Scam World is a big place, encompassing everything from investment fraud to everyday rip-offs. Setting out to discover its strange geography, Zeke Faux ('the funniest finance writer in America' - Matt Levine) takes notes at stadium-sized motivational conferences where paying audiences learn that the only way to reach your dreams is to sell, by any means necessary. He goes undercover, taking a job at a shady Florida call-centre operation fueled by social media ads that 'go out and find the morons for me'.
Crossing the globe from India to Dubai to Thailand's Golden Triangle, where gangsters have built an entire city of scams, he explores the psychology of the con artist. What drives someone to choose a life of ripping other people off? And what makes us fall for them? (As one victim of a $100,000 fraud tells him, 'Once my scammer told me how I could make 30% overnight, working for $20 an hour seemed like the real scam.')
From Mar-a-Lago to White House, from Wall Street to your street, this is the story of how the 'sell or be sold' mindset went from being a sign of sociopathy to a marker of success.