Neuroscience Meets Magic

Untitled Drunken Con Piece

“So what’s the play with this group?”

“Oh dear God woman! Let me just drink!”

“Come on, what’s your angle? How are we doing this?”

“Aren’t you full of fucking questions tonight?”

“Only fucking your getting.”

“Yep.”

“And plus, I know you. The little drunken barroom act means your making someone.”

“I drink in bars all the time. I get drunk in bars all the time.”

“But you only get belligerent drunk in private or alone. And I have seen how you push away those watered down glasses there Mr. Sinatra.”

“Christ, I need to stop hanging out with you so much.”

“No one else will put up with you.”

“I have lots of friends.”

“Who won’t put up with you.”

“Group in the corner. Info to cull from them.”

“And how you going to get that info all the way over here getting drunk?”

“Oh my dear, the info is in how they act, not in what they say.”

Copyright 2010 by Casey Moore

Woman Catches Her Own Thief

For research.

How To Hack an ATM - From io9

Research material:

Basketball Story Research - Point Shaving

Point shaving:

The quickest way to corrupt an athlete is to help him run up a gambling tab he can't pay, says FBI special agent Jon Bunn, who briefs college men's and women's basketball teams during the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA basketball tournament. The jock then has a choice: Cough up cash he doesn't have or "provide a service," Bunn says.

"They come from behind on the court, so they can think they can come from behind in the gambling arena. But it doesn't end up that way. They wind up further in the hole," he says.

Manni, for example, would place wagers for the athletes with his cash, then pay them the profits if they won, according to an FBI affidavit. Electronic surveillance on Manni's phone captured McDougle asking the gambler to bet $2,000 for him on the GMAC Bowl between Toledo and the University of Texas-El Paso on Dec. 21, 2005.

"Gary informed McDougle that another player would be helping out," reads the affidavit.

Toledo won 45-13.

In a phone call in November 2005, according to the affidavit, the FBI heard Manni telling a Rockets basketball player, "Scooter had taken care of certain players on the team who would be helping (Manni) influence a game that day."

Wining and dining:

Gamblers seduce athletes with fancy dinners, booze and drugs and set up opportunities for sex. Manni invited the players he met in Toledo to join him in Detroit for free dinners and paid gambling sprees at the Greektown Casino downtown, the FBI affidavit says.

Similarly, when New York gangster Henry Hill first met two Boston College men's basketball players involved in that point-shaving scheme, he paid them $500 apiece just to have dinner with him. Hill says he also plied the players with free booze, cocaine and prostitutes.

Magic number:

A bribe of $10,000-plus will often persuade a reluctant athlete to cross over to the dark side, says Michael Franzese, a former Mafia soldier-turned-anti-gambling crusader.

Manni offered an unnamed football player "up to $10,000 to sit out particular games," according to the FBI affidavit. Nearly three decades ago, Hill says he paid three Boston College men's basketball players about $10,000 apiece to shave points in nine games during 1978-79.

"There's a certain number with these kids and it's $10,000," Franzese says. "You buy them a dinner, put a few bucks in their pocket, and you've got them."

--Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY

ATM Skimming

Research material found here:

ATMs are under siege more than ever from skimming. Skimming, where ATM thieves steal your PIN and account number using remote devices, is increasing dramatically. Often done by sophisticated crime rings from the Eastern bloc countries, ATM skimming is becoming a high-tech art that's hard to detect.

That's bad news for consumers. Experts say that losses from skimming are approaching $1 billion. Nearly one in five fraud victims reported having their credit card PIN or debit card ATM PIN information stolen in 2009, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. And Robert Vamosi, an analyst handling risk, fraud and security at Javelin, sees ATM skimming continuing to rise this year and next.

"Consumers aren't aware of ATM tampering," he says. "ATMs have 40 years of trust."

Skimming isn't new. It's been around for at least 10 years. What has changed is that the "technology of the bad guy is getting better and better every year," says Robert Siciliano, a security expert based in Boston. "It's up to consumers to watch their own backs."

Typically, ATM thieves use two devices to capture your PIN and card data. One device sits near where you swipe your card and reads the magnetic stripe on your card with your account number. Even more confusing, the device mimics the card slot. "The technology has evolved to a point where the molded plastic fits like it belongs there," says Siciliano. Devices are even readily available over the Internet for as little as $300.

A camera, hidden from view, captures the PIN. "You can get the data in real time," says Siciliano. "You can be in your car with a laptop remotely accessing the device."

Thieves then burn the data onto a blank card to access your money.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Max Milien wants consumers to be warned. "The public is notified after an event," he says. And don't take bank security for granted. Fraud can occur at any bank in any part of the country. Thieves are even sending out false text alerts to get consumer data.

Banks, they say, are slow to adopt anti-skimming measures. When Javelin surveyed 25 banks, four stood out, though, for their anti-theft measures. They are Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo.

