# The Scientist and the Swindler

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 3 Mar 2023, 37 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/b3df2fe8-23c3-4104-9ed7-afb801486a05/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Cautionary Conversation: Celebrated physicist Professor Paul Frampton was on his way to Brussels to meet the love of his life, swimwear model Denise Milani. Or so he thought. When he found himself in jail, he realized he’d fallen prey to a confidence trickster. Tim Harford is joined by Maria Konnikova - journalist, psychologist and best-selling author - to talk about swindlers: what motivates them; what they look for in their victims; and how to avoid being conned altogether. Listener questions Tim is taking your questions. Do you have any queries about one of the stories we've covered? Are you curious about how we make the show? Send in your questions, however big or small, and Tim will do his best to answer them in a special Q&A episode. You can email your question to tales@pushkin.fm or leave a voice note at 914-984-7650. That's a US number, so please be aware that if you're calling from outside the US international rates will apply. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, dear listeners. Before we dive into another cautionary tale,
[0:22] Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know that I'm taking your questions.
[0:25] Speaker 1: Do you have any queries about one of the stories
[0:28] Speaker 1: we've covered? Are you curious about how we make the show,
[0:31] Speaker 1: or is there anything else I can help with. I
[0:34] Speaker 1: want to hear from you, so send any questions you
[0:36] Speaker 1: might have, however big or small, and I'll do my
[0:39] Speaker 1: best to answer them in a special Q and A
[0:41] Speaker 1: episode when you get in touch. It would be helpful
[0:44] Speaker 1: if you left us a name, or a pseudonym, or
[0:46] Speaker 1: at least a pronoun and please bear in mind that
[0:48] Speaker 1: if you leave us a voice message, you're giving us
[0:50] Speaker 1: permission to play it. You can email me at tales
[0:53] Speaker 1: at Pushkin dot fm. That's t A l. E. S
[0:57] Speaker 1: at Pushkin dot fm. Or you can leave a voice
[1:01] Speaker 1: note at nine one four nine eight four seven six
[1:05] Speaker 1: five zero. That's US number. So if you're calling from
[1:09] Speaker 1: outside the US, international rates will apply. You could also
[1:12] Speaker 1: find the email address and number in our show notes.
[1:16] Speaker 1: And now on with the episode. Denise Milani was a
[1:23] Speaker 1: thirty two year old Check swimwear model. Paul Frampton was
[1:27] Speaker 1: a divorced particle physicist more than twice her age. What
[1:31] Speaker 1: happened next was a tale as old as time they
[1:34] Speaker 1: met online. She send messages by turns steamy and adoring.
[1:39] Speaker 1: They arranged to meet in Bolivia, where she was doing
[1:42] Speaker 1: a photo shoot. Alas when Professor Frampton arrived in Lapaz
[1:46] Speaker 1: to meet her face to face for the first time,
[1:49] Speaker 1: she had had to dash to another shoot in Europe.
[1:52] Speaker 1: Could she meet him in Brussels instead? And would he
[1:55] Speaker 1: mind terribly collecting an empty suitcase of hers from Lapaz
[2:00] Speaker 1: and bringing it with him. I'm Tim Harford, and you're
[2:05] Speaker 1: listening to cautionary Tales. This is another of our cautionary conversations.
[2:31] Speaker 1: I'll be discussing a story of disaster, or in this case,
[2:35] Speaker 1: a whole class of stories, and I'll attempt to learn
[2:38] Speaker 1: some lessons with the help of an expert. And today
[2:41] Speaker 1: I am beyond thrilled because I'm joined by Maria Knakova,
[2:45] Speaker 1: one of the most exciting nonfiction writers working today. Maria
[2:49] Speaker 1: studied at Harvard and Columbia as a PhD in psychology.
[2:52] Speaker 1: Has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and
[2:55] Speaker 1: The New Yorker. Is a New York Times best selling author. Oh,
[2:58] Speaker 1: and by the way, she's also spent some time as
[3:00] Speaker 1: a professional poker player. Maria's first book was Mastermind, How
[3:05] Speaker 1: to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, and her most recent book
[3:08] Speaker 1: is The Brain Melting Brilliant The Biggest Bluff. But today
[3:12] Speaker 1: I think we may linger on her second book, The
[3:14] Speaker 1: Confidence Game. Maria, welcome to cause Me Tales. Thanks so
[3:18] Speaker 1: much for having me to him. It's always such a
[3:20] Speaker 1: pleasure at talking to you. Well, the pleasure is all mine.
[3:22] Speaker 1: And well, gosh, Denise Milani and Paul Frampton. We should
[3:26] Speaker 1: probably make it clear early on the real Denise Milani
[3:29] Speaker 1: did not, in fact strike up a relationship with Professor Frampton. No,
[3:32] Speaker 1: she did not, and she was shocked when she found
[3:35] Speaker 1: out that she was in the middle of all of this,
[3:38] Speaker 1: and gave some very funny press conferences where she denied
[3:41] Speaker 1: all knowledge of Paul Frampton. Because how often when you
[3:45] Speaker 1: meet a supermodel online, is it really that supermodel? I
[3:49] Speaker 1: guess I've never met anybody even pretending to be a
[3:52] Speaker 1: supermodel online, Although I have met a few people pretending
[3:55] Speaker 1: to be a crown Prince of Nigeria, I haven't given
[3:57] Speaker 1: people any detail about how this story unfolds. But from
[4:01] Speaker 1: what I've said already, it's obvious from the outside what
[4:04] Speaker 1: is going to happen, but it wasn't obvious to Paul Frampton.
[4:07] Speaker 1: And he was a very smart guy. He was a
[4:09] Speaker 1: very smart guy, but he was very smart in a
[4:12] Speaker 1: very different way. Right physicist, tenured professor, has theories and
[4:17] Speaker 1: has always been lauded for his brilliance from the time
[4:20] Speaker 1: he's a little boy, and everyone clearly tells him how
[4:23] Speaker 1: brilliant he is. Because he has tenure at UNC Chapel
[4:26] Speaker 1: Hill and he is doing well and publishing papers, and
[4:30] Speaker 1: he's admired, and he's divorced. One of the reasons he's
[4:33] Speaker 1: divorced is because, as his ex wife puts it, he's
[4:38] Speaker 1: like a child. And I think this is very crucial.
