Cons, Scams, and Flim-Flams with Pretend (ep. 180)

Javier Leiva from Pretend did a podcast with me!!!! 

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We teach each other about:

03:10 a pig in a poke

06:30 salting a mine

10:00 melon drop

14:50 vanity awards

21:55 Baltimore stock-broker

25:00 fake casting agents

Plus learn the three most interesting things about me!

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Pig in a Poke (Cat in a bag)
Have you ever heard the expression “a pig in a poke” or “don’t let the cat out of the bag?” You might be surprised at the origins of this cliche.

A pig in a poke is a thing that is bought without first being inspected, and thus of unknown authenticity or quality. The idiom is attested in 1555 in the writings of John Haywood: I wyll neuer bye the pyg in the poke, Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre cloke. A "poke," I should explain, is a bag, so you can’t actually see the pig. How it would work…

But the piglet would often turn out to be a bundle of rags or some inanimate object that gve the huckster away, so they shifted tack to stuffing stray cats in the poke so there were be movement. When the buyer opened the bag after the con man has absconded with their money, they would let hte cat out of the bag, which is where we get that expression which means to reveal a secret, though it’s usually used in a positive context. Idioms in other cultures:
Italian comprare a scatola chiusa to buy in a sealed box
Catalan Donar/Prendre gat per llebre to give/to take cat instead of hare
Chinese 隔山买老牛 buy a cow over there in another mountain
Maltese xtara l-ħut fil-baħar to buy fish in the sea

 

Salting
Salting a gold mine
How do you make a worthless mine a little more valuable? Take a shotgun, stuff it with gold dust, blast the walls, and bedazzle it with gold. That's precisely what some Mine owners would do to turn a profit. But I can imagine that this confidence trick can only last for so long. Some buyers would ask to blast the mine before the sale's closing. The huckster seller would sometimes stuff gold in the stick of dynamite. After the explosion, the mine shimmered with gold. — Source

1871 was the year of the Great Diamond Hoax.
Two cousins named Philip Arnold and John Slack returned to San Francisco with a bag full of diamonds. As a result, salivating investors wanted to know where they found the gems. So then, the cousins led the group of investors on a four-day goose chase through the wilderness until they finally arrived at a vast field with brilliant gems. Cha-ching! But when geologists studied the diamonds, they quickly discovered that this diamond-filled field was an elaborate con. It turns out the cousins purchased chat diamonds for about $35,000 and scattered them around the ground.

Salting the tip jar
Have you ever noticed the jar full of money at your favorite coffee shop or on the bar counter? Do you feel like a jerk when you don't drop in a few dollars or coins? This technique of "salting the tip jar" works almost every time. Psychologists call it "social proof." It turns out that humans want to mimic what other people do. For example, when someone claps, others clap too. And you even reluctantly stand during "the wave" at a baseball game. Social proof is used in advertising all the time. Nine out of ten dentists can't be wrong, right?
Melon Drop
Melon drop The mechanics of the melon drop scam are pretty simple, but it does require one specific thing: foreign tourists, specifically Japanese ones. This is because melons in Japan tend to be very expensive, sometimes costing upward of $60 USD, far more pricey than they are in the States. Presumably in the days before the internet put the sum of all human information in our pockets, hustling New York con men decided they could use this information to their advantage by pulling a fast one on Japanese visitors. According to Ask Men, the scam works like this: First, acquire a watermelon for the low price of a couple bucks here in the U.S. of A. Step two, carry the melon around until you find your mark. Then, bump into them, drop the watermelon, so it shatters, blame them for the collision, and finally demand they pay up to the exorbitant tune of up to $100 to compensate you for your broken, "expensive" produce.
Although skeptics may say the melon drop scam might be a myth, at least some version of this scam is still alive and well in New York City. According to some Reddit users, NYC scammers are still pulling off the melon drop hustle, only the updated version involves expensive booze and targets anyone, not just foreign tourists. But the mechanics are pretty much the same.

"That still happens in some parts of NYC with expensive liquor like Hennessy, for example. They bump into you and drop and break a bottle with water and try to guilt you into paying them back. You know when you're in the right or wrong. If you're in the right, just walk away fast," advised one Reddit user. Others shared stories of similar encounters, while still more people said they had experienced the same basic scam, only with expensive sunglasses instead of alcohol or fruit. So although some may say the melon drop is just a New York City myth, like the alligators in the sewers or the mole people, others are well aware that it is best to keep an eye out for any shifty looking strangers carrying fruit or fancy-looking bottles.

