Confidence trick

A confidence trick, confidence game, or con for short (also known as a scam) is an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons (known as the mark) usually with the goal of financial or other gain. The confidence trickster, con man, scam artist or con artist often works with an accomplice called the shill, who tries to encourage the mark by pretending to believe the trickster. In a traditional con, the mark is encouraged to believe that they will obtain money dishonestly by cheating a third party, and is stunned to find that due to what appears to be an error in pulling off the scam they are the one who loses money; in more general use, the term con is used for any fraud in which the victim is tricked into losing money by false promises of gain.

Confidence tricks in paper literature

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• Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man.
• Many of the crime novels of Jim Thompson involve confidence artists.
• Joyce Carol Oates's My Heart Laid Bare features a family of confidence artists.
• Neil Gaiman's American Gods uses a two-man con as a major plot element.
• O. Henry's collection The Gentle Grafter describes a variety of confidence tricks.
• Slippery Jim - the protagonist of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat trilogy - uses abundant schemes and frauds.
• The Big Con