Download or read book Fifty Scams and Hoaxes written by Martin Fone and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2019-01-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty Scams and Hoaxes is a light-hearted investigation into some of the worst examples of financial skulduggery, medical quackery and ingenious hoaxing from history.
Download or read book Hoaxes and Scams written by Carl Sifakis and published by Facts on File. This book was released on 1994-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the stories of quack cures, confidence men, automobile repair scams, practical jokes, imposters, swindlers, fraudulent scientific research, phony mediums, and newspaper hoaxes
Download or read book The Big Con written by Nate Hendley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a broad range of infamous scams, cons, swindles, and hoaxes throughout American history—and considers why human gullibility continues in an age of easy access to information. Covering American cons and hoaxes past and present, including the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, the controversy over "subliminal messaging" (do bands, filmmakers, and advertisers really put secret messages in their works?), the panic about "satanic" daycare operators in the 1980s, and recent Internet scams, this book provides a fascinating, fact-based look at infamous frauds across the centuries. Offering an engaging mix of history, sociology, and psychology, author Nate Hendley gives readers an appreciation of how prominent scams, cons, "confidence men," and hoaxes have impacted American society, past and present. Each entry details the scheme or hoax and the pertinent con artist/schemer involved, examining the sociological, cultural, political, and/or economic effect of the scams. Each topic is accompanied by a short bibliography of further reading selections. As the old saying goes, "There is a sucker born every minute"—and there has always been a keen-eyed swindler to take advantage of the situation. The Big Con: Great Hoaxes, Frauds, Grifts, and Swindles in American History explores this sordid underbelly of American civilization and invites readers to revel in the felonious experience.
Download or read book Fakers written by H. P. Wood and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Trojan horse to fake news, scams have run rampant throughout history and across the globe. Some con artists do it for fun, others for profit. . . and every once in a while, a faker saves the world. In this era of daily online hoaxes, it's easy to be caught off-guard. Fakers arms kids with information, introducing them to the funniest, weirdest, and most influential cons and scams in human history. Profiles of con artists will get readers thinking about motivation and consequence, and practical tips will help protect them from falsehoods. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is--except in the case of this book!
Download or read book Science Tales written by Darryl Cunningham and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Encyclopedia of Claims Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural written by James Randi and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six hundred and sixty-six entries, along with hundreds of illustrations, on such topics as the Abominable Snowman, astrologer Jeane Dixon, and the monster of Loch Ness expose the cranks, charlatans, and myths of past and present.
Download or read book Fakes Frauds and Flimflammery written by Andreas Schroeder and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 1999 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1991, Andreas Schroeder has been a regular on the very popular national CBC-Radio show "Basic Black" with Arthur Black. Each month, Schroeder recounts, with wry understatement, yet another outrageous scam or particularly notable rip-off, leaving his listeners speechless with disbelief, amusement, and even grudging admiration. Such was the popularity of his two previous story collections that he has done it again. Stories Include: "Another Day, Another Picasso: The decades-long career of aristocratic forger Elmyr de Hory, some of whose Picassos, Matisses, Van Goghs, and Braques still lurk in art museums and reference books, masquerading as the real thing. "Making Hay in Cathay: A damning expose of that thirteenth-century con artist, Marco Polo, which is sure to have readers questioning everything they learned in school. "Gangs That Couldn't Loot Straight: Three tales to prove that incompetence can be elevated to an art form. "Extortion by Remote Control: How a technologically inventive bomber (calling himself Dagobert Duck) managed to hold one of Germany's largest department stores hostage and baffle the police for almost two years. Each story is told in Schroeder's wicked, deadpan style, which covers a certain underlying glee at the shenanigans of truly ingenious characters - despite their questionable morals.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Hoaxes written by Gordon Stein and published by Gale Cengage. This book was released on 1993 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at scams, shams, and flim-flams that have been perpetrated in almost every field including art, business, entertainment, politics, and more.
Download or read book A History of Ambition in 50 Hoaxes History in 50 written by Gale Eaton and published by Tilbury House Publishers and Cadent Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the Trojan Horse, Piltdown Man, Keely Motor Company, and Ponzi Scheme have in common? They were all famous hoaxes, carefully designed and bolstered with false evidence. The con artists in this book pursued a variety of ambitions—making money, winning wars, mocking authority, finding fame, trading an ordinary life for a glamorous one—but they all chose the lowest, fastest road to get there. Every hoax is a curtain, and behind it is a deceiver operating levers and smoke machines to make us see what is not there and miss what is. As P.T. Barnum knew, you can short-circuit critical thinking in any century by telling people what they want to hear. Most scams operate on a personal scale, but some have shaped the balance of world power, inspired explorers to sail uncharted seas, derailed scientific progress, or caused terrible massacres. A HISTORY OF AMBITION IN 50 HOAXES guides us through a rogue’s gallery of hustlers, liars, swindlers, imposters, scammers, pretenders, and cheats. In Gale Eaton’s wide-ranging synthesis, the history of deception is a colorful tour, with surprising insights behind every curtain. Fountas & Pinnell Level Z+
Download or read book The Book of Hoaxes written by S. Gordon and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human trickery and credulity have always gone hand in hand. The author describes the most outrageous scams and cons ever perpetrated.