[4:41] Speaker 1: He has a very very high opinion of himself, which
[4:44] Speaker 1: is something that we will come back to. You will
[4:47] Speaker 1: not find a supermodel on a Mere Mortals dating site,
[4:51] Speaker 1: and if she's forty years younger than you are and
[4:56] Speaker 1: you're not Harrison Ford, then chances are that's probably not
[5:00] Speaker 1: who you think it is. Yea. And yet, and yet,
[5:04] Speaker 1: when you think so highly of yourself, when you think, oh,
[5:08] Speaker 1: I'm this brilliant man. She must be attracted to my mind.
[5:11] Speaker 1: And when you lack that common sense, that skepticism, that
[5:16] Speaker 1: inedibility that I think a lot of people now have
[5:19] Speaker 1: when they are online natives. But when you're over a
[5:23] Speaker 1: certain age, you're not an online native. This is something
[5:25] Speaker 1: that's relatively new to you. I think a lot of
[5:28] Speaker 1: that skepticism stops. You describe this story very vividly in
[5:33] Speaker 1: the Confidence Game. What are the points you make is
[5:35] Speaker 1: that con artists are quite good at making people feel special. Yeah.
[5:41] Speaker 1: So Paul Frampton his a tenured professor, he's a brilliant man,
[5:45] Speaker 1: and he's an unusual character. But we all have that
[5:48] Speaker 1: capacity to view ourselves as special in some way, absolutely,
[5:52] Speaker 1: and that is I think the brilliant thing that the
[5:55] Speaker 1: best con artists do. They figure out why you're special
[6:01] Speaker 1: to yourself, right, what is it about you that you
[6:04] Speaker 1: think is unique? And they mirror it back to you
[6:06] Speaker 1: and then some because we're the center of our own movie,
[6:09] Speaker 1: we're our protagonist. But we also don't see the world objectively.
[6:13] Speaker 1: We think we do. We think that we're all objective,
[6:16] Speaker 1: but we see it through our own lens, through our
[6:18] Speaker 1: own little pink colored glasses. And yes, I'm using the
[6:21] Speaker 1: cliche of the rose colored glasses, but I'm doing that
[6:24] Speaker 1: for a reason, because what the psychological research shows is
[6:27] Speaker 1: that the vast majority of people have this optimism bias
[6:31] Speaker 1: about the world and about themselves. You think you're more
[6:34] Speaker 1: intelligent than average, you think you're slightly better at looking
[6:36] Speaker 1: than average, you're nicer than average, and then on negative traits,
[6:40] Speaker 1: you think that you're oh, definitely, you're not even close
[6:42] Speaker 1: to average. You're much lower on all the negative traits.
[6:45] Speaker 1: All of those things you lack completely. And con artists
[6:50] Speaker 1: are really good at listening to you, at figuring out
[6:53] Speaker 1: what your biases are, what your hopes are, how you
[6:57] Speaker 1: see yourself, how you see your world, and then they
[6:59] Speaker 1: mirror it back to you. And of course you believe
[7:01] Speaker 1: because it's your version of reality. And so there are
[7:05] Speaker 1: so many cases that are just if you tweak the
[7:07] Speaker 1: details slightly, it could happen to you. And online dating,
[7:11] Speaker 1: when people pull out your hard strings, you don't necessarily
[7:14] Speaker 1: stop to think weight is this a con? You say,
[7:18] Speaker 1: I've been looking for a love for so long. I'm
[7:21] Speaker 1: so glad that here's someone who finally sees the real me,
[7:24] Speaker 1: who appreciates the real me who understands the real meat.
[7:28] Speaker 1: This is what I deserve, this is what I've been
[7:30] Speaker 1: working for, and then the penny never drops. Yeah, I
[7:34] Speaker 1: mean quite struck. I've been interested in chat bots. Chatbots
[7:37] Speaker 1: work very well in certain environments, and one of the
[7:40] Speaker 1: environments they work well in is online dating. Chatbots are
[7:43] Speaker 1: really good at flirting, they're really good at sexting. Yeah,
[7:46] Speaker 1: because when you're in the middle of that and you're
[7:48] Speaker 1: just not thinking clearly, wishful thinking really really takes over.
[7:51] Speaker 1: It's emotional. This is like the most emotional thing that exists, right,
[7:55] Speaker 1: it's love. It's preying on something that's no longer logical.
[7:59] Speaker 1: And the con artists first thing they want to do
[8:01] Speaker 1: is get at your emotions because those parts of our
[8:04] Speaker 1: brain are at odds constantly. Yeah, And I mean I've
[8:07] Speaker 1: seen the photos of Denise Melanie. She's a very beautiful
[8:10] Speaker 1: woman that she is. So we should take the story
[8:13] Speaker 1: of Paul Frampton forward a bit. He's in Lapaz. He
[8:16] Speaker 1: gets this message from somebody he believes is Denise Milani
[8:19] Speaker 1: who is flirting with him, and he's told to pick
[8:22] Speaker 1: up this suitcase and he meets some guy outside the
[8:24] Speaker 1: hotel right in a dark alley, and the guy hands
[8:28] Speaker 1: him not a designer bag, not like this luxury suitcase
[8:32] Speaker 1: that you would think someone like Denise Melani would travel with,
[8:35] Speaker 1: but just a nondescript, empty black duffel. This thing probably
[8:39] Speaker 1: costs two dollars. He takes this empty bag and he
[8:43] Speaker 1: stuffs his dirty laundry into it and decides, Okay, great,
[8:47] Speaker 1: let's go to the airport. Great idea. But a friend
[8:50] Speaker 1: of his is saying, Paul, there are drugs in the
[8:54] Speaker 1: learning of this bag, but he can't accept that information
[8:57] Speaker 1: that's coming in. Yeah. That's one of the things that
[8:59] Speaker 1: over and over and over in all of these stories
[9:02] Speaker 1: of Connor to send their victims that have looked at
[9:05] Speaker 1: over the years, it's a really common refrain where people
[9:10] Speaker 1: point out the red flags. But when you're in it,
[9:13] Speaker 1: when you're the one who's emotionally invested, you dismiss them.
