The Confidence Game Page 15

As 2014 drew to a close, she was charged with public mischief, pled guilty, and was sentenced to the two months she’d already served in custody. She was deemed such a high flight risk that she was locked up until her extradition flight—and guarded on the flight itself. “Ms. Azzopardi has a long history of impersonating others, lying, and committing fraud,” said Rhonda Macklin during Azzopardi’s immigration hearing. No resource would be spared to make sure she was returned to Australia. And, preferably, kept there.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ROPE

  Ultimately, anyone can be conned, if you have the balls to do it.

  —SIMON LOVELL

  Mervyn Barrett had been working for Nacro, a British charity dedicated to crime reduction, going on thirty years. In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) and by 2012 he had decided that perhaps it was time for bigger things: his time at the charity, as head of resettlement, was slated to end in June, and he needed to think ahead. What about running for police commissioner of his old home county, Lincolnshire, as an independent candidate? one of his young employees suggested. Matthew de Unger Brown told him that his mother was a member of the German aristocracy. Her views were in line with Barrett’s, and she would be happy to finance the campaign. All Barrett had to do was say yes. And why not? He’d been thinking about crime reduction for decades. Perhaps now it was time to act.

  Matthew had joined Nacro as a volunteer in the early days of 2012; he had a legal background, he said, and independent wealth. It was an important cause and he would be more than happy to dedicate his energy toward its advancement. The young man quickly charmed his officemates, impressing them, Barrett later said, “with his skills and intelligence.” He was “undoubtedly a brilliant and charismatic character.” Initially shy about his past, Matthew had, over time, opened up to the older man, perhaps seeing in him a sort of mentor and role model. His father, he told him, was Lord Malcolm Brown. He had served as a senior envoy to Hong Kong. His mother, the Baroness Renate Margaret de Unger, was a Prussian royal. But not all was rosy for little Matthew. He had, he confessed, a dark secret in his past. Maybe it was because his parents had left him so much to his own devices. Maybe it was all the travel. But whatever the root cause, he had, a few years earlier, been in prison. The charge: corporate tax evasion.

  Matthew’s revelation only led to a deepening of his and Barrett’s growing trust. And to Barrett, he seemed like a perfect fit for the organization. After all, it was part of the organization’s mission to rehabilitate criminals. And Matthew had told him, in confidence, of course, that in prison “he’d developed a social conscience and wanted to help others while working out what to do with his life.” “It seemed right to give him a chance,” Barrett said.

  And so, when his young protégé suggested an election campaign, he listened. What convinced him above all, though, wasn’t the young man’s enthusiasm—he was impressionable, and Barrett was his boss—but a letter Matthew received from his mother, the Prussian royal. In the letter, he later told the Sunday Times, she affirmed her faith in his abilities, and even asked him to join the board of the family charity, established to honor Matthew’s twin brother, Sebastian, who had, alas, died unseasonably young in a drunk-driving accident. It was called, simply, the Sebastian Foundation. Barrett was touched, not only by the offer but by the show of trust from a woman so cultured and experienced. “Up until that point I hadn’t been convinced by Matthew’s arguments,” Barrett recalled. “But when I saw the faith she had in me it was the turning point.”

  Matthew was thrilled at Barrett’s change in heart. And his entreaties went a step further. He not only thought a bid for commissioner was a brilliant idea, but he persuaded Barrett that he himself would be the perfect man to run the whole thing for him. He’d had substantial election experience, he said, both as a member of the Young Conservatives movement and during his time on American campaign trails. That, coupled with his “towering personality” and “considerable talent for everything he undertook,” persuaded Barrett that he’d found just the man for the job. Yes, he told Matthew. He would run, and Matthew would be his right-hand man.

