The Big Con by David Maurer and Luc Sante

The Book in 3 or More Sentences

An engaging look at the highly developed world of confidence men before 1940 and their criminal profession in general. The saying “You can’t cheat an honest man” is revealed to be apt, in emphatic terms and in a high degree of detail. A surprising amount of jargon has made it’s way into common language even in 2025. The book is a bit repetitive but quite readable nonetheless.

How I Discovered It

The good people of the Amazon Algorithm displayed it to me after I finished a similar book

Who Should Read It?

Anyone interested in that particular chunk of defunct Americana – or how good social engineering started.

Notes

Although the confidence man is sometimes classed with professional thieves, pickpockets, and gamblers, he is really not a thief at all because he does no actual stealing. The trusting victim literally thrusts a fat bank roll into his hands. It is a point of pride with him that he does not have to steal.

A confidence man prospers only because of the fundamental dishonesty of his victim. First, he inspires a firm belief in his own integrity. Second, he brings into play powerful and well-nigh irresistible forces to excite the cupidity of the mark. Then he allows the victim to make large sums of money by means of dealings which are explained to him as being dishonest—and hence a “sure thing.” As the lust for large and easy profits is fanned into a hot flame, the mark puts all his scruples behind him. He closes out his bank account, liquidates his property, borrows from his friends, embezzles from his employer or his clients. In the mad frenzy of cheating someone else, he is unaware of the fact that he is the real victim, carefully selected and fatted for the kill. Thus arises the trite but none the less sage maxim: “You can’t cheat an honest man.”

Their methods differ more in degree than in kind from those employed by more legitimate forms of business.

The three big-con games, the wire, the rag, and the pay-off, have in some forty years of their existence taken a staggering toll from a gullible public. No

In the big-con games the steps are these: 1. Locating and investigating a well-to-do victim. (Putting the mark up.) 2. Gaining the victim’s confidence. (Playing the con for him.) 3. Steering him to meet the insideman. (Roping the mark.) 4. Permitting the insideman to show him how he can make a large amount of money dishonestly. (Telling him the tale.) 5. Allowing the victim to make a substantial profit. (Giving him the convincer.) 6. Determining exactly how much he will invest. (Giving him the breakdown.) 7. Sending him home for this amount of money. (Putting him on the send.) 8. Playing him against a big store and fleecing him. (Taking off the touch.) 9. Getting him out of the way as quietly as possible. (Blowing him off.) 10. Forestalling action by the law. (Putting in the fix.)

Before 1900 crime had not become a big business. Confidence men did not realize that they were destined to become the aristocrats of crime.

The World War brought a crop of millionaires and sub-millionaires whose purses were swelled out of all proportion to their knowledge of investments.

As often as not these men had made their money slightly on the shady side and to them the rag and the pay-off appeared as very logical methods of taking profit.

With the increasing power and effectiveness of the Federal Government since 1930, the con men have had a hard time of it. Whenever a victim’s check passes through the mails the con men are laid open to possible prosecution and almost inevitable conviction, for once the government prepares a case thoroughly enough to bring it to trial, the fix is of little avail and it is almost a foregone conclusion that a federal jury will convict.

Why not a wire store? In other words, why not apply the tried and proved principles of confidence work to the rather clumsy touting efforts of the telegraph operators? If an unemployed telegrapher could get the mark’s confidence well enough to extort “expenses” from him, what could any expert insideman do? Once the mark was thoroughly convinced that the race results were being delayed for him, it was immaterial whether they really were or not—provided he was played against a fake bookmaker instead of a real one. And so a fake horse-poolroom which took bets was set up, shills were used in place of real betters, fake races were called with convincing fervor, and the results were all that could be desired. Thus the wire store was born. Now it only remained for smart confidence men to study the idea, correct its weakness, refine its strong points, and develop its potentialities.

the most enterprising have agents who locate prospective marks, investigate their financial standing, and compile a list from which the roper can select the fattest and juiciest. There is one restriction which, though it was formerly ignored especially in New York, is now rigidly observed: the mark must not be a resident of the city where he is to be trimmed.

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 shills who surround the mark at the window usually play for more than the mark is being played for; if the mark is being played for $25,000, the air is full of $50,000 bets; thus the mark always feels like a piker instead of a plunger. Furthermore, ambitious marks must not be allowed to get too much of the store’s cash into their pockets.

Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast except the mark knows his part perfectly. The insideman is the star of the cast; while the minor participants are competent actors and can learn their lines perfectly, they must look to the insideman for their cues; he must be not only a fine actor, but a playwright extempore as well. And he must be able to retain the confidence of an intelligent man even after that man has been swindled at his hands.

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.

It is not intelligence but integrity which determines whether or not a man is a good mark.

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.

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.

But he 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.

Many con men feel that marks have one characteristic in common—they are all liars. Whether this is true or not, I have no way of knowing first-hand, but we may assume that, if anyone is capable of giving expert testimony on this point, con men are, since lying is their profession.

If marks were not so anxious to impress strangers, they would keep their bank accounts intact much longer.

Perhaps it naturally follows that, if a mark has made money in a speculative business, his acquisitive instincts will lead him naturally into a confidence game; in the light of his past experience and his own philosophy of profit, it is a natural and normal way of increasing his wealth; to him, money is of value primarily for the purpose of making more.

Jews are difficult, but there is a con man’s proverb which says, “It takes ten Jews to trim one Greek.” And all con men agree that it is next to impossible to trim a Chinese. “I don’t know any grifter who would be dumb enough to try to trim a Chink,” said Little Chappie Lohr. “I’ve often seen them watching flat-joints down in China- town [San Francisco] that were playing for tourist suckers. They would look on for about five minutes, then walk on with a kindly grin. They’re a fly lot, those Chinks. They can smell a crooked joint.”

The outsideman travels on railways and steamship lines, usually on those lines leading into the city where the big store is located, and preferably those lines which extend far beyond the borders of the state within which the big store is situated; thus he avoids the “home guards” and “short riders” who might be able to cause trouble through political connections in their home state.

Hence ropers are just as essential to the prosperity of a big store as salesmen are to the success of a legitimate business.

You need what little sense you’ve got to trim him—and if you had any sense at all, you wouldn’t be a grifter.”

though Charley Gondorff at one time maintained an almost permanent boost for his New York store. At the height of the big-con games—1914–1925—New York was the center for much of the swindling activity which stripped thousands of marks of millions of dollars. At this time, the social and unofficial headquarters for big-con men was Dan the Dude’s saloon. “In New York City you could always get the best boost,” said John Henry Strosnider, who had a store there at that time. “All the con men hung out there.

So the tailer must be on the alert to see that no harm befalls the mark. He is really a sort of bodyguard and is usually the only man around the store who is armed.

Some hangouts specialize in one type of criminals, others cater to all types.

Confidence men are the elite of the underworld. They have reached the top in the grift*(which includes crimes depending upon lightness of touch and quickness of wit, as contrasted to the heavy-rackets which involve violence); they have arrived at the ultimate in success and achievement; they have gone as far as any professional thief can go.

Confidence men are not unaware of their social preeminence. The underworld is shot through with numerous class lines. It is stratified very much like the upperworld, each social level being bounded by rather rigid lines determined largely by three factors: professional standing, income, and personal integrity. While, as in the upperworld, income has much to do with social position, professional excellence and personal “rightness” appear to play an even greater part among con men than they do in the upperworld.

Pickpockets, because of the widespread reputation they bear as stool pigeons, are often shunned, though once a pickpocket has turned con man and established himself in that profession, he is accepted as a social equal provided he conducts himself according to the established code for con men. Small-time thieves, pimps, touts, traffickers in narcotics, hoodlums, some types of professional gamblers and all the numerous riffraff of the underworld are commonly excluded from the company of con men, who prefer association with their own kind, with higher-ups from the heavy-rackets, or with the political bigwigs, criminal lawyers and fixers who, in one way or another, derive revenue in return for protection.

When we think of cheese, it’s Wisconsin; when we speak of oil, it’s Pennsylvania; but with grifters, it’s Indiana. Many a first-rate con man has hailed from that state, and many, many more second- and third-raters.

Perhaps the fact that for many years it was customary for circuses to winter in Indiana may help to explain the number of grifters who come from that state. The American circus was a grifter’s paradise on wheels. Until very recently, most circuses carried grifters and confidence men as a matter of course, for the grift was a source of great profit—as

Although New York was for years—and still is—a center for all kinds of confidence men, few outstanding ones hail from that area, and relatively few from the East. The West appears to have produced more good grifters than the East, with Texas heading the list, while the Deep South, like the East, trails behind.

