Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Book Review: The Fine Art of Swindling edited by Walter B. Gibson (1966)

The more things change, the more they stay the same, and that goes for stupid is as stupid does and a fool and his or her money are soon parted. This book collects a number of essays and nonfiction pieces that appeared in The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, and other periodicals or publications. Each essay explores a scammer or a scam in detail, but most of the scams come from around the turn of the century (as the book itself is almost forty years old).

Two things strike me:

The heights that the best scammers reached.
Charles Ponzi, whose very name is synonomous with the pyramid scheme, bought a bank and a brokerage firm with the money he made from working class Bostonians who wanted to earn fifty percent interest in 90 days. Oscar Hartzell lived for over a decade in style in London while purportedly seeking to settle with the English monarchy for the Francis Drake estate--but really he was just after his "investors'" money. That's long jack, my friends. Nowadays, nobody lives that high on the hog with so little production but venture capitalists, their pet executives, and government officials. At least swindlers used their wits and not their contacts.
The same scams are still running.
Three specific examples: The Nigerian scam (help me transfer my ill-gotten gain from my African country); the here's-a-bag-of-money-you-can-hold-it-if-you-give-me-slightly-less-of-your-money-as-a-deposit (which really needs a popular nickname), and the pyramid scheme (now more popular than ever as women's "Gift Clubs"). The population is getting more technologically knowledgeable, but not necessarily more savvy.

Of course, the best swindles aren't in this book, because the best swindles are not reported or solved. Still, the book's an interesting read, but not widely available. I paid $6.00 for this copy....wait a minute...the penciled-in price claims it's a 1966 first edition, but it looks like a book club edition....

Fine art of swindling, indeed. Curse you, Sheldon! Next time I am in your book shop, I am pulling the books out by putting my fingers at the top of the spine.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:44 PM