
How I became a con artist (2010) - gscott
http://www.salon.com/2010/11/30/life_as_an_amateur_con/
======
arjie
It's funny, but this (seemingly blind) trust is why I like shopping in the
Western world. As someone who never abuses it, it makes my life a lot easier.

By contrast, in India everyone's tried every variant of this scam. The net
result? Shopkeepers don't accept returns and buying things is a combative
experience.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "This is why we can't have nice things".

~~~
bruceb
So true. Not even western world, the US. In my travels I have never found a
place that is as open and easy to return stuff as America. Even the same
company has different return policies depending on the country. H&M has 30 day
return for cash with tag & receipt. H&M Brussels will not give your money
back, only credit. It might even be only 14 days their I forget.

We pay less of a risk premium in the US. Some of these scams will drive that
up.

~~~
auctiontheory
_We pay less of a risk premium in the US. Some of these scams will drive that
up._

Yup. Thanks to the scammers, even REI has limited their return policy:
[http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021116265_r...](http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021116265_reireturnsxml.html)

~~~
f7t7ft7
Except that REI isn't going from a normal return policy to a draconian return
policy. It's going from the most unbelievably lenient and forgiving policy to
something that's still far more lenient and forgiving than anyone else offers.
I don't think it's _quite_ a fair comparison.

------
davidw
Trust is hugely important in society. If you have to stop and verify every
single thing, it's hugely expensive, which tends to make everyone worse off.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(social_sciences)#Economi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_\(social_sciences\)#Economics)

~~~
mtrimpe
I once heard that described as "Trust is a common good," which really rang
true to me.

I'd go as far as to say that the first world's biggest asset is the collective
trust it has accrued over the centuries.

~~~
javert
This is a bad way to look at it, because you're saying, inmplicitly, either
_sacrifice_ for the "common good" and be good, or help yourself and be evil.

The truth is that constantly stealing and manipulating instead of relaxing and
focusing on producing real value to trade with others is not in your self
interest.

So there is an argument to be made for behaving honestly that relies on self-
interest instead of calling for self-sacrifice. That is a much more appealing
argument, and one I can actually buy into.

~~~
thecage411
"The truth is that constantly stealing and manipulating instead of relaxing
and focusing on producing real value to trade with others is not in your self
interest."

Do you have any proof this is true? I would guess there are whole classes of
people for whom stealing and manipulating is in their own self interest.
Sociopaths for example.

Honest question: are you sure you aren't rejecting the parent's premise
because you don't like the conclusion, not because you disagree with the
premise?

~~~
javert
I think that what is in a person's self-interest is to find a sustainable,
enjoyable way to live that will last a lifetime. There is a lot more that
could be said about that, but it's a high-level summary.

The proof of that is looking at man's nature and what life _is_. So all I can
do is point in the right direction. To write it all down in a comment would be
impossible, plus pointless, because it doesn't prove anything _to you_ until
you see it yourself, firsthand, by looking at reality.

> I would guess there are whole classes of people for whom stealing and
> manipulating is in their own self interest. Sociopaths for example.

I am certain that that's not right. Lying, cheating and manipulating will
never be a sustainable mode of living. It keeps you dependent on luck and the
whims of others, and eventually you will get caught. It's much better to pick
any one of 10,000 honest professions and actually live by your own work. It's
better to trade with "all of humanity" and live in harmony with others, than
to constantly be at war with others.

> Sociopaths for example.

Being a sociopath would be horrible. (They may not realize that themselves--
because they don't know any different and/or would rather not face the facts.)
Why? Because you'd have to completely give up on all the values you get from
enjoying other people---friendships, cooperation, and all forms of romantic
love. (Sociopaths may outwardly seem like they have some of these, but in
reality, everyone is not only their victim, but also a potential threat when
the victim catches on to the game.) Plus the more general issues I mentioned
above.

> Honest question: are you sure you aren't rejecting the parent's premise
> because you don't like the conclusion, not because you disagree with the
> premise?

I'm not sure what you are calling the premise and what you are calling the
conclusion. But in general, I think that acting in your own self-interest
actually results in cooperation with others and not victimizing other people.
So we need to be arguing for more rational self-interest. We need to stop
making the typical "moral" arguments that amount to, "If you want to be good,
sacrifice for others; if you want to be happy, sacrifice other people." That
is a completely horrible argument that will never result in anyone being good
OR happy.

~~~
thecage411
In general I agree with your argument, I just think there are a small
percentage of actual sociopaths in the world (I've met one).

> I'm not sure what you are calling the premise and what you are calling the
> conclusion. But in general, I think that acting in your own self-interest
> actually results in cooperation with others and not victimizing other
> people. So we need to be arguing for more rational self-interest. We need to
> stop making the typical "moral" arguments that amount to, "If you want to be
> good, sacrifice for others; if you want to be happy, sacrifice other
> people." That is a completely horrible argument that will never result in
> anyone being good OR happy.

