as popular as ever , keeping the tradition of debt resolution throughout history , but adapting to the age of online banking .
Despite cities turning into mega centers and swindlers growing in numbers , the victims of devastating fraud remain the same . In the 19th century , grafters targeted people with money and reputations to protect . Today , cybercriminals target the employees of corporations with money and reputational capital at stake , especially employees with access to sensitive data . Directors of telephone companies , bank managers , military officers and priests are targets with the power to infect company servers with phishing email links or create credibility for the fraudster and scheme .
No doubt Tom Bell chose Magistrate John Stockton carefully to facilitate his fraud , as Stockton had valuable influence within the community where Bell was committing his crimes . As the dawn of cyber criminals boomed , whaling — targeting only the highest and most powerful company members with phishing emails — caused multiple scandals and losses . Russian hackers , for example , targeted the 2016 Democratic election campaign Chairman John Podesta with a phishing link that gave them access to the valuable Clinton campaign emails , compromising sensitive information the Democrats did not want made public .
Fraudsters today , like those of yore , also target vulnerable people , like elderly persons suffering from cognitive decline or technophobia . As phone calls are the most common way scammers reach modernday victims , generations who grew up without access to mass communication technology unknowingly fall victim to primitive scams . Scammers prefer older people due to their relatively lower ability to detect fraud compared to younger people . Criminals posing as healthcare providers sell elders useless medicines at high prices . Lottery and mortgage scams fool older people into giving up personal information in anticipation of a reward , allowing the scammer to hack into bank accounts and tax reports .
Baby boomers tend to trust strangers more readily than members of more recent generations trust them . Swindlers , who can even be family members or close friends , leverage their relationships to gain access to savings and trust accounts , alter wills and sign deeds . They can also tap into the retirement funds of the elderly , which are typically larger than those of younger generations , since they have been saving for a longer period of time . Swindlers pretending to be grandchildren have taken large sums from grandparents . Trust is abused with grandparents sending fortunes to people they believe are legitimate family members . Like patent medicines of old , fake anti-aging products meet a ready market among the aging and aged alike . Many victims do not know they have been fleeced or how to report the fraud to the relevant authorities .
Then as now , greed helped grafters to find suckers who thought they could get rich quick . In the 19th century , carnival gooseneck games lured men into betting on whether an odd or even number resulted from a feat of strength . The operator , though , determined the outcome and would bait the victim with easy wins to grow the pot until it had risen enough for the operator to win the rigged game . The get-rich-quick scams , so popular in the 19th century that entire newspapers were dedicated to promoting them , have turned mostly into promotion scams , with fake promoters claiming the victim has won a prize or providing the person with a unique financial opportunity . Requesting an upfront payment to receive the gift or personal information required for delivery , scammers can use people ’ s blindness in the face of prizes to make a quick buck or fund a larger scam .
Bernie Madoff was not alone in targeting specific cohorts or communities , such as American Jews , when conducting his fraud . Modern-day scammers target distinct ethnic , racial , religious or professional communities due to their highly trust-based cultures . Swindlers leverage economic contractions — national , sectoral or regional — to exploit people desperate for work . For example , Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing ( FHTM ) was a 2001 scam promoted as a marketing opportunity . More than half a million members paid a small upfront fee to access purported products and services , gaining discounts and the rights to sell them . FHTM was ultimately discovered and stopped , with most products being pre-existing commodities such as Dish TV and tax bots .
Swindlers leverage anyone with lower levels of financial literacy , rendering victims unable to recognize unusually good propositions as scams . As traveling conmen preyed on primitive communication networks in the early 19th century , modern-day swindlers target groups like the Amish or unhoused , who are not embedded in modern communication systems . Despite major technological advancements , the victims and communities affected by fraud have remained much the same as they were 200 years ago .
It has been over 275 years since Tom Bell walked into the Princeton tavern with an eye for fraud . Since then , white-collar crime tactics have evolved to meet socioeconomic and technological changes while the underlying strategies have remained largely unchanged . As new forms of electronic transfers and communication develop , cyber-criminals will no doubt continue to create new tactics to steal money from victims while relying on greed , ignorance and other vulnerabilities as their predecessors have done for centuries .
Samuel Stein is a senior at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in California . His current research interests are financial fraud and the history and evolution of economic and financial crimes . He is starting college in Fall 2025 , potentially majoring in economics and / or accounting and finance . Thanks to Financial History editorial board member Robert E . Wright for serving as the academic advisor for this article .
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Meier , William M . Property Crime in London : 1850 – Present . Palgrave Macmillan . 2011 .
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