[9:19] Speaker 1: You say no, no, no, no, that's not a red flag,
[9:22] Speaker 1: and then you can coct these elaborate tales about why
[9:26] Speaker 1: this is actually not a red flag. If Denise Melanie
[9:29] Speaker 1: were a con artist, she would never be so stupid
[9:31] Speaker 1: as to give me a bag full of drugs, because
[9:34] Speaker 1: obviously I'd suspect that and not do that because I'm
[9:38] Speaker 1: not an idiot. That sounds very stupid what I'm saying it,
[9:41] Speaker 1: but that's what goes on in people's minds. What's the
[9:44] Speaker 1: moment when he starts to realize that things might be
[9:47] Speaker 1: about to get difficult for him? He successfully flies from
[9:50] Speaker 1: Bolivia to Buenos Aires. So he's been in the airport
[9:53] Speaker 1: at this point for I believe thirty six hours something
[9:55] Speaker 1: like that, and Denise has been promising to send these
[9:58] Speaker 1: tickets to Brussels and they just aren't coming. And so
[10:01] Speaker 1: finally his friend, who's a very good friend, sends him
[10:03] Speaker 1: a ticket home, not to Brussels. And Paul's like, okay, fine,
[10:07] Speaker 1: I'll take this ticket because I'm sick of being in
[10:09] Speaker 1: the airport, but I will meet the love of my
[10:12] Speaker 1: life soon. And he sits waiting for his flight and
[10:15] Speaker 1: they announce his name. When they announce my name, my
[10:18] Speaker 1: first reaction is oh shit, like what's wrong? Right of
[10:20] Speaker 1: what happened? His reaction is, oh, I'm getting upgraded to
[10:23] Speaker 1: first class. That's what he thinks, because that's how you
[10:26] Speaker 1: treat professors. Because that's how you treat professors. So his
[10:29] Speaker 1: reaction isn't there's something potentially wrong. His reaction is I
[10:32] Speaker 1: deserve this, and things always happened to the people who
[10:35] Speaker 1: deserve them, which is why Denise is waiting for me.
[10:37] Speaker 1: I'm getting upgraded and all these wonderful things are happening.
[10:39] Speaker 1: It is not an upgrade. It is actually a detention
[10:43] Speaker 1: with a lovely police escort because, as we all knew,
[10:47] Speaker 1: there are drugs in the lining of the bag, as
[10:50] Speaker 1: his friend has told him, and even still he thinks
[10:53] Speaker 1: it's funny, he thinks it's a joke. Just the level
[10:57] Speaker 1: of disconnect with reality is truly mind boggling at that point.
[11:01] Speaker 1: And it's not until he's actually in jail and in
[11:06] Speaker 1: a cell and he realized that there are very harsh
[11:11] Speaker 1: penalties for drug smuggling when you're stuck in Argentina. That's
[11:16] Speaker 1: when he says, oh, maybe something's wrong. And then Denise Mlanney,
[11:19] Speaker 1: the real Denise mlani appears on television saying that ain't me.
[11:23] Speaker 1: And when he sees that, it's one of those moments
[11:26] Speaker 1: where he's a little bit heartbroken because probably even in jail,
[11:30] Speaker 1: he still harbored the fantasy that at least he did
[11:34] Speaker 1: this for Denise there's a personal angle here for me,
[11:38] Speaker 1: because Paul Frampton is actually well was friends with my
[11:42] Speaker 1: late father. They studied physics together and they kept in touch.
[11:46] Speaker 1: When I read this and talked to my father and
[11:49] Speaker 1: found out this had happened to Paul and that he
[11:51] Speaker 1: was he was in jail in Argentina, my natural reaction was, oh,
[11:56] Speaker 1: old physicists are vulnerable people. I need to look out
[11:59] Speaker 1: for my dad. But actually, then I think maybe that's
[12:01] Speaker 1: the wrong reaction. Maybe the reaction should have been I
[12:03] Speaker 1: need to think about myself, because it's not just elderly
[12:07] Speaker 1: physicists who get targeted by we'll be talked. Yeah, I
[12:11] Speaker 1: think that that is the wrong lesson because while Paul
[12:14] Speaker 1: is a very unusual person, romance cons and cat fishing
[12:17] Speaker 1: scams and those types of things, they really happened to anyone.
[12:22] Speaker 1: Someone I knew from childhood. An old friend of mine
[12:25] Speaker 1: who has since gone on to a very successful career.
[12:30] Speaker 1: She met someone online and he was a medical student, brilliant,
[12:36] Speaker 1: worked with all these Nobel prize winning people. He didn't
[12:40] Speaker 1: seem to have any friends of his own. She never
[12:42] Speaker 1: met his family, but all of her friends loved him
[12:45] Speaker 1: at first, and everything seemed hunky dory, and then he
[12:48] Speaker 1: became more and more controlling. Anyway, long story short, because
[12:52] Speaker 1: it's not about him. He was a cone artist and
[12:54] Speaker 1: his name was not what he said it was. He
[12:56] Speaker 1: didn't go to the school he said he went to.
[12:59] Speaker 1: He had forged IDs, he'd forged everything. She was living
[13:01] Speaker 1: with a complete stranger, and she almost married him. And
[13:06] Speaker 1: she's a very intelligent person who, as I say, is
[13:09] Speaker 1: very successful at what she does. And if you look
[13:12] Speaker 1: at her, she's not Paul Frampton. You would say she's smart,
[13:15] Speaker 1: she's savvy, and yet in this particular case, it didn't
[13:19] Speaker 1: matter because she was in love. Yeah, and that's the rub, right,
[13:23] Speaker 1: you think, hallelujah, cautionary tales will be back after the break.