Experts add that debit card users are most at risk. Typically, consumers must report fraudulent charges within two days, limiting your liability to $50. If you report ATM skimming fraud within 60 days, you're liable for the first $500 of any transaction. Siciliano adds that thieves carefully orchestrate ATM withdrawals, maxing out cash withdrawals one day and waiting until after midnight for the next stash, which quickly adds up.

Here are four tips to help you protect your account.
1. Cover your password with your hand
Hidden cameras are disguised so they can pick up your password. By protecting it, ATM thieves can't access your account.
2. Use familiar ATMs and limit your visits
ATMs in dimly lighted spots or used late at night could be more susceptible to fraud, while ATMs under video surveillance can be safer. Stay away from ATMs at retail stores or restaurants, adds Siciliano. Recently, skimming devices were found on ATMs in a popular grocery store in central Florida. Airports, convenience stores or kiosks are equally vulnerable to ATM thieves. Still, even highly trafficked ATMs outside a bank branch have been targeted by thieves.

Also, try to limit your visits to the ATM. "With frequency, there's risk," says Siciliano.
3. Check bank balances frequently

Given the two-day window for reporting fraud, it pays to check your account frequently. If you don't report fraud within 60 days, you have unlimited liability. "Sign up for alerts and notice unusual withdrawals," says Vamosi.

With credit cards there are more protections in place, and you can dispute charges."You have at least a billing cycle," says Siciliano.
4. Observe the ATM
Vamosi cautions consumers to look at an ATM to make sure a card slot is "legitimate and not tacked on." Look for things that strike you, he says. "Some people have felt that when they inserted their card, something went awry," he says. In that case, try another ATM.

When protecting your account against ATM thieves, "it's all about awareness, paying attention and understanding risks," says Sicilano. "There are 400,000 ATMs and every one of them is susceptible to fraud. The speed and convenience of technology has replaced the security of technology."

Topkapi

Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants

Unsolved Boston Art Heist

From here:

BOSTON – It remains the most tantalizing art heist mystery in the world.

In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two thieves walked into Boston's elegant Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum disguised as police officers and bound and gagged two guards using handcuffs and duct tape. For the next 81 minutes, they sauntered around the ornate galleries, removing masterworks including those by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, cutting some of the largest pieces from their frames.

By the time they disappeared, they would be credited with the largest art theft in history, making off with upward of a half-billion dollars in loot far too hot to sell.

Now, 20 years later, investigators are making a renewed push to recover the paintings. The FBI has resubmitted DNA samples for updated testing, the museum is publicizing its $5 million, no-questions-asked reward, and the U.S. attorney's office is offering immunity.

Two billboards on Interstates 93 and 495 are also advertising the reward.

"Our priority is to get the paintings back," U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said. "If someone had information or had possession of the paintings, immunity from prosecution is negotiable."

Investigators say they've largely ruled out some of the more popular theories, from the specter of a recluse billionaire art collector to the hand of notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger.

More likely, investigators say, the two were homegrown thieves with knowledge of the museum's security system — including the absence of a dead man's switch that would have alerted police once the guards became incapacitated. They might have even underestimated the breathtaking scope of their crime.

Elderly Jewel Thief Arrested

Still going strong at 79:

79-year-old jewel thief facing new charge in CA

SANTA ANA, Calif. – An international jewel thief who claims to have pocketed a small fortune in gems while shoplifting in ritzy stores from New York to Monte Carlo was arrested in Southern California for allegedly trying to steal a coat.

Doris Payne, 79, pleaded not guilty to a felony count of grand theft in Superior Court on Tuesday in Orange County, district attorney's spokeswoman Farrah Emami said.

Court officials said Payne was represented by a public defender, but the attorney could not be reached for comment.

Payne was arrested Friday after security guards said she walked out of a department store with a $1,300 Burberry trench coat, Costa Mesa police Lt. Mark Manley said.

Payne was on parole for a previous theft conviction at the time and she remained jailed without bail Tuesday.

Payne, who was born in Slab Fork, W.Va., has described a five-decade career of shoplifting in the U.S. and Europe. Authorities said she used at least 22 aliases.

Her career was detailed in a 2005 story by The Associated Press based on court records and interviews with Payne, prosecutors, detectives, FBI agents, friends and jewelry store employees.

The account said the exquisitely dressed and well-mannered Payne would waltz into a store and begin trying on diamond ring after diamond ring. When the clerk had taken out a number of fancy items and was thoroughly confused, she would steal one and casually slip out, sometimes with the ring on her finger.

The Jewelers Security Alliance, an industry trade group, sent out bulletins in the 1970s warning about her.

The daughter of an illiterate coal miner, Payne said her criminal career began when she was 23 and walked out of a Pittsburgh jewelry store with a $22,000 diamond.

"I've had regrets, and I've had a good time," she said.

Payne has served jail time in Nevada, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Colorado and Wisconsin.

Real Life Cons & Heists

CIA duped by con-man:

The intelligence reports fitted the suspicions of the time: al-Qaida sleeper agents were scattered across the US awaiting orders that were broadcast in secret codes over the al-Jazeera television network.

