There are a lot of terms used in the United States for "scam."
Cheat, con job, confidence game, dirty pool, double-dealing, fix, fraud, grift, racket, ripoff, shell game, snake oil, and many more.
As little as 100 years ago, the vast majority of scams were perpetrated face-to-face. But as our ability to communicate over great distances improved through the mail, radio, telephones, and now the Internet, scams have skyrocketed.
Social media and email made separating people from their money or other assets using old techniques that have been around for centuries. And the prevalence of computers, online business and banking, and smartphones gave rise to a new form of scammers—hackers.
Most people are familiar with the most common forms of modern scams, but what were the most infamous ones from history?
Reddit user forty5v asked:
"What do you think is the most successful scam ever perpetrated?"
Winging It
"Whoever took a chicken wing and cut it in half and called it two chicken wings."
~ Big_Generator
"Or the person who took chicken wings from a garbage byproduct of butchering chickens for parts to bars around me selling them like their seafood."
~ knumberate
Oh, What A Relief It Is
"Alka-Seltzer. Lady came in and said, 'I can double your sales'. They said OK.'
"She simply changed the directions on the box from one tab to two so people would have to buy twice as many."
"Peggy Olsen from Mad Men was modeled after her."
"Plop, plop, fizz, fizz."
~ Jubjub0527
For Battlefield Earth Alone
"Scientology has to be up there. Seriously, these guys rake in billions of dollars a year."
"They charge thousands of dollars in membership fees & for 'leveling up' in the religion which some people are rich & dumb enough to willfully pay them for. Also, they were even able to become a tax-exempt religion."
"Their belief system sounds like total BS as well. While I'm a firm believer in the existence of alien life, I don't think they have any real connection to any religions—especially modern ones."
"Some may have started a few religions in ancient times, but I doubt any of them would be so directly involved with aliens as Scientology claims."
~ Sea_Perspective6891
"There has never been a time that people didn’t know the 'religion' was made up by a science fiction writer in the modern day, and the general 'content' of the religion has been publicly known for decades."
"It is and has always and only been a financial scheme, with immense amounts of money, and the legal/financial/social/blackmail power to force people to keep paying."
"It’s an MLM Investment Scheme, but with enough teeth at the top to ensure no one can stop."
~ SkeetySpeedy
The Brooklyn Bridge Was Next
"Victor Lustig. That dude that actually sold the Eiffel Tower."
"Twice!"
~ Ill-Dimension-3911
"Then he fled to the United States and, on the boat over, sold a 'money printing machine' to a guy, but all he bought was a machine that spat out 2 $100 notes and then nothing else."
~ mattl1698
Doing The Reading
"'College textbooks are terrible. 'You need this book for your class? Oh, that’ll be $100'."
"'That’s a pretty steep cost for this box that has like 300 pages…do I need to buy this version?'."
"'Absolutely. If you don’t, you’ll have wrong numbers and information!'."
"'Okay, fine…"
"*go to class, told by professor: 'Oh, yeah, the textbook. I was told by administration I had to have a textbook. You don’t need it, at all. We’ll do nothing in it'."
"*Annoyed, take book back"
"'Oh, yeah, we don’t accept returns on textbooks. You buy a mug, we can accept that for store credit, but the textbook sales are final'."
"'Okay…can I sell it back to you?'."
"'Sure! I can pay you…$1 for book? That sound fair?'."
"'But you can turn around and sell it for $100? No, that doesn’t sound fair! How about you buy it for $90!'."
"'No go. $1 is the best I can do'."
"'Fine, fine, just take it off my hands!'."
"*sees shelf, where the cashier puts it right back, and it still costs $100."
~ betterthanamaster
" Education and textbook publishing in the digital age. They’re making billions every year for something that should be 100% digital.
"Talk about a powerful lobbying group. Holy sh*t."
~ YouArentReallyThere
Madoff Money
"The Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme. Roughly 65 Billion Dollars over 17 years."
"Promised investors 9-10% returns annually, never invested the money and instead, paid the interest with other people's money they invested."
"He was very established on Wall Street and on the head board for Nasdaq."
"Died in prison."
"I'd call 17 years a success. And the only reason he got caught was due to the housing crisis in 2008, where the sh*tty triple A mortgages flopped."
~ -Involved-
A Girl's Best Friend
"How has nobody said diamonds yet?"
"It's the most successful ad campaign at least. I don't think diamond engagement rings have been a thing for much more than 100 years."
"And you can blame De Beers for that."
~ LeVampirate
"I would agree with diamond jewelery. Raw diamonds are relatively cheap."
"It's the jewelery industry like De Beers (as you mentioned) that you can thank for the absolute bullsh*t prices people pay for looks and ego (90% of the time)."
~ Fabrication_king
"Diamond prices are artificially maintained by a few powerful companies restricting the supply."
"Most diamonds are used for industrial purposes."
~ derickj2020
Let Them Eat Cake
"The Ancien Régime—political and social system in France from the 15th to the late 18th century. The amazing thing about the French Revolution was how long it took to happen."