[13:46] Speaker 1: You've got to laugh about Paul Frampton, even though it's
[13:48] Speaker 1: also very sad. But she the more I reread The
[13:51] Speaker 1: Confidence Game, the more I thought, these are not funny,
[13:55] Speaker 1: These are tragedies, These are heartrending betrayals, are very sad story.
[13:59] Speaker 1: I agree. As an aside to another story, also from
[14:03] Speaker 1: The Confidence Game, that was also crazy, the Knodler Art fraud,
[14:08] Speaker 1: one of the biggest arts of the century. A fraudulent
[14:11] Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock, and the woman who was in charge of
[14:13] Speaker 1: the gallery, Ann Freedman, had this Pollock hanging in her
[14:17] Speaker 1: apartment and at some point someone pointed out that, hey,
[14:22] Speaker 1: Pollock's signature is misspelled, and you would think that that's
[14:26] Speaker 1: a red flag, right, And she said, no, no, it
[14:28] Speaker 1: means it's authentic even more because this wasn't a misspelling,
[14:32] Speaker 1: and she had this whole story about how he must
[14:34] Speaker 1: have lifted the brush. Then no forger would be stupid
[14:38] Speaker 1: enough to misspell Pollock. So this is clearly a real painting.
[14:42] Speaker 1: And the fact that someone could have pointed this out
[14:44] Speaker 1: to her and she concocted this whole explanation is just
[14:47] Speaker 1: also crazy. But people do this over and over, intelligent people.
[14:51] Speaker 1: One of the things that body struck me reading that
[14:53] Speaker 1: story is she managed to get herself in so deep
[14:57] Speaker 1: over such an extended period of time. Yeah, I mean
[14:59] Speaker 1: here we're talking over a decade, Anne Freedman. She needs
[15:02] Speaker 1: a La Fear of Rosales who brings a little painting
[15:05] Speaker 1: from mister X, this anonymous collector, and establish a relationship
[15:10] Speaker 1: that lasts years and years and years. And these paintings
[15:14] Speaker 1: are authenticated and they're purchased and they're exhibited. It's just
[15:19] Speaker 1: this miracle. And so by the time that everything starts
[15:22] Speaker 1: crumbling and crashing and we get a misspelled park, which
[15:27] Speaker 1: I still can't quite believe happened. By that time, everyone
[15:30] Speaker 1: is in so deep, and everyone's reputations are so embroiled
[15:33] Speaker 1: in this. It's not that they are incapable of seeing
[15:36] Speaker 1: it on a logical level, but on an emotional level,
[15:39] Speaker 1: they no longer can, and they truly truly convince themselves
[15:43] Speaker 1: that this is real. And she's ended up selling millions
[15:48] Speaker 1: of dollars worth of work that she's received. She believes
[15:51] Speaker 1: it's genuine, it's forged, she sells it on and then
[15:54] Speaker 1: as it all starts to unravel, she is this forged works,
[15:59] Speaker 1: staunchest defender. Doesn't matter how much evidence, how many people
[16:02] Speaker 1: tell her it's forged. She's the champion of this work.
[16:06] Speaker 1: She is, and I think that also part of it
[16:09] Speaker 1: is that it's become her reputation right. This is what
[16:12] Speaker 1: has established her as a force in the modern arts scene.
[16:17] Speaker 1: Abstract expressionism is such a hot selling point of twentieth
[16:22] Speaker 1: century art, and she had unearthed all these treasures. That's
[16:26] Speaker 1: what made Anne Freedman and Friedman. So if you're giving
[16:29] Speaker 1: up the story, you're saying, my reputation is built on
[16:33] Speaker 1: a lie. I wasn't able to see this. I was duped.
[16:36] Speaker 1: What does that say about you? Your identity, your self worth,
[16:39] Speaker 1: everything is in There's this really amazing moment when everything's
[16:45] Speaker 1: fallen apart and her lawyer phones her and says, Rosales
[16:52] Speaker 1: has confessed. Rosales got this Chinese guy to paint all
[16:55] Speaker 1: of these paintings. And when Freedman puts the phone down,
[16:58] Speaker 1: her first instinct is, no, that's not right. I know
[17:01] Speaker 1: the paintings are genuine, and she still can't accept even
[17:04] Speaker 1: when the con artist is saying, yeah, yeah, I caned you.
[17:06] Speaker 1: I mean, that just shows the power of bully. Most
[17:09] Speaker 1: people who are victims of con artists never get that
[17:13] Speaker 1: moment of reckoning. Never get the con artist has been caught,
[17:17] Speaker 1: has confessed. You have the person, you have everything, you
[17:20] Speaker 1: have all the evidence, and you know, beyond a shadow
[17:23] Speaker 1: of a doubt that this is not real. Most people
[17:26] Speaker 1: can still cling to that illusion that it was real.
[17:30] Speaker 1: And that's the moment that illusion was taken away from
[17:32] Speaker 1: an Friedman. It reminds me of the very famous book
[17:37] Speaker 1: when prophecy fails. We tell the story in one of
[17:39] Speaker 1: one of our first cautionary tales of the cult who
[17:42] Speaker 1: believed that the UFO is going to come and then
[17:45] Speaker 1: they're going to take the true believers off to the
[17:47] Speaker 1: planet Clarion, and then they're going to destroy the world.
