cover image Easy Money

Easy Money

Charles R. Whitlock. Zebra, $18.95 (357pp) ISBN 978-0-8217-4554-0

In 1992, some nine million persons were victimized by various forms of confidence trickery, according to business consultant Whitlock in this massive, well-organized and depressing overview. This catalogue of theft and extortion tells of an entrepreneur who breaks windows at night and sells window repair by day; a Fed Ex driver who collects $96.25 each on 50 false COD packages in a day; fake repairmen who charge an old woman $1200 for unneeded household repairs and steal her TV. Other areas where the buyer must beware include travel, where deposits for tour packages disappear; banking, where stolen credit card numbers are ``retailed'' to con artists; and medicine, where physicians file false Medicare claims. The author assiduously lists government and private agencies for the bilked to notify. So prevalent are crooked schemes in American life that law enforcement agencies can't investigate, let alone prosecute, more than a small fraction of them. (May)