Talk:List of scams

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Diet and exercise scams

Is it possible that some exercise devices and pills can be classed AS scams to bilk people out of money? In this, the wallet, bank account of the mark loses weight. What about "Lipozene" a pill taken that will (allegedly) dissolve body fat that exercise will not remove, supposedly developed by something called "The Obesity Research Institute"? Someone else could be really rude when asking similar questions. Powerzilla (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Ogged

I have actually seen this on various blogs over the years. Maybe it should be put back in. What do you think?--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lord

Whats the name of the scam where the criminal pretends to be a Lord? The C of E (talk) 17:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ticket tout scam

This is not a scam, this is a service. Here in Berlin you pay 2 euros to use public transportation for two hours. If you donate the ledt hour to a beggar and he sels the hour for one Euro, what is the harm? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.78.107.254 (talk) 09:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This could really be removed anyway due to the fact that the London Underground mostly runs using elecroic top up cards and only tourists and out of towners use paper tickets, meaning it isn't worthwhile for touts, so it doesn't happen anymore. Caspar esq. (talk) 02:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Art school and Bejing tea scam

I can say personally that the Bejing tea scam isn't just confined to Bejing! I had a variation of that one done on my in Shanghai. Also in Shanghai I came across the art student thing, though the paintings were AFAIK real, but mass produced (i.e. I actually saw the same one twice in different rooms). Having lived in Chengdu before where there weren't enough tourists for there to be an industry in tricking people I came to Shanghai rather naieve :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caspar esq. (talk • contribs) 02:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Drugs

I don't know where it should be added but drug dealers often, maybe always, use scams; pig-in-a-poke has happened to me loads of times, not to mention cutting drugs with other stuff. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.106.31 (talk) 23:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Making individual scams more visible

I intend to create subsections for each individual scam which will make them more visible, with their names appearing in the TOC, also it will break up long passages of text. --Penbat (talk) 20:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have now restructured this article so the individual scams are more prominent, appear in the TOC and are listed in alphabetical order. The actual content could still do with a good review.

I am dubious whether there is any point in categorising the listed scams, most are just listed as uncategorised anyway. Maybe just a single alpha list is required.

The listed scams need to tie in exactly with Template:Scams and Template:Confidence Tricks once they are merged as per Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion#Template:Scams.--Penbat (talk) 18:12, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Possible copyvio!

I just found a book which has the same wording as this article! What's the deal? --Slashme (talk) 13:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch. :) Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) is a self-publishing book company, which would make me lean towards the belief of reverse infringement, but in this case they cite wikipedia on p, 189. They aren't properly licensing the content they use from us, but at least they acknowledge us! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong name

If the article is going to be a general list of scams, as opposed to confidence tricks, it should be renamed. For example, the taxi scams are in no way cons. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Taxi Scams were originally copy/pasted in as a group, buy a single-purpose account that was used only to promote a particular web-site.

It wouldn't bother me at all if the Taxi stuff disappeared entirely. APL (talk) 19:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm your grandson

How about the despicable people who call elderly people (sometimes selected randomly, sometimes targeted) pretending to cry, that they got arrested, etc.. "This is your grandson", hoping to get fed the right name by the callee "Is that you Josh? Are you in trouble? How can I send you money?" etc.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.176.98 (talk) 08:34, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody tried a variant on this trick on my mother-in-law recently. Apparently this trick is well known in Germany. Jnork (talk) 18:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missionary conspiracy

And this is different from "real" missionaries....how? What is a "quasi-religous belief" btw? Since all religious claims are unsupported by any actual empirical evidence, what distinguishes "religious belief" from "quasi-religious" belief? Aren't "real" missionaires scamming these people too, promising them things that aren't actually going to happen? SuperAtheist (talk) 14:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially it's the difference between conning a few hicks for a few $ and conning a billion people and an entire continent out of trillions of $ for a millennium — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.171.98 (talk) 04:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what to make of this

It seems to me this article used to have a lot of information. Now it's mostly a summary of internet scams and appearances of scams in Popular Culture like TV shows and movies. I thought that lists were deprecated to some extent, but this article is far longer than the article Confidence tricks.

I was looking in particular for a very old trick where am 'alchemist' made 'gold' for a mark -- the first time it was real gold in a small amount, and then the mark had to come up with money to pay for the 'secret' of the trick and materials, and the alchemist departed. Naturally a Google search for this turned up mostly references to World of Warcraft etc. It seems to me this scam used to be in this article, or somewhere in wikipedia, but not any more. 24.27.31.170 (talk) 05:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC) Eric[reply]

Massive deletion needs undoing

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_confidence_tricks&oldid=484083837

....removed a huge number of edits (32,000 characters!) simply because the user decided they were "dubious" to him/her. Large numbers of them are recognizable to almost anyone, or reference scams used in famous movies.

It requires a manual remerge. Can someone do this please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.174.140.200 (talk) 19:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide references other than movies or blogs or personal websites. Otherwise it is original research, incudig name of the trick and its description. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the removal. It mostly consisted of things that either didn't meet the definition of a confidence trick, and dubious tricks that probably only happened in movies.

A few of them could probably be put back once a real-life source is found. (Like "Melon Drop", which I'm pretty sure is a real thing.) APL (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lottery confidence trick

Most (all?) lottery and similar gambles advertise in a way that leads people into thinking they have a chance to win much higher than they actually do - it creates (or at the very least reinforces) in them a disproportionate idea of their possibility of winning.

The way lotteries and the sorts advertise themselves is "tricking" people into having the "confidence" that they will win that juicy jackpot.

Even though this is legal nowadays, shouldn't this qualify as a "confidence trick"? It is appearing to me to have all the required parameters.