Australia's Honest Con Man Nicholas J Johnson! #195

They're guys. They do magic. They are the Magic Guys.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 195 of the Magic Guys. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Lex Luthor. Over to my right, we've got Nick Kay. Hi, I'm Lex Luthor. Welcome to the show, friends.

And to my left is my favorite minion, is lex luther number two i love it good to see everyone yes i'm josh libido and we are the magicians paving the way to share our lives as professional magicians answer your questions and all around have fun and shenanigans and sometimes we have guests on really cool guests and we were just talking about myself and then nick and our guest look like a progressive progressive timeline line if you were to stay at home forever.

So my beard is small, Nick's getting there, getting the length, and then wait to see our guest. And that's when you know how wise you are is the length of your beard. Anyway, Nick, how are you today? I'm doing great, buddy. I'm sure everyone's super excited to actually not only see what our gorgeous guest and his magnificent beard look like, but actually hear what he has to say. So I say we jump straight into it and talk about a whole bunch of fun, shall we? Heck yeah.

Let's do it. Friends, our guest is known as Australia's Honest Con Man. He is one of the most important people in my magic career. He's been responsible for so many opportunities that I've had. He's not only an amazing magician. He's also the author of many books, one of which I'm holding, which is Chasing the Aces. He'll tell you all about that in just a moment's time.

The man is a one-man orgy. There's very little he can't do. So please join me in welcoming Australia's honest con man, Mr. Nicholas J. Johnson. Music.

Welcome nicholas j johnson please tell our friends and guests who are you and what do you do my name is nicholas j johnson and i'm a professional bullshit artist, excellent let's go just keeping it real keeping it real if you were wondering why we brought you here today is because most recently our good friend josh he wrapped up last week's episode and we're super excited for him he'd literally said oh i've got an upcoming international gig were super excited for it.

Sad thing was, it was actually a scam. And Josh made a YouTube video about it. And so Josh, tell him, tell him what happened.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up because it is a sore point trying to put it behind me, but you know, what's better is talking about it on the pod. Now we did plan this. So yeah. And look, I made a video about this on YouTube. I think it's worth sharing, even though, you know, I look a bit silly and I got an inquiry from an overseas client, which I'd just done a gig in Singapore a few months back. So it's not unusual for me to feel like this is normal.

And clients spoke very great lingo in terms of events. I done my Googling, their email came from the same email as the website. So it just, everything looked as it should. You know, I sent them my fee. They agreed it. They agreed upon it, which, you know, excites you and everything was fine.

They sent me a contract and this is where I'm like telling my partner, I'm like, oh yeah, look in, you know, February, we're going to be going overseas, you know, let's start organizing the dog sitter and all this kind of stuff. And I'm looking at the contract and it just has this little detail, which is, look, we'll help you. Obviously, we'll pay for your airfares and all that kind of stuff.

There's just one thing you need because, you know, when you travel, you need a visa, whether it's a work visa or whatever. But they had this other thing called a bond authorization form, bond authorization insurance. And they're like, if you don't have it, here's the travel agent we work with. That's very fast at getting them for people. And long story short, they wanted me to send $1,000 for this bond that you get back once you leave the country.

And it assures the country that, this is all not even true, but what they're saying is it ensures the country that you have money to fund yourself while you're there and you're not going to try and stay longer and work and all that kind of stuff.

Anyway that was so convincing and it wasn't until I had to just stop and go hang on a client would never ask you to pay money and what country needs you to pay a bond like they would be doing this millions of times a year it turned out to be false but up until that point I was really hooked in and I just don't want to see other magicians fall for that especially if you were to pay it and God knows what else could happen if you did. So that was my experience. Kind of funny to come out of it.

You know, I'm a little bit wiser now and hopefully you guys are too, but it was a very like smart con that isn't a normal red flag. When you see the email, you know, it's, not legit. It really took two weeks of conversating with them for something to really prick up. So yeah, so that's why we thought we'd get the expert on in this field. He understands the psychology of how people can get sucked in.

So Nicholas, I'll open up the floor to you. When you hear something like that, what sort of springs to mind maybe that the human mind does when getting pulled into a scam like that so the first thing i noticed is you you didn't get scammed and there was nothing there were really no red flags until they started asking you to pay this dodgy fee and that's when you went oh this sounds like a scam so you know it doesn't sound like you did anything wrong or anything silly or made

any sort of cognitive errors at any point you you're presented with an opportunity. You did what, you know, your due diligence, like you said, you checked that, yep, this is all legit, this is all real. And then the moment there was a red flag to be spotted, you spotted it. The reason that this type of scam normally works, this is called advanced fee fraud, which is essentially pay us a small fee now and you'll get a larger reward later on.

The reason why it usually works is one, there's the promise of a reward. So this small amount of money that you're going to be paying is just a tiny obstacle to get over. But also So because there's a real sunk cost for you. So you, like you said, have spent two weeks talking to these people. You've put all of this effort in already. And so you're basically now looking for the money. And the idea of then saying, actually, this is a scam and these people have wasted my time.

And sometimes it's easier for our brains to go, I'm not going to think about that because I've already invested all of this time into it. And what will often happen is that sunk cost will then become, oh, you paid your $400 fee. That's great. But you also have to pay now this $5,000 fee. And there's numbers. They'll just keep asking you for money. And it will keep going up until eventually you don't have any more money or you stop paying.

And I mean, it sounds like you got in at the ground floor and shut it down before anything happened. Thank God. I mean, thank God. I mean, the, the, the artist in me, like you just said, knowing that you're going to get paid this lump sum, as soon as you have this tiny detail, yeah, ropes you in. Is that also how people get quote unquote, like catfished when they're talking to someone that's not real and they're asking to be sent money.

