{"id":34346,"date":"2022-12-26T17:30:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T23:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/?p=34346"},"modified":"2022-12-15T12:21:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T18:21:05","slug":"new-era-impostors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/new-era-impostors\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Paul Wilson On: New Era Impostors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In the rogue\u2019s gallery of con artists, a wing of that exhibit must be dedicated to impostors who have successfully fooled millions of people into believing they were princes, heiresses, celebrities and even time travelers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real danger from modern impostors is not someone claiming to be Sidney Poitier\u2019s son or a lost Russian princess – it\u2019s from scammers pretending to be your boss, your bank manager, or even your own flesh and blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve talked about impostors before but every year, new scams appear thanks to changes in social dynamics, new technology, and new ways of working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How we communicate often defines how an impostor operates since the ability to verify their claims should be either limited or controlled to ensure the success of a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past, the speed of global, national, or local communications was decided by the means of conveying the mail, it might take months to find out that someone is not the brother of Wyatt Earp<\/a> or a missing Romanov princess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This meant impostors could claim almost anything without fear of being proved a liar for weeks, months or years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As technology improved from the telegraph to the internet, impostors became more sophisticated and used increasingly clever techniques to discourage interrogation of their claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Social compliance, politeness and deterrence all play a factor in this kind of con game, as does the con artist\u2019s greatest technique, which is to offer people what they really want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The play Six Degrees of Separation<\/em><\/a> illustrates this perfectly with high-society suckers all too happy to be rubbing shoulders with the son of the great actor and director, Sidney Poitier, and all too self-satisfied to properly verify the impostor\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was based on real-life serial impostor, David Ham<\/a>p<\/a>ton<\/a>, who would mingle with students from Columbia University and to gain immediate credibility, he would claim that his father was the legendary movie star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n