Sorry for not being clear here. I meant the premise is "Trust is a common
good" and the conclusion is "sacrifice for the 'common good' and be good, or
help yourself and be evil"

~~~
javert
To answer your question about rejecting the premise because I don't like the
conclusion...

I actually agree with the statement "trust is a common good." The problem is,
people often assume that esablishing a "common good" is something that
requires self-sacrifice from individual people. That's not true in general,
and certainly not true in this specific case. Why? Trust is _also_ an
individual, personal good. Lying, cheating, and manipultaing people is not a
viable way to live a sustainable, happy life.

So, if it's going to be said that "Trust is a common good," I just wanted to
add, "... and also a personal good." That's why I said the person's point was
a "bad way to look at it." Really, it's just an incomplete way to look at it
and possibly misleading, given people's typical assumptions.

Anyway, thanks for the chat and it's nice to know that we have some common
ground here.

------
yetanotherphd
The perverse ethics of the author were apparent from the start "[I operated in
a time] before you had to show ID, sign a slip of paper and answer a battery
of questions from the always skeptical supervisor." The offended tone of the
author is hardly appropriate given that this batter of questions was designed
precisely to prevent scammers like the author, and indeed made necessary by
people like him.

Anyway, theft is theft whether it's against a large corporation or an
individual.

I can understand that people don't feel sympathetic towards large corporations
since they never seem to be criminally liable when _they_ break the law.
However the answer is surely to enforce the law equally no matter who the
criminal or victim is?

------
austenallred
I had a really hard time reading this, mostly because it's difficult for me to
separate out in my mind when arbitrage becomes theft.

For example, in my teens I found a hack in the eBay search algorithm. The
algorithm was very simple; it simply scanned the titles. So if I input '32GB
Apple iPod Black' it would return everything with those keywords. If, however,
I typed in 'iPod' it would return millions of results and be unusable. Not
everybody realized this, however, so there were plenty of items just titled
"iPod."

I ended up generating a 2-page long search that stared with iPod and negated
all non-relevant terms (i.e. 'ipod -headphones -case -protector -battery'
etc.). After entering in that term I would be given a page of everything only
titled 'iPod,' and could pick them up for $50-100 and flip them the next day
for $250-300. That was a good living for a 15-year-old kid.

When my mom began to probe after seeing iPods arriving at the house day after
day, she started to question me, and we had a long philosophical discussion
about whether or not what I was doing was "right." It was legal, of course,
but was it _right?_ \- this was the much more important question in the eyes
of my mom. She felt it was unethical and not providing value - I disagreed,
and she allowed me to continue and not go against my conscience.

After a few interesting twists and turns the eBay hack turned into a multi-
million dollar, off-eBay Broadway ticket brokerage firm. (We scalped broadway
tickets at scale.) I provided no real value other than buying tickets at face
value a long time in advance, and marking the prices up 3-4x last minute. I
justified it by saying wall-street traders don't provide much value either. I
let people wait to buy tickets, and let Capitalism decide who would get the
tickets instead of who got word of the shows first or who cared the most. I
appeased my conscience by convincing myself that I took the risk away from the
venues, who could have waited and charged more, and profited thereby, but
either didn't know it or were bound into agreements with artists/shows/etc. I
still don't know how truthful that was, but eventually I left to try and start
something that will actually _benefit_ people, not just redistribute things
and make money.

I wonder now if I was on a slippery slope and got off at just the right
moment. I've seen a lot of my ticket broker/scalper friends end up trying to
swindle casinos, get caught up in credit card fraud, etc; it becomes easy to
feel smarter-than-thou when you're making bunches of money off of others'
perceived negligence.

But at the same time I'm not the kind of successful where I can look back and
say, "I was dumb and broke the rules and made some mistakes, but look, I made
it now!" It's tempting to slip back into a world where you're not benefiting
anybody and profiting thereby. So in that sense it's hard to separate my
motives then from that of the author. Making money while helping people is
really, really, really hard.

The moral of the story: It's difficult for me, at times, to discern when a
"cool hack" becomes "criminal theft."

~~~
javert
A seller on an open market quotes the price they _want_ to sell for. They
would rather have that much money, than the item they are selling. So it's not
victimizing them to make the trade.

But it would be victimizing _yourself_ to _not_ make the trade, and instead
tell the other person your inside knowledge.

And it's not dishonest, because in a market, there is no implicit assumption
that the buyer doesn't know something the seller knows, on the part of either
one.

This is especially obvious in the stock market. If I think a stock is a sell
at $X and you think it's a buy, we trade, but clearly one person knows (or
thinks they know) something that the other doesn't.