And even though one side of your brain probably realizes it's not real, the other side just wants that, like you're so far into it now, you just keep going or? Yeah, absolutely. I always think about it, particularly what you're talking about there is like a romance scam. So when it isn't a gig, it's a relationship. And people always say, I don't understand how these people don't realize they're in a fake relationship.

Or they say, I don't realize why they sort of, once they've been told they're in a fake relationship, often the people just don't believe it and refuse to accept it. And I always say, well, it's not a fake relationship. It's a real relationship. It's 100% real. These feelings are real. The way you imagine this person is real, it's all entirely real. So I reckon it's easier in that context to think about it like an abusive relationship.

You're in a real relationship, but it's with someone who is abusing you. They're lying to you. They're cheating. They're trying to take your money. It's financial abuse. And if you think about it in that context, you go, okay, yeah, people go back to abusive relationships. They go back to these people that they kind of deep down know good for them, but they're on the hook emotionally. And so they keep going down.

Is what you're saying that I might not actually be in an online relationship with Beyonce? Is that what you're trying? Oh, no, that's real. That's 100% real. She rang me before and we were just talking about how great you were. And you should definitely send her that cash. You know, it's interesting, like to go down that route. I've heard stories of people who have gotten sort of, it's not a scam,

but there's people who do prey on people of this nature. Like they will prey on people who have an addiction to this type of.

I don't know fetish or lifestyle or you know and and they'll spend tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars like on these only fan models and so forth i've experienced this you know these stories with people that have actually been around me it's a very very gnarly time but like it's weird because like as evil as that is you're praying on people with addiction not quite a scam but you know not far out of the vein don't you think yeah it's definitely

scam adjacent i think if someone is if you if you have someone who feels like they're in a real relationship with you and it is not a real relationship it's kind of like a parasocial relationship and then you take advantage of that i feel like that's definitely crossing some ethical.

Boundaries in terms of whether it's a scam or not i'm not sure that it is because the person doing only fans is pretty up you know it's only fans people pretty up front about what it is and what it's about and you're you're saying you know if you give me money you will get this service and you get the service so it's sort of it's definitely it is definitely manipulative but i don't i think it's slightly different from a scam yeah i

mean there's so many things out there where they they prey upon these addictions or these sort of wants of people scotty p in the chat just mentioned i had one where chris ramsey famous magician chris ramsey was going to send me a PlayStation 5, I just had to pay the postage. He hadn't fallen for it.

I see this quite often. I actually are part of a couple of gaming groups and so forth through some sim racing that I do, and they'll say things to the effect of, I had this PlayStation, my son passed away, if anybody wants it, just let me know. And it's like, what's going on here? You know what I mean? You can just have it is the idea. I'm just going to give it away, but you pay the postage. Like it's a really interesting way to prey on people, don't you think?

Yeah, 100%. And the great thing, I mean, choosing a PlayStation 5 is great because it is just expensive enough that it's got value to us where we want to leap on it. But it's not so expensive to maybe start hitting those red flags.

It's just at that right price point of oh this is i want this but it's not so expensive that if i said hey look my kid died so you can have my ferrari you're going to be suspicious but if it was something that was a bit cheaper you might you know just go don't worry about i don't want to pay the postage i'm not not interested also with the playstation 5 less so these days but you know we had a solid is it like 12 18 months when no one could get a playstation 5 so this thing

everybody wanted everybody wanted a playstation 5 and it wasn't even about the money the financial value of it it was just the scarcity so it's a playstation 5 is a is a good uh is a good thing to offer that's so true and if i may it's it happens in show business too when we post a sold out poster for our show on the theater of magic people will comment on that guy and hey hey, me and my husband can't go anymore in case anyone wants to get our ticket.

Just message me and we'll do a search and that person is fake. Kidding me. Yeah. Yeah. And it happens quite, we have to, we have to patrol that quite often. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's happened to me a lot. Like I will post that it's a sold out show and people instantly will come in and try and get the tickets.

What is interesting though, is that we, when we post on social media, hey, the show is sold out we're relying on exactly the same psychology in that we're going hey this show sold out which is everyone's oh the show's this show's selling out well i better get my i better buy tickets for it then because suddenly you've got scarcity so both the person making the post about their sold out show and the scammer are both relying on scarcity to try and make a buck now we're

getting into the good stuff how do we scam people in the best way possible to buy tickets to our show is there a better way is there a guilt method is there a relationship you know real to pull them in what what should we be doing look so this is this is a topic where i feel like. If I pretend that I know what I'm talking about, I will be a scammer. I'll be conning you because I have a massive amount of knowledge on how to sell tickets to shows and I just don't do it.

I just don't do the things that people should be doing to sell tickets to their shows. It's something that I don't do. The big thing, so one of the things though that in talking to producers who are successful, one of the big things is to have a show that is accessible to as many people as possible is to basically look at like removing as many of the barriers to entry as you possibly can for your audience.

And only put in things which are specific about your show if you really know that it's going to affect the quality of the show. So if you've got a kid's show, make sure it's clear that it's a kid's show. But this is a thing that – because I always like to do a themed magic show. So I want to do a magic show, and it's also about board games.

It's a magic show, and it's also about neuroscience. you know and the problem is that you then have an audience of people who want to see a magic show, and you have you have an audience of people interested in neuroscience but if you've got to get people who are in the middle of that venn diagram to come see the show so instead you say come see the magic show one of the shows that's really popular these guys in do really well in australia and it's the they're

just the greatest magic show that's just what it you know it's.

