The con artist is the most seductive criminal in fiction because the weapon is charm, not violence. We know we are being played, and we lean in anyway, which makes us complicit in a way no other crime story manages. The grift is a magic trick performed on a human being: misdirection, confidence, and the mark's own greed doing most of the work. The pleasure is watching the machine click together, and the gut-punch is realizing the audience was the last mark all along.
From the elegant period sting to the modern fake-heiress saga, the genre runs on a single irresistible question: who is conning whom?
Essential Con Jobs
The grift hall of fame: long cons, sweet talkers and swindlers who play the mark, not the vault.
The best mark is the one who thinks they cannot be conned
Great con films understand that the swindle works on vanity. The Sting and Matchstick Men build elaborate clockwork around a target's certainty that they are too smart to fall for it. The con is never really about the money. It is about belief, and how easily it is sold.
The great con films
Card sharps, fake identities and elaborate stings, where the only honest thing on screen is the camera.
Grifters on TV
Con artists you let into your living room every week: fake heiresses, silver-tongued lawyers and crews who run the long game.
Television turned the grift into appointment viewing, from crews who run the long game every week to the true-story sagas of fake heiresses and Silicon Valley fabulists who conned the whole world.
More swindlers, schemers and clean getaways
Heists
Explore the Heists guide →A con only works because the mark wants the story to be true. That is the genre's dark little secret: the swindler does not steal your money so much as sell you your own wishful thinking.