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The Interestingness of Scams
This week I started watching Fyre, the Netflix documentary about the fraudulent Fyre Festival orchestrated by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. It’s a strange movie to watch. Some parts feel very scripted, and at times the interviewees feel a little bit, well, cast. The story itself, though, is incredibly compelling: Billy McFarland managed to scam rich people into buying very expensive tickets to a music festival that didn’t quite happen.
I have always been fascinated with scams, cons, and heists. My friends and I will watch Ocean’s Eleven every couple years and it brings into focus how fun it is to watch a scheme in action. I’ve determined that heist movies are thrilling because you get to see a protagonist take clever steps to game a system. Every heist has an ace-in-the-hole, and it is very satisfying to see someone work with an unfair advantage. In Ocean’s Eleven, Danny Ocean’s ace-in-the-hole is his team. Their collective knowledge and skill set makes robbing a casino very, very easy. And this is super fun to watch.
As a result, the heist movies are everywhere. From The Sting to Inside Man to Fyre, you don’t have to look very hard to find a movie about a con-artist. I recently encountered a children’s picture book about con-artist Victor Lustig, titled Tricky Vic. The book is about Mr. Lustig’s famous escapades in selling pieces of the Eiffel Tower to unsuspecting…
