1) Foundation Work - Preparations are made in advance of the game, target marketing analysis, hiring accomplices
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2) Approach - The victim is contacted in a way that seems "causal" or "random happenstance"
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3) Build-up - The victim is given an opportunity to see SHOCKING BENEFITS from a scheme. The victim's sense of greed is encouraged, such that their rational judgment of the situation might be impaired.
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4) The Small Pay-off or Convincer - The victim receives a small payout as a demonstration of the scheme's effectiveness. This may be a real amount of money, or faked in some way. In a gambling con, the victim is allowed to win several small bets.
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5) The Sudden Crisis or SHOCKING Event - This forces the victim to act immediately and induces a sense of paranoia or fear. This can be used to solidify the group and label non-believers as "others." This is the point at which the con succeeds or fails.
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6) The In-and-In - A conspirator (in on the con, but assumes the role of an interested bystander) puts an amount of money into the same scheme as the victim, to add an appearance of legitimacy to the scheme. This can reassure the victim, and gives the con man greater control
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In the Russiagate Confidence Scheme, confidence men like John Brennan and Adam Schiff used the illusion of "secret information" to fleece millions from their audience. CNN, MSNBC, and a carnival of swindlers got in on the act for 2+ years
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In the QAnon Confidence Scheme digital anonymity allows the confidence men and false interested bystanders to be one and the same simultaneously. Writing the posts while also "decoding" the posts they themselves wrote, and taking in donations, selling books, apps, etc
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The funders of any confidence scheme are the people paying into it. The audience. The "marks" or "gulls" as they're called A shill (also called a plant) is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing they have a relationship
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Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, opportunism, lust, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation, and naïvety. As such, there is no consistent profile of a confidence trick victim
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Researchers Huang and Orbach argue: Cons succeed for inducing judgment errors—chiefly, errors arising from imperfect information and cognitive biases.
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Greed, the desire to ‘get something for nothing,’ is a shorthand expression of marks’ beliefs that too-good-to-be-true gains are realistic.
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Bottom Line: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is /END
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End of conversation
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