How to Avoid Falling Victim to Today's Scam Artists

Business Expert Jack Payne Tells How to Avoid Falling Victim to Today's Scam Artists

Jack Payne has spent nearly a half-century observing scam artists and con men. And he's written the book on how to be a scam artist - literally. Payne's legal thriller Six Hours Past Thursday (ISBN 1-59113-502-8, Impact Books, http://www.sixhrs.com) is both a portrait of a con man and a cautionary tale to those who would unwittingly become a scam artist's next meal ticket.

Six Hours offers an insider's view into the mind of a scam artist. And, according to Payne, every con man takes a similar approach to finding people to fleece.

Culled from Payne's decades of experience in business, including as founder of the "Business Opportunities Digest" newsletter and author of 55 books on business, the novel's insights into con games are chilling.

First, as Payne illustrates through Six Hours Past Thursday's oily protagonist, Steve Draves, a scam artist is looking to reel in a sucker. For most con men, that means the elderly, the ill, the disadvantaged and people who tend to believe without questioning. Scam artists will quickly weed out skeptics, says Payne, so individuals can protect themselves from falling victim to a con by asking logical questions and doing their homework.

Once a scam artist has identified his targets, he will enlist their sympathy or outrage, play to their egos, or capitalize on their weaknesses. The woman desperate to lose weight, for example, is likely to pay a premium for the con man's "exclusive report" on dropping 50 pounds. The guy who just sold his first stock is likely to want the scam artist's "inside information" on the next big deal. And the families dealing with lung disease as a result of the local factory's negligence will probably support the con man's "crusade" against big business.

To avoid arousing suspicion, scam artists will start small, asking for just twenty dollars for their product, service or cause. But as soon as a target buys in, the con man ups the ante. The next scam is bigger, and, according to Payne, there will be a paper to sign at the last minute - just a formality, of course - that waives the signer's right to legal action against the scammer.

"Those are just the basics," Payne explained. "The scam artist's end game is to create an atmosphere where emotion trumps logic. I hear about new scams every day. Con men are getting more sophisticated. I urge my readers to arm themselves with information."

Story Summary
Thriller Book Explores Little-Known World of "Legal" Crime

Respected family man. Successful business broker. Enough? Not for Steve Draves, outwardly a solid citizen, happily married, father of twin sons.

A moral life in the suburbs serves only as "cover" for this con man, as his story unfolds in rapid-fire, legal thriller fashion. Though he has the best of intentions--to rein-in his con artists' activities--he is slow to respond to his own desires. Like the compulsive gambler constantly saying, "I bet you I can quit gambling," Draves, nonetheless, forges ever-onward in his quest to amass a fortune.

Blueprint for Con Men

His high-risk exploits include stock tips that do not add up, the sale of prime development property through a "Straw Man,"a highly-profitable stock sale in a mining company about to go bankrupt, and the generation of eight separate fees for himself from the sale of a shoe manufacturing company. These, among his many legal scams.

All of the con artists' tools are skillfully used: under-the-table deals, kickbacks, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't escrow accounts, others. Draves manages to keep his various deals, technically, "legal."

A possible impediment to Draves' wealth-building dreams is his lust for women, a character flaw that begets a prodigious prurience which knows no bounds He feels such conquests can easily be accommodated as "asides, " easily taken in stride. All women are scrutinized, considered. Tall. Short. Old. Young. All qualify, as long as they meet his standards: they must be voluptuous--and drop-dead beautiful He pursues a series of delightful interludes, all the while inspired, overall, by his money-grubbing passion: "the big score."

His secretary, Deby Collinger, restaurant hostess, Sandy Serell, and fashion model, Tina Landon, make up the prime objects of his lecherous pursuits. Chester Carlin, an entrepreneur of considerable wealth, and rapacious billionaire, Johnny Patiense, old-school crime kingpin, are the primary, "stepping-stone" tools Draves uses to forge his own fortune.

Although he is able to keep his wife, Betty, from learning anything at all about his variety of extra-curricular activities, his well-ordered lifestyle inevitably slips gears. It manifests overconfidence, miscalculation, grievous error. This, in turn, leads to domino-effect, from-all-sides, conflict. Storm clouds form. Induction of the mobster into this cortex looms large. Draves is shaken, takes pause, as one would before licking a steak knife.

Intermixture of Fraud, Passion, Ruthlessness

It's after this scam artist allies with Patiense that things go from bad to worse to worse yet. Their ambitious joint venture, a gambling-Mecca island development off the coast of Florida, comes unglued. Draves' fate is compounded when he unwittingly gets involved with Patiense' daughter, Nina, despite the mobster's warning that his daughter is "off limits" He finds his Utopian, well-managed life collapsing all around him--propelling him into a maelstrom of self-doubts, introspection, nerve-wracking stress. He learns real fear: the kind you get when you wake up screaming and realize you haven't even fallen asleep yet.

While Nina Patiense stalks Draves in a series of amorous pursuits, her father's "Enforcer" stalks him with a very different motive.

His devious con man mind furiously turning, Draves weaves a web of decep;tion supported by tenuous threads of lies and deceit to escape his self-made trap. Along with the mobster's daughter, Nina, and his wife, Betty, all of the female objects of his desires become involved, Deby ,Sandy,Tina, as does his lifelong friend, Mark Brightly, a disgruntled advertising agency account executive. Even innocent bystander, Chester Carlin, gets embroiled in the mix. As the walls keep tumbling down around Draves they threaten to bury all that he cherishes most, his tightly sheltered private life. Even his very life itself.

Hammer-like Climax

Resolution of this legal thriller comes to depend upon a fateful decision, made under the most dire of circumstances. With stunning consequences for all concerned.



Payne's ongoing reports about modern scam artists' tactics are available at the Con Man's Blog, http://legalthriller.blogspot.com. The author's legal thriller, Six Hours Past Thursday, is a fictionalized account of business scams and "legal" crimes common in the business world; the first two chapters are available for free at http://www.sixhrs.com.