Talk:List of scams

Diet and exercise scams
Is it possible that some exercise devices and pills can be classed AS scams to bilk people out of money? In this, the wallet, bank account of the mark loses weight. What about "Lipozene" a pill taken that will (allegedly) dissolve body fat that exercise will not remove, supposedly developed by something called "The Obesity Research Institute"? Someone else could be really rude when asking similar questions. Powerzilla (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

The Ogged
I have actually seen this on various blogs over the years. Maybe it should be put back in. What do you think?--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Do not, as it does not exist under this name.Zezen (talk) 13:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Lord
Whats the name of the scam where the criminal pretends to be a Lord? The C of E (talk) 17:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Jehovah? ']}. Zezen (talk) 13:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Ticket tout scam
This is not a scam, this is a service. Here in Berlin you pay 2 euros to use public transportation for two hours. If you donate the ledt hour to a beggar and he sels the hour for one Euro, what is the harm? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.78.107.254 (talk) 09:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This could really be removed anyway due to the fact that the London Underground mostly runs using elecroic top up cards and only tourists and out of towners use paper tickets, meaning it isn't worthwhile for touts, so it doesn't happen anymore. Caspar esq. (talk) 02:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Art school and Bejing tea scam
I can say personally that the Bejing tea scam isn't just confined to Bejing! I had a variation of that one done on my in Shanghai. Also in Shanghai I came across the art student thing, though the paintings were AFAIK real, but mass produced (i.e. I actually saw the same one twice in different rooms). Having lived in Chengdu before where there weren't enough tourists for there to be an industry in tricking people I came to Shanghai rather naieve :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caspar esq. (talk • contribs) 02:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it was going on e.g. in the USA before 9/11 for years, but these were not Chinese students, ehm... Zezen (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

For some unknown reason, the Tea House scam was removed from the page at some point. The section was still there in 2012, but trying to find when it was removed was a problem for me. I think it was gone by 2013. There was some vandalism about that time, so maybe that is when it happened. My wiki-fu and patience proved inadequate to narrowing it down much further than that. Whenever it was removed, it was without discussion or even notation in the edit summary. I restored the section based on the latest version I could find from people's noted edits, and added citations I found from travel agency and news websites.

As an aside, I think Zezen misunderstood this because the link they provided was not relevant to this scam (it was a tale of espionage by drug gangs using social engineering). From what I have found, although clip joints may abound in the world, the tea scam is specific to Chinese large cities and involves local tea houses or tea ceremonies. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 13:47, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Drugs
I don't know where it should be added but drug dealers often, maybe always, use scams; pig-in-a-poke has happened to me loads of times, not to mention cutting drugs with other stuff. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.106.31 (talk) 23:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Report yourself to the FBI to find out if the drug dealers are law-abiding citizens then, and update the article with your story... Zezen (talk) 13:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Making individual scams more visible
I intend to create subsections for each individual scam which will make them more visible, with their names appearing in the TOC, also it will break up long passages of text. --Penbat (talk) 20:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have now restructured this article so the individual scams are more prominent, appear in the TOC and are listed in alphabetical order. The actual content could still do with a good review.


 * I am dubious whether there is any point in categorising the listed scams, most are just listed as uncategorised anyway. Maybe just a single alpha list is required.


 * The listed scams need to tie in exactly with Template:Scams and Template:Confidence Tricks once they are merged as per Templates_for_discussion.--Penbat (talk) 18:12, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Possible copyvio!
I just found a book which has the same wording as this article! What's the deal? --Slashme (talk) 13:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Good catch. :) Lulu ( http://www.lulu.com/ ) is a self-publishing book company, which would make me lean towards the belief of reverse infringement, but in this case they cite wikipedia on p, 189. They aren't properly licensing the content they use from us, but at least they acknowledge us! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Wrong name
If the article is going to be a general list of scams, as opposed to confidence tricks, it should be renamed. For example, the taxi scams are in no way cons. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The Taxi Scams were originally copy/pasted in as a group, buy a single-purpose account that was used only to promote a particular web-site.
 * It wouldn't bother me at all if the Taxi stuff disappeared entirely. APL (talk) 19:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm your grandson
How about the despicable people who call elderly people (sometimes selected randomly, sometimes targeted) pretending to cry, that they got arrested, etc.. "This is your grandson", hoping to get fed the right name by the callee "Is that you Josh? Are you in trouble?  How can I send you money?" etc.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.176.98 (talk) 08:34, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Somebody tried a variant on this trick on my mother-in-law recently. Apparently this trick is well known in Germany. Jnork (talk) 18:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Missionary conspiracy
And this is different from "real" missionaries....how? What is a "quasi-religous belief" btw? Since all religious claims are unsupported by any actual empirical evidence, what distinguishes "religious belief" from "quasi-religious" belief? Aren't "real" missionaires scamming these people too, promising them things that aren't actually going to happen? SuperAtheist (talk) 14:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Essentially it's the difference between conning a few hicks for a few $ and conning a billion people and an entire continent out of trillions of $ for a millennium  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.171.98 (talk) 04:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what to make of this
It seems to me this article used to have a lot of information. Now it's mostly a summary of internet scams and appearances of scams in Popular Culture like TV shows and movies. I thought that lists were deprecated to some extent, but this article is far longer than the article Confidence tricks.