Regarding ticket scalping: People selling tickets know that that's going on.
If they don't want it, they will forbid you from doing it, and if you do it,
it's breach of contract and subject to legal penalties. If not, go for it.
There is no reason to sacrifice your own interests so that people who didn't
get in on the sale earier and can't afford scalped prices can have their
interests satisfied instead. In other words, don't victimize yourself.

Regarding HFT: If you are market-making, you buy at the best price (giving
someone a good deal) and sell at the lowest price (giving someone a good
deal). Yes, these people could have matched against each other if they wanted
to play the game of predicting which way the market is moving and waiting a
few microseconds, but you can also lose at that game, so institutional
investors don't want to play it. There are no victims here. I assume this kind
of thing generalizes to other forms of HFT, except when people/exchanges
actually do cheat (exchanges: people don't let people cheat, that is basically
your sole purpose for existing).

> The moral of the story: It's difficult for me, at times, to discern when a
> "cool hack" becomes "criminal theft."

You only victimize someone (other than yourself) if you commit breach of
contract (implicit or explicit; fraud is a form of breach of contract) or
actually use physical force. Otherwise, you aren't.

tl;dr moral of the story: don't victimize anyone (yourself, or others)

~~~
Peaker
> This is especially obvious in the stock market. If I think a stock is a sell
> at $X and you think it's a buy, we trade, but clearly one person knows (or
> thinks they know) something that the other doesn't

Or maybe they just need the liquidity for some purchase they need to make?

~~~
javert
Sure, but that's beside the point.

That just means they have knowledge you don't have about an even better
investment.

Or, they actually need to spend the money (e.g. buy groceries) and they still
want to do the trade and appreciate the liquidity, no matter what knowledge
you have.

------
sfx
I once switched my laptop hard drive with a portable one bought at the store,
by removing the portable's case and swapping that drive with my laptop's. I
then had the new 500gb one in my laptop and an old 120gb in a new portable
housing case. I joked to my friend who was with me that I could just return
the now 120gb drive back to the store no questions asked. He told me I was an
idiot if I didn't; he didn't think of it as stealing as I did. Unfortunately I
don't think that mindset is uncommon with our society. What's worse is being
moral can be seen as weak and stupid by those who don't see the long term
benefits of having a moral population. (Probably aided by the con man often
glorified as extremely clever and smart in media, when often he's just taking
advantage of people's good will e.g. Catch Me If You Can, Matchstick Men,
maybe 21 and Oceans 11. But people love someone smarter than everyone else so
they want to emulate that) On the bright side most of the brighter people I
know have good ethics.

------
driverdan
Pulling a con is very similar to being a hacker (the good or bad kind, your
choice). You find weaknesses in a system and exploit them. Finding and
exploiting them becomes a rush and pulling the con off can be just as
rewarding as the financial gains (or more so). Creating a persona and
successfully acting it out becomes almost an addiction.

Back when I was into fraud I was always looking for loopholes and weaknesses.
Most of them I didn't exploit because the risk / reward ratio wasn't good
enough. But there were still plenty of "good" ones. Store doesn't check serial
numbers on returns? Buy a new item and return a broken one in its place. Store
lets you do self-checkout on high ticket items? Use stolen credit cards cloned
onto gift cards. Mail drop photocopies your ID? Make a fake ID with matching
foreground and background contrast so the B&W copy looks black. Get online
access to someone's bank or credit card with no additional info? Change the
mailing address and request a new card (and PIN).

------
bryan_rasmussen
You know anyone could shoot a man in Reno just to watch them die but it takes
a real super genius like me to talk at them until they just commit suicide.

------
TrainedMonkey
So apparently people believe when you lie to them if you sound convincing.
Frankly I feel I should be disgusted by this kind of behavior, but I am just
numb. That numbness makes me sad, where did my innocence go?

~~~
r00fus
Simply human nature.

Cultural programming has de-attuned you to this fact because we make laws and
social custom that mostly keep these things in check (well, except for those
1% folk).

I'm not surprised, I'm glad I live in a society where it's so uncommon to be
scammed that it disgusts you so.

------
javert
Someone who is truly self-interested will strive to live in harmony with
reality and with other people, instead of trying to constantly deceive and
manipulate.

They will focus on producing real value they can trade, instead of the less
efficient strategy of stealing from others.

In other words, do you think the author was happy? I don't.

Religion and altruism teach that your self-interest (at least in this world)
is in opposition to morality. You can either help yourself, OR be good, but
not both. The truth is that they are the same thing and you can do both.

------
nutball
Yeah, get it! Shoplifting is also worthy challenge, though, that I feel the
author underrates. Scams and shoplifting are two ways toward the same goal:
exiting the store with goods without paying for them or getting caught.
Sticking stuff in your pants or purse is a pretty simple move, sure, but it
has its subtleties. And plus there's a bunch of complexities to worry about
like security tags, snitching customers, loyal employees, security guards,
loss prevention officers, and cameras.

