In 1940, David W. Maurer published The Big Con, which tells the story of the early twentieth century con artist pieced together from interviews with the actual practitioners. Maurer was an academic linguist by trade and had a fascination with the unique vocabulary developed by various dubious professions. Through the course of his career, Maurer published works on everyone from moonshiners to prostitutes, but it is The Big Con that stands out as his crowning achievement.
While the television drama Leverage contains a cast of characters that includes grifter, hitter, hacker, thief – as well as a former insurance fraud investigator who serves as the “mastermind” – the series is more about the “con” than any of the other dubious occupations seen on the show. Like the 1980s The A-Team, the crew of Leverage operate outside the law to bring criminals to justice, while their method is the sort of elaborate subterfuge utilized by the 1960s television classic Mission: Impossible. Whether intentional or not, Leverage is also a direct descendent of David Maurer’s The Big Con.
David Maurer outlines the steps used by con artists when launching a new con and the list could just as well serve as an outline for the episodes of Leverage. From “locating and investigating a well-to-do victim,” to “gaining the victim’s confidence,” to “steering him to meet the inside man,” to “fleecing him,” Leverage is as much a blueprint for conducting a con as it is for producing an entertaining and successful television show.
Maurer spends a considerable amount of time in The Big Con tracing the evolution of the American con artist from the hucksters of the late 1800s to the more elaborate practitioners of the “big con.” Along the way, he documents many of the techniques that were used over a century ago – techniques that are easily recognizable to viewers of Leverage.
For Maurer, the story begins with the Three-Card Monte, the classic game of chance where a Queen and two other cards from a standard deck are placed upside down and moved from spot-to-spot in a rapid-fire fashion. The “mark” is then expected to find the Queen despite some clever sleight of hand by the card handler. The Three-Card Monte also serves as the name of a season three episode of Leverage in which “mastermind” Nathan Ford must outguess his mob-enforcing father and discover his true criminal intentions.
In the 1860s, con artist Ben Marks regularly operated the Three-Card Monte in the western outpost of Cheyenne, Wyoming. As the town grew and entertainment options multiplied, Marks decided to move his game indoors as opposed to on the streets. Inventing what became known as the “Dollar Store,” he opened a thrift shop to lure customers into the establishment, where they then found numerous Three-Card Monte tables operating simultaneously.
The Dollar Store eventually evolved into a “fight store” by the end of the century. This swindle involved illegal fights that, according to the story told to the mark, were fixed by a millionaire sportsman. A disgruntled employee would then explain how he had devised a way to outsmart his boss – and make a lot of money in the process – but needed a partner to pull it off.
Given the large payoff, the mark would inevitably put up his own cash. During the fight, one of the boxers would deliver a “death blow” to his opponent. In the ensuing chaos, the mark would leave his money behind as he rushed to the exit before the law arrived. The team on Leverage used a similar con in the season two episode “The Tap-Out Job.”
The concept of a “fight store” later merged with a scam conceived by out-of-work telegraph operators. In the late nineteenth century, these unemployed hucksters would travel the country and sell expensive equipment to gullible gamblers that were supposedly capable of receiving the results of horse races before the information was transmitted to betting parlors. Professional con artists stumbled upon the deception and developed what is arguably the most famous con of all time – “the wire.”
Anyone who has ever seen The Sting knows the basic concept, which incorporates elements of the “fight store” with the ruse devised by the former telegraph operators. The wire has likewise been a staple of episodic television and served as the main plot for installments of a number of series, ranging from Remington Steele in the 1980s to White Collar and Leverage in the early twenty-first century.
As previously noted, David Maurer was a linguist by profession and the final chapter of The Big Con focuses on the language of the con artist. “Criminal argots are really artificial languages used by professionals for communication among themselves,” he explains. “Of all criminals, confidence men probably have the most extensive and colorful argot. They not only number among their ranks some of the most brilliant of professional criminals, but the minds of confidence men have a peculiar nimbleness which makes them particularly adept at coining and using argot.”
Leverage utilizes a similar colorful language for the names of the various cons that unfold within each episode. The list includes such intriguing monikers as the Mummy’s Tiara, the Moscow Circus, and the Edward Albee. In the season three episode “The Morning After Job,” a debate even ensues regarding the correct name for the con being used. The narrative involves a former hockey goon who made a fortune by giving bad stock advice. The Leverage gang get him drunk, drug him, and then make him believe that he killed female thief Parker during a night of passion.
Eliot Spencer refers to the deception as the Dead Hooker Con, while Alec Hardison maintains that it is the Vegas Wake Up Call. Sophie Devereaux, meanwhile, says to Nathan Ford, “So it’s the lawyer, the prosecutor, the deal, and the dead girl in the bed. It’s the Cuban Sandwich.”
“A ‘big store’ will never beat a mark,” David Maurer writes in The Big Con. “It will not take off a score by itself. It is effective only when it is manned by good professionals, and when the props and personnel are used most strategically. Little by little, conmen discovered which parts they could fill best. Some showed special talents which they developed and perfected to a truly remarkable degree.”
The same holds true for the television drama Leverage. By diversifying its cast from mere con artists and incorporating hitter, hacker, and thief to go along with grifter and mastermind, the series crafted a unique blend of specialized characters that keep the action entertaining and fresh. Leverage is also more than just another entry into the confidence game genre, but a direct descendent of the source that started it – David Maurer’s The Big Con – and keeper of a legacy that began in the late nineteenth century.
As Sophie Devereaux herself explains in the season three finale of Leverage, “There are no new cons.”
Anthony Letizia