As the story goes, Detective Chief Inspector Harry (Henry) Mann of the Western Australian police was wined and dined at London’s swanky Cafe Monaco in the early years of the twentieth century. His genial hosts were from a group of Australian con men with records longer than the arms of everyone at the table. The cafe was their London hangout and distribution centre for the proceeds of crime. Cop and crims were obviously well known to each other and this strange moment says a lot about the relationship between the police and the Down Under dupers who dominated Britain’s confidence games for decades.

In the years directly before the Great War of 1914–18, right through to the end of World War II in 1945, there were more Australian con men on British police registers than those of any other nationality—by a long shot.^[i] They were recognised as highly skilled exponents of their nefarious schemes and were very successful. When caught, many had what amounted to small fortunes in their bank accounts and stuffed into the upholstery of their expensive furniture and cars—and they were just the stashes the police found. No self-respecting trickster would be without a secret hidey-hole or two for the inevitable emergencies. Bags of cash were essential to set up the bigger cons and to fund the lavish lifestyles needed to impress rich marks.

And there were plenty of them. Especially after World War I, Britain, Europe and the United States were awash with money flowing through newly opened international financial channels and connections. Business deals and schemes were being rolled out around the world in oil, minerals and a hundred other lucrative enterprises. A lot of people made a lot of money—and often spent it lavishly and ostentatiously. Perfect pigeons for gangs like London’s Hanley Mob, among others working the same rackets.

Sometimes the wealthy individuals suckered in were themselves con men of a kind, wheeling and dealing in the white-collar areas of finance and investment. But they were rarely found out and, if they were, could usually buy their way out of trouble. Eventually, their activities would play a part in the great stock market crash of 1929 and the deep depression that followed. But, for now, it was not only an era of excess and indulgence, it was also the golden age of the con.

The fix was in.

Just how and why Australians became the main exponents of the con in Britain, and sometimes Europe, is a mystery. Operators like Bludger Bill Warren, Dictionary Harry (Harry Harrison) and Dave the Liar (David John Lewis) excelled in new and clever versions of classic cons. These included the infallible betting system (and its variant known as ‘the brass’), ‘the pay-off’ (and an adaptation known as ‘the rag’), and other scams large and small also perfected by the cons from Oz. In one celebrated operation, Bludger Bill and some accomplices took down the immensely wealthy English shipping magnate, Sir Walter Cockerline, for more than £20,000—just under $2 million—in 1923.

At the time for—let’s say—professional reasons, Bill was sojourning on the continent. He’d fleeced a businessman in Portugal of £15,000 and found it necessary to fade away, turning up on the French Riviera. Here, the normally foul-mouthed Bill with his strong Australian accent became the owner of a South African diamond mine or three. Employing his practised skills, Bill checked into the same expensive hotel as Sir Walter, and soon made a good friend of him. Only a day or two later, Bill introduced Sir Walter to an acquaintance who was, quite coincidentally, a guest at the same hotel. The acquaintance was an American oil king. 

After getting to know each other a little more, the convivial trio visited Monte Carlo for some wagering at the tables. As they refreshed themselves with a coffee, the oil king noticed a man he described as ‘the biggest bookmaker in the United States’. The bookmaker, whose betting limit was said to be ‘the blue sky’, was invited to the table and was soon a member of the affable group. 

It wasn’t long before the conversation was about betting on the gee-gees. Bill and the oil king placed big bets through the bookmaker and invited Sir Walter to join the fun. By day’s end, the bookmaker was pleased to tell the informal syndicate that they had netted £170,000 in winnings. 

It was time for the sting.

When settlement of the bets was due, Bill, very annoyed, informed Sir Walter that the bookmaker’s club through which he had laid their bets would only pay up when the punters proved they could show they were men of substance. ‘But’, said Bill, flashing a large wad of cash, ‘I’ll put up the “cover”’, as it was called. Being gentlemen, of course, the others couldn’t allow Bill to pony up the full amount of their joint obligation so they each wrote personal cheques for £25,000. 

Sir Walter then had to return to England before the group’s winnings were drawn. Soon after he arrived, he received a wire from France. Bill was embarrassed, naturally, but he’d had a spot of bad luck and was temporarily short of £12,000 of his share of the cover. Would Sir Walter possibly be so good as to advance him that sum until the winnings were available? Completely conned, Sir Walter obligingly wired the money to Bill and never heard from the diamond magnate again.