"They turned over the royal mint (the currency supply) to the people running the lottery, so that each was used to finance the other, to the detriment of the country—except for the nobles."
"They used the money from the state to try to settle Louisiana. Look at the map: compare the size of the Louisana territory with France. This effectively drained the government's finances, rendering it helpless."
"They defined about 1% of the population as Nobility. Nobles were exempt from tax (in some cases were paid generous subsidies), were legally entitled to all top jobs, property rights, rights over hunting, were immune to some laws."
"The other 99% of the population? F*ck 'em."
"I kinda understand why the people cheered when the guillotine was running."
~ peterhala
But The Gold Tablets
"Mormonism. Billions of dollars being hoarded away or used for extravagant temples that sit empty, and yet members willingly pay them every last dollar, even if they can't afford their bills.
"I mean, it's what I did. Couldn't afford my rent or healthcare or anything, and yet I still gave money to the corp."
"Thank goodness I woke up."
~ hurryuplilacs
Only In The USA
"Health insurance. How is it that we are paying a company to pay our bills that are too high, and the Healthcare providers AND the insurance companies make BILLIONS while we are left with crippling medical debt?"
"It really is the biggest scam and I can not f*cking believe it isn't talked about more."
~ Buzzdanume
Oh, Hey, Poyais
"Gregor MacGregor's Poyais scam has got to be up there."
~ gigashadowwolf
* In 1822 and 1823 hundreds of people departed England and Scotland for the country of Poyais. With their Poyaisian currency, the would-be settlers discovered the promised bustling harbor, elegant capital city, and readily cultivatable land promoted by the country’s governor, Gregor MacGregor, were nothing but a desolate wilderness.
Leading to financial ruin and more than 150 deaths, the colonization attempt revealed Poyais to be a con, and MacGregor, the Scotsman behind the scheme, to be a grifter.
Gaining the rank of general in the war for Venezuela’s independence from Spain despite an unremarkable military career, MacGregor returned to Britain and convinced aristocrats in London he was a war hero. He then convinced them and investors that an Indigenous ruler in Central America had granted him an eight-million-acre tract of land along the region’s Mosquito Coast and appointed him cacique, or prince, to govern and develop the country.
To corroborate his story, MacGregor presented official-looking documents, land grants, maps, and a flag. While visiting England, he received the use of a country estate, and Poyais gained credibility as a country.
Despite the lives and hundreds of thousands of pounds lost, MacGregor was never brought to justice. A number of people, including some of the surviving Poyais colonists, blamed voyage the organizers and leaders rather than MacGregor.
The possibility he lied about his title and country and fooled British aristocracy seemed inconceivable to Britain's elite. Taking advantage of Britain’s hesitation to prosecute him, MacGregor fled to France in 1823.
Gravity, And A Ponzi Scheme
"Successful? Not sure if this qualifies, but it definitely laid the foundation for a lot of current scams: South Sea bubble of 1720."
"The South Sea Bubble has been called: the world’s first financial crash, the world’s first Ponzi scheme, speculation mania and a disastrous example of what can happen when people fall prey to 'group think'."
"That it was a catastrophic financial crash is in no doubt and that some of the greatest thinkers at the time succumbed to it, including Isaac Newton himself, is also irrefutable. Estimates vary but Newton reportedly lost as much as £40 million of today’s money in the scheme."
~ SilverMoonshade
Something Is Trickling Down
"Trickle down economics. The theory is literally give rich people more wealth, and they'll be generous and let workers have some wealth too."
"Sounds far-fetched to me, but they managed to convince hundreds of millions of workers to vote for it for the last 40 years."
~ kwsteve
Consider Who Pushed It
"Cryptocurrency."
"You give me your real money, and in turn, I will give you this make-believe virtual money! And in the future, you can sell it back for huge real money profits!"
"So, this real money just comes from other cryptocurrency participants. Eventually when everyone wants to get their real money out of it, there's not enough actual real money to pay everyone out and the entire pyramid collapses."
"It's straight up a pyramid scheme."
~ Itisd
Commander-in-Thief
"Running for president to funnel donation money to your own accounts and services and hotels and buildings and golf courses."
~ CowsWithAK47s
"Especially the book deal nonsense where the campaigns buy the books with donor money and give them to donors."
~ B_P_G
"A long-running scam in politics—that I suspect has been going on since the Sumerians—is bigoted citizens throwing their support behind a right-wing politician who promises to persecute marginalized minorities but also implements policies that harm the interests of those bigoted citizens."
"As long as they hate all the right people, they'll give them all their money."
"And those bigoted citizens either don't notice or don't care because they are gullible and inattentive or their bigotry is more important than anything else in their life."
"We see this with Trump supporters in the USA, but I've noticed a similar thing happening in Russia, China, Germany, France, and the UK."
"Right-wing voters rarely pay attention to the substance of what lawmakers are doing and keep supporting right-wing politicians so long as said politicians keep saying what they want to hear."
~ squashbritannia
What scam would you add to the list?