Oh man their names have just leapt out of my head and they would beat me up and i have a, justin justin williams and sam hume thank you sorry sorry justin and sam and and to me that's brilliant and when you look at their show like their poster they've got a picture of a guy who kind of looks like a magician he's got a top pad he's got a curly mustache and you go great magician let's go and their show itself is not that exact you know it's not that their show is more specific

than that but they're not what they're trying to say is hey this is a magic show this is professional This is good. You're going to love it. Like you look at like the illusionists. It's literally just the illusionists. They're magicians. Come see. Yeah. Yeah. Be specific. Yeah. So this is interesting because a lot of the things we're talking about are very modern day things. They're examples of cybersecurity issues and scams of that nature.

But what I'm curious about is like how far back does it go? You know what I mean? Like, I mean, scams have existed since the dawn of time. I don't know what the earliest...

Sort of reported scam might be but i imagine it would be things in the streets things like the the monty and the so forth can we sort of explore the very beginnings of scams and maybe like where it came from the streets yeah sure so things like the three card monty and the shell game they're old but they're not as old as we would like people to to think you know like there's always that thing about oh you know there's hieroglyphics with people doing the cups and balls and pyramids

and And it's like, no, there's not. That's not. I think that's baking is what they're doing. They've got their, like, it's actually bakers, but we like to pretend that these are much older. But the psychology of the scams goes back really far. You know, you see the principles that are used in scams are used over and over again. The advanced fee fraud, the idea, like, pay some money now and you'll get a reward later.

You can see that going back throughout history. The Spanish prisoner is like a classic scam where people would approach. You know, their victims, scammers would approach their victims in, you know, taverns in medieval times and say, there is a beautiful princess who's been kept prisoner in Spain and we want to go and rescue her. We're going to go and mount a rescue operation. If you can invest in our operation, then you'll get money from the princess.

And often the implication is that the princess will marry you as well you know because we're going to bring her back here and all of her wealth and people would would pay money and that is essentially exactly the same as the nigerian scams you know the nigerian email scam of like hey there's a you know i'm a nigerian prince and i need to get some money out of nigeria it's exactly the same thing so you know even though the scams themselves

might be newer than we think the psychology just goes way back. I think that to me sounds like the plot of like a Mario Brothers thing where it's like there's a princess and some guy at the bar who's just tripping balls on mushrooms and then he's going like, yeah, man, I'm gonna go find this princess and he stumbles out the bar, falls into a pond and fights a turtle thinking it's Bowser.

That's where my comedy brain goes immediately. Totally. But like, it's the reason why it's the scam and the reason why it's the in Mario and the reason why it's like the plot of, you know, like 100 movies is it's like these classic archetypes, these classic stories that we tell over and over and over again. And when you take those stories and you put it into a scam, it's like people's brains go, bing. Yes, I like that story.

I want to be the hero of the story. He rescues the princess. was the cups and balls originally type of Monty-esque you know scamming game or was it always cups and balls I don't look I don't know I'm sure there's a magic historian would have a better better idea than me I do know that the cups and that buskers doing cups and balls variations.

Were linked with con artists scamming people on the street you know from from pretty much as soon as they popped up there's a very famous painting of someone doing the cups and balls and the audience member is leaning in staring really you know closely you know utterly amazed and if you look closely you can see someone in the crowd is picking their pocket at the same time you know so it's sort of this you know the two are definitely linked but as far as you know

the actual history you know and like they they are really quite different effects even though they do use three objects yeah it's different methodology and it's it's yeah it's not necessarily as as linked as i think it might be but i reckon there's a magic historian out there who'd have a better idea than me where's doug when you need him yeah now as far as like street scams go the three that come to mind for me i would be like the three card money in which you would have let's say

a money card would be represented by like let's say a like a diamond ace of diamonds and two black in different cards like two court cards you mix them up and you have a one in three chance of getting it correct and should you do that you win you win some money as well as that there is the p and shell of which you have an amazing collection of shells right nick you have like hundreds of them yeah yeah yeah so the p and shell game little p under a walnut shell mix it around guess correctly

win some money and then the less more common known which is the title of your. Second book fast and loose is one in which you put a chain in a particular pattern and if you hold your finger down and remove the chain it sticks to your finger if it sticks to your finger you win. I'd never seen that before you showed me how did you stumble across that one i the fast and loose so the reason why those three ones are ones that we've heard of is that they're three which are.

Basically popular with with magicians you know that's really the reason why that you know we really know a lot about them fast and loose is actually pretty obscure i think i first heard about it from whit hayden is the school for scoundrels that he set up with chef anton where they basically train people in these types of scams so and one of the things they do is fast and loose but it's as a magic effect it is it's it's a frustrating one because

the audience just loses over and over and over and over again. There's no lot of opportunities for storytelling or twists or turns. It's just no matter what happens, you lose, you're an idiot. So it doesn't necessarily, it's much harder to structure a routine from. That one is a very, very old, it's a very, very old quote.

And it's, sorry, it's a very old name. In Shakespeare, he said, he meant someone mentions to play fast and loose with faith which is like from love's labor's lost and when we say fast and loose and we're talking about the scam it's not a reference to shakespeare shakespeare is actually referencing the scam in the play so when he says to play fast and loose with faith it basically means to gamble to and and also to gamble in a

way in which you're probably going to lose so yeah it's crazy that something like that existed way back in those times yeah, and there's a few variations there's one with a belt where you sort of fold a belt you fold a belt in half and then roll it up and then you have to put your finger in one of the two loops are in the middle and you can basically choose who's going to win and who's going to lose.