  The campaign got under way. Matthew was living up to his promise. Polls, pamphlets, even a television spot: he was pulling no punches in his bid to get Barrett into the commissioner’s seat. His intelligent, canny handling of the run convinced the would-be commissioner to give him access to his private bank account. Matthew would need a few last-minute funds, understandably, in those instances his mother wasn’t immediately available. They agreed to a spending limit: £10,000 of Barrett’s own money, and a total campaign budget of £25,000, the balance supplied by the wealthy aristocratic family who was placing such trust in him.

  Whatever Matthew was doing, it seemed to be bearing fruit. Proudly, he showed Barrett the numbers from the independent poll he’d commissioned with his mother’s money. Barrett’s popularity was on the rise. Matthew set the older man up with a respectable social media presence: a spiffy new Web site, a Twitter account that soon began accruing followers at a steady pace.

  On the evening of Wednesday, October 24, 2012, Mervyn Barrett issued a surprising official statement. The whole campaign, he told the press, had been an elaborate ruse on the part of his ill-intentioned campaign manager. He was resigning “after discovering that I have been the victim of a bizarre and hugely embarrassing deception by the person who was acting—and I use the word ‘acting’ quite deliberately—as my principal adviser and campaign manager.”

  Barrett had learned the truth. The Fund for the New American Century, the think tank where de Unger Brown had said he had connections, didn’t actually exist, according to Andrew Gilligan’s subsequent exposé for the Telegraph. Nor did MatthewPAC, its associated political action committee—a committee whose name was linked to Barrett’s campaign Web site. That healthy Twitter following? Sixteen thousand fake followers, an investigation by the Times of London found. The tracking polls de Unger Brown had presented for Barrett’s inspection, the pamphlets he’d handed out to secure more votes: all “purely figments of his imagination.” They had never existed.

  Barrett was now poorer to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds—according to him (the case is still pending), Brown drained his account of £84,000 and left £16,000 in bills—his reputation in tatters. He had only £4,000 of his life savings left. When he opened his bank statement to see what could have possibly happened, he saw campaign charges, yes, but also “rent,” donations to charities, direct debits to the Treasury, drinks at a bar in the West End. None of them had been authorized by Barrett. “To my knowledge,” he later said, “there has been no funding for my campaign, other than from my own bank account, to which Matthew had access.”

  “I realize I was completely unsuitable for this position,” Barrett admitted to the Sunday Times after his resignation from the race. “In fact, after what I’ve let Matthew get away with, I’m not sure I’m suitable for any position of responsibility.

  “He has deceived me on a shocking scale,” Barrett went on.

  How had it happened? Barrett wasn’t quite sure. What he did know was that he was “swept away by it all”—the references, the charisma, the talent. It was the full package. Whenever Barrett asked for clarification on something that seemed off, he would immediately receive a plausible explanation. Over five months, the two men had built a bond of friendship and trust, Barrett felt. “I feel totally betrayed and very hurt that he used me to perpetuate some kind of Walter Mitty fantasy,” he concluded. “I also feel very foolish that I fell for his fabrications, when I have a track record of sound professional judgment, but I have to accept the reality.”

  * * *

  In 2003, Eric Knowles, a social psychologist at the University of Arkansas who has been researching persuasion since the 1970s, and Jay Linn, an organizational and social psychologist at Widener University, posited that all persuasive strategies could be categorized into two types. The first, alpha, was far m
ore frequent: increasing the appeal of something. The second, omega, decreased resistance surrounding something. In the one, you do what you can to make your proposition, whatever it may be, more attractive. You rev up the backstory—why this is such a wonderful opportunity, why you are the perfect person to do it, how much everyone will gain, and the like. In the other, you make a request or offer seem so easy as to be a no-brainer—why wouldn’t I do this? What do I have to lose? They called the juxtaposition the approach-avoidance model of persuasion: you can convince me of something by making me want to approach it and decreasing any reasons I might have to avoid it.

