Scams and confidence tricks are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the "con artist" or simply "artist", and the intended victim is the "mark". Particular scams are mainly directed toward elderly people, as they may be gullible and sometimes inexperienced or insecure, especially when the scam involves modern technology such as computers and the internet.
This list should not be considered complete but covers the most common examples. Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied; these include fake franchises , real estate "sure things", get-rich-quick books, wealth-building seminars, self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters , fortune tellers , quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals , foreign exchange fraud , Nigerian money scams , fraudulent treasure hunts , and charms and talismans.
Variations include the pyramid scheme , the Ponzi scheme , and the matrix scheme. Salting or "salting the mine" are terms for a scam in which gemstones or gold ore are planted in a mine or on the landscape, duping the mark into purchasing shares in a worthless or non-existent mining company.
Examples include the diamond hoax of and the Bre-X gold fraud of the mids. Farnum trick Brom Garret into believing gold is to be found on the claim Swearengen intends to sell him. This con was also featured in Sneaky Pete.
In season 3 of the TV series Leverage , the team salts a mine with coltan in order to run a con on two greedy and corrupt luminaries. The Spanish Prisoner scamβand its modern variant, the advance-fee scam or " Nigerian letter scam "βinvolves enlisting the mark to aid in retrieving some stolen money from its hiding place. The victim sometimes believes they can cheat the con artists out of their money, but anyone trying this has already fallen for the essential con by believing that the money is there to steal see also Black money scam.
