I think it would be great idea to include in a high school curriculum and college a course(s) about the above and similar cons. There certainly are enough real life examples to present in such a course. Title of the course could be "How not to be conned" or "What to beware of when something is too good to be true".
Actually, this whole thread would be a great part of the course as there is so much truth and knowledge to be had.
Colleges don't really teach anything useful. If the ciriculum is hard enough and a student is determined to get thru with a high GPA, he will come out 1) being able to manage his time 2)juggle a number of different jobs at once, 3)sort things out in order of importance 4) know what corners can be cut and which ones can't 5) how to get away with cheating, where to cheat, when to cheat, when not to cheat 6) how to do effective research, at least in some instances 7) make a bunch of contacts to help his career. But as far as being taught something useful that is directly applicable? Not a phuggen chance in hell. Once a college graduate gets out of school and into his first post college job, very often their first conversations on the job go like this: "Did you want that order supersized, sir?" or words to that effect. If they are lucky enough or shrewd enough or know the right people and get a job more or less along the lines of what they studied, they are generally confronted with "Forget everything you learned in college, here is how it is done in the real world!" Or you can take the case of, say, the Navy. Some young hotshot gets a degree in, say, mechanical engineering, and is then accepted by the Navy for OCS or AOCS (Air Officer Candidate School.) Becoming a division officer onboard some cruiser or learning to fly a plane and all the weapons systems onboard doesn't really have jack shit to do with the mechanical engineering he learned in college. Or he can become a SEAL officer, again, his degree won't get him thru BUD/S, that would take some serious hard work, and, that degree doesn't mean he will be a good leader or be good at jumping out of planes. About the only place in the Navy where his engineering degree comes remotely close to what he would be doing is the nuclear/submarine officer program, and mainly the officers hate standing enginnering offficer of the watch (EOOW) and want to qualify as Officer of the Deck, which is their senior forward watch station and has to do with running the whole boat and its warfare/espionage functions and has zip point zilch to do with his degree in mechanical engineering.
I am rambling here. The point is colleges are basically worthless except for the widely held belief in diplomas, as if they are some sort of magical talisman. HOWEVER ... if you want to receive a college level education in con games ... I will break it down for you. I will even put it in terms of a 4 year ciriculuum.
Freshman year: Read, several times through, every book by Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim. The first one to read is
Pimp: The Story of My Life then all the rest in no particular order.
Pimp is the most important.
Sophmore year: Find yourself an underground book catalog, or several. Read every single book there is on con games. Do the research and update them. Most are oudated at time of printing.
Junior year: Get a copy of the Tony Berger course "Advanced Macking". It was the best out there when it comes to picking up women for and shtupping them same night. Tony's premise is that just going for a phone number is for chumps, so is dating, and he explains why. Tony is cynical as hell, but, he is basically correct. Furthermore, with some imagination, his course is more broadly applicable, no pun intended, hahaha.
Senior year: Go looking for cons in seedy places on your own. Get good at spotting them. Three card monte, various pool hustles, pinball hustles, etc. Use your imagination. Learn to be a great poker player. Learn all about card cheats of all kinds. Learn the difference between sophisticated and fast cons.
BTW, no need for the course to actually take 4 years. And, if you are seriously interested and want to make it your life's work, I reccommend becoming a prison guard at a federal prison, a club fed, where you will meet all manner of high end white collar crooks.
My recco's: If you are considering stepping outside the law to make a living, become a dope grower. It is, as far as going outside the law, an honest living. There are lots of legitimate medical users that will need your product. There is the satisfaction of creating new strains, and the satisfaction of producing a top quality product, so you can take pride in your work. As far as the non medical users, the main differences between, say, producing a barrel of exquisite single malt scotch and growing the finest weed is that the weed is illegal, the weed has a higher profit margin, the weed is not taxed, the weed is far less likely to cause someone to have an accident on the road, and the weed is far less toxic overall, especially if consumed via vaporizer or eaten as opposed to just being smoked.
Pete