In olden times [around 1910–1915] in Dan the Dude’s place, you could see a hundred con men there at once, and not one of them would be a native New Yorker. Indiana, I think, has turned out more good grifters than any other state.”

It has been estimated by one informant that in Chicago alone in 1898 there were, to his personal knowledge, more than two hundred ropers working for five permanent and protected monte stores alone; there were hundreds more roping against unprotected stores which ran “on the sneak,” while the railroad lines running into Chicago were infested with mitt mobs. And similar conditions prevailed in New Orleans, San Francisco, New York City—in fact, in any city which was a railroad center.

The Yellow Kid, at the top of the list, was born a con man and never in his life had time for any other occupation.

With the increased use of narcotics among underworld folk, it is inevitable that some con men should become addicted, though most modern big-time criminals shun narcotics like poison. Some of the old-timers took up opium around 1900 when it was considered no more dangerous than smoking cigarettes—when many citizens on the West Coast placidly puffed the pipe on their own front porches, and an opium lay-out was standard equipment for most prostitutes whose Pekes and Pomeranians often acquired a “lamp habit” from breathing the smoke while their mistresses puffed. But the Harrison Act changed all that. As opium became more difficult to buy and to take, many addicts turned to morphine and heroin. However, confidence men have always felt that there was something disgraceful about addiction, the present generation being particularly sensitive about it. Consequently, once a con man becomes addicted, he carefully conceals the fact as well as he can and only his intimate associates are aware of his misfortune. How many of the more prominent grifters are addicted it is impossible to say, but it is rumored that Kid Duff, Jack Hardaway, Charley Dixon, Pretty Willy (better known as a thief), Kid Niles, the Yenshee Kid, Claude King, Kent Marshall, Red Lager (the Younger), Jimmy the Rooter, the Sanctimonious Kid and Jackie French are, or have been, addicted. There must be many others who have successfully concealed their addiction. As one goes down the social scale among grifters, addiction becomes increasingly common.

And Farmer Brown, king of the monte players, frequently and vociferously proclaimed in public that he was “married to the most beautiful woman who ever straddled a chamber-pot,” expert testimony to the contrary notwithstanding.

A good grifter never misses a chance to get something for nothing, which is one of the reasons why a good grifter is often also a good mark. Indiana Harry, the Hashhouse Kid, Scotty, and Hoosier Harry were returning to America on the Titanic when it sank. They were all saved. After the rescue, they all not only put in maximum claims for lost baggage, but collected the names of dead passengers for their friends, so that they too could put in claims.

On a police force there are two kinds of officers—“right” and “wrong.” A right copper is susceptible to the fix, whether it comes from above, or directly from a criminal. A right copper really has larceny in his blood and, in many respects, is an underworld character, a kind of racketeer who takes profits from crime because he has the authority of the law to back up his demands.

So, in a sense, the con man looks upon the right copper as a businessman who is smart enough to sell his wares at a price which the criminal can afford.

If the copper has damaging evidence to present, he will give it; if not, he will make no effort to frame the con men or give them a “bum rap.” Con men universally agree that the bum raps always come from right coppers and not from wrong ones. In other words, the maxim of the big con works both ways—if you can’t cheat an honest man, neither will an honest man cheat you.

The fix in Europe, however, seems to apply only to non-violent crimes; it is almost impossible to fix for crimes of violence as is done almost universally in this country.

The short-con games are, theoretically, any confidence games in which the mark is trimmed for only the amount he has with him at the time—in short, those games which do not employ the send. However, big-con operators do sometimes put the send into short-con games with excellent results, so, perhaps it is more accurate to say that, from the big-con man’s point of view, short-con games are any con games except the rag, the wire and the payoff.

“Mark it down and mark it well,” says a man who has taken off thousands with this game, “that a New Yorker is the best sucker that ever was born. He is made to order for anything. You can’t knock him. He loves to be taken because he’s wise.

The con man approaches a mark with the old story that he needs an honest man to finance a dishonest project.