Yeah the the yeah fast and loose is is one that shows up you know a lot but like with a lot of these types of you know at both as magic routines and as scams is that the methodology so like how to get the p from one shell to another is pretty simple how to you know swap the two cards you know two cards win fast and lose also quite simple fast and lose to do the you know it's all pretty simple but what is hard is to get people

to play the game and bet money and that is actually you know the real that is the real trick of these and in the case of you know magic it's like well how do we take these and actually make them entertaining that's that's the real challenge.

So when you talk about like that's a skill in itself and I'm sure there's been people along the way is there any people that sort of come to mind who have been exceptional at, being scammers i mean like who would be your top three scammers top three scammers as in con artists yeah i don't know i mean look you know the boring answer is that there's probably people who've just made millions in some financial scam and it's it's they're kind of boring stories and the people who we think of

as the greatest scammers of all time they're not people making millions of dollars but they're people who've got good stories to tell you know there's so like victor lustig was con artist and he sold the eiffel tower on two separate occasions so the eiffel tower was originally meant to be a temporary structure was set up for a kind of world's fair type deal and people liked it so it stayed but some people like wait wait wait this is

this weird giant metal pyramid sticking up out of the middle of these beautiful buildings what it no let's get rid of it. And so he started to go into scrap dealers saying he was a government official and saying that it was going to be pulled down for scrap and got them to bid. And then he found this one guy who kept sort of, who he thought this guy's a bit dodgy. So he went up to this one particular guy and said, Hey, you know. I am, you know, just a government official.

I don't make very much money, but you know, so, and basically hinted that he'd like a bribe.

So this guy bribed Victor Luzdig. he said okay you've got the contract then he took the money off the guy as well for the job and then this guy showed up to try and pull down the eiffel tower and he was so embarrassed he didn't tell anyone about it and so victor lost stick skipped town realized there was it didn't make the papers went oh okay so he came back and did it again oh pulled it to do the second time which is why you know it's why so great that you're willing to kind of

tell that story about you you know just and he's seen out of being scammed because con artists rely on the fact that we keep that stuff a secret. But that said, Victor Lustig, yeah, sure, he made a lot of money, but the reason why we think of him as a great is because he's got a cool story. And that's why Frank Abagnale, you know, the Catch Me If You Can guy, that's why he is so famous is because he could tell these really incredible stories.

You know, the scams themselves were, well, I mean, the scams themselves were non-existent. Everything that is in that movie is lies. None of it happened. All the stuff that is in his book, all the pack of lies. He just, he made it all up. The scams he was actually pulling were small scale frauds of his friends and family.

Just real real small scale sleazy manipulative bullshit but he wrote a memoir where he's this dashing charismatic you know guy who's jet-setting around the world taking down multinational companies and you know it makes a great movie but he's you know he's just full of it wow.

That's i guess i mean like a liar lies right it is yeah that's it i mean that's the thing like You get a lot of people who present themselves as being reformed con artists, and you find that often what they're saying isn't true. They may well be con artists, but they'll then create a mythology for themselves, and then they'll write memoirs and give TED Talks and all this sort of stuff about their time as a con artist and a swindler.

And they'll start giving advice that isn't actually good advice, but it's just advice that helps reinforce the mythos. And some of them end up going back to prison again. There's a guy like Barry Minkow, who scammed a whole bunch of people in the 80s, set up this vacuum, this cleaning company, and basically, through complicated means, became very, very rich by getting investors and not doing anything.

Went to prison, came out, became a a preacher turned his life around started talking about you know the you know the dangers of becoming a con artist and why he got sucked in and you know and how god had changed his life and then ended up defrauding all of the people in his church went back to prison again you know so a lot of these guys who you know the reformed con artist are not quite not it's not that they're.

You know still committing crimes but the type of person who becomes a con artist in the first place isn't necessarily the person you want to go to for advice yeah pro tip you know it'll fit a straight line system yeah well it's fun because like johnson and i you know we used to catch up regularly over coffees and so forth and one time johnson scammed me and i got to share this just for the sake of fun stories because it leads into another i was like cool man i gotta get going i'm like

cool you head off i gotta take care of some beers johnson takes off then i go to i go to pay my bill and it's like oh cool so you're having this uh and the raisin toast and i'm like, scammer johnson didn't pay for his raisin toast left me to pay it trust the con man to stitch me into paying for his raisin toast this son of a bitch so i was like i actually i actually went like damn he's good when that happened i did that to a yeah yeah i did that to a friend a couple of weeks ago and uh

we're talking about we're just sort of talking about you know that weird thing when you know when people really argue over who's paying you know we're going back and forth you You know that thing where like, you know, we're going to sort of just, you know, and then there's this big fight. It's really awkward. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate that. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, me too.

And I go, and then later on, I go, oh, actually, can I, like when we go to pay at the counter, can I, can I just try, can I just, can I just try something? And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, cool. And so we go up to the counter and, and she goes, now, now are you guys splitting this? And my friend, like Pablo, he kind of looks at me, expect it because I said I wanted to try something. And I go, no, Pablo's pain. And then just walked off.

And he was so, he was so like, like, wait, what just happened? And he couldn't, he didn't, he couldn't, there was nothing. He just didn't have it in him to argue. He just paid the bill. That's great. But one of the stories that you shared was this amazing story about a truck and watermelons. It was a really cool story. Could you share that with our audience?

