I, like many others, am fascinated by stories of con artist, specifically female con artists. Every once in a while I get sucked fresh into the story of yet another high-profile woman who seems to have it all, only for their facade to crack. Elizabeth Holmes, famously the founder of the $9 billion dollar company Theranos. Anna Delvey, the apparent socialite who drifted between five-star hotel residences, leaving millions of dollars of unpaid bills in her wake and scamming her friend out of her year’s salary on one trip to Morocco. Margaret Lydia Burton, an independently wealthy socialite in the 50’s who came into cities with her daughter under false names, siphoned cash from her bookkeeping jobs, accumulated flashy cars and bred prize-winning cocker spaniels, and slipped into another identity and another city when she was on the verge of being caught. Caroline Calloway, who originally amassed her famous social media presence with fake followers, signed a book deal worth over a third of a million dollars that she was unable to deliver, sold $165 tickets to workshops that fell through, wrote a piece on Ozempic touting its ability to cure excess, appetite and addiction, and ultimately ties it all into a bow in her book titled Scammer.
How do people fall for it? There have been countless psychological thinkpieces and books written on this subject. There have been elaborate documentaries about how scammers have transformed themselves. Maybe there is some trick in the way they make up their stories. But I think what it comes down to is that most times, con artists are mirrors.
The victims of scammers see their own goodness, their own ambitions, their desires reflected back at them through the prism of these fascinating women. Scammers often appear as innocuous, helpless individuals because they tap into our desires to be benevolent and altruistic and giving people. Silicon Valley saw a young, aspirational female founder that spoke of transforming the face of healthcare and sprang for the allure of believing in her. If one believed in her, if they invested in her, they, too, could be young and precocious and brilliant, an upstart to reckon with, a David against the Goliath of the US healthcare industry. Young girls who dreamt of living the fairytale-like, academia, high society life flocked to Caroline Calloway’s page, where she portrayed Cambridge in candlelit dinners and balls and meet-cutes with Swedish princes and arched, ancient structures, blurring truth and fiction. If they bought her workshops, her books, her tarot readings, her Matisse copies — they, too, could summon a reality that gravitated around them with a charmed, coquettish whimsy and storybook flair. They could be interesting. Anna Delvey’s and Margaret Lydia Burton’s jetsetting, high-profile lifestyles were entirely funded by the illusion of wealth — they made people believe that they were somebody, that they were socialites, amassing wealth and status that was reinforced at every turn — from fancy cars to exclusive memberships to lavish residencies. They are the people to give and pour into because they are the aspirational image of somebody to be.
Such is the siren song of scammers; somewhere, among what Dr. Maria Konnikova coined as “the dark triad” of con artist psychology — the narcissism and the Machiavellian tendencies, the belief that they are entitled to something that belongs to others, the psychopathic lack of empathy — is this very innate, human ability to understand someone at their deepest insecurity and desires. They are then able to transform into the thing they want most. In transforming themselves, scammers, too, transform their victims, and give them a glimpse of a life that they could have had if everything had been different. And what wouldn’t one give for that?
I find myself going down deep rabbit holes sometimes with these stories of scammers. I delve into deep Reddit threads and read the articles. I immerse myself in random Netflix documentaries. I’m not alone. There is such a fascination with true crime in this country and with stories about con artists. We gleefully pick apart the scammers’ ruse and scoff at the victim statements when they come onto the screen and sit in the confessional chair, their heads bowed. It becomes so obvious to us now how it all was a lie. Who just gives away their life savings to a faceless sweetheart on the other side of the computer? Who just signs up for a trip to Morocco and puts sixty grand on their credit card?
I believe that this, too, is a trick mirror. We’re fascinated with these stories and consume them time and time again because we want to reinforce the belief that we are smarter than the people who are deceived by things like this. We would never fall for anything like that, we tell ourselves. That deception would never reach us. We are foolproof.
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