in the veins of a mark when the manager feels that he is not entering into the play enthusiastically enough. It may be repeated several times so that the mark is fully impressed with what he has missed.”

The shutout or prat-out works like this:

The mark — let’s call him James Markham — gets acquainted with an affable, attractive man. Let’s call this second man John Conway, for he is a con artist.

Through various loops and intrigues, Conway convinces Markham that he has access to inside information on horse betting.

Conway gives Markham a tip on a sure-thing pony.

Markham bets.

And Markham wins. His excitement and greed flare up.

Conway feeds Markham another sure-thing tip. Let’s say Challedon to win in race 4.

Markham stands in line at the betting parlor to put down that bet before the race starts.

But there are a few people ahead of him in line. Unknown to Markham, all of them are part of the big con.

Each one is placing very large bets. It’s taking a long time. They finish one by one while Markham hops nervously from foot to foot, dreaming of the score he will surely make once he bets on Challedon in race 4.

Finally it’s his turn to place his bet. But right before he can hand over his money and tell the bookie which horse he wants to bet on, the announcer for race 4 says:

“And they’re off!”

It’s too late. Betting on race 4 is closed.

Markham listens to the race results as they come in. Challedon lags at the rear.

​​Markham listens with attention.

​​Challedon starts to move up. As the horses enter the home stretch, Challedon is in fourth place. But Challedon presses forward. Neck and neck through the finish line. Challedon wins!

​​And Mr. Markham sits there, stars in front of his eyes, calculating the small fortune he would have made had those bastards in line ahead of him been just a little faster with their bets.

Mr. Markham has been given the shutout or prat-out. He is now much more ready to be set up for the sting — to be separated from his $25k or $30k or $50k. That’s the equivalent to $549k or $659k or $1.1M in today’s money, in case you forgot.

But what’s really going on here?

And how can you use shutout or the prat-out in other, less larcenous fields of influence?

Perhaps it’s obvious to you.

Or perhaps I’ve given away too much in this email.

But if not, if there are valuable details you are unsure of or are still curious to learn, then you can find a full treatment of the underlying psychological principle in my Most Valuable Postcard #2, informatively titled the Ferrari Monster.

As I explained yesterday, I will retire MVP #2 tomorrow at 8:31pm CET.

The reason why, in case you’re curious:

As the name of it suggests, MVP #2 is really just the remains of my short-lived subscription offer, the Most Valuable Postcard, which I ran last summer.

MVP #2 should be a standalone course, with clearer positioning, with its own sexy name, with a bit more bulk, and with an extra zero or two in the price.

So I will retire it. Maybe I will bring the content back in the future, changed slightly and priced much higher.

But if you would like to get it before it disappears, at the current very affordable price, you can buy it today, of your own choosing, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/