Oh, yeah. this is this is titanic thompson titanic thompson is was a famous con artist who was and also like a poker player but he made his money mostly from small scale scams and it was usually proposition wages so like side bets and he would come up with these little what seemed like really small scams but there were actually you know things that were were going to you know end up making him a lot of money so he was basically a road gambler and so he would do things

like you know he he once bet he was like a golfer and he once bet someone that he could drive a golf ball 500 yards using like a a wooden club so like at the time like a you know if you had like a really good driver you know you could get like 200 yards so this was impossible so he he made this bet with someone and then he He went outside and drove the ball over a frozen lake. So the ball just kept bouncing until it had gone 500 yards and won the bet. So he did that kind of thing.

But the watermelon was essentially he was just sitting outside with this guy and this watermelon truck kind of pulled up in front of him. And he just went. 187. And the guy says, what's that? He goes, that's how many watermelons there are. 187. And he goes, there's not 187 watermelons. You can't know that. He goes, no, it is. 187 watermelons. And they keep arguing about it. And eventually goes, fine, I'll bet you.

And he bets this crazy amount of money, crazy amount of money that this is what it's going to, you know, like $500. And this is like 100 years ago. And so they go and they pay the watermelon driver.

They say, we want to count your watermelons. you know five bucks let us can't eat watermelons and that and he goes and i think they agree that it's got to be within five and so it turns out there are 186 watermelons he's off by one and he wins the bet and it turns out that he had he knew that that guy was sat on that bench every day and he knew that guy was a gambler and so he paid someone to drive a watermelon truck up around the streets and wait for the guy and then made the bet so the

whole thing was set up the way he got the set up the watermelon he set the whole thing up but to the guy who was sitting there if this was just a small sale scam and the cost you think that is not actually that much you know there's a guy watermelon you know truck guy deliverer you know you say hey you know can you drive your watermelon truck and just park it here for me and then we'll count the watermelons and I'll pay you $10.

So he's risking $10 and the reward is however much he can convince him to take the bet. Damn. Isn't it great when you can orchestrate things like that? That's a magic trick. Yes.

And like with magic, I think that a lot of the time people fall for the trick because they underestimate how much effort we're willing to go to to create, you know to do something that's kind of dumb you know you've got this silly this you know i've spent ages and ages i've spent years practicing this particular move just to make it look like coins disappeared like people really underestimate how much effort we're willing to go to. 100 you know casino seems to

be one of those locations in which they're constantly trying to crack down on you know gamblers and scammers or anything of that nature is there anything in your memory or knowledge that has been successful as far as scams in casinos or heists oh yeah no absolutely yeah there's a huge number of them and they go on all the time but the casinos keep it quiet there was one here crown casino where it was in the blackjack was in the private blackjack room and involved

one of the whales and the whale was essentially in cahoots with someone who was on staff at the casino who was essentially they were using the casino's security system and using sort of information that was gathered from security cameras which the the you know the person working at the casino had which was then being fed to the whale and they won this crazy amount of money wow and the whale actually got basically kicked out of the country in the middle of the night and the whole

thing would have just been smoothed over except the. Casino the next morning had had this media event which was the world's most expensive cocktail and this whale this guy was going to buy the world's most expensive cocktail and get his face in the in the, you know, his picture in the paper. But when the reporters all showed up, it was a different guy. It was some other guy. And one of the reporters said, hey, wasn't it supposed to be this other guy?

And this guy said, oh, yeah, yeah, there was something happened with the other guy and he got kicked out. You know, just some offhand remark, which meant the newspapers then went, oh, there's a story here and went and uncovered what actually happened. But none of that would have come out, you know, if it wasn't for this situation.

No idea wow is it i'm just curious now about this cocktail is it the most expensive cocktail because it's it's the thing where it costs a thousand dollars but it comes with a room for the night like is it that kind of because i know some places would do that you buy this cocktail someone told me the story of a speed dating event that happens at a hotel and the way you get around, getting a room if you really find someone you click with at this speed dating is you order this,

particular cocktail and it costs $900, but it also comes with a room that they just give you when you buy the cocktail. Yeah. So this one was, I look, I think that it was in this situation, it was a publicity stunt. And so they made, it was called the Winston, I think.

And it was this very expensive, you know, it had just, you know, 1858 cognac, you know, that kind of thing, just a whole bunch of expensive stuff thrown in there and then it was essentially this guy was going to, his name is james manning was going to buy this cocktail essentially as a publicity stunt and it was like you know it was like fifteen thousand dollars he was going to pay for it the reason why it was fifteen thousand dollars was because that

was the price that they had put on the cocktail so they could call it the world's most expensive cocktail, and then the whole thing fell apart when they had to sort of fake it the next day with a different guy because Manning hadn't shown up. It wasn't there anymore. So it's a yeah, it was really just a sort of publicity stunt.

But that idea of what you're talking about, of like you're buying one thing but you get this other thing for free, like you see that in I believe it happens in Japan, where you'll play a game, it would be illegal to gamble but you can play a game and win a prize and so you pay a game and then you win say a bar of soap and then. Luckily, there just happens to be a shop next door that will buy the soap from you for $100.

Also, I found the article online. So it doesn't look like much right this second, but this is the Winston cocktail. Yeah, that's it. And if you type that in, most expensive cocktail called the Winston, it comes up with that story from Melbourne. And just quickly, the most expensive cocktail was sold for $12,970 and was made by Jeff Heffernan in Australia at Club 23 in Melbourne in 2013.

And it was called the Winston, contained 60 mils of Croizets, 1858 cognac, and it made it into the Guinness Book of Records.

