scam
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.35|Political cartoon by Joseph Morewood Staniforth| Staniforth: [[Herbert Kitchener attempts to raise £100,000 for a college in Sudan by calling on the name of Gordon]] A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually
Article
11 sectionsContents
- Terminology
- Length
- History
- Stages
- In a Long Con
- Vulnerability factors
- Online fraud
- In popular culture
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|upright=1.35|Political cartoon by Joseph Morewood Staniforth| Staniforth: [[Herbert Kitchener attempts to raise £100,000 for a college in Sudan by calling on the name of Gordon]] A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')".
==Terminology== Other terms for "scam" include confidence trick, con, con game, confidence game, confidence scheme, ripoff, stratagem, finesse, grift, hustle, bunko, bunco, swindle, flimflam, gaffle, and bamboozle.