~~~
jaekwon
I'd made a faraday cage with tin foil in my backpack to thwart the tag alarm
system, and tested it out on a large retail electronics store. So yeah, maybe
it doesn't require the social skills needed for the author's cons, but it did
require technical skills.

That said, that was a long time ago when I was a troubled kid. Now I'm a
voluntaryist, and I see that stealing doesn't fit with my set of values.
Perhaps I picked up some valuable lessons while experimenting with anti-
values.

As for the author, it seems that he never really grew out of it. It's clear
that he derives pleasure from cleverly conning people. It's a shame, because
that mental energy could be used for good instead of what amounts to scummy
behavior.

There is so much more pie to be had when you can bake it yourself, rather than
having to con it from others.

------
how2return
I've done this several times while being completely honest about what I'm
doing... returning gifts without a gift receipt probably from a different
store.

Step 1) Find two employees who are polar personalities. Step 2) Attempt to
return the item while being completely honest about what you're doing.
(books/software/clothes/whatever) Step 3) Get denied. Step 4) Try again with
the second employee and mention how the first employee didn't let you.

~~~
colinbartlett
I don't understand. So the second employee magically helps you because the
first wouldn't? To make him jealous or something? What's the con here?

~~~
gnaritas
The enemy of my enemy; people will do things they shouldn't just because they
don't like the other person.

------
JPKab
I find the fact that the mother who owned the thrift store would just hand
donations that were "designer" to her kid immoral enough.

When I donate to a thrift shop, I'm doing so knowing that I'll help people be
employed there, and also help out folks who need clothes for a decent price.

People who do this stuff always try to rationalize it, but at the end of the
day they are stealing from all of us by passing the costs of their behavior
onto us through higher prices.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
>> and also help out folks who need clothes for a decent price.

In your mind, does that mean it's immoral for someone well off to shop at a
thrift store?

------
jezebel6
I hope he gets caught one day and has to spend a couple weeks in jail.
Grifting scumbag.

------
marincounty
I noticed a few years ago how much information, and questions companies wanted
for returns. Well--now I only buy exactly what I need. It's just not worth the
agrivation. In all honestly, I don't like shopping anymore. I'm tired of being
photographed when I walk in a store. I'm tired of receipts that disappear if
you put them in your pocket.(thermal paper--and yes, I think they know the
receipts will disappear, and the customer will forget all their transactions
are on a database). I'm tired of lifetime guarantees, but are up to the
discretion of the disgruntled Store Manager--Costco--a grey market watch. The
most dishonest(stealing the most, internal theft) is usually the Manager;
followed by employees. It's a little know secret in Retail Security. The
question is why are their employees, and customers stealing so much?

------
suprgeek
There seems to be a suspiciously large dose of "How smart I was to exploit the
trusting nature of people" even if he makes it clear that what he was doing
was illegal.

If I had to guess, the moral compass is not truly reset - I see a future ether
as a CEO or a Wall Street Hedge fund trader for this person.

------
cftm
The entire tone of the article is rather off-putting. Through portions of the
article there tended to be this sense of having pulled one over on corporate
America, when that is hardly reality.

One data point: Nordstroms. They will take everything in returns. For them,
customer lifetime value add of a hassle free customer experience outweighs
edge cases like the author who take advantage of the system.

I'm sure there were many instances of the author taking advantage of the
bureaucracy of large corporations, but that's no particular feat of genius-
that's a byproduct of bureaucratic systems.

A writer whose name currently escapes me said something to the effect of,
"Love your stories, but never believe them".

------
callmeed
While it's easy to get shocked at some of the author's behavior, I personally
don't think it's out of the ordinary. People lie to save money or avoid blame.
Examples:

\- I have a friend who works at an LA Wal-Mart doing returns. You'd be blown
away at the things people will bring back. My favorite is a raw turkey post-
Christmas that someone didn't cook all the way.

\- People lie to tech support all the time. "Oh I don't know what happened. I
never logged in yesterday!" ... actually, the log file says you did.

\- My sister-in-law works at a bank. The stories people will tell to fight
overdraft fees are hilarious.

------
addedlovely
This is so so sad. I value truth over money.

------
tehwebguy
I was waiting for a slightly more meaningful enlightening or moral awakening
at the end of this article, maybe some kind of realization that the world
isn't full of "good people" and "bad people" but that everyone is capable of
basic crimes against one another like stealing stuff.

------
gtz58
The justification people have for their actions is interesting. The mother
thought she was "outfoxing" the rich, the writer gave himself rules to follow.
I can feel a little empathy for being vulnerable to tricking yourself like
this.

------
mariuolo
I'd be ashamed of being you.

------
philthesong
This is more like being cheap