So that's kind of cool as a way to promote is to get the thing in the guinness book of records that's definitely one way to do it, so so the interesting thing is that like for the for the past you know 40 minutes we've been talking about scams and they're basically done in a very negative notion they're done to either deceive or steal or con people out of their money i'm really curious if there's any stories.

Where scams have been used for good and are there many of those stories well no not really i mean Ultimately, when you scam someone, you're deceiving someone in order to make a profit. The Catholic Church. Now, just kidding, everyone. Just kidding. Well, yeah. I mean, okay, so that's it. The idea is just, you know, we have this idea in movies where you'll have, say, like a movie like The Sting where...

They will say, okay, we want to make the con artists the heroes, so we'll make sure that the victim deserves it. So we'll say, we'll pick this guy, and this guy deserves to be scammed, and he is, you know, but he's still ultimately the victim of a crime. Like, and so to sort of say, like, oh, this guy deserved it, therefore it's a good thing, I would say it's satisfying, but it's like, it's basically like revenge. A revenge scam would be like the closest to a good scam.

The other thing to remember, I think, is that the people doing the scamming will say, well, every scam is a good scam because we got paid, you know, from their perception. And they will often have justifications for why they do it. When you talk about, say, you know, some of the scammers in Africa, they will have built into the culture of scamming. They will essentially say that people from the West have been coming to Africa for hundreds of years.

They have the reason why a lot of African countries have such poor economies is because of colonialism. It is because of the action of Western corporations coming in and removing the natural resources and destroying the country and making it unstable. And so us scamming Westerners essentially is revenge. It's restoring the balance. It's getting the money that was taken out of Africa and bringing it back again. So from their perspective, not only are they making money, they are righting

the wrongs of the past. They're righting the wrongs of history. Now, whether that makes it okay or not is a different question, but from their perspective, they're good. They're the good guys.

Hmm it's really interesting like yeah i just thought that if there was any kind of story it's like well these guys scammed the corporation out of their money back in order to be able to help their community whatever it might be you know like yeah that's right they beat them at their own game like that would be yeah how that was sort of unfold yeah i know i just noticed someone in the comments asked about operation mincemeat and whether that was a positive scam that was the

That was during World War II when I think the Allies got a homeless guy and dressed him up as a soldier with some fake plans. He was a dead guy, a guy who died. And so they got the body and dressed him up so he looked like a soldier and put some fake plans in his satchel and then made sure the body washed up at shore. And then they essentially used the plans to try and spread misinformation.

I don't think that is necessarily – it's deception, obviously, but it's not necessarily a scam because profit is not the – it's not about the financial profit. It's more about, you know, deception, you know, in the case of war. War games, yeah. Yeah, it's war games. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, in fact, we referenced some of the things that happened in the World War in the episode we did, episode 187 on Jasper Masculine, in which during that time they were doing a lot of just covert sort of ideas where they would emulate inflatable tanks and dress up trucks and tanks as just normal supply trucks and just that level of misdirection. Like there was quite an interesting level, but I had no idea that they were using like corpses, you know, to misdirect.

And it's an amazing way of thinking, right? It's, you know, the reason I bring that up is that like from the conversations we had earlier, you think about the psychology of the people who are taking advantage of these folks and scams. And you kind of look at them and go, oh, they're narcissistic. But then when someone has a mind that goes, let's put plans on a corpse and see what happens.

I don't know what to call that person. i don't know if narcissistic like i wouldn't call him a narcissist or a genius like i don't, know it's a weird type of genius it's a weird type of genius you know yeah you know that the sickos are going to examine that soldier's body for clues and they're going to find a clue that we've planted like it's it's like the way that magicians will pretend to palm a card in the hopes that they will go ah i know how you did the trick now it's in your hand you're

like i don't know what you're talking about yeah i mean yeah like though you think about with magicians like i remember sitting in a lecture where the where the magician who was lecturing spent 10 minutes talking about so you've got the coin is in your hand or they think the coin is in your hand and now you're going to open your hand and you're going to show that the coin isn't there and he spent like 10 minutes talking about all the different ways in which someone

might open in their hand to show the coin isn't there.

To make it as effective as possible and and everyone was like this is very interesting like you know you never sort of open your hand fully up you always sort of go like one finger at it you know you unravel your fingers a little bit you know you do you sort of open it towards yourself and then turn your hand or you know all of those different types of things that we you know put all that effort into so i think it's the same here it's just it's just thinking

about people think about the details they think about you know exactly how this is going to work out nick i think we should do a gig story how do you feel about that feel great sure. So gig stories is a part of the show we like to talk about magic moments or even con man moments either while performing or our day-to-day lives starting with the story from our guest mr nicholas j johnson all right i did a gig so i i got hired to do a gig for or at a function room at Parliament

House. So this is in Victoria. This is like state government. And it was close to election time. It was close to budget time, which meant security is quite heightened. And I had not really thought about what was in my bag. And so I took my magic kit and I stopped at security and they opened it up. And it was full of like knives, fake money, like a hammer, nails, like all of this sort of stuff. And they were like, okay, what are you doing? I'm a magician.

And security was like, okay, well, what are you doing? And like, I'm going to do a magic show and these are my props. Oh, okay. And eventually they said, you can't take the money in. It's like you can't take the knife in. Okay. And I go, okay, that's all right. Because it's like there's knives in there. That's fine. I'll just collect my way out. And they go, yeah, I'm not sure you'll be able to do that. And I go, well, that's okay. It's a cheap knife. Whatever. I understand.