  The rope, then, is the alpha and omega of the confidence game: after finding a victim and lowering his defenses through a bit of fancy emotional footwork, it’s time for the actual persuasive pitch. It’s Matthew roping Barrett in by convincing him that he’s the perfect person for the job (alpha) and that there’s no good reason why he shouldn’t do it (omega). What’s the worst that could happen? The put-up identified the mark and mapped out his idiosyncrasies, hopes, and fears. The play caught the mark’s attention and baited the hook. The rope makes sure he bites and the hook sinks deep—else, with a bit of wiggling, the almost-sure-deal prey swim hastily away.

  The psychologist Robert Cialdini, one of the leading experts on persuasion, argues that six principles govern most persuasive relationships: reciprocity (I rub your back, you rub mine), consistency (I believe the same thing today as I did yesterday), social validation (doing this will make me belong), friendship or liking (exactly what it sounds like), scarcity (quick! there isn’t much to go around), and authority (you seem like you know what you’re talking about). These are all alpha principles, used to increase persuasive appeal—and while Cialdini’s own motives in setting them out are laudable ones (improve leadership, persuade people about important issues), they can, as so often happens, be used in most any direction. Get some combination of his principles, add some resistance-overcoming omega tactics, and your chances of roping your targeted mark are good—especially if you’ve done your legwork in the put-up and laid the right groundwork in the play. The result is a number of persuasive techniques that have been in the repertoire of the confidence artist centuries before they were articulated by Cialdini.

  On a strip of land along Honduras’s Black River, spreading over some eight million acres—about the size of Maryland and Delaware combined, or a bit larger than Wales—lies a small nation whose modest size belies its promise. The land is so fertile it yields three maize harvests a year. The water, so pure and refreshing it could quench any thirst—and as if that weren’t enough, chunks of gold line the riverbeds. The trees overflow with fruit, and the forest teems with game. The weather is lovely—warm, welcoming, sunny. Quite the contrast with the rainy darkness and rocky soils of Scotland. The natives are friendly and solicitous, and just happen to have a soft spot for British settlers. It is, in other words, something of a paradise. And it is called Poyais.

  In October 1822, Gregor MacGregor, a native of Glengyle, Scotland, made a striking announcement. He was, he said, not only a local banker’s son, but the Cazique, or prince, of the land of Poyais, on the shores of South America. The country was rich beyond compare, but what it lacked was willing investors and settlers to develop and leverage its resources to the fullest. At the time, investments in Central and South America were gaining in popularity. From Mexico to Brazil, the financial opportunities seemed endless. And Poyais appeared to be a particularly appealing proposition. It was unclaimed—and Scotland didn’t have any colonies of her own. Could this not be a corner of the new world for her own use?

  MacGregor was a master salesman. The opportunity he presented seemed too good to pass up—and the cost of missing out, perilously high. MacGregor published interviews in national papers touting the perks that would come from investing or settling in Poyais. He highlighted the bravery and fortitude that such a gesture would demonstrate: you wouldn’t just be smart; you would be a real man. The Scottish Highlanders were known for their hardiness and adventurous spirit, he wrote; Poyais would be the ultimate testing ground, a challenge and gift, all in one. He pointed those who needed more convincing to a book on the virtues of the small island nation, by the elusive Thomas Strangeways (actually MacGregor himself). His prospectuses enticed the public with their masterful promises, their lure of opportunity, their appeal to scarcity, their admonitions not to let this perfect moment pass by.

  And they were beyond successful. Not only did MacGregor raise £200,000 directly—the bond market value over his life ran to £1.3 million, or about £3.6 billion today—but he convinced seven ships’ worth of eager settlers to make their way across the Atlantic. In September 1822 and January 1823, the first two, the Honduras Packet and the Kennersley Castle, left for the mythical land, carrying some 250 passengers. The mood was high; MacGregor’s salesmanship had been unparalleled. But when the settlers arrived just under two months later, they found the reality to be a stark departure from the allure of MacGregor’s brochures. No ports, no developments, no nothing. It was a wasteland.

