A short while ago, a man walked into a Boston police station bearing good news and bad news. Apparently, as a demographic, police officers are not very adept at keeping up with their cell-phone payments. The bad news was that the man � we'll call him Bob � was there to collect outstanding phone bills. The good news was that the company Bob worked for a collection agency � was offering a one-time-only deal. If the officers coughed up immediately, they would have to pay only a fraction of what they owed.

The opportunity seemed too good to pass up, and by the time Bob had finished brandishing his brochures and business plans, many of the cell-phone deadbeats wanted in. Forms were signed. Bills were paid. Receipts were shown. Cash changed hands. Bob was gone. A few weeks later, however, some odd things started happening. Cell-phone bills continued pouring in. Worse still, there were rumblings of fraud. The officers bills, it turned out, had been paid with a dodgy credit card. Somebody call the police! Oh, wait ...

Chances are, as you read this you are not shaking your head and tut-tutting. Chances are, you are smiling. This, after all, is a great con. Bob was clearly a pro: he did research, he used props, he had a great line of patter, and he had balls the size of a Volkswagen Bug. You've got to love him.

Indeed, no matter how much we'd gripe and groan if we were to get taken like this, most of us delight in a clever, well-executed con. We are especially delighted when the trick targets someone seemingly unconnable. We are left with a feeling of amazement and wonder, not unlike the feeling we get when we see David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear “How did he do that� With his cell-phone scam, Bob hit con-game pay dirt. As Boston fraud detective Steven Blair says, “It must have been a thrill pulling one over on the cops�

Quite. But not such a thrill for the cops, maybe. For one thing, they know they're unlikely to get much sympathy, even from their fellow men in blue. “If you fall for this stuff, Â� says a local officer, “Jesus, what kind of dope are you?�

The truth is, you don't have to be a dope to fall for a con trick. As with many crimes, there's a temptation to blame the victim, to comfort ourselves with the notion that we would never fall for something like that. But anyone can get taken, even trained police officers. Actually, cops might be especially vulnerable. Scam artists prey on complacency, and cops have that attribute built in.

Scam artists also prey on greed, the desire to get something for nothing; and Bobs cell-phone ****ers were not immune to that. Who is? If someone offers you free money, why, you take it. The only catch is, con games are invariably set up in such a way that to make (or, in the cops case, save) money, you first have to part with money. It's a proposition that should set the alarm bells ringing, yet people have been falling for this stuff for millennia. Why?

First, we have to take a look at what a scam is. This is more difficult than it sounds. The con game is a nebulous thing. Even the law doesn't have a firm grip on what constitutes a scam. Sometimes its treated as larceny, sometimes as fraud. Basically, a crime becomes a con when there is some sort of systematic trickery involved when confidence is won through dishonest means. Hence the name.

Because of its amorphous nature, the con game is a crime without a jurisdiction. A list of the agencies that investigate and prosecute scams reads like a bowl of alphabet soup: FTC, FBI, SEC, AG, BBB, SPD ... With so many agencies punishing so many scam artists for so many crimes, its tough to attach figures to current trends in scammery. According to the Alliance Against Fraud, the con game is a $40-billion-a-year industry. And anecdotal evidence suggests that scam artists are at large in record numbers.

Last year, according to the Cambridge Police Department, the city saw a rash of “brick in a box� scams. In one incident, a guy called around saying he was a Best Buy manager. For cash up front, the guy said, he could arrange a nice little deal on a computer. One potential victim grew suspicious and called the cops, who arrested a 29-year-old Medford man. A surprising number of people, though, fall for scams like this, paying good money for boxes stuffed with bricks, newspaper, and blocks of wood.

Jesus, what kind of dope ... This is a common response. But you have to take into account a true con artists talent. A good grifter is an actor, a novelist, a salesman, a psychologist, a psychic, an illusionist, a motivational speaker, a mentor in other words, a skilled liar. A scam artist can impress the hell out of you or have you weeping with pity. Con artists seem to put their trust in you, so you are more likely to put your trust in them. They can make an opportunity seem irresistible and almost out of reach. The very cleverest will have you clamoring for a piece of the action.

"They don't take peoples money,� says author Robert Jay Nash, who has written extensively on confidence tricks. It's foisted on them. The best cons are set up like, Get away from me, why should I let you in? You don't part with your money, you're begging him to take it. Its a human trait: the more you are denied something, the more you want it.

In the grips of a skilled con artist, everyone is a potential victim. And for the artist, the smarter the mark, the bigger the thrill. According to Cambridge Police sergeant Frank Pasquarello, for instance, rings of grifters who delight in scamming MIT and Harvard students have recently been operating in Cambridge.

“Con men have a perverted sense of humor, says Nash. “They feel superior to the top deans at Harvard and Yale, because these [academics] may have the intelligence, but they don't have the moxie to go out and put it to the test.

And this fact isn't lost on the rest of us. “We have a secret admiration for con artists,� Nash says. “We get a vicarious thrill.

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