And so I go and I do the gig and I come back out. And when I come back out, the federal police are waiting for me. Oh, wow. And I have to explain to them exactly what every prop is. So essentially I've just finished the show and I have to go and do the show again for the federal police, you know, and it's stuff like. You know, I do the human blockhead, you know, so hammering a nail into my face and, you know, like I'm doing this like really weird stuff and this, they're not entertained.

They don't, they're just right. What are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with that? And just one thing after the other and to, and at the end they just basically went, okay, you can go. And that was it. And it was like, from their perspective, it was literally like, this guy has to demonstrate how he uses all of these things, because you can't take things into Parliament House if you don't have a reason to bring them in.

So I had to demonstrate each object one by one. They did not care I was a magician. They did not care about the performance. All they cared about is that I could demonstrate what I was doing.

And yeah, and then I got to go home what was crazy was i did have essentially fake money that was probably illegal but because i from their perspective they weren't thinking about that crime just they're like well what are you doing with it and i go magic tricks and they go okay that's fine off you go bloody hell literally performing for your life yes that's right holy crap all right i also had one where i had the opposite

situation which was you know instead of showing up to a gig and having all this stuff that I didn't kind of really think about having. I showed up, it was a kid's show and I showed up to do a kid's show with my box of tricks. And I. It was like, you know, once we just, you've got your box, you walk on stage, you put it down, you open it and you just start, you know, there's no, there's no setup. And the kids were all sitting there ready to go. So I just walk in,

I put it down, I go, Hey kids, you gonna have some fun. Great. Let's start. And I opened the box. No magic tricks. It was the wrong box. And it was just full of like random stuff that was not, it was just like paper. I sent just random bits of paper. And it was, and I was on stage with literally no props, no props at all. And I'd already started the show. And so I had to say, oh, no, kids, it looks like I've forgotten all of my magic tricks.

What are we going to do? Can you help me make some magic tricks? And all the kids go, yay. And it was in a classroom. So I was like walking around the classroom, picking up objects. What do we need to do a magic show? And they say, you need a magic wand. Okay. And so I get like a pen, you know, a texter.

That's going to be my magic wand. and like this is going to be my hat and i'm like so i do like a cups and balls and i do like some you know some sort of sharpie vanish type stuff and feel like 50 minutes with this just pulled out of my backside magic show and at the end i went up to the client and said i'm so sorry about that i really i'm really sorry i was really unprofessional and she goes what are you talking about and i go what i forgot

all my magic and she goes oh i thought that was just what you did i thought that was the show that that was my vibe that i just show up and make like she was just like yeah.

That was cool that you just made up all those tricks with the stuff and wild utterly wild like max malini type stuff where you just rock up with lint in your pockets and pull out a magic show that's insane yeah yeah i think for a kid's show particularly when your character is like shambolic like oh i don't know what i'm doing and kids can you help me if that's kind of your vibe it's much easier to get away with you know like to walk on stage as a like

a mentalist you know who's very serious and to be like rummaging around in people's pockets for things to do magic tricks with you know that's a bit more of a challenge far out yeah that's true all right i don't think i can top that but i will just share a little anecdote from last week's shows i noticed in my show i get people to choose out of two bags there's a bag that has a on it and a bag that has b on it and there are genuinely two different routines in

there endings to a routine and i let them choose so this kid i'm like which bag will it be and i he flicks i see him like flicking him an imaginary coin put it on his wrist and he goes b and i'm like that's a pretty good way to test you know which outcome you want are you sure do you want to change your mind he's like hang on let me check, no. And by the way, like, why would a coin say A or B anyway? And, uh, I'm like, is that a legit coin? Let me see it.

So this kid hocks over an imaginary coin and I catch it and turn it into a real coin as if like, you know, as a magician would. And the audience loses their mind because it's a completely off the cuff moment. So just a little, you know, for us, it's nothing. It's like, oh yeah, just put a coin in Ramsey's subtlety. He throws it to you.

But I tell you, the audience lost their mind at that. And then I just, you know, shuttle past it and threw him back his invisible coin and he caught it and did this and then kept going. And it was just a fun little nothing moment that I didn't even film it because I usually film every show. And it was just so beautiful.

And then we just kept going with the show, but everyone just was like not expecting that surprise i guess is what it really was the surprise that that was a very fun little bit that happened that's cute beautiful yeah that's great really fun i like when yeah i like when kids yell like they yell out things they want you to do and you can do it like they yell and sometimes they yell out something they.

Think is really dumb or silly you know and they're like you know a kid will go make a frog appear in your mouth and it's like you've got like a sponge frog sitting right there and you're just like okay you know like they just lose their minds it's that great it's so it's so beautiful that idea how is it possible to manufacture those moments do you think are there ways in which you can sort of you know.

Lead an audience down a path and make them feel like they're seeing something special and unique that only ever happened today or you know like are they techniques do you reckon to kind of manufacture those moments probably i mean there is there is one i do in my show which is i ask them what card they want in the deck and then i ask them what would be the most impressive way i can find it for you and i do that in my show so that it just makes it fun for me but also like i

can film that part of the show every week and it's a new thing but also but also it feels like what you're saying it's part of the show that no one ever sees because it depends on what they say in that moment but realistically people only say sort of five different things but to them it feels like it's the first time like that's ever happened because i'll obviously play it off like oh my god no one's ever said to make it be at the top of the deck or

whatever and i think the more you can incorporate that the better absolutely like if i could have someone have an imaginary coin each time to like decide something and you know in hindsight maybe i should but yeah absolutely that's when it becomes real magic.

Yeah totally seemingly yeah you can play that off if i just said like i want you to imagine you're holding a coin give it a flip catch put on your wrist it's going to be a or b what do you see and they go hey great and throw me the cone thanks man and just put it in your pocket like.

