gentleman thieves 🇺🇦

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

john rogers on the louvre heist. for context on the "low tech" thing, they used this to access the napoleonic jewels:

Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.

When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.

So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.

I asked him why I hadn't received any notice of this.

"They didn't have the right address and the proceedings will start in two hours!"

Oh no, I said. How awful. Please give me the name of the courthouse and the docket ID so I can call them to see if I can make arrangements.

*click*

That is not how "you are going to be on trial for a crime you didn't commit" works

No real lawyer is going to volunteer to represent someone they've never heard of without at least a solid discussion of what's going on.

Always ask for the extra details. Account numbers. Location. Date of the incident in question. If it relates to court, name of the judge; name of the prosecutor. If it's an offer of money, who's giving it, and do they have a website? If it's a bill, what's the invoice number, when was it created, what's the source company's contact info? And by the way, Caller Trying To Avert Disaster By Calling Me, A Stranger - what's your name, email, phone number, and relation to this incident? Where did you get my number? Ah, there's a virus on my computer, you say? Which one? ("The one running Windows.") ("Which computer? Which version of Windows?") (At the time I got this call, I didn't know it was a scam - I just knew we had 5 computers in the house, some of which had different versions of Windows.)

Law enforcement agencies that call you - which, as noted above, is NOT how this works - will be VERY CLEAR about their bona fides. They will establish which agency they are calling from; they will give you their name; they will give you whatever ID number they have. (Badge number, employee ID, whatever.) They WILL give you a contact number so you can call them back.

For any of the "I think this might be a scam" issue: Start with, "What's your name and phone number, in case we get disconnected?" Then ask for the case number, invoice number, account number - something that identifies "you" on their end.

Anything legit will WANT you to call them back if there's a problem.

This is how to steal a piano

At my undergrad uni, in the 90s, two guys showed up at the music faculty with coveralls, a clipboard, and a big rolling dolly. They went up to one of the practice rooms, loaded up a piano to take it off for maintenance, took the service elevator to the loading dock, and never came back.

After that, practice rooms were key card access only.

greatest psychic of the 21st century!! i never finished this one but i always liked it a lot… though in hindsight it’s a bit busy.