OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
* Every man and woman in the US, Canada and Western Europe will be targeted multiple times by professional fraudsters
* One in nine adults will lose money as a victim of fraud.
* Seven out of every eight frauds will go unreported.
* Most fraudsters will get away with their crimes.
Robinson, a recognized expert on fraud, organized crime, and money laundering, levels the playing field for everyday readers by showing you how to spot scams and to protect yourself from becoming an unwitting victim.
“We are all at risk,” he says, noting that this book is aimed at everyone with a computer, a bank account, a credit card, and even people who do nothing more than put out the garbage out at night.
Also included in the book are the ten most vital things you must do immediately after being victimized by identity theft, and the all-important thirty-nine steps to protecting yourself from fraud.
Robinson says that he’s written THERE’S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE to arm everyday consumers with the knowledge they need to defend themselves.
“Fraud is a very simple crime to understand. I tell you a lie, you give me money, that’s fraud. And it is never any more complicated than that. Spotting the lie is the first defense.”
“One of the things that makes fraud all the more insidious is that fraud is a two-way street crime. That means, before a conman can do any harm, you have to open the door. To get you to let him in, a fraudster will employ every trick he can think of and all the chicanery he can muster. This book is all about helping people keep that door shut.”
In clear, easy-to-understand terms, Robinson reveals the most popular frauds and schemes being committed today, including identity theft, lottery scams, work at home scams, phishing, prescription drug fraud, check fraud and fraud targeting senior citizens. He illustrates how each scam works, then provides readers with the best defense to prevent each situation.
The patron saint of fraudsters has got to be P.T. Barnum, the circus impresario generally credited with the conman’s motto, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
As the story goes, sometime around 1869, Barnum set out to buy the “Cardiff Giant,” a 10-foot hoax made out of gypsum and carved into a crude, ancient, fossilized man. It was supposedly discovered on a remote farm near Syracuse, New York and, given the publicity that surrounded the discovery, was soon drawing paying crowds of 3000 gullible people a day.
Barnum, who knew a great scam when he saw one, offered a substantial sum to bring the Giant to New York where he felt he could sell ten times as many tickets. But one of the Giant’s investors, David Hannum, didn’t like Barnum’s terms. So, Barnum did the next best thing and made a Cardiff Giant one of his own.
Hannum is the one who supposedly said that anyone paying to see Barnum’s copy proved the adage, “there’s a sucker born every minute.” A law suit followed, during which the two men admitted that both their Giants were fake. And somewhere in the confusion, the quote by Hannum got attributed to Barnum.
Except, there doesn’t appear to be any record of Hannum ever saying it. Or Barnum, either.
Another story credits the quote to a Barnum rival, Philadelphia circus promoter Adam Forepaugh. He purportedly came up with it during an interview where he tried to discredit Barnum by telling a reporter that it was Barnum who always preached, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Yet another account tags it to Michael Cassius McDonald, a saloon keeper and politician in Chicago during the 1860s. But his title to authorship appeared in a book published in 1940. By then, the expression had already been in print several times. In John Dos Passos 1930 epic, “42nd Parallel” --- where it’s attributed to Mark Twain --- and in “A Yankee from the West,” an 1898 novel by someone called Opie Read.
The eminent amateur entymologist, Barry Popik, has since tracked half a dozen appearances of variations on the expression to as far back as 1857. He notes that early appearance in the New York Herald --- “There is a new fool born every day” --- and another in 1906, when the New York Evening Mail perpetuated the original myth by writing about a certain politician who will, “Get all the votes coming to a political Barnum whose motto is that of the original Barnum: ‘A sucker is born every minute.’”
In fact, Popik’s research suggests that the phrase was not “coined,” but rather part of an era, just one of those things often said by New York gamblers in the early 1880s.
A man frequently cited from those days was the “notorious” New York con-man, Joseph “Paper Collar Joe” Bessimer. According to a widely held version of the tale, Bessimer used it as an excuse to explain his criminal successes to NYPD Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams who, at the time, was in the process of arresting him. Williams is said to have repeated Paper Collar Joe’s phrase to Joseph McCaddon, whose brother-in-law James Anthony Bailey was Barnum’s business partner. McCaddon then took the liberty of re-quoting Bessimer in an unpublished autobiography.
The only problem is that Clubber Williams was a famously bent cop who couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth, and there is no record, whatsoever, in NYPD or New York court archives of any conman --- notorious or otherwise --- named “Paper Collar Joe” Bessimer.
In the end, it seems that the origin of the quote has simply been lost to time.
But, the truth behind it, most definitely, lives on.
On The Mean Streets of New York
With Robin Roberts
Good Morning America
You Are What You Throw Away