You could probably well i mean you do do that nick right with a card like imagine you have a card and you fold it up and you know you literally can do that already with yeah i think sometimes you can sort of you can almost visually prompt people to to say something like i do the you know like like i said before i do the human blockhead so you're hammering a nail in and then you pull it out with the back of the you know like you do you pull it out with the claw yeah and uh what i

tend to do is i hammer it in and then i got to take it out with my hand and then i sort of pause like it's stuck and i'll just kind of pause for a second and then lift up the hammer just slightly because it's in my hand already and nine times out of ten someone in the audience will shout out use the claw and i go use the claw and i go okay and then pull it out and somehow that makes it more amazing and more disgusting and more incredible because it was like

so you know just a loose thing that happened in the moment that's cute yeah those sort of little things but it's just yeah it feels um yeah yeah nick what what is your what's your gig story do you have something i i had a cute moment on Sunday, I was performing at a 60th birthday party and it was great. It was very private function at this beautiful restaurant, a lovely, lovely family.

And I'm performing away and this kid's there and they're kind of following me from table to table and I'm great with kids. So it's the type of thing where they weren't eating or they weren't, I'm like, come on kids, magic show, follow me, follow me. I bring them all back to the kids' table. I do some magic for them and go, look, you got to finish your lunch if we're going to do any more magic, all right? Because I don't want to get in trouble and add this whole back and forth.

And I'm doing that. And I got a great rapport with the kids. I'm only there for an hour. But I remember at the end of the day, this kid's young boy, cute, cute little fella, was just losing it, losing it. And it was, I was in these sort of like, it was like a booth and he was like trying to get out, but he was reaching his arms out towards me to like, to pick him up.

And he was just losing his mind. His mother ends up coming over and pulling him out of the booth and the kid's still losing it with his arms outstretched to me. And she's like, what's up? and I go, I think he wants me to hold him. She's like, here. He didn't even think about it. Just went like, you take this. And I grabbed this kid, dead silence.

Just stop crying and i was like all right cool i just took it for a little walk and then i put it back to the booth i guess you're my kid now yeah i was just sort of like this is awesome like i made a little friend today yeah i just thought that was really cute because i don't know i i i think i've held like a baby my whole life like i wouldn't even know what to do with it you know what i mean it's because i love kids but just when they're running around and swearing not when their little

bags of poop crying and just what's that wow wow oh it's for you like you know yeah yeah when they're running around and they're swearing and they got opinions and stuff like that and they're like unreasonable i enjoy them at that phase that's for me when they're the most fun when everything's going to be off the ground because they're going to reach for stuff you know like i enjoy them at that level so yeah it's when there's this little eating poop factory yeah,

thing it's like yeah they're like larvae you know what i mean before they become a butterfly whatever you just sort of sit in there wrapped up with this kind of like bundle of poop yeah.

Wow and then people say nah man you got it wrong that's really the best and it's like well maybe i'll experience that someday when i become a dad but like yeah but it was just a really cute moment i really it was like the best part of my weekend being able to make friends with this kid or the kid had a nice connection enough with me that he was like, I'm losing my mind.

Help me. Like, I just thought that to have that with kids, you know, you know, I love those little moments where it's like, come on, kids. And one kid grabs you by the hand. It's like, come on, we're going to go to the table and you're going to play with us. And it's like, oh, I made a cute little friend, you know.

Scotty P says, I'm going to ship my turd burger of a nine-year-old to you as we speak. That's Scotty T. We've hit the hour mark, but I had one more thing on my list that I wanted to ask you about, Nick, and it was this amazing product you released some years ago, which was your three-disc Monty. Can we talk about that? Yeah, sure. Three-disc Monty, so it's a variation of the three-card Monty.

It's the one that's actually still performed by scammers it's the one if you go particularly into europe you'll see people out on the street playing it and so i spent quite a bit of time in europe collecting hidden camera footage and then put together a documentary about it so it explains not just the moves but how the con artists work and all the different techniques they have for avoiding getting caught and so on and then and then

with a little routine for magicians and so So I released that about like a decade ago and I still get people asking me about it and still wanting it. So I'm going to re-release that shortly. We're going to have it with a download option because, you know, that's now people tend to want that as well as still the DVD and you get a little set of the discs. I know there's some people selling the discs and they're very pretty. Did they, are they, is it this kind of thing? Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a few of you look up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're like black plastic discs with a white spot on one of them. There's a few people who sell them as a magic prop and they're very pretty and they're really, they look very nice. The ones that I include are the ones, so the design is from a guy, a French guy who uses them on the street. So they're not a magic prop. They're the actual thing that is used on the street.

So these aren't like the hand carved shell game things that are in my collection. And these are the things that the Conas would actually use. So anyway, yeah, I'm setting all that up for digital download and getting the disks made as we speak. Great. And that's going to be available on your website at some point? Yeah. Conman.com.au. That is in the link in the description, Nicholas's website, 100%. Check it out. Well, guys, I mean, I don't know about you. I could talk to the cows home.

I've had the best time, but the hour is up. Mr. Nibido, is there anything we want to say before we wrap up and throw it to the final word? No, look, I just think between last week having Mario the maker magician and now having Nicholas J. Johnson, I just, you know, hope you guys are absorbing all of this awesomeness that I've been absorbing. And hopefully now we are a little wiser to look out for these scams. And I think the best way to end this episode is by giving our guest the final word.

Important thing that I recently learned is don't touch people when you're performing without asking them first, because they really don't like it. Ask people before you touch them.