OddThinking

I have an friend from Canberra who has a great party trick. He/she can contort their fingers into the letters of their name! He/she can also contort them into spelling the word “Blood”. To protect their anonymity, that’s the nickname I am going to give them here.

Blood has a magician friend called Nick “Tricky Nick” Johnson. I have met Nick two or three times, but I’ve only seen a little of his performance. Last time I saw him, he was practicing the classic con trick, Three-Card Monte. I played a willing mark as he ran through his routine. The experience was a little belittling; the entire time, he was at least one step ahead of me, and I was never able to point to the target card. He even pointed out exactly when I had given up following the queen and just started guessing wildly.

I started to chat to him about the difference between magic tricks and con tricks; the concept of “honest liars” that I have touched on before. I didn’t quite follow all of his response, but essentially he considered his magic routine to be a homage to the con trick, rather than a con trick itself.

A few months ago, I saw an advertisement for Today Tonight, a controversial Australian tabloid-style current affairs show. Alongside pushing a miracle new weight loss system that doesn’t involve surgery and a in-depth cross-promotionreport into the intrigue and controversy of a reality TV show contestant’s past, the promo warned that “Australia’s number one con man is at it again”. The footage showed Nick Johnson. Intrigued, I recorded the show.

It seems that Nick Johnson markets himself as “Australia’s Honest Con Man”. Today Tonight produced two segments on his con artist skills. The first is available via his web-site. The second was the one I recorded at home.

In the first segment, he demonstrated scams:

1. a Pickpocket Warning sign that is tricks people into subconsciously giving away their wallet location.
2. the Rocks In The Box scam, where a CD player was substituted for a rock during a sale.
3. the Three-Card Monte gambling game.
4. a card skimmer, attached to an ATM machine to copy your credit-card details.
5. a secret camera, to record your PIN number.
6. the Lebanese Loop, a plastic sleeve hidden in an ATM that secretly captures your credit-card.
7. an aerosol spray, used to detect the fingerprints of someone typing in their PIN number.

In the second segment, he demonstrated four scams:

1. the Valet scam, in which he pretends to be a car-park security guard, and steals your car
2. the camera + card skimmer
3. Three-Card Monte
4. the Rocks In The Box scam

The second segment was treated as a contest between three different Australian cities, comparing their relative gullibility, based on the size of the haul made in four hours.

I was watching the second show with interest, until something rather unexpected happened.

I recognised one of the victims.

It was Blood.

The whole scam was a scam! Were any of the alleged victims really being fooled. Had Nick scammed Today Tonight, or were they in on it too? Last weekend, I caught up with Blood and got the answer.

The Today Tonight crew were willing participants. Blood described the crew as caricatures of themselves – more extremely cynical than even a Frontline fan might expect. None of the scams were actually carried out – every part of the segment was faked. With the Pickpocket warning sign, even the random man-on-the-street that touched his backpocket to check his wallet was acting in response to a request made by the Today Tonight crew.

The aerosol spray, used to detect fingerprints, isn’t even a real scam – it was just made up for the cameras.

At least that puts to rest my surprise about the sophistication of the card skimmer and secret camera scams – both seemed to be incongruous with the low-tech techniques used by Nick in his other work.

Today Tonight has different presenters in different cities. In Sydney, the show suggested that Sydney was the least gullible. Given that the numbers were completely fictitious, I now wonder if they customised the results in every city it was shown!