Card Shark and Professional Entertainer: Jason Michaels at TEDxNashville

you inside this box is a mysterious item it's an item that no one has ever seen before I haven't even seen it and after I show it to you no one will ever see it again it's a bold claim are you interested what's inside the box what's your name Chris Chris wants to know what's inside the box I dare say many of you also want to know what's inside the box Chris I'm going to show you what's inside the box in just a moment but let's make this a little more interesting let's just I tell you what I tell you what we'll do um in just a second I will show you what's inside the box but in the idea the in the pursuit of ideas worth spreading let's make this a friendly little wager if I show you something that I have just described at the next break after all those Nick's beakers would you be willing to buy me a drink out at the bar with the caveat that if I have misspoke misspoken if I have said anything that lied to you at all that I would buy your drink we would be but one of us is going to buy a drink fair enough fair little uh fair little all right very good inside this box I have a peanut in a shell if I actually take the actual nut out of the shell Chris nobody has ever seen this nut before not even me and now there you've seen it no one will ever see it again ah that my friends is the perfect example of a proposition bet now some of you would call that a bar bet and it is but technically it's called a proposition bet because the hold the hustler or the con artist makes a bold or outrageous claim he then draws you in and makes you think about what he's claimed maybe even doubting what he's saying that he can do and then he does exactly what he was saying he was going to do because he has some sort of obscure or specialized knowledge that you don't have they call it the hook the line and the sinker so we're going to do over the next few moments is I'm going to share with you the psychological aspects of a scam you see a con artist or a hustler is really just a street psychologist they understand how to manipulate a situation so that you are willing to take your wallet out of your pocket and put your money down on what appears to be a sure bet so as I said I'm going to describe to you I'm going to explain to you what draws you in what entices you to take action and what ultimately will empty your bank account again it's called the hook the line and the sinker so let's take a look at the mysterious item inside the box the hook I come out and claim bold claim there's an item inside this box no one's ever seen before and no one ever ever will ever see again the line I let you think about it for just a moment I even go so far as to make you maybe doubt a little bit about what I'm claiming and then I suggest perhaps a friendly little wager and the sinker I do exactly what I said I was going to do and I collect my winnings and by the way if you want to buy me that drink that will be totally fine with me actually but of course none of us would ever actually fall for a scam would we I mean we're all too intelligent for that right let me tell you a little story when I was a kid I used to have this romantic vision in my mind of what it must be like to be a hustler or a professional gambler I bought books with titles like games you can't lose how to be treated like a high roller even though you're not one and a treatise on the sucker effects of the three-card Monte in for some strange reason the idea of being able to live off your cleverness or your wits alone was very enticing to me when I got out of college my very first job was for a mortgage company every so often one of the yeah exactly right uh every so often one of the real estate brokers that did a lot of business with my the company I was a part of they would come he would come in and he would talk about these quick turnaround deals that he was doing that was making him a bunch of money and once he brought it up every time he came up I came in over the next several weeks he would tell me about all the money he was making he had even gone so far as to bring in one of the loan originators who was in the office there on some of the deals and they were making money together that was the hook one day the loan originator came to me and said hey this real estate broker is interested in wants to know if you would like to participate in one of these real estate deals and I said I was interested she said well if you invest nine thousand dollars in 30 days you will get back a check for ten thousand six hundred dollars now being just out of college I didn't have any money and I told her that and she said I totally understand but if you're really serious you could go to the bank and take out a loan my responsible as well I don't think they're going to give a guy with no collateral nine thousand dollar loan for partial ownership in a piece of property that we're going to try to flip so I just don't know if that would work and she said you know what you're probably right but if you're actually serious about being an investor then you can tell them that you're going to take it out for furniture so I did that was the line the sinker was that after I gave them a nine thousand dollar check more or less they skipped town both of them you see the two had become romantically involved and had acted together as a team to make matters worse they would have often call me and give me what appeared to be perfectly legitimate reasons for why the piece of property had not sold it took me a while but sooner or later I finally figured out I was going to be paying on a nine thousand dollar loan for the next several years of my life according to the Justice Department Americans lose billions and billions of dollars every single year due to fraud uh in fact according to the FBI they put out a report that said in 2011 Americans lost 485 million dollars in online scams alone if you want to talk about Medicare fraud Medicare doesn't even have an exact estimate on how much they lose due to fraud however if we look at FBI estimates again they estimate that between three and ten percent of all healthcare claims are fraudulent and if we apply that math that means between seventeen and fifty seven billion dollars are lost by the American public every single year due to Medicare fraud if you think about all the different types of fraud that are out there the