[I still care]

When you run into a REAL conman, you never know it until damage has been done somewhere. They look you straight in the eye, smile, tell the most believable lies, and are totally immoral - they don’t care if you drop dead from what they do.

For years I was friends with a family who had one for a brother. He stayed over their house for several months once, and they had no idea what was going on until the police showed up on their doorstep the week after he left.

They get away with it by unbelievable chutzpah. For weeks after, they were answering the door to poor slobs who had been sold things they’d come to pick up and already paid for - the same item for each person.

When the family went to clean out his apartment, three people showed up who tried to move in. He was a renter, and had posed as the landlord to several people - took their deposits, etc and told them all to move in on the first.

[PGalt]

When you run into a REAL conman, you never know it until damage has been done somewhere. They look you straight in the eye, smile, tell the most believable lies, and are totally immoral - they don’t care if you drop dead from what they do.

Exactly. It's easy to be caught up in their clever web of deception. When the realization hits you, often great damage is done to you, or to those that have trusted you, or to those that you love. The conman often scams you last, as you unwittingly become the point man for the projection of his credibiltiy...part of his plan to get at other unsuspecting victims.

[Question_Assumptions]

Do some web searches on psychopaths. You can find an interesting description of them here (I don't endorse that whole web site, by the way). Researchers estimate that they make up 4% of the population or more and may account for 50% of all violent criminals. This is one of those stories that the press doesn't want to touch because it brings into question two strong liberal beliefs -- that human behavior is a product of nurture not nature (psychopaths actually think differently and react differently in ways that can be measured) and that criminals can be reformed (phychopaths are notorously difficult to reform and reform attempts that focus on compassion and empathy often make them more likely to commit more crimes. Once you've read some descriptions of pyschopaths and how they think, the nutty things that people do in the news makes a lot more sense. It not that everyone is going bad. It's that phsycopaths are very adept at playing a system that tries to be compassionate and understanding yet can't imagine a person with no conscience, no remorse, and no interest in being reformed or changing.