Flights from Britain and France were cancelled. Officials warned of a looming "spectacular attack" to rival 9/11. In 2003 President Bush's homeland security tsar, Tom Ridge, spoke of a "credible source" whose information had US military bracing for a new terrorist onslaught.

Then suddenly no more was said.

Six years later, Playboy magazine has revealed that the CIA fell victim to an elaborate con by a compulsive gambler who claimed to have developed software that discovered al-Jazeera broadcasts were being used to transmit messages to terrorists buried deep in America.

The world's largest diamond heist:

Leonardo Notarbartolo strolls into the prison visiting room trailing a guard as if the guy were his personal assistant. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian prison turn to look. Notarbartolo nods and smiles faintly, the laugh lines crinkling around his blue eyes. Though he's an inmate and wears the requisite white prisoner jacket, Notarbartolo radiates a sunny Italian charm. A silver Rolex peeks out from under his cuff, and a vertical strip of white soul patch drops down from his lower lip like an exclamation mark.

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done.

The loot was never found, but based on circumstantial evidence, Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years. He has always denied having anything to do with the crime and has refused to discuss his case with journalists, preferring to remain silent for the past six years.

Until now.

The Math of Gambling

From the New Scientist:

FIVE years ago, Londoner Ashley Revell sold his house, all his possessions and cashed in his life savings. It raised £76,840. He flew to Las Vegas, headed to the roulette table and put it all on red.

The wheel was spun. The crowd held its breath as the ball slowed, bounced four or five times, and finally settled on number seven. Red seven.

Revell's bet was a straight gamble: double or nothing. But when Edward Thorp, a mathematics student at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, went to the same casino some 40 years previously, he knew pretty well where the ball was going to land. He walked away with a profit, took it to the racecourse, the basketball court and the stock market, and became a multimillionaire. He wasn't on a lucky streak, he was using his knowledge of mathematics to understand, and beat, the odds.

No one can predict the future, but the powers of probability can help. Armed with this knowledge, a high-school mathematics education and £50, I headed off to find out how Thorp, and others like him, have used mathematics to beat the system. Just how much money could probability make me?

When Thorp stood at the roulette wheel in the summer of 1961 there was no need for nerves - he was armed with the first "wearable" computer, one that could predict the outcome of the spin. Once the ball was in play, Thorp fed the computer information about the speed and position of the ball and the wheel using a microswitch inside his shoe. "It would make a forecast about a probable result, and I'd bet on neighbouring numbers," he says.

Thorp's device would now be illegal in a casino, and in any case getting a computer to do the work wasn't exactly what I had in mind. However, there is a simple and sure-fire way to win at the roulette table - as long as you have deep pockets and a faith in probability theory.

Apollo Robbins: Essential Books on Cons

Found here:

"The Modern Con Man: How To Get Something For Nothing" by Todd Robbins

"How To Cheat At Everything" by Simon Lovell

"Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story," by J.R. "Yellow Kid" Weil and W.T. Brannon

"Travel Advisory! How to avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams While Traveling," by Bambi Vincent and Bob Arno

"A Dictionary of the Underworld," by Eric Partridge

"The Art of the Steal: How to Protect Yourself and Your Business from Fraud, America's #1 Crime," by Frank W. Abagnale

"The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man," by David W. Maurer

"Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern," by David W. Maurer

"The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security," by Kevin Mitnick and William Simon

"The Modern Con Man: How to Get Something for Nothing," by Todd Robbins

"The Professional Thief," by Edwin Sutherland

"How to Cheat at Everything: A Con Man Reveals the Secrets of the Esoteric Trade of Cheating, Scams, and Hustles," by Simon Lovell

"Players: Con Men, Hustlers, Gamblers, and Scam Artists," by Geno Zanetti and Stephen Hyde

Van Meegren - Forger

I love a good con:

Fool the Art World
Launching his career in the 1920s and 30s, Dutch painter Han van Meegeren utterly failed to take critics by storm. Apparently committed to toiling on realistic portraiture while everybody else was trying to be Picasso, van Meegeren seemed doomed to the fate of a "never was." But when a critic derided his work as "lacking originality," the frustrated artist hatched a plan that would prove his talent and make his foes look like idiots. Ironically, the plan involved abandoning any pretense at originality whatsoever. Instead, van Meegeren set out to become the greatest art forger who ever lived; not merely copying known works of his hero, Jan Vermeer, but producing new paintings that would combine Vermeer's literal and artistic signatures with van Meegeren's own critically panned style of painting. Van Meegeren originally planned to create just one of these paintings, make it an international sensation and then reveal the truth to a very small and sorry art world. But plans--as plans are wont to do--went awry.

Unofficial Brother's Bloom Poster

This is what a movie poster should look like:

Seven Best Scams of 2008

From Wired's Threat Level

Wired: Fake a Credit Card

Leverage Behind the Scenes

Con Men Reading List

Found through John Rogers, an essential reading list on cons and con men.

Apollo Robbins the man behind the list and a consultant on cons.

Psychology of Cons

Found this through BoingBoing:

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable.