List of confidence tricks

This list of confidence tricks and scams should not be considered complete, but covers the most common examples. Confidence tricks and scams 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 credulous and sometimes inexperienced and/or insecure, especially when the scam involves modern technology such as computers and the internet.

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, and charms and talismans. Variations include the pyramid scheme, the Ponzi scheme, and the matrix scheme.

Count Victor Lustig sold "money-printing machine" which he claimed could copy $100 bills. The client, sensing huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price (usually over $30,000). Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce just two more $100 bills, but after that it produced only blank paper, as its supply of hidden $100 bills would have become exhausted. By the time the clients realized that they had been scammed, Lustig was long gone. This type of scheme is also called the "money box" 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. During gold rushes, scammers would load shotguns with gold dust and shoot into the sides of the mine to give the appearance of a rich ore, thus "salting the mine". Examples include the diamond hoax of 1872 and the Bre-X gold fraud of the mid-1990s. This trick was featured in the HBO series Deadwood, when Al Swearengen and E. B. Farnum trick Brom Garret into believing gold is to be found on the claim Swearengen intends to sell him.

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