Movie Scams

Anthony Riniti on Saturday, March 15th, 2014 Comments Off on Movie Scams

Movie Scams

Scams that have been depicted in movies are likely good choices for video analysis.

 

Double Saw Swap – The Grifters

Follow the money as con artist Roy Dillon (John Cusack) throws low at a crowded bar. First, he flashes a $20 bill, and orders a drink. When the barkeep turns to pour, Roy palms the twenty, and switches it with a rolled-up $10 bill. The bartender is oblivious, he delivers the drink, grabs the sawbuck, and gives change for a $20. Free booze, free money-fantastic.

 

The Rag – Hustle

The show kicks off with a securities swindle known as the Rag. Posing as an investment executive, one of the characters claims his company’s supercomputers can delay international stock orders by a fraction of a second, enabling him to buy shares before their price shoots up. Seduced by the promise of guaranteed profits, the gullible “investor” trades a suitcase full of cash for a big bunch of lies.

 

Latin Lotto – Matchstick Men

Pity the illegal immigrant who can’t redeem his “winning” lottery ticket, for fear of being deported. Fortunately for him, he finds a sympathetic soul, willing to help him claim his millions. Before handing over his lucky stub, however, he asks for a “good faith” deposit-say, a few thousand bucks. (This way he won’t get cheated, right?) Turns out, (surprise!) the lotto ticket is counterfeit. And the deposit money? Adios, amigo.

Nicolas Cage is not Latino, but as a conman in Matchstick Men he teaches a variation of this trick to his 14-year-old daughter (Alison Lohman). Because, hey, even white girls gotta grow up sometime.

 

Pump And Dump – Boiler Room

As an unlicensed broker at a seedy firm, Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) hypes worthless stocks to naive investors, placing cold calls to the elderly and the plain stupid, to artificially “pump” the value of the shares. When the inflated stock price hits a high, the insiders dump their shares, and walk away with the money. The selloff inevitably decimates the stock value. Outside shareholders, like Seth’s sucker clients, are left holding the bag.

 

Cold Reading – South Park: Season 6: “The Biggest Douche in the Universe”

After Cartman ingests Kenny’s soul (mistaking his ashes for chocolate milk mix), Chef takes the boys to see TV psychic John Edward, in hopes that the Crossing Over host can speak with their dead friend. He can’t. Stan demonstrates the “Cold Reading” technique on a crowd of strangers. He spurts vague generalities (“It’s an older man…”) until eliciting a response from the audience. (“My father!”) The crowd concludes that Stan really can communicate with the dead, ultimately leading to his psychic showdown with John Edward—the biggest douche in the universe.

 

The Badger – Derailed

The Badger is a timeless classic. A married man is seduced by a foxy babe. They go to a hotel room. He gets undressed, assumes the position. Before the deal gets sealed, however, her accomplice bursts into the room. Extortion and blackmail follow. Derailed offers a few dark twists on this theme. Clive Owen plays a married advertising exec, whose flirtation with a fellow Chicago commuter (Jennifer Aniston) goes much, much farther than he expected. He never gets to third base—but he gets screwed, all right.

 

Ponzi Schemes – Pay It Forward

Turn-of-the-century fraudster Charles Ponzi masqueraded as an investment broker. Rather than actually investing his clients’ money, he simply paid them off with funds from subsequent investors (after taking his own cut, of course). Suckers flocked to get in on the action. When authorities pulled the plug, the little guys and the latecomers lost everything.

In Pay It Forward, young Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) pitches his own Ponzi scheme, ostensibly as an assignment for his social studies teacher (Kevin Spacey). The gist: You help me today, somebody helps you tomorrow. We know how these things end. Badly.

 

The Straight Hustle – White Men Can’t Jump

Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) doesn’t resort to the usual tactics of streetball hustlers. No sandbagging, no missed shots, no trash talk. He just shows up, and acts Caucasian. The other pick-up players in Venice Beach assume he ain’t got game, and start making bets bigger than their asses can cash. Which makes you realize—if he’d played his cards right, Larry Bird could’ve made a bundle.

 

Chump Checks – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

While mulling over their money troubles, one of the boys in Guy Ritchie’s B-crime bonanza proposes the following ripoff: You open up a shell company called, say, Ass-Ticklers Anonymous, then place an advertisement announcing a breakthrough in butt-plug technology. You charge $25 per pop, and instruct the customer—for the sake of propriety—to send their checks to your other company with an innocuous name, ATA Industries. After receiving payment, you send the customer a note of apology, claiming you’ve run out of stock. You include a refund check explicitly from Ass-Ticklers Anonymous, betting that the sucker would be too embarrassed to cash it.

 

Gypsy Switch – The Spanish Prisoner

David Mamet’s con masterpiece is more addictively mind-boggling than Three Card Monte on crystal meth. Nice guy Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) has developed an industrial “process” worth a great deal of money. He keeps it written down in a red notebook. Ultimately, he falls prey to a sophisticated scheme orchestrated by Jimmy Dell (a humorless Steve Martin) with a full cast of accomplices.

How do the grifters separate the fool from his formula? They create diversions and sow confusion—then simply switch the red notebook for one that looks exactly like it. At least, we think that’s what happened