[17:49] Speaker 1: And Leon Festinger, this great psychologist, sent his grad students
[17:53] Speaker 1: in to join this cult, and so they were there
[17:56] Speaker 1: when the aliens did not show up, and then half
[17:59] Speaker 1: the cult leave and the other half, Yeah, double down,
[18:02] Speaker 1: We've actually saved the world even met and they start
[18:05] Speaker 1: issuing press releases. It's crazy. I love that story so
[18:08] Speaker 1: much because it just illustrates beautifully how cons work and
[18:13] Speaker 1: the moment that the red flags are no longer just
[18:16] Speaker 1: like red flags. Now it's like a fire. You say no,
[18:19] Speaker 1: there are no flames, there's no fire. Everything's fine, and
[18:22] Speaker 1: you double down and you believe even more. One of
[18:25] Speaker 1: the things that I was really surprised to find during
[18:28] Speaker 1: my research is how often victims of con artists pay
[18:32] Speaker 1: the legal fees of the con artists when the con
[18:36] Speaker 1: artists go on trial. That just makes me so sad.
[18:38] Speaker 1: It's it's sickening because they say no, no, it's a
[18:41] Speaker 1: travesty of justice. You know, this person's getting railroaded. It's
[18:44] Speaker 1: a government conspiracy. You have no idea how many mental
[18:48] Speaker 1: hoops that they jump through to justify it. And then
[18:51] Speaker 1: those same people they end up being the best targets
[18:55] Speaker 1: for new con artists because they've already gone through all
[18:59] Speaker 1: of this rationalization. So it ends up that the best
[19:01] Speaker 1: victim is someone who's already been victimized, because they're going
[19:04] Speaker 1: to fall forward again rather than say, oh no, I'm
[19:08] Speaker 1: used up. Kind of the anchoring tale of the Confidence Game,
[19:12] Speaker 1: which is the story of the great impostor, Ferdinand Demara,
[19:16] Speaker 1: this mythical but real figure who impersonated multiple people over decades.
[19:22] Speaker 1: And Demara, we should say, has done things like he's
[19:25] Speaker 1: pretended to be a surgeon, He's actually performed surgery on real,
[19:28] Speaker 1: live humans. He dropped out of high school. Right that.
[19:31] Speaker 1: This is not someone with any background to do this whatsoever.
[19:34] Speaker 1: This is someone who just goes beyond just being a
[19:37] Speaker 1: con artist. He plays literally with people's lives. His biographer,
[19:41] Speaker 1: Robert Crechton, actually captures a lot of this. So Crechton
[19:45] Speaker 1: has been traveling all over the country with Demara and
[19:47] Speaker 1: Crechton knows all of this about him. He's writing about him, right,
[19:50] Speaker 1: he's his biographer, and he knows this is a con artist.
[19:54] Speaker 1: He knows who Damara really is, a high school dropout.
[19:57] Speaker 1: And at the time, Crechton's wife is pregnant at home
[20:00] Speaker 1: and Demara somehow convinces Crechton that it would be a
[20:04] Speaker 1: really good idea if they fired their doctor. They're ob gyn,
[20:10] Speaker 1: and he Demara delivered his wife's baby, and Krechton from
[20:15] Speaker 1: California calls his wife and in all seriousness, proposes this
[20:22] Speaker 1: and she's obviously saying, are you out of your mind?
[20:25] Speaker 1: No way in hell, but has a happy end egg
[20:27] Speaker 1: She tells him exactly what she thinks of this idea,
[20:30] Speaker 1: and a normal doctor delivers a baby and the baby
[20:33] Speaker 1: is fine, but can you believe it? And then the
[20:36] Speaker 1: baby's now a little older and there are two daughters
[20:39] Speaker 1: at home and Crechton now and his wife. Now his
[20:42] Speaker 1: wife has met Demara. They let him babysit the kids,
[20:46] Speaker 1: which is just insane. The whole thing is yes, yeah,
[20:52] Speaker 1: what Demara was doing. It actually baffles me. He wasn't
[20:55] Speaker 1: a straightforward fraud where he's trying to gain financially or
[20:58] Speaker 1: it didn't seem to be he's just pretending to be
[21:01] Speaker 1: all these people that he's not because well, because I
[21:04] Speaker 1: don't know why he was doing it. Well, what I
[21:06] Speaker 1: have come to believe is almost no cons are just
[21:11] Speaker 1: for money, because most con artists, even the ones who
[21:14] Speaker 1: actually commit financial cons, they are perpetually broke because they
[21:19] Speaker 1: use the money for their other endeavors and for their cons,
[21:23] Speaker 1: and they could have made more money in simpler ways.
[21:25] Speaker 1: If you're smart enough to perpetrate a lot of these cons,
[21:28] Speaker 1: you typically are smart enough to get a job that
[21:31] Speaker 1: would be a lot simpler where you could actually make
[21:34] Speaker 1: more money. But I think that at the end of
[21:36] Speaker 1: the day, it's for power. It's for that feeling of
[21:40] Speaker 1: control over other people's realities and their people's lives. I
[21:44] Speaker 1: use the phrase playing god before I think that's exactly
[21:48] Speaker 1: what it is. It really is playing God. You get
[21:52] Speaker 1: to craft a world for someone else to live in,
[21:55] Speaker 1: and they believe in it, and you get to manipulate
[21:58] Speaker 1: what they're doing. I mean, what a rush of control.
[22:01] Speaker 1: And that's why I also think that what you and
[22:03] Speaker 1: I do, we're obviously we're not con artists, but you
[22:08] Speaker 1: have to realize that kind of storytelling, journalism. It has
[22:12] Speaker 1: some of those same roots for kind of creating worlds.
[22:16] Speaker 1: World set are realistic and that people want to inhabit,
[22:20] Speaker 1: and we do it because we want to hopefully clarify
[22:24] Speaker 1: and make people's lives better. Con artists, the motives are different.
[22:28] Speaker 1: They do it because they want to manipulate and control,
[22:32] Speaker 1: and they do it for personal gain, and their purposes
[22:35] Speaker 1: are much more nefarious. It is absolutely extraordinary. There is
[22:39] Speaker 1: a cautionary tale that has fascinated me about a particular
[22:44] Speaker 1: con which is the Howard Hughes autobiography. I don't know
[22:48] Speaker 1: how familiar you are with this conn Yeah, in a nutshell,
[22:51] Speaker 1: a writer, Clifford Irving proposes to ghostwrite the autobiography of
[22:56] Speaker 1: Howard Hughes, who's this famous for clues and convinces the
[23:00] Speaker 1: publishers that Howard Hughes is in on this and is collaborating.
