THERE'S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE: A Revelation of Audacious Frauds, Scams and Cons - How to Spot Them, How to Stop Them
Jeffrey Robinson
Old fashioned storyteller. International bestselling author of THE LAUNDRYMEN. 30 books & counting. Expert on money laundering & financial crime. Seasoned investigative journalist, television, film & keynote speaker.
(c) Jeffrey Robinson 2023
Finally the eBook version. And cheap, too.
Over the next 12 months, one in nine Americans will lose money as a victim of fraud. Every man and woman in the country (and every child with an email address) will be targeted by professional fraudsters-multiple times. Seven out of every eight frauds go unreported. Most fraudsters will get away with their crime. Government agencies and crime watchdogs suggest that there could be up to $100 billion worth of fraud in this country in any given year. A jaw-dropping exposé of fraud in America today-who's doing it, how it's done, and how you can protect yourself-the world of fraud is laid bare: from personal finance and investment schemes to Internet scams and identity theft, to pyramid cons and the infamous Nigerian advance fee frauds. Jeffrey Robinson gets inside the heads of the most notorious scam artists to uncover the psychological weapons they use to entice victims. With uncanny clarity and insight, he shows how to spot a scam and how to limit your exposure to fraudsters. THERE'S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE levels the playing field, arming consumers with the knowledge they need to combat even the most insidious conmen.
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Here’s a sample of what to expect:
?THE PATRON SAINT OF FRAUDSTERS
?The patron saint of fraudsters has got to be P.T. Barnum, the circus impresario generally credited with the conman’s motto, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
As the story goes, sometime around 1869, Barnum set out to buy the “Cardiff Giant,” a 10-foot hoax made out of gypsum and carved into a crude, ancient, fossilized man. It was supposedly discovered on a remote farm near Syracuse, New York and, given the publicity that surrounded the discovery, was soon drawing paying crowds of 3000 gullible people a day.
Barnum, who knew a great scam when he saw one, offered a substantial sum to bring the Giant to New York where he felt he could sell ten times as many tickets. But one of the Giant’s investors, David Hannum, didn’t like Barnum’s terms. So, Barnum did the next best thing and made a Cardiff Giant one of his own.
Hannum is the one who supposedly said that anyone paying to see Barnum’s copy proved the adage, “there’s a sucker born every minute.” A law suit followed, during which the two men admitted that both their Giants were fake. And somewhere in the confusion, the quote by Hannum got attributed to Barnum.
Except, there doesn’t appear to be any record of Hannum ever saying it. Or Barnum, either.
Another story credits the quote to a Barnum rival, Philadelphia circus promoter Adam Forepaugh. He purportedly came up with it during an interview where he tried to discredit Barnum by telling a reporter that it was Barnum who always preached, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Yet another account tags it to Michael Cassius McDonald, a saloon keeper and politician in Chicago during the 1860s. But his title to authorship appeared in a book published in 1940. By then, the expression had already been in print several times. In John Dos Passos 1930 epic, “42nd Parallel” - where it’s attributed to Mark Twain - and in “A Yankee from the West,” an 1898 novel by someone called Opie Read.
The eminent amateur etymologist, Barry Popik, has since tracked half a dozen appearances of variations on the expression to as far back as 1857. He notes that early appearance in the New York Herald - “There is a new fool born every day” - and another in 1906, when the New York Evening Mail perpetuated the original myth by writing about a certain politician who will, “Get all the votes coming to a political Barnum whose motto is that of the original Barnum: ‘A sucker is born every minute.’”
In fact, Popik’s research suggests that the phrase was not “coined,” but rather part of an era, just one of those things often said by New York gamblers in the early 1880s.
A man frequently cited from those days was the “notorious” New York con-man, Joseph “Paper Collar Joe” Bessimer. According to a widely held version of the tale, Bessimer used it as an excuse to explain his criminal successes to NYPD Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams who, at the time, was in the process of arresting him. Williams is said to have repeated Paper Collar Joe’s phrase to Joseph McCaddon, whose brother-in-law James Anthony Bailey was Barnum’s business partner. McCaddon then took the liberty of re-quoting Bessimer in an unpublished autobiography.
The only problem is that Clubber Williams was a famously bent cop who couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth, and there is no record, whatsoever, in NYPD or New York court archives of any conman - notorious or otherwise - named “Paper Collar Joe” Bessimer.
In the end, it seems that the origin of the quote has simply been lost to time. But, the truth behind it, most definitely, lives on.
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What else to expect: Here’s the Table of Contents.
PART ONE
Chapter One: A Two-Way Street Crime
Chapter Two: Footprints in the Sand: Knowing What to Look For
Chapter Three: Greed and Benevolence
Chapter Four: Gullibility and Fear
Chapter Five: Identity Theft
Chapter Six: Smaller Than a Two-Cent Phone Call: Cyberfraud
Chapter Seven: Genies in a Bottle: Knowing Who to Trust
Chapter Eight: Maybe This Time: Advance Fee Fraud
Chapter Nine: The Nigerian Yahoo-Yahoo Boys
Chapter Ten: Snake Oil
Chapter Eleven: Defrauding Seniors
Chapter Twelve: Business Fraud
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PART TWO: The Scams: What They Are and How to Stop Them
PART THREE
The 39 Steps: What You Need To Do To Protect Yourself From Fraud
PART FOUR
Resources
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You might also be interested in a few related videos I made about fraud. Just click on the links.
?Identity Theft - Waste Paper Basket Wading:
?On The Mean Streets Of New York Talking Identity Theft:
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