 

Baltimore stockbroker / Psychic Sports Picks
The Baltimore stockbroker scam relies on mass-mailing or emailing. The scammer begins with a large pool of marks, numbering ideally a power of two such as 1024. The scammer divides the pool into two halves, and sends all the members of each half a prediction about the future outcome of an event with a binary outcome (such as a stock price rising or falling, or the win/loss outcome of a sporting event). One half receives a prediction that the stock price will rise (or a team will win, etc.), and the other half receives the opposite prediction. After the event occurs, the scammer repeats the process with the group that received a correct prediction, again dividing the group in half and sending each half new predictions. After several iterations, the "surviving" group of marks has received a remarkable sequence of correct predictions, whereupon the scammer then offers these marks another prediction, this time for a fee. The next prediction is, of course, no better than a random guess, but the previous record of success makes it seem to the mark to be a prediction worth great value. For gambling propositions with more than two outcomes, for example in horse racing, the scammer begins with a pool of marks with number equal to a power of the number of outcomes.

The scam relies on selection bias (the selection of individuals, groups, or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby failing to ensure that the sample obtained is representative of the population intended to be analyzed), and more specifically survivorship bias (concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not) and is similar to publication bias (a type of bias that occurs in published academic research. It occurs when the outcome of an experiment or research study influences the decision whether to publish or otherwise distribute it).

This particular scam received its name as a result of Frank Deford's book "Cut N' Run", where a stockbroker in Baltimore goes to several different bars and predicts the outcome of the upcoming Johnny Unitas-era Baltimore Colts' next game. Several authors mention the scam: Daniel C. Dennett in Elbow Room (where he calls it the touting pyramid); David Hand in The Improbability Principle; and Jordan Ellenberg in How Not to Be Wrong. Ellenberg reports often hearing of the scam told as an illustrative parable, but he could not find a real-world example of anyone carrying it out as an actual scam. The closest he found was when illusionist Derren Brown presented it in his television special The System in 2008. Brown's intent was merely to convince his mark that he had a foolproof horse race betting system rather than to scam the mark out of money. However, Ellenberg goes on to describe how investment firms do something similar by starting many in-house investment funds, and closing the funds that show the lowest returns before offering the surviving funds (with their record of high returns) for sale to the public. The selection bias inherent in the surviving funds makes them unlikely to sustain their previous high returns.

 

Vanity publications and awards schemes
Do you want to be famous and successful? It's easy. All you have to do is hand over your money. But unfortunately, scammers and con artists have cooked up schemes to pray on your vanity and need for acceptance and recognition throughout history.

Vanity press
Trying to get your book published can seem impossible. But there's a sure-fire way of getting your book out there. Scammers know that desperate writers will do almost anything to get their books printed. Vanity publishers make their money from publishers, not readers purchasing books. Therefore, they have no financial interest in promoting the book, leaving the author with a financial burden.

2022 Golden Globes controversy

Vanity awards are pay-to-play awards given to the highest bidder. Did you know that NBC dropped the Golden Globes broadcast in 2022? Instead, the awards results were posted live on Twitter. Not only is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association accused of not having a single black voter, but they're also accused of taking bribes from studios, production companies, and publicists. Winning a Golden Globe award can equate millions of dollars in box office earnings and elevate an actor's career. Since the scandal broke out, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced new rules and added new members of color. — source

Fake casting agent scam
A well-connected casting director or agent can instantly make you a celebrity. However, one thing a casting agent will never do is charge you. Most casting agents make money only when you do—typically about 10%. A casting agent will never guarantee work, they make you take their classes, and they don't really care if you have prior modeling or acting experience. Finally, you should never feel rushed or pressured into doing something you don't feel comfortable with.

Does your child want to be a Disney Channel Star?
There is no fast track to Hollywood. If you hear or watch an ad that says, "Does your child want to be a Disney Channel Star? Auditions are being held this weekend. Call some number and book your slot."— It's a scam. Most of these so-called agencies charge an exorbitant amount of money and have no affiliation with Disney or Nickelodeon.