  For Poyais had never existed. It was a figment of MacGregor’s fertile mind. He had drawn his investors and colonizers to a desolate part of Honduras—and soon, the hardy Scotsmen began dying. The remaining settlers—only one third would survive—were rescued by a passing ship and taken to Belize. The British Navy recalled the remaining five ships before they reached their destination. MacGregor escaped to France.

  If he was at all remorseful, he had a strange way of showing it: not long after his arrival he started the Poyais pitch all over again. His initial investment may have evaporated, but his mastery of the art of persuasion was undiminished. In a matter of months, he had a new group of settlers and investors ready to go. France, though, was a bit more stringent than England in its passport requirements: when the government saw a flood of applications to a country no one had heard of, a commission was set to investigate the matter. MacGregor was thrown in jail. After a brief return to Edinburgh, he was forced to flee once more, pursued by the wrath of the original Poyais bondholders. He died in 1845, in Caracas. To this day, the land that was Poyais remains a desolate and undeveloped wilderness—a testament to the power of the rope in able hands.

  In 1966, Stanford University psychologists Jonathan Freeman and Scott Fraser observed an interesting phenomenon in their experiments: someone who has already agreed to a small request—like opening the door for you—would become more, not less, likely to agree to a larger request later on. In one study, they asked 150 housewives in Palo Alto, California, if they would sacrifice two hours of their time: a research team of five or six people would come to their homes to classify the household products they used. It was, as anyone would agree, a fairly big ask—invasive and time-consuming both. It didn’t seem likely that many people would be willing to comply. Some of the women, however, had already been contacted once before. That time, in a phone call, they’d been asked to spare a few minutes to answer some brief questions about their preferred brands of soap.

  When Freeman and Fraser looked at the results, they found a striking difference between the willingness of that one group and the rest of the women in the study. Over half of them agreed to the second request—as compared with one fifth of those who had not had to respond earlier. In other words, once someone does you anything that can be perceived as a favor—picking up a dropped glove (how many con artists love the dropped clothing article!), lending you a quarter for the phone (only a quarter! it’s an important call), spending a few minutes on that phone with you in conversation—that person becomes more likely to keep doing even more on your behalf. Freeman and Fraser called it the foot-in-the-door technique. The funny thing is, they later found, the approach worked even if the person doing the requesting the second time around was someone else: doing a small favor seemed to open the door to being nice, generally speaking. It’s one of the reasons that con artists often work in groups. There’s the roper, the one who make
s the first request, engaging his chosen persuasive strategies of choice, and then there’s the inside man, a second member of the group who sweeps in for the kill, with the real request (the con that will be played out). You are already in a giving mood, and you become far more likely to succumb than you would’ve been without the initial prime.

  It makes sense. We often make judgments about ourselves based on our actions, something psychologist Daryl Bem calls self-perception theory. If we yell at someone, we’re rude, but if we open the door for them, we’re nice. As nice people, well, we do nice things. That’s just who we are. And there are few things we like more than thinking ourselves good: we like proof that we are decent, giving, generous human beings. As Cialdini points out, one of the elements that make us more vulnerable to persuasion is our desire to maintain a good image of ourselves. If something is framed so as to make us feel like worthy people, we are much more likely to comply with it. We want to be behave in a way that’s consistent with the image we’ve created.

  Consistency here plays a crucial role in the other direction, too—not just in our evaluation of ourselves but in our evaluation of the person we’re helping: if I’ve helped you before, you must be worth it. Therefore, I’ll help you again. If I’ve given you a job in my company, I will keep helping you with your “redemption” and will keep trusting you, and may even give you my campaign to run. You are worthy. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have invested my time and resources in you. If I’ve given you an investment for your new colonizing mission, I will keep providing you with capital and eager settlers, maybe even some ships. You must be worth it: otherwise, I wouldn’t have given you any money to begin with. It’s the logic behind many a successful rope, and the logic that has propped up one of the longest-running cons of them all: the Nigerian prince.