I have an friend from Canberra who has a great party trick. He\/she can contort their fingers into the letters of their name! He\/she can also contort them into spelling the word “Blood”. To protect their anonymity, that’s the nickname I am going to give them here.<\/p>\n
Blood has a magician friend called Nick “Tricky Nick” Johnson. I have met Nick two or three times, but I’ve only seen a little of his performance. Last time I saw him, he was practicing the classic con trick, Three-Card Monte<\/a>. I played a willing mark as he ran through his routine. The experience was a little belittling; the entire time, he was at least one step ahead of me, and I was never able to point to the target card. He even pointed out exactly when I had given up following the queen and just started guessing wildly.<\/p>\n I started to chat to him about the difference between magic tricks and con tricks; the concept of “honest liars” that I have touched on before<\/a>. I didn’t quite follow all of his response, but essentially he considered his magic routine to be a homage to the con trick, rather than a con trick itself.<\/p>\n A few months ago, I saw an advertisement for Today Tonight<\/a>, a controversial Australian tabloid-style current affairs show. Alongside pushing a miracle new weight loss system that doesn’t involve surgery and a in-depth It seems that Nick Johnson<\/a> markets himself as “Australia’s Honest Con Man”. Today Tonight produced two segments on his con artist skills. The first<\/a> is available via his web-site. The second was the one I recorded at home.<\/p>\n In the first segment, he demonstrated scams:<\/p>\n In the second segment, he demonstrated four scams: <\/p>\n The second segment was treated as a contest between three different Australian cities, comparing their relative gullibility, based on the size of the haul made in four hours.<\/p>\n I was watching the second show with interest, until something rather unexpected happened.<\/p>\n I recognised one of the victims.<\/p>\n It was Blood. <\/p>\n The whole scam was a scam! Were any of the alleged victims really being fooled. Had Nick scammed Today Tonight, or were they in on it too? Last weekend, I caught up with Blood and got the answer.<\/p>\n The Today Tonight crew were willing participants. Blood described the crew as caricatures of themselves – more extremely cynical than even a Frontline<\/a> fan might expect. None of the scams were actually carried out – every part of the segment was faked. With the Pickpocket warning sign, even the random man-on-the-street that touched his backpocket to check his wallet was acting in response to a request made by the Today Tonight crew.<\/p>\n The aerosol spray, used to detect fingerprints, isn’t even a real scam – it was just made up for the cameras.<\/p>\n At least that puts to rest my surprise about the sophistication of the card skimmer and secret camera scams – both seemed to be incongruous with the low-tech techniques used by Nick in his other work.<\/p>\n Today Tonight has different presenters in different cities. In Sydney, the show suggested that Sydney was the least<\/em> gullible. Given that the numbers were completely fictitious, I now wonder if they customised the results in every city it was shown!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\ncross-promotion<\/del>report into the intrigue and controversy of a reality TV show contestant’s past, the promo warned that “Australia’s number one con man is at it again”. The footage showed Nick Johnson. Intrigued, I recorded the show.<\/p>\n\n
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