There’s a (perhaps apocryphal) gambling scam that goes something like this:
Scammer takes a large list of people and divides it in two. Half of the list are sent a prediction “team X will win this week”; the other half get the opposite prediction, “team X will lose”. After the result is known, the scammer discards those who were sent the wrong prediction, divides the remainder of the list in two, and repeats. After several iterations they have a short list of people who believe the scammer makes predictions with 100% accuracy.
Wikipedia calls it a “Football Picks” or “Inverted Pyramid” scam (and calls it a “theoretical scam usually seen on TV” suggesting it might be apocryphal as you say).
Nothing as cool as the Pigeon Drop or Spanish Prisoner. It’s been called an inverted pyramid scheme, or the horse pick con, but it’s not like any long con in that there’s no identified mark – there’s a pool of potential marks, and you don’t know which one will be the “winner.” If I had to come up with a name, I might call it the Elimination con, or maybe March Madness.
I first heard about it 40 years ago as a trick used by a “colourful Sydney racing identity” in the 30s and 40s. As a refinement he never asked for pre-payment for tips, the mark just had to have a bet for the conman. Because they only paid for winners that they backed they felt that it was legit.
The same guy pulled an even better scam in 1940 when *Old Rowley *won the Melbourne Cup. Each year in Australia there are thousands of Melbourne Cup Sweeps run. Prizes are allotted on various scales according to the size of the field. The conman thought that Old Rowley would win and wanted to have a substantial bet on it although it was 100/1 so he sold “sweep” tickets" and told everyone that they had drawn Old Rowley. He then put all the money on the horse. When it won he collected 101 pounds for every pound he bet and paid out less than 20 to each “winner.” Having won the sweep they were all happy.
I’ve always heard this called “The Raindrop Scam”. I.e., if you sprinkle enough drops around, one of them will hit. I thought that was what it was called on a “Math Net” episode. But Googling suggests this is not at all a common term for it.
I’ve heard this called “Newsletter Scams”, and aimed at investors, trying to fool them into thinking they have an uncanny ability to pick winning stocks.
