Julep is grifter and criminal mastermind. I, sadly, am not.
Thus I've had to do a lot (read: a LOT) of research. When I started down this
road of con artists, hackers, and mobsters, I knew just about ZILCH regarding
the criminal underworld.
Confession time: I really thought I was going to be a sci-fi
or fantasy author, so most of my educational and recreational background is in
that—not mystery. I literally owned the Technical Manual
for the Starship Enterprise. For years. What I didn't
own…? Any of the Godfather movies. I hadn't even seen
The Godfather until my senior year of college. Needless to
say, I was vastly unprepared to write these books.
Enter the Internet.
At this point, it should come as a shock to no one that
Google was my go-to for writing this book. In fact, I'll go out on a limb here
and say that this book could not have been written if it
weren't for Google. Here's how the Interwebs helped me learn to crime…
Books
That's right, Google sent me to good old-fashioned books.
You would be AMAZED what people are willing to put down in writing and attach
their names to. I was amazed. Frankly, I wondered why they
hadn't been tracked down and arrested. Here are the three books I relied on
most heavily:
Author: Sheldon Charrett
Synopsis: Find out how crafty
counterfeiters stay one step ahead of the bureaucrats and security
professionals and readily replicate driver's licenses, birth certificates and
other supposedly "secure" identity documents. In Secrets of a
Back-Alley ID Man, Sheldon Charrett (The Modern Identity Changer and Identity,
Privacy, and Personal Freedom) will show you the most effective "new
school" and "old-school" techniques for new IDs, as well as poor
man's tricks for those on a tight budget...
Author: Paul Zenon
Synopsis: As opposed to
offering up typical magic tricks, this hilarious collection of scams, swindles,
bets, and stunts features everyday objects and requires no special skills—just
nerve. Some of the scams presented include how to drink from a champagne bottle
without opening it, guess the date on a coin as it spins on the table, and pull
a 10-dollar bill out from under a beer bottle without touching or knocking over
the bottle. This amusing guide claims that a cheater, armed with the right
skills, always wins...
Author: Frank W. Abagnale
Synopsis: Drawn from his
twenty-five years of experience as an ingenious con artist (whose check scams
alone mounted to more than $2 million in stolen funds), Abagnale's The Art of
the Steal provides eye-opening stories of true scams, with tips on how they can
be prevented. Abagnale takes you deep inside the world and mind of the con
artist, showing you just how he pulled off his scams and what you can do to
avoid becoming the next victim...
Blog Posts and YouTube
Just as in books, you'd be amazed what people are willing to
blog about on the Internet. Wikipedia alone is a hotbed of illicit information,
if you follow the bread crumbs far enough.
Here are a mere three examples, the tip of the iceberg of
criminology accessible with nothing but a few keystrokes:
Title: The Ten Basic Cons
Author: Evan Andrews
Excerpt: Unlike most kinds of
petty crime, a confidence game, or con, takes an enormous amount of skill and
forethought to pull off. When done right, in many cases the grifters who
perpetrate them have not actually done anything overtly illegal–they’ve simply
used lies and manipulation to get their victim, or "mark," to
willingly hand over their own money. Whether blackmail, fraud, or illegal
gambling, the following are ten of the most famous ways that these swindlers
try to take advantage of the confidence of their unsuspecting victims.
Obviously, there are a number of takes on any kind of con, but these are the
most popular variations of the most well known tricks. Read more…
Title: Underwater Bullets at 27,000fps
Author: The Slow Mo Guys
Description: Gav and Dan slow
down time by over one thousand times to show you how bullets look when fired
from an underwater gun. See it in action…
Title: The FBI
Author: The FBI
Description: There's a wealth
of information on government sites about criminal practices and the steps law
enforcement takes to bring those criminals to justice. I found most of my
information about human trafficking and organized crime directly from the FBI.
Check it out…
Actual, You Know, People
Beyond the Internet, there is a world full of two-legged
brains all around us. And you'd, again, be shocked by the depth and breadth of
knowledge those brains contain, illicit knowledge that you would never, ever in
a million years expect. Like my uncle, who, inexplicably, knows how to blow up
a boat using a kitchen timer. (That little tidbit came in handy, let me tell
you.)
The trick to getting intel on how to game the system
(any system) is in asking the people on the front lines of that system—the bank
tellers, the cashiers, the busboys, the janitors. Those are the people who can
give you the information on how to get free food, get into places you shouldn't
be, and get away with it all scot free.
For example, long before my wife went to law school, she was
a barista (and then a shift supervisor) at Starbucks for five years. (She's got
the fancy pen to prove it.) So when I wanted a scene where Julep scams a free
drink off a barista, I asked my wife how she would do it. She rattled off the
steps she would take to finagle a free drink, and I quickly wrote them down.
Then a few days later, I actually tried it. And guess
what. It worked! So if you have the guts to try it, you can find out how to do
it in Trust Me, I’m Lying.
The #1 Secret to Pulling Off the Perfect
Con
After all my research, I did manage to find the number-one
trick for pulling off the perfect con, and because I love you all so much, I'm
going to tell you what it is.
It all boils down to the word "con." For those of
you who don't know, the slang term "con man" is the short form of the
term "confidence man." The number-one thing you must have to pull off
the perfect con is confidence.
We are genetically programmed to band together to form
societies. And the basic foundation of any society is mutual trust. No one can
really know if you're a veterinarian who specializes in the treatment of the
pink fairy armadillo. We don't have time to exhaustively research everyone we
meet every day. So if you can produce a business card, rattle off a fact or
two, and in general appear confident during the
conversation, your mark is going to believe you 99% of the time. It's how
society continues to function. And it's part of our psychological profile
as a species to respond to inherent confidence.
Of course, now that I've told you, don't tell anyone else. A
good grifter never reveals her secrets.
~~~
What are your go-to references for researching the criminal
underworld? Have you ever used the knowledge you gleaned to commit a crime?
Tell us in the comments!
INSERT YOUR POST HERE
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Shallow Graves
Kali Wallace studied geology and geophysics before she decided she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds as much as she liked researching the real one. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Lightspeed Magazine, and Tor.com. Her first novel will be published by Katherine Tegen Books in 2016. She lives in southern California.