[23:04] Speaker 1: And he just takes the bet that Howard Hughes is
[23:06] Speaker 1: so reclusive that he will never show up and say,
[23:09] Speaker 1: I don't know who this guy is in this project
[23:11] Speaker 1: has nothing to do with me, But what I think
[23:13] Speaker 1: is interesting and feels unusual. Maybe it's not unusual about
[23:16] Speaker 1: this particular con is that Clifford Irving doesn't seem to
[23:19] Speaker 1: have thought through the exit. Yeah, like, what's going to
[23:22] Speaker 1: happen after he's taken the money from the publisher? What
[23:24] Speaker 1: if Howard Hughes does say, I think this has nothing
[23:27] Speaker 1: to do with me. He hasn't thought through And most
[23:30] Speaker 1: con artists do, I think, think very carefully about how
[23:32] Speaker 1: to get out of the situation. Well, yes and no.
[23:35] Speaker 1: It seems to me that this was his first con
[23:38] Speaker 1: right before he was a middling author and nothing really successful.
[23:42] Speaker 1: But it's not like he committed cons or fraud in
[23:45] Speaker 1: the past, so because of that, he would have an
[23:48] Speaker 1: exit strategy. Con artists, as you say, often they do
[23:52] Speaker 1: have a very careful script for Okay, how do I
[23:55] Speaker 1: get out of this the last stages of the con. Now,
[23:57] Speaker 1: if the con is good enough, you never get there,
[23:59] Speaker 1: but there's always here's what we do in the end.
[24:02] Speaker 1: If the mark wise ends up as they get more successful,
[24:06] Speaker 1: as they get away with it and don't need that
[24:08] Speaker 1: exit strategy, the hubris gets the best of them. They
[24:12] Speaker 1: think that they're going to keep getting away with it
[24:15] Speaker 1: over and over and over. Let's once again use our
[24:18] Speaker 1: profession think about the journalists who were fabulousts or plagiarists
[24:22] Speaker 1: who got caught. Eventually, they usually get caught with something
[24:26] Speaker 1: so brazen that you think, oh my god, how does
[24:29] Speaker 1: anyone possibly think that they could get away with us?
[24:32] Speaker 1: He keeps saying, Oh, I got away with that, I
[24:33] Speaker 1: got away with that. I'm never gonna get caught. I'm God, Clifford.
[24:37] Speaker 1: He took Howard Hughes and he just starts there and says, Oh,
[24:43] Speaker 1: I think I can get away with this. It's not
[24:45] Speaker 1: like he's had a successful career at this and this
[24:49] Speaker 1: is probably why because his first one he did not
[24:52] Speaker 1: have an exit strategy, so he, I think safe to say,
[24:55] Speaker 1: would never have made a successful con artist. But here,
[24:59] Speaker 1: what's equally surprising to the fact that he had no
[25:01] Speaker 1: exit strategy, it's how much money he was paid and
[25:04] Speaker 1: how far he was able to take it before Howard
[25:09] Speaker 1: you stepped in it. I mean, this guy made millions
[25:12] Speaker 1: at the time, and it got pretty far into the
[25:16] Speaker 1: process before it all unraveled. And how do you not
[25:21] Speaker 1: see this coming? Well, I think you are a sense
[25:24] Speaker 1: believe your own eyes and believe that you're that good.
[25:28] Speaker 1: This guy's not hiding. He thinks he's going to get
[25:30] Speaker 1: away with it. We've been talking about stories from the
[25:34] Speaker 1: Confidence Game, but you have written two other rather wonderful books,
[25:37] Speaker 1: and I wanted to talk briefly about a story in Mastermind,
[25:41] Speaker 1: which is your book about how to think like Sherlock Holmes,
[25:44] Speaker 1: and that's the case of the Cottingly Fairies. We have
[25:46] Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about the cotting Lea fairies. It's two
[25:49] Speaker 1: little girls who persuades Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator
[25:54] Speaker 1: of the most brilliantly rational figure in literary history, that
[25:59] Speaker 1: there are are fairies at the bottom of the garden
[26:01] Speaker 1: by faking these photographs. I mean, this one is funny.
[26:04] Speaker 1: It's hilarious. Yes, it also has its sad aspects to it. Yes,
[26:09] Speaker 1: I wanted to ask In Mastermind, you talk about Conan
[26:14] Speaker 1: Doyle's life outside Charlock Holmes, and I I was a
[26:17] Speaker 1: little puzzled because there's this other famous case where he
[26:21] Speaker 1: intervened in a miscarriage of justice. Conan Doyle seems to
[26:24] Speaker 1: be He's not just a guy who writes that a
[26:26] Speaker 1: smart guy. He is a smart guy. He's a very
[26:28] Speaker 1: rational man, and yet he falls for this this fairy story. Literally,
[26:32] Speaker 1: this fairy story so what was it about him that
[26:35] Speaker 1: made him so rational in some circumstances And he just
[26:38] Speaker 1: fell head over heels for this one. That's such a
[26:40] Speaker 1: great question. You know, he wasn't just a writer. He
[26:42] Speaker 1: was a doctor and the only reason he became a
[26:45] Speaker 1: writer was because his practice actually wasn't going well. And
[26:48] Speaker 1: so she started the first Charlock Holmes stories as he
[26:51] Speaker 1: waited for patients who did not come. But he was
[26:54] Speaker 1: The reason I mentioned this is he was part of
[26:56] Speaker 1: the scientific community. He went to lectures in Germany to
[27:01] Speaker 1: hear about the latest discoveries of microbes. You know, he
[27:06] Speaker 1: was someone with a really keen scientific mind. So also,
[27:09] Speaker 1: by the way, an expert photographer. Yes, one of his
[27:12] Speaker 1: first yes, I think his first work was published in
[27:14] Speaker 1: the British Jirle of Photography. Yes, he's someone who throughout
[27:18] Speaker 1: most of his life was just this paragon of rationality.
