The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

A classic of popular sociology and underworld linguistics, Maurer takes us inside the world of the big con. In its heydey in the 1920s, mobs of organized grifters would set up elaborate fake betting shops, poker dens, and stock exchanges, where traveling marks identified by “ropers” would be sent in to turn over their life savings to the machinations of the “insideman”, the chief grifter of a city. Cons work on any man with larceny in his heart, a desire to win some money on a sure thing.

By training, Maurer was a linguist, and there’s poetry in the thieves’ cant. “Never boast about your rags, but brag about your long crush. That will lead him along to brag about his long hack, and then you’re getting somewhere, brother. If he is a hard-shelled Babbitt, why you’re one too.” Even the names, The Yellow Kid Weil, Limehouse Chappie, The High Ass Kid, convey a romanticism of the lost past, and of the grift mobs who stole with deception rather than force. For the grift is an art, an alternate reality where more money is just around the corner. It’s rather fascinating to compare the Big Shops to the online deceptions of modern scammers like Derek Alldred and the romance of this book against the sordid lies of reality.