I was looking in particular for a very old trick where am 'alchemist' made 'gold' for a mark -- the first time it was real gold in a small amount, and then the mark had to come up with money to pay for the 'secret' of the trick and materials, and the alchemist departed. Naturally a Google search for this turned up mostly references to World of Warcraft etc. It seems to me this scam used to be in this article, or somewhere in wikipedia, but not any more. 24.27.31.170 (talk) 05:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC) Eric

Massive deletion needs undoing
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_confidence_tricks&oldid=484083837

....removed a huge number of edits (32,000 characters!) simply because the user decided they were "dubious" to him/her. Large numbers of them are recognizable to almost anyone, or reference scams used in famous movies.

It requires a manual remerge. Can someone do this please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.174.140.200 (talk) 19:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Please provide references other than movies or blogs or personal websites. Otherwise it is original research, incudig name of the trick and its description. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with the removal. It mostly consisted of things that either didn't meet the definition of a confidence trick, and dubious tricks that probably only happened in movies.
 * A few of them could probably be put back once a real-life source is found. (Like "Melon Drop", which I'm pretty sure is a real thing.) APL (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Lottery confidence trick
Most (all?) lottery and similar gambles advertise in a way that leads people into thinking they have a chance to win much higher than they actually do - it creates (or at the very least reinforces) in them a disproportionate idea of their possibility of winning.

The way lotteries and the sorts advertise themselves is "tricking" people into having the "confidence" that they will win that juicy jackpot.

Even though this is legal nowadays, shouldn't this qualify as a "confidence trick"? It is appearing to me to have all the required parameters.


 * You could elaborate on "trick", "lead", etc but the definition (in the main article, rather than in this list) is that a con is an attempt to defraud. With a lotto 1) there is, at least a chance of winning (unlike con games) and 2) many, if not most, buyers realize their odds are very slim.  What ticket buyers might forget is that there is a high probability that no tickets are winners -- unlike a raffle. I don't mean to be completely negative about the suggestion but I doubt that such an addition will be supported in the long run. Arbalest Mike (talk) 17:32, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

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Potential outside interference by reddit.
reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/b4jro6/this_comprehensive_list_of_common_scams_and/ --71.90.193.174 (talk) 18:30, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Missing a few scams
Pahunkat (talk) 13:34, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Technical support scam - probably an 'online scam'
 * IRS impersonation scam, SSA impersonation scam (working on that article, see my user page)
 * Advance fee fraud in general

"Pig butchering" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Pig butchering and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. MB 02:17, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

The article is getting long
Should this article be split? 747pilot (talk) 19:05, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * If it were up to me, I wish there were different articles for classic scams that have been repeated many times throughout the ages, and specific modern scams that require craigslist or something. Those feel like very different categories.
 * ApLundell (talk) 01:58, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Vanity Publishing ?
Is this really a scam? These people pose as ‘publishers’ when they are merely printers. They attract the business of people who don’t know what ‘publishing’ truly means. But such ignorant folk DO get their books printed, even if they don’t get truly ‘published’. So they got what they paid for, and maybe an education, e.g. Authorship 101 - a publisher gives YOU money. Never the other way round. 2001:8003:3020:1C00:F8C2:246:FC9E:C3DA (talk) 07:56, 15 July 2023 (UTC)