[27:21] Speaker 1: Of course, he saw a miscarriage of justice. He created
[27:23] Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes, and that something seems to happen. We can't
[27:27] Speaker 1: just look at it in a vacuum. The fairies didn't
[27:30] Speaker 1: just magically appear. He had experienced a lot of personal misfortune.
[27:36] Speaker 1: Son died in the war, wife incredibly sick. That made
[27:40] Speaker 1: him very despondent, wanting to believe that he can somehow
[27:45] Speaker 1: communicate with the other side that life doesn't end in death,
[27:49] Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people feel when they
[27:52] Speaker 1: lose people they love. And also context of the times,
[27:57] Speaker 1: this is a moment in time where spiritualism is actually
[28:02] Speaker 1: getting a little bit more credibility in the mainstream. So
[28:07] Speaker 1: William James, who we know as the father of modern psychology,
[28:12] Speaker 1: happens to head up the Spiritualist Society and wants to
[28:16] Speaker 1: run studies and psychological experiments on the other side and
[28:21] Speaker 1: these unseen psychic powers and psychic forces, because so many
[28:25] Speaker 1: unknown forces are actually being discovered scientifically, radio waves, X rays,
[28:30] Speaker 1: all these things that we can't see. There's so much
[28:32] Speaker 1: invisible in the world that we're now bringing signs to
[28:35] Speaker 1: bear on. That said, when two girls appear and show
[28:41] Speaker 1: this evidence of fairies, even at the time, almost nobody
[28:45] Speaker 1: believes them because if you look at the photographs, they're bad.
[28:48] Speaker 1: These are not good fakes. And as we know, what
[28:51] Speaker 1: they did was they cut out fairies from a book
[28:54] Speaker 1: and they just pasted them, you know, into these landscapes.
[28:58] Speaker 1: It's a very crude forgery. Beyond that one of the
[29:02] Speaker 1: girls is an apprenticet of photography studio, and as you said,
[29:06] Speaker 1: Conandoel himself was a photographer. And yet I think he
[29:11] Speaker 1: just wants to believe. What I find really interesting is
[29:14] Speaker 1: that even as he's being deceived by the fairies, he
[29:17] Speaker 1: is still writing Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't believe
[29:21] Speaker 1: in spiritualism. It's just hilarious because I think on some
[29:24] Speaker 1: level Conan Dowell must understand what's going on, but it's
[29:28] Speaker 1: subconscious and he's bringing it out in his fictional creation.
[29:32] Speaker 1: He really wanted to believe. And Ann Friedman, yeah, really
[29:36] Speaker 1: wanted to believe that she had found these rothcoes in
[29:38] Speaker 1: these pollocks. And Paul Fampton really wanted to believe there
[29:41] Speaker 1: was a supermodel waiting for him in Russells. Never underestimate
[29:45] Speaker 1: our need to believe, in our desire, to believe in
[29:47] Speaker 1: our hopefulness and our eternal optimism that good things happen
[29:51] Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, your Most Fast book is the biggest bluff.
[29:55] Speaker 1: It is an absolute classic. It's a wonderful Everyone needs
[29:58] Speaker 1: to read it. I feel like everyone has read it.
[30:00] Speaker 1: But if you haven't read it, go and read it
[30:02] Speaker 1: all about your quest to try to become a championship
[30:07] Speaker 1: level poker player. Given what we've been talking about, I
[30:11] Speaker 1: wanted to ask, what are the similarities or differences between
[30:14] Speaker 1: a bluff and a con The answer to that is
[30:17] Speaker 1: the answer to why not all marketers or pr people,
[30:23] Speaker 1: or politicians or writers are all con artists either, because
[30:26] Speaker 1: it's so easy to say, well, it's all deception. Why
[30:29] Speaker 1: isn't everything a con And that's intention. So a con
[30:32] Speaker 1: artist is someone who takes advantage of your confidence, your
[30:38] Speaker 1: trust in them for their own personal gain, and it
[30:42] Speaker 1: is deception with a nefarious edge, with intent to do
[30:48] Speaker 1: something harmful, something that is good for the con artist,
[30:54] Speaker 1: and what they say is all in service of that.
[31:00] Speaker 1: When you're talking about white lies, or storytelling in journalistic sense,
[31:05] Speaker 1: or a bluff and poker, the intention is not nefarious.
[31:10] Speaker 1: In the case of a writer, it's to make the
[31:11] Speaker 1: world clearer. In the case of a politician who's not
[31:14] Speaker 1: a con artist, it's to make the world a better place.
[31:16] Speaker 1: In the case of a bluff, you're playing a game
[31:18] Speaker 1: with rules, right, You're playing poker. Bluffing is part of
[31:21] Speaker 1: the game, and so you're just engaging in deception that
[31:25] Speaker 1: everyone is aware of. Everyone knows that within the rules
[31:27] Speaker 1: of this game is to deceive other people so that
[31:31] Speaker 1: you can win. It's a very different tone of deceiving
[31:34] Speaker 1: someone for your own personal ends. Now, there are con
[31:37] Speaker 1: artists in absolutely every profession. We talked very briefly about
[31:40] Speaker 1: writers who are fabulous or plagiarists or who deceive their
[31:43] Speaker 1: con artists. They're con artists in the poker world, people
[31:47] Speaker 1: who pretend to be someone else, who steal your money.
[31:50] Speaker 1: That's not within the rules, that's not part of the game.
[31:52] Speaker 1: That's not bluffing, that is actual malicious intent. The way
[31:57] Speaker 1: I always say, you know how to draw the line
[31:59] Speaker 1: between con artists is take a snake oil snailsman, and
[32:03] Speaker 1: one of them knows he's selling snake oil. Right. He
[32:06] Speaker 1: knows that this is actually, you know, to bull oil
[32:09] Speaker 1: with fruit coloring, and is probably not going to kill you.
