15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Ensnared People

There's fairly basic and well-known cons that almost anyone with a knack for social manipulation can pull off. Indeed, scams are so closely connected with Nigeria that several scammers outside non-Nigerian nations are aware that they will have an extra, Shaggy levellayer of "It wasn't me" that could obfuscate their identity.

Let’s take the best illustration. Have you ever been so desperate for love, care and nurturing that you'd impersonate a woman's dead son to be let into her home? Well, Arthur Orton apparently was. The fact that he was British and far fatter than the deceased Frenchman did not seem to bother him.

A fool's dignity is easily separated from him. And we have a feeling that many people spend a lot of time trying to reclaim their dignity after falling for these very evident ruses. So consider this a public service announcement: people will always be out there trying to con the ignorant folk. Don't be one of the knuckleheads.

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Stringfellow was elected to Congress as a paraplegic war hero. Two years later, it came out that he dSource: NY Times

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - This doctor floored the scientific community in the ’70s with his “patchwork mice” who had transplan Source: NY Times

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - When Frenchman Roger Trichborne died at sea, Orton showed up and claimed to be him. He was fatter thaSource: British Museum

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Media reported that this British woman gave birth to rabbits. Turned out she’d just shoved rabbit parSource: The Paris Review

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - He became a financial celebrity— and landed a cushy position on a Chinese government advisory board— Source: NPR

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - This German writer published a dozen interviews with famous celebrities like Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt Source: The Guardian

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - For 30 years, he roamed Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, ranting and peeing himself. He was actually Source: NY Times

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - The world went nuts when this historian shared a brass plate Sir Francis Drake had printed in 1579. iSource: California History

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - A student spent one month at a French junior high school, claiming to be a 15-year-old orphan named FSource: NY Times

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Deng recruited soldiers into a special forces group and charged them fees. It was all an immigration Source: LA Times

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for her news story about an eight-year- old heroin addict named Jimmy. D.CSource: Columbia Journalism Review

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - A student spent one month at a French junior high school, claiming to be a 15-year-old orphan named FSource: The New Yorker

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Hillar claimed that Taken was based on his life. He spent the next decade giving seminars and counterSource: FBI

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Miller rose to fame as a gun advocate thanks to her story of fighting off a home invasion. When it tuSource: Washington Post

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15 Stunning Frauds That Somehow Took People In - Wakefield came up with the false study that linked the MMR vaccine with autism. Even anti-vaxxers shoSource: British Medical Journal