In the rogue’s 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.
The real danger from modern impostors is not someone claiming to be Sidney Poitier’s son or a lost Russian princess – it’s from scammers pretending to be your boss, your bank manager, or even your own flesh and blood.
I’ve talked about impostors before but every year, new scams appear thanks to changes in social dynamics, new technology, and new ways of working.
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.
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 or a missing Romanov princess.
This meant impostors could claim almost anything without fear of being proved a liar for weeks, months or years.
As technology improved from the telegraph to the internet, impostors became more sophisticated and used increasingly clever techniques to discourage interrogation of their claims.
Social compliance, politeness and deterrence all play a factor in this kind of con game, as does the con artist’s greatest technique, which is to offer people what they really...
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