[32:12] Speaker 1: But it's definitely not going to do any of the
[32:13] Speaker 1: things he says. But he can make a lot of
[32:15] Speaker 1: money at fairs selling it, so he's going to do it.
[32:17] Speaker 1: That's a con artist, right, he knows exactly what he's doing.
[32:21] Speaker 1: Now imagine he convinces someone else to sell that with him,
[32:24] Speaker 1: and that person becomes a true believer. They actually think
[32:27] Speaker 1: it cured them and they think they're selling this miracle
[32:31] Speaker 1: snake oil, and they come up to you and they say, here,
[32:34] Speaker 1: by this, it's amazing. They're not a con artist. There
[32:36] Speaker 1: might be a little gullible, but they're a victim. They're
[32:39] Speaker 1: a true believer. They're someone who actually believes what they're selling.
[32:43] Speaker 1: Exact same action, right, You're selling snake oil, and yet
[32:46] Speaker 1: one of the people who's selling it as a con
[32:47] Speaker 1: artist and the other person isn't. And I think that's
[32:50] Speaker 1: the test you always have to subject people to to
[32:53] Speaker 1: try to figure out is this a con or not,
[32:55] Speaker 1: because otherwise the word loses all meaning. We do need
[32:59] Speaker 1: to have that intention very clear. Of course, it's hard
[33:02] Speaker 1: to get into other people's minds and know what their
[33:04] Speaker 1: intention really is. You know, is this person a true
[33:07] Speaker 1: believer or is this person a con artist? And can
[33:10] Speaker 1: you give me any advice as to how not to
[33:12] Speaker 1: be calmed or is it just like the weather, it's
[33:17] Speaker 1: just one of these things. So it's going to rain,
[33:19] Speaker 1: you're gonna get wet, it's gonna relate, you'll be calmed. Well,
[33:21] Speaker 1: I think that has to be your attitude. When I
[33:24] Speaker 1: finished writing The Confidence Game, my initial reaction was lock
[33:28] Speaker 1: myself in a room, throw away the key, and never
[33:31] Speaker 1: interact with the outside world again because people suck. I
[33:34] Speaker 1: got past that. There was a reason that was my
[33:36] Speaker 1: initial reaction, because you realize that we're all susceptible to it.
[33:40] Speaker 1: But that means you also don't get to live. So yes,
[33:43] Speaker 1: you always just have to say one day it might happen,
[33:45] Speaker 1: and that's okay. You still can protect yourself against the
[33:49] Speaker 1: worst of it. My best advice is whenever things are
[33:54] Speaker 1: happening that are good, that's when you need to be
[33:56] Speaker 1: the most skeptical. When things are too good to be true,
[33:59] Speaker 1: they probably are, but nothing's too good for me. Really
[34:02] Speaker 1: try to get past that and try to say, Okay,
[34:04] Speaker 1: things are really good. This is when I need to
[34:06] Speaker 1: ask questions. Don't assume every single person's out to get you,
[34:09] Speaker 1: as they're not, but verify and don't be afraid of
[34:12] Speaker 1: looking like an asshole, because one of the reasons we
[34:14] Speaker 1: often don't verify is because we don't want to be Oh,
[34:17] Speaker 1: you know, I hate to be the guy who brings
[34:18] Speaker 1: this up. But be the guy who brings it up,
[34:21] Speaker 1: that's okay. At this stage, I would normally ask my
[34:25] Speaker 1: guest to tell me how the story ends. I'd ask
[34:27] Speaker 1: you to tell me how the story ends. For Paul Frampton.
[34:30] Speaker 1: But actually, if it's okay, I'm going to tell you
[34:32] Speaker 1: how the story ends. Yes, as I mentioned, he was
[34:36] Speaker 1: friends with my father, and so he went to jail
[34:39] Speaker 1: for a few years. He got back to the UK
[34:42] Speaker 1: in the end, and I saw him in the spring
[34:47] Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two. And the good news is he
[34:50] Speaker 1: was in great form. Is very happy, very cheerful, very charming.
[34:54] Speaker 1: The bad news is it was at my father's funeral,
[34:56] Speaker 1: and so perhaps being happy, cheerful and charming was not
[35:00] Speaker 1: exactly how he should have behaved, but maybe it was
[35:02] Speaker 1: in character. And the funny thing was we only spoke briefly,
[35:06] Speaker 1: but he told me that it had an argument with
[35:08] Speaker 1: my father, or a gentle argument with my father over
[35:11] Speaker 1: who was the most famous me, my father's son, or him,
[35:16] Speaker 1: Professor Paul Frampton, who'd been profiled in the New York
[35:19] Speaker 1: Times for being the victim of one of the most
[35:22] Speaker 1: famous scams in history. But there you go. He's flourishing,
[35:26] Speaker 1: and I was glad to see it. Of course he
[35:29] Speaker 1: is so glad. He's flourishing. Narcissism gets you very far
[35:32] Speaker 1: in life. Riah Clickova, thank you so much, Thank you
[35:38] Speaker 1: so much to this has been an absolute pleasure. Cautionary
[35:49] Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
[35:54] Speaker 1: It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Edith Rousselow.
[35:59] Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of
[36:01] Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. The show wouldn't have been possible without the
[36:06] Speaker 1: work of Jacob Weisberg, Bryan Dilley, her Barton, Greta con Latle, Millard,
[36:12] Speaker 1: John Schnars, Carlie Migliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Mrano,
[36:17] Speaker 1: and Morgan Ratner. Cautionary Tales here's a production of Pushkin Industries.
[36:23] Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
[36:26] Speaker 1: and review. It helps us for mysterious reasons, and if
[36:30] Speaker 1: you want to hear the show, add free sign up
[36:33] Speaker 1: for Pushkin Plus on the show page and Apple Podcasts,
[36:36] Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus by

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.