The World’s Wildest Cons (2024)

I guess the Dumb Criminals book did OK, because Harper Collins asked me to write a second book in the same vein. While writing The World’s Even Dumber Criminals, I’d come across some amazing con artist cases with the first book (especially the story of the German criminal who conned Nazis), so we settled on confidence schemes as the subject of the next book.

I was surprised how old some of these schemes are. Many cons have been going on, almost unchanged, for centuries. Victims of a con tend to keep quiet about it (even though almost anyone could be fooled), so the same methods keep working.

Another thing that surprisedd me was that the famous cons – for example, selling the Eiffel Tower or Brooklyn Bridge – are mostly fictions invented by “true crime” writers, but connected to real-life criminals who committed simpler and more profitable crimes.