The Art of the Con Read Free Page B

be stealing these from me. Not eighty, not sixty, and not even forty. These watches, in the case, with the guarantee . . . are twenty pounds and remember, we guarantee you will be happy.”
    Hands filled with money shot toward us. Alex fought to take all the cash and hand out the watches. Before we knew it, every watch we had was gone and we could have sold many, many more. Alex’s apron was stuffed with twenty-pound notes. I turned back to the crowd. “Isn’t that what coming to the market is about? A watch like that for twenty pounds? Who is satisfied?” Hands fill the air. “Who’s happy?”
    Everyone shouts back “I’m happy!” and I reached up and grabbed the handle for the shutter.
    â€œIf you’re all happy,” I said, “then we’re happy!”
    I pulled down the shutter with a crash, sealing us inside the van. The engine started and we drove quickly away leaving the stunned crowd behind us, our pockets full of money. I looked around at the empty boxes. If we had more merchandise, we could have sold it all. If we were doing this for a living, we’d be making money hand over fist—but this was not my biggest revelation that day. One of the most important lessons I would ever learn about cons was yet to come, when we returned to face the crowd and give them back their money.

    This was not my first experience working a pitch. For two years, in my late teens, I spent many weeks and months on the road following “DW,” a professional pitchman (also known as a “Grafter”), as he set up new pitches then left me to continue selling while he found new locations to work. That product was the infamous Svengali Deck, a special pack of cards that could, in the right hands, perform miracles. Cards can be made to appear in any location, the deck could be seen to be normal or, with a riffle of the cards, transform so that every card was exactly the same. Each deck came with two free additional tricks for reading minds and winning money, all presented in an oversized copy of the card box.
    At first, I was reluctant to follow DW’s orders. I didn’t want to follow his presentation to the letter and only perform the tricks according to a strict script. Like most young men in their late teens, I thought I knew better, so I ignored those instructions and developed my own routine, which I was much happier with—until it became painfully obvious that I wasn’t selling enough decks to cover my expenses, let alone make a profit. Finally, I wised up and returned to the pitch that DW had originally taught me. Having built my confidence over a couple of weeks, the pitch was suddenly much more effective. People began to respond and sales increased sharply. It proved to be a wise move because DW returned one day, unannounced, to watch me work. Later, he took me for lunch and gave me some important advice: “This is not a magic show. It’s a game and the name of the game is to make them want what we’re selling. If you show off, you lose.”
    It’s a game
    I remembered that, so when DW taught me how to build a crowd, how to hold them, and apply subtle pressure to make a sale, I listened. He told me, “If you learn, you’ll earn” and I did both. Eventually I landed back in Scotland and ran a pitch for many months. I gained a great deal of experience about how to speak to an audience, work a crowd, and press their buttons for the desired response. Ever since, I’ve had a real appreciation for grafters. I’ve learned to observe how they construct presentations, layering every conceivable positive aspect of a product until the crowd is smothered in reasons to buy. I have studied how they manipulate groups of people into reacting without giving them a chance to think or consider their options. I’ve seen pitches for knives, chopping devices, miracle cleaning products, cookers, household gadgets, Saran Wrap