Best scam you ever heard of?

Best one I ever heard of was a couple of guys in the early 90's who sold Irish Pound coins to the English at Cheltenham races for 20 quid a go, they claimed that they were commerative medals of Arkle struck by the Irish Government!:D:D:D

The Irish Gubberment convinced lots of unknowing Irish suckers it would be a great idea to invest in the newly privatised Eircom, making them a killing, which they duly wasted.

Not sure if this is true or not but there was a hacker in the states in the 80's who hacked a couple of banks but he only took 0.0025 dollars but took it from all bank accounts for years, and bank accounts numbered millions.. never caught either.

* Start a charity, pay yourself six figures. Give the rest to charity.

* Claim to know about the afterlife. Market it.

* Learn some cold reading techniques and pretend to be a psychic.

* Become a hypno-anything. Charge to help people quit smoking, loose weight, feel better. Also sell tapes and mp3s online.

* Sell products that can't possible work. Magnets that cure cancer or some herbal crap to cure baldness.

* Collect money 'for your religion'

* Sell 'fake' autographed sports memorabilia on your website. Offer a 100% refund for any item that fails verification by an expert. 90% of customers won't pay for an expert to inspect it, if someone does, refund the money.

* Sell open source software on a website. Spam it all over the place. So long as you include the original source, you aren't breaking the law, and anyone stupid enough to pay for it isn't going to figure it out.

* Buy a receipt printer. Use it to create receipts that appear 100% authentic to use for whatever you can imagine. For example - most places will only exchange software/media for the same title. So you buy some new game, install it, then take it back saying there is something wrong with the disk and you want an exchange. They'll give you a new copy of the game - but they'll almost always give you a new receipt or draw/mark up your old one. Then you go home and recreate the original receipt. Now you return to the store (preferably a different branch of the same store) with the unopened game and the receipt. Then tell that store your Grandmother got it for you not realizing you already have it. Be sure to point out you haven't opened it. Now you get your money back or a store credit and you repeat.

* If you don't use wifi or if you have an extra (or just fancy) router - you can give out free wifi. Without encryption, if you live in the city, it won't be long before people start to connect and use it. Naturally, you'll be sniffing their traffic and collecting username/passwords, performing MITM attacks on HTTPS and logging all of it. It's insane how many people will connect to an open network and then think that as long as they see 'https://' they can do anything and be safe. They'll gladly say 'OKAY' to any certificate warnings that pop up and do online banking and everything else you can imagine - all on your network.

* Get a legit student-id when you aren't a student (so you can get student discounts). There are lots and lots of universities all over the world that are now offering online degrees. Many of them are also traditional universities. If you have a student's name and id number; you can fax in a request and include your picture and ask them to mail an ID to you. Granted, you need some information and some balls to do it; but it absolutely does work. The best part is - they charge the student's account that you are faking! I know the specifics of one university where this would work - but I'm sure lots of others are the same.

The downside is, you are sending in a picture of yourself for it to look real. Anyway, take your fake student id, print out a fake class schedule, and get yourself a 100% legit student travel card. Enjoy discounts on everything.

* Get a friend (who is in on the scam) who is going out of town and has his own place. While he's gone (perfect alibi), you 'break in', take pictures of the place, and list it on Daft.ie or some other website. List it at a reasonable, but low price to get lots of interest. With the rental market how it is, you'll have a lot of interest (assuming your in a city). People will show up with money in hand to secure the place. Anyway, people will say, 'We'll take it' and you'll say, 'Okay - sounds good. I'll just need your deposit...and you can move in anytime after Monday.' Then you take their money and write a rent-receipt, give them a copy of the lease to 'look over' and sign and say you'll be there on Monday (or whenever they want to move in) to sign the lease.

Naturally, you take their money. With any luck you'll get quite a few people paying deposits or parts of deposits and expecting to move in. All the information you give them is fake and when they come back to the house, your friend is there and says he knows nothing about anything. Gardia gets called and they conclude someone broke in, take a description, make a report, and you and your friend are off the hook. Avoid your buddy's house for a while after that. Split the money 25/75 in your favor. Don't repeat with the same guy though.

If you have serious balls, break into someone's house while they are away and do the same thing.

* Identity theft

* Get some really cheap knock-off merchandise - then make up a story how you are a delivery guy/warehouse guy and it a surplus showed up, but you'll be in a mess if they find out you signed for too many. Whatever. Let people think you are stealing it and selling it too them at a good price. (This sounds ridiculous, but it was very successful in the US (http://pdxkaraokeguy.hubpages.com/hub/I-Fell-Victim-to-the-White-Van-Speaker-Scam)). In fact, you are selling low quality junk to people who don't know any better but won't mind paying cash, in a hurry, because they think it's 'hot'.

Heard of a lad who lived over in London in the 1960's who made a fortune selling blue and purple Smarties wrapped in tinfoil to mods.