But all professional criminals speak at least one argot or lingo fluently—the argot of their own profession. It is a mark of professional affiliation, a union card, so to speak, which requires several years to acquire and which is difficult to counterfeit.

Criminal narcotic addicts, in general shunned by other criminal groups, are extremely clannish and when they are together talk or jive incessantly in their own argot about the one subject which obsesses them—dope.

Grifters, and especially confidence men, like to talk and tell merry tales among themselves; in private they compensate for the fact that they must speak a conventional language while they are working by indulging in the excessive use of an argot which is very highly developed.

Bum rap. A conviction on a trumped-up charge.

Confidence game or con game. Any type of swindle in which the mark is allowed to profit by dishonest means, then is induced to make a large investment and is fleeced.

The gold brick. An obsolescent con game in which a sucker bought what appeared to be a genuine gold brick from a farmer or Indian.

Grift. 1. n. A racket or criminal profession. Often used where grifter would not be used in a strict sense. “I’ve been on the grift all my life.” 2. n. A group of criminal professions which employ skill rather than violence. “All those boys were on the grift.” 3. v. To work any profession included in the grift.

Grifter. In the strict sense, one who lives by his wits as contrasted to the heavy-men who use violence. For the professionals recognized as true grifters, see the chapter Birds of a Feather.

Gun moll. A thief-girl, especially a female pickpocket. The term has no connection with guns or with killings—as is sometimes suggested in the newspapers—but comes from Yiddish gonif, thief.

Heavy-gee. A professional on the heavy-rackets, usually a safeblower. Heavy-rackets. Those rackets involving violence or threat of violence as contrasted to the grift. See grift.

Joe Hep or Hep. Smart, or “wise” to what is happening. Probably ironically so called from one Joe Hep, the proprietor of a saloon in Chicago where grifters had their headquarters.

The pay-off. The most lucrative of all big-con games, with touches running from $10,000 up, with those of $100,000 being common. It operates on the principle that a wealthy mark is induced to believe that he has been taken into a deal whereby a large racing syndicate is to be swindled. At first he plays with money furnished him by the confidence men, then is put on the send for all the cash he can raise, fleeced, and blown off. The pay-off (invented in 1906) evolved from the short-pay at the track (q.v.) and was fully developed by 1910, when the big stores appeared in many of the larger cities. See

The rag. An intricate big-con game very similar to the pay-off, except that stocks are used instead of races. The insideman poses as an agent for a broker’s syndicate which is trying to break the bucket-shops. The mark profits on several investments, is sent for a large sum of money, and is fleeced.

Right. 1. As in right territory, territory protected by the fix. 2. As in right copper, one who will accept a bribe. 3. As in right guy, one who is trustworthy, especially one who is in sympathy with criminals.

Short con. As contrasted to the big con, those games which generally operate without the send. Also little con.

The wire. A big-con game in which the insideman (passing as a Western Union official) convinces the mark that he can delay the race results going to the bookmakers long enough for the mark to place a bet after the race is run. The roper makes a mistake and the mark loses. Cf. the rag, the pay-off.

The present European War is already affecting international stores. First, it has practically eliminated tourist traffic in Europe and also is hampering the free movement of con men abroad. Since the international con man preys, for the most part, on wealthy tourists, his only recourse is to follow the tourist trade to safer waters—namely, South America, the West Indies or Mexico. The problem of the fix is also becoming more difficult in the face of increasing military control over civilian life. This situation will probably force many confidence men to seek other hunting grounds for the duration of the War.

Recent federal legislation against securing passports under false names will probably seriously hamper the activities of confidence men and deep-sea gamblers who rope for the big con. For, once they reveal their true identity, they run the very grave danger of arrest by federal officials on an old charge or social ostracism on shipboard, for no con man can work effectively if a whole shipload of passengers is pointing him out as the notorious so-and-so. Neither of these obstacles is insurmountable, however; con men have overcome many more serious ones in the past.

Confidence men trade upon certain weaknesses in human nature. Hence until human nature changes perceptibly there is little possibility that there will be a shortage of marks for con games.

As long as the political boss, whether he be local, state or national, fosters a machine wherein graft and bribery are looked upon as a normal phase of government, as long as juries, judges and law enforcement officers can be had for a price, the confidence man will live and thrive in our society.