numbers are absolutely staggering so I guess the question is how is it that really intelligent people fall for scams well in the books sleight of mind the neuroscientist Steven Mack Nick and susana Martinez conde they wrote this book slide of mine they are from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and they write about a fellow neuroscientist named Paul Zak who is one of the leading authorities on the neurobiology of trust now according to Balzac the key to a con is not so much that you trust the con artist the key to a con is that the con artist shows that he or she trusts you and when you feel trusted your brain releases oxytocin and when your brain releases oxytocin you reciprocate that trust naturally you see oxytocin is the hormone that is released in a childbirth breastfeeding social recognition and cooperation according to Zach when you cooperate when you help someone it makes you feel really really good quote unquote I need your help as a potent stimulus for action if we take a look at why Bernie Madoff Ponzi investment scheme work what we learn is that basically it worked because he created this air of exclusivity you see Bernie Madoff wouldn't just let anybody invest with him no he only let people invest with him that he trusted and because he trusted they could trust him in turn you see he frequented private clubs exclusive establishments and he created this this sense of a very unique exclusive group and by the time an investor was finally let into that world their oxytocin circuits were firing all the way to the bank they were now interestingly enough of course there are many different reasons why we get conned or why we get scammed and oxytocin is just one another common reason would be greed so that guy now if you stop and think about it okay you know they tell you what there's actually a really interesting really interesting quote it's a grifters quote it's an old quote by con artists and it says you can't cheat an honest man what does that mean let me explain to you what they'd be in fact if you set on a you know a con artist and you said hey how do you justify stealing someone's money they would say you can't cheat an honest man and here's the philosophy here's the perspective behind that they look at it as though the potential victim is actually getting ready to take advantage of them you see the way a con works is it sets up a situation where the entire of the way that the potential victim views it is that everything is in their advantage they can see that they have every advantage and that they are actually going to take the con artists money and the con artists perspective is that if they can see all of that that they're not being honest and they're going to steal the con artists money for their own greed and that is the reason why they are more than happy to justify stealing your money or someone else's money by saying you can't cheat an honest man now it's important to understand as well that that even though I'm kind of out laying laying out for you the anatomy of a scam how it works that unfortunately there as long as there are people around to think about figuring out how to take advantage of other people there will be scams you can't completely control it and you can't completely protect yourself however there are a few indicators that I will share with you that should if you find yourself in a situation where you may potentially be getting scammed these should set off red flags in your mind number one a con artist is going to try to get you to participate eight in a situation where you are willing to give your money to them the key word there is willing you see the police are going to have a hard time doing a whole lot about it if you willingly gave your money to somebody number two again like I said a moment ago they're going to put us it create a situation that puts you that gives you an unfair advantage over everybody else and they're going to try to get you to take advantage of the unfair advantage consider this example you probably aren't going to go to the police and tell the police that hey I was part of a local crew of people who were cheating at a card game but somehow we messed up the cheat and I'll stall my money number three they use a partner and sometimes they use numerous partners but they always use a partner to act as your confidant there has to be someone when you're on the fence who says oh I did it or they're willing to put their money out there in bet or invest or whatever so if you see other people doing it that is a very powerful reason for hey if they're doing it I should be able to do it too and also lastly a time sensitive they're going to create this picture for you that is a picture of a perfect situation and then they don't want you to think about it too hard because if you step away and use your critical thinking you may decide not to participate so they're going to create a situation where you have to act immediately now as I said just a moment ago unfortunately I can't protect you I can't give you everything because there's no way to truly protect yourself if you were to walk out of here thinking that you couldn't get conned after listening to me talk you're actually a much easier target to con but now that you kind of understand the anatomy the hook line and sinker and now that you understand some of these indicators so that maybe the red lights will go off in your mind if you find yourself in this situation hopefully you will be able to protect yourself just a little bit more but I think the real question is what would this actually look like in action right well I've given you some examples but I'd like to share with you right now is I'd like to share with you what it actually really does look like an action we asked it during the break we asked a couple people to participate we have and Benny you can come out with the camera and we have Dustin you've been like the mascot for TEDx Nashville this year Dustin and we have Scott right Scott Scott joining me right over here on this side Dustin you'll be right there so what we're going to do is I'm going to share with you a street game it's actually you might see this played on the streets of big cities the idea this game is called chase the ACE it's also kind of called find the lady the technical name for it is the three-card Monte it uses three cards and it the two of those cards are similar one card is