Until the French police caught up with Bill and his wife in Paris. They had fled there in a newly purchased luxury car after another mark had complained to the authorities. When the police raided the con man’s apartment they found stashes of bank notes in various European currencies, as well as share certificates and a lot of diamonds being worn by Bill’s wife. The expensive car was also full of loot.

One of the advantages of being a confidence trickster was that the risk of being caught was very low compared with most other forms of crime. Victims were often too embarrassed to admit they had been so easily fooled and often reluctant to report their loss to police. Even when they did, it was often difficult for prosecutors to make winnable cases because the nature of the transactions could often be represented as commercial business deals, gambling wins and losses, or gifts. There was rarely a paper trail documenting what happened, whatever that had been. In the case of Bludger Bill, the French court in which he was brought to book was at first reluctant to admit the case at all, as the prosecution failed to establish Bill’s true identity, even with help from Scotland Yard. The wily fraudster also maintained that his arrangement with Sir Walter had been a commercial matter.^[ii]

This and the odd loophole in the laws of the various countries in which the Aussies operated meant that they often escaped conviction. The only recourse available was to prosecute them for fraud under civil law, a course taken by several victims who had the financial resources required. No that this made much difference to their finances. Bill and his accomplices were tried and convicted, spending some more years in a French prison. It’s unlikely any of their victims ever saw their money again.

Confidence tricksters are a special type of criminal. They depend on their wits, powers of persuasion, and the gullibility and greed of their ‘marks’, or victims. They have been fleecing the foolish forever and will never stop. Their wiles and ploys are complex and clever, as well as despicable. As one writer on the subject put it in 1935: ‘in its higher reaches the art of the confidence trick is a subtle science demanding more than common qualities of nerve and brain—or if you like a front of brass and a fertile cunning. Steal a fiver and you get thrust into gaol; steal a million and they build you a monument. That is the creed of the master of craft.’^[iii]

Con artists are generally considered to be elite criminals who avoid violence in favour of elaborately researched and constructed frauds usually perpetrated against those who most people think are too wealthy for their own good. That includes the averagely paid police officers tasked with tracking con artists down. Chief Inspector Mann was in London to visit colleagues at Scotland Yard and swap intelligence on the roots and scams of the con men well known to them all. They were few enough in number to be recognised by police who often had an ambivalent relationship with them. The hunters and the hunted shared a bond of common interest in crime, even if from different perspectives. The diners at Cafe Monaco were all aware of their roles that night but suspended hostilities for a few convivial hours, each no doubt hoping to learn something to his advantage from the event. 

Confidence tricksters also need to keep up with changing times. The Australians were at the forefront of the new, twentieth-century breed of operators. A few gentlemen thieves and suave manipulators of an earlier age were still around but had largely been succeeded by a brasher, often more proletarian crim, better suited to the world of self-made millionaires, often with colonial connections. The same skills of deceit and manipulation were used to rob the rich and had evolved, from the lowliest short con to the most sophisticated long con, into finely staged performances in which the star was also the mark.

The con men, and some women, weren’t exactly benefiting the poor but they did not batten onto everyday mugs. Not worth the trouble, of course. Since that time, scams and cons have increasingly targeted you and me through the internet and mobile phones. We’re not filthy rich but there are an awful lot more of us and it’s all so easy to play the Nigerian money scam, for example: simply the modern form of an ancient con known as ‘the Spanish prisoner’. These tawdry rorts employ the tricks of deception, diversion and persuasion used by the earlier fraudsters, but they are crude echoes of a much cleverer and more artistic form of criminality. The old-time operators weren’t known as ‘con artists’ for no reason.

^[i] W. Meier, Property Crime in London, 1850–Present, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2011.

^[ii] ‘Warren’s arrest’, The Evening Star (Dunedin), 10 July 1923, p. 4. According to this report, Bill netted £23,000 from Sir Walter. Dilnot, below, also says £23,000. 

^[iii] George Dilnot, Getting Rich Quick: An outline of swindles old and new with some account of the manners and customs of confidence men, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1935.