A few chapters later, there is a bit on the Tinkers, the mysterious group of people who travel around Ireland pulling small scams, or sometimes committing bloodier crimes: luring tourists to be mugged or beaten or worse.
However, the U.S. Department of State has issued a warning about several common cons — such as the "I'm out of small bills" scam, typically perpetrated when the delivery guy arrives.
A small-time scam artist capable of posing as a Bible salesman to cheat widows, an author of asinine schemes, he nonetheless had an astounding ability to survive.
For a little over an hour "The High Life" is a familiar story of a small-time scam artist who seeks redemption in the form of an innocent young woman newly arrived in the big city, in this case Guangzhou.
Although he says grimly, "I do not know what name you could give to the things I have done," he's really just a small-time scam artist, doing what he can to survive on the streets.
What starts out as a small-time scam — pouring boiled tap water into mineral-water bottles recovered from restaurants — gradually evolves into a thriving big-time business, enabling "you" to ascend into the firmament of the wealthy with a big house, a driver and lots of security to protect him from the envious rabble.
In a campaign to stop what many people here see as an eroding of the French Quarter's quality of life, the police have chased off many of the Quarter's fabled tap-dancing children, cracked down on unlicensed fortune tellers, jailed small-time scam artists who prey on tourists and restricted the places where street musicians may perform.
He acquired the identity of a New Orleans stranger from a small-time scam artist, hitchhiked between states and sold some of the marijuana that, according to the police, he stole after killing a drug dealer and two of her visitors in a bungled robbery in an apartment above the deli.
We talked to a few people who witnessed these kinds of (small scale) workplace scams.