different the different card is called the monty card or the money card okay that's the one that you want to bet on if you were to put your money down so I'll just kind of just kind of explain how this might actually work in action so in fact what they would probably do is they would probably draw you in with a nice little rhyme and it might sound something like this inky dinky parlez-vous I'll tell you what I'm gonna do a little game from hanky poo the Joker's for me the ace for you ladies and gentlemen step right up step right up and learn the secrets of the Ancients now I'm going to leave out that snappy line of patter because I don't want to confuse anybody if you know what I mean so what we'll do is I'll show you how this might work if you're walking by down the street if you're walking down the street the guy might always toss the exact same pattern it would be simple it would be methodical it would be slow so that you could always follow what's going on the moment you stop and take your wallet out of your pocket he's going to change the pattern you see how changed does not affect where the ace goes but the pattern itself does change now in order to get you to actually bet in order to get you to actually participate he has to be willing to let you win if you win on a small bet you'll take the big money out of your pocket a little bit easier so Dustin will you help all right Dustin here we go I'm gonna let you win this one you'd be a little hint there Dustin Dustin which one of those carts is the ace very good guess Dustin you an all right all right Dustin you just won that was a $10 bet Dustin you just won $10 and in fact I forgot to point this out but remember this Dustin the ace always starts in the center because if it doesn't start in the center it can be a little bit hard to follow now here's what I want you guys to understand I mentioned a moment ago there are first off you have a time sensitive situation he has to make a decision quickly second off it's a situation where you're willing to get your money involved that he's willing to participate it's going to be tough to justify that later on third partner here's what you don't know the reason that this is actually a he can't win is because I have a partner that he doesn't know about that's why I have two people up here so what we're going to do here is you're going to help me out you're going to play as my partner if that's all right with you so what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually have you if he guesses correctly you are going to I'm going to give you a signal I will call it I will say and like that so if you guess you're correctly I will go and and when I do that all I'm gonna need you to do is I'm gonna need you to say I double that bet can you do that okay so in other words if he doubles the bet because I only take one bet at a time I would take his bed over yours now you don't know that we're actually working together so I'm paying a guy off that's on my payroll so we're keeping the money between us so you win one bed and then you're kind of start take out the big money and that protects me and anybody else on my team from losing any big money fair enough alright so here we go Dustin are you ready all right here we go all right here we go Dustin watch very closely Dustin here we go all right Dustin alright alright so I need a $20 bet to get this started you willin to bet $20 on this yes you all right fantastic I hear a double over here that's fantastic that's $40 to this gentleman right here so I need a $50 bet from you to get a little bit too cuz now he's got it are you willing about $50 fantastic would you bet on this cart this cart of this card I hear $100 bed over here so which one which one would you be willing to bet on this one right here and I'm very good then you win $100 so Dustin he's got confidence you see this my friend is a confidence game you have to be willing to actually participate you have to be willing to put your money on the table so we're gonna do this one more time now the bets now $100 so we're going to try one more time are you ready all right Dustin here we go here's the here's the ace okay so here we go you know you understand the situation yes so you're ready alright so here we go all right Dustin pay close close attention just like so I will go like this I will go like this will go like this I will try to confuse you just a little bit I will make this very easy Dustin hundred-dollar bet to you are you willing about a hundred dollars and I hear a double over here that's two hundred to this gentleman now the only way you can actually win this game is if you come up with more money than the partners got because then he can't double the bet so you got a hundred on it yeah I don't even know do you probably have a hundred dollars do you that's okay um I tell you what I'll get you I'll get you some more investors um we've got a hundred dollar bet here I've got a double up here so I need would you be willing to bet put a fifty on it so we're trying that we're trying to get a fifty all right now I got 150 could I get a fifty from you maybe a DIN yes another fifty so that's 200 let's add in one more can I get one hundred from you fantastic like that still I like that cut no no absolutely not that's very good so now it's a $300 bet but Dustin even though you've got a lot of people participating here only one person actually gets to bet gets to pick the card so Dustin your choice this card this card or this card pick it out hang on a second now wait there's a bend in that card do you see that Bend right there that's weird hmm I think all right you know what I'll take your bet anyway and when I say I'll take it I mean I'll take it that ladies and gentlemen is the three-card Monte thank you very much give them both a big round of applause thank you very much you guys can go back so here's your takeaway the final thing for you to remember if you find yourself in a situation that appears too good to be true it probably is thank you guys my name is Jason Michaels have a great rest of the day

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 95,044

Rating: 4.5714288 out of 5

Keywords: Cards, Nashville, TEDx, ted, ted talk, tedx, TEDxNashville, ted x, ted talks, tedx talk, Illusion, tedx talks, United States Of America (Country), English

Id: Z6BXeIjnaYE

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 29 2014