Confidence Trick

A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual operating alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté or greed.

Read more about Confidence Trick:  Terminology, History, Vulnerability To Confidence Tricks

Famous quotes containing the words confidence and/or trick:

    The root of the problem is not so much that our people have lost confidence in government, but that government has demonstrated time and again its lack of confidence in the people.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    If thou must love me, let it be for nought
    Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
    “I love her for her smile—her look—her way
    Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
    That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
    A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)