Free The Art of the Con by R. Paul Wilson Page A

imaginary wife regarding tickets for my imaginary daughter is all for the benefit of anyone in earshot, and it will either attract their attention or soften my approach if I still need to do the legwork.
    Next, I order a soft drink and wait to see if I have anyone’s attention. In most cases I would have singled out a suitable target and would know very quickly if she were interested. They would either come up to me or might be discussing what they heard. Sometimes all I need to observe is that they stop to listen to my call, but once I hang up, I need to wait and see what happens.
    Softening the approach can be an important step, especially with those who tend to especially dislike cold calls and unexpected interruptions. There’s a certain band of society that resists outside human interaction generally. How many of us don’t even know the names of our closest neighbors? For this type of person, making a connection requires an understanding of what will engage the mark.
    Giving them a little information in advance about who and what you are can be used against you. The most important objective, from the scammers’ point of view, is to ensure they identify with you somehow and believe that you don’t want anything from them. That’s especially important in a simple scam like this. We could easily just walk from bar to bar and keep asking groups of people if they want to buy tickets, and this is how many hustlers operate. The problem is that they attract attention and they activate suspicion. With a little grift-sense we can narrow our target search, encourage trust, and perhaps even sell our fakes to people who already have tickets .
    The best-case scenario after our phone call is that someone who needs a ticket walks up and engages us directly. This is perfect for our needs as it puts the mark in the position of establishing herself first and clearly indicates that she has been hooked by the bait. If this doesn’t happen, we still have a powerful option available to us, which is to ask her advice. This ploy doesn’t need us to establish our story with the phone call, but it becomes more powerful when the intended victim thinks she already knows something about my situation.
    Let’s take the difficult path. No one approaches me but I sense genuine interest in my predicament from the next table: a middle-aged woman of above average means with her daughter and two of her friends. I have no doubt they all have tickets to the show, but we can still secure a sale. Here’s how I would proceed:
    I stand up while checking my phone and adopt an image of impatience. In my mind, I have been summoned to the office for some sort of work emergency and I won’t be able to wait around to sell my daughter’s ticket. I’m not going to say any of this unless I need to, but human beings are able to sense body language; putting myself in this frame of mind can be a powerful psychological ally. I have prepared my story but I avoid scripting anything too clearly as this can sound false and memorized. Instead I try to clearly understand the scenario and stick to that story.
    Here’s how things might pan out when I walk up to the mark:
    ME: Excuse me.
    MARK: Yes?
    ME: Sorry to bother you but do you happen to be going to the concert tonight?
    MARK: Yes, we are.
    ME: You wouldn’t happen to know anywhere that would buy my daughter’s tickets? A record shop or . . . I don’t know.
    This is a soft hook. In one, clear sentence, I’ve told them I have tickets for sale and suggested an explanation for where they’ve come from, but I’ve done it without making a direct offer . Instead, I’ve asked for advice and I’m watching to see if anyone appears interested.
    MARK: She can’t go?
    ME: Excuse me?
    I heard her the first time but making people repeat something gives me a better read on their level of interest.
    MARK: Your daughter can’t go?
    ME: She broke her