Download or read book The Little Black Book of Scams written by Industry Canada and published by Competition Bureau Canada. This book was released on 2014-03-10 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Canadian edition of The Little Black Book of Scams is a compact and easy to use reference guide filled with information Canadians can use to protect themselves against a variety of common scams. It debunks common myths about scams, provides contact information for reporting a scam to the correct authority, and offers a step-by-step guide for scam victims to reduce their losses and avoid becoming repeat victims. Consumers and businesses can consult The Little Black Book of Scams to avoid falling victim to social media and mobile phone scams, fake charities and lotteries, dating and romance scams, and many other schemes used to defraud Canadians of their money and personal information.
Download or read book The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872 written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the hoax written by victims and newspapers *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "[T]he most gigantic and barefaced swindle of the age." - The San Francisco Chronicle's description of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872 It's only natural that people have always been attracted to get-rich-quick schemes, and in spite of their best efforts, almost everyone has been tempted at one time or another by a promise of riches that can be obtained with little or no work. The attraction is even stronger during periods when ordinary people have indeed struck it rich, particularly the California Gold Rush and the Yukon Gold Rush in the mid-19th century and late 19th century respectively. Having heard stories of men who went west with nothing and returned as millionaires, people were more inclined than ever before to believe that "there's gold (or silver or diamonds) in them thar hills." It would take decades of research to fully understand that most of the miners in the West did not strike it rich, and that those who fared best were mining companies and those who sold goods to miners. But regardless, fraudsters also understood that the best way to make a profit off the gold rush was to fleece the people trying to find the gold, and before long a large number of shysters hoped to make their own pot of riches in a far less honorable way. As Patricia O'Toole, author of Money and Morals in America: A History, noted, "I see the Diamond Hoax as one in a long line of scams made possible by the fact that the United States truly was a land of opportunity. Many a legitimate fortune seemed to be made overnight, so it was particularly easy for a con artist to convince a gullible American that he too could wake up a millionaire." There were many schemes carried out in the 19th century, and even professional con men like Soapy Smith, but perhaps no fraud in the region was as infamous as the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. It began with a major, legitimate diamond strike in South Africa. From there, the fever quickly spread to America, spurred on by tall tales told by trappers from Jim Bridger to Kit Carson of diamonds and other precious gems that could be picked up by the side of the road as one walked through the deserts of the West. Most of these men told these stories as harmless tall tales for the amusement of their audiences, but there were a few that had bigger and, at least in the own minds, better ideas. They decided to use the rumors to line their own pockets. That is where two cousins entered the picture. With the help of a friend, cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack managed to take otherwise sensible people, including highly successful businessmen and politicians like former Civil War General George McClellan, for nearly half a million dollars. They accomplished this by playing the long game, reinvesting initial sums of money to salt the ground they claimed was rich in minerals with enough diamonds and other gemstones to convince a few respected experts that they really had struck it big. They then sold shares in the land to investors before skipping town with their ill-gotten gains. In the end, the scam was only discovered because of a coincidental meeting on a train, one that sent a renowned geologist back to their claim, where he quickly determined it to be a fraud. Of course, by then the cousins had their money, and thanks to the embarrassment that most of their victims felt, Arnold and Slack were able to keep the money. There were hearings and lawsuits both in the United States and England, but in the end, almost no one got back any of the money they had invested under false pretenses. The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872: The History of 19th Century America's Most Notorious Fraud chronicles the story of one of the most infamous scams in the history of the United States.
Download or read book Science Tales written by Darryl Cunningham and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A graphic milestone of investigative reporting, Science Tales takes on controversies surrounding climate change, electro-convulsive therapy, the moon landing, the MMR vaccine, homeopathy, chiropractic, evolution and science denialism. Thouroughly researched and sourced, Cunningham's clear narrative, graphic lines and photographic illustration explain complicated and controversial issues with deceptive ease and wit. Science Tales decodes the myths and lies that have shaped some of the most fiercely-debated issues of the past fifty years.
Download or read book Ponzi written by Donald Dunn and published by Crown. This book was released on 2004-03-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just who was the man whose name has become synonymous with the classic “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” scam in which money from new investors is used to reward earlier ones? In December 1919, he was an unknown thirty-eight-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with a borrowed two-hundred dollars in his pocket. Six months later, he was Boston’s famed “wizard of finance,” lionized by the public and politicians alike. Based on exclusive interviews with people who knew Charles Ponzi, lent him their money, and exposed him, Donald Dunn’s Ponzi recreates both one of America’s most notorious and colorful financial con artists and the mad money-hungry era in which he thrived.
Download or read book Bunk written by Kevin Young and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction “There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.”—Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers—from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
Download or read book Email Hoaxes written by Theresa Heyd and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How genres emerge and evolve on the Internet has become one of the central questions in studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC). This book addresses the issue of genrefication by giving an in-depth analysis of email hoaxes as a candidate for digital genre status. Email hoaxes are deceptive messages that spread in digital social networks; they are a fascinating object for discourse linguistics as they exemplify a major pragmatic tendency in CMC, namely deceptivity and a lowering of sincerity standards. This study examines formal and functional aspects of email hoaxes and provides ample evidence both from a systematized corpus and in situ data collected online. Besides a structural and microlinguistic analysis, it identifies key issues such as pragmatic duality, narrativity and textual variation and change in email hoaxes. In conclusion, a digital genre model is outlined that bridges both the old/new and the formal/functional gaps and may be applied to many other digital genre ecologies.
