Con Men: Fascinating Profiles of Swindlers and Rogues from the Files of the Most Successful Broadcast in Television History

From Publishers Weekly This expanded version of a 1999 television special by 60 Minutes on "The Best of Cons" revisits the popular show's inventive and delightful investigative pieces featuring "not just reports of political skullduggery but tales of criminal greed, scams, and schemes." An introduction by Mike Wallace accurately notes that these tales feature "some of the most devious, entertaining, piratical, and resourceful individuals ever to grace a television screen," including famous con artists such as Clifford Irving, author and forger of Howard Hughes's autobiography; painter Elmyr de Hory, whose fake Picassos and Matisses were sold for millions of dollars to unsuspecting collectors and museums; and Mel Weinberg, an ex-convict who helped run the FBI's massive Abscam sting operation in the 1970s. But the lesser-known people are the book's most memorable characters, such as Danny Faries, who stole almost $2 million in merchandise over the phone using stolen credit card numbers, despite the fact that he was an inmate in a Miami jail; and Kirby Hensley, founder of the Universal Life Church, where anyone can be named a minister for only $20. Hensley gleefully proclaims himself to be a con man in the service of putting traditional organized religions out of business. Spryly written, with updates on each con artist at the end of their respective chapters, this volume is a fun and fascinating look at an ongoing issue raised by Andy Rooney in a closing essay: "why there are so many semihonest people in business, and why the rest of us are such suckers." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One: This Year at Murrieta January 1, 1978 No one is more vulnerable to a con than a person afflicted with an incurable or terminal disease. Snake oil salesmen have been around forever, preying on the desperate hopes of the sick and the infirm. On New Year's Day 1978, Mike Wallace reported on a particularly grievous representative of the species, an individual named R. J. Rudd who was running a cancer clinic at a spa in Murrieta Hot Springs, California. After receiving a number of letters about Murrieta and conferring with California medical authorities and the local sheriff, who had looked over the place himself,