Scams Schemes Scumbags

A Light-hearted Look At Con Artists Through The Ages
by Pat Silver-Lasky & Peter Betts
Cartoons by Peeby

Since civilization first spilled a trickle of coins through man’s fingers and placed a value on objects, some rapacious rogue has been eager to pick a pocket through swindles, tricks and cons. To the con artist, money is like seawater: the more one drinks, the thirstier one becomes. Do you have a sneaking admiration for people who get away with such tricks? You may laugh at other people’s foolishness, but how susceptible are you? Wouldn’t you consider, buying a box guaranteed to print money if you saw the bills rolling out? Or accept an acre of land in the center of a town you’d never seen, if it were being given away free? Wouldn't you like to know some of the tricks these conmen and conwomen pulled? (Not that you want to pull them yourselves, you understand, but just so you’ll be on guard.) This book dishes the dirt on the biggest fraudsters in history. Bold artists of the scam who used swindles as a short cut to riches. They followed a golden rule, with 'Avarice' at the beginning of their alphabet––and trapped their victims through their own greed. Discover in these pages a world of tricksters who beguiled the avaricious with their inventive scams. The men and women revealed in these pages did not always profit from their nefarious efforts, but a few made a fortune in jail, writing their memoirs.