PG - What I Learned As A Con-Man - Master Chen

all hello everyone how you doing today okay well I'm not going to do that thing where I say I you can do better than that how are we doing today no okay hey it worked anyway see I con you already all right my name is master Chen or Nick Rosario and today I'll be talking about what I learned as a con artist so I hope you enjoy I guess we could start by uh letting you know who I am I am a chen of all trades and a master of nothingness it's kind of like a Zen thing that I have going on uh it's really hard to do actually we could talk about that later um I got started in sales and

martial arts so I used to run my own martial arts school and so I'd have to you know find new clients sign up new people and this is where I learned a lot about sales about talking to people about social interaction um and just getting to know people and getting inside their heads and from there I went on to getting a psychology degree or I'm working on getting a psychology degree uh next uh next fall so uh I also like to hack VoIP uh asterisk specifically uh you might have seen me in 2600 uh these are the two articles dealing with VoIP in 2600 and so that's just a little bit of who I am um I'm currently a gaming

surveillance operator at uh MGM specifically New York New York and there I also learn a lot about body language as well uh catch Blackjack cheaters um people who like to cap bets or try to sneak in uh illegal cheating tools that's what I look out for and so that's pretty much what I'm doing now all right so what makes a con successful well I believe that you have four things to make a con successful you need to know your mark and we'll get into what a mark is in a second you need to know your mark you need to have information flow control which means uh to have every aspect of what you're doing controlled by you uh Plan B all

all the way to plan z uh you need patience you need to relax you need patience because it'll all come down uh con stands for confidence so you need confidence in yourself and you also need to have their confidence in you as well um now you might be wondering about the picture up here uh I actually didn't start working for MGM until 2012 um but I snuck into the holiday party at uh in 2007 so you'll see me there on the right and then my cousin in the middle and then my best friend on the left or I think that's your left that's your right um we actually snuck in just because we were decently dressed and they didn't

card us or anything so it was that simple and and that's the thing that I want to talk about today is that conning is very simple you don't have to run a Ponzi scheme even though I I never have I think I could with the right amount of tools and resources um and so we'll move on from there so before we get into some of my examples today uh we're going to talk about useful terms uh the first one is the mark you might have heard this in watching TV uh like Leverage or some of my favorite TV shows White Collar the Mark is basically your target the person who has the assets that you want to grab

okay the play is uh your plan your plan of action what you're going to do to con the person out of those assets uh the shill is actually the person who is in on the con but they look like they're just some average joeblow part of the uh part of the audience so I might have a shill in here or two I don't know uh okay so these are not my examples but these are classic examples of cons you might know these uh you have the three card Monte also known as the shell game or the card game where you're looking for the queen among three uh among three playing cards uh now what makes this Con

successful is that you have the shill who's in the audience pretending to look for the queen or the the shell under the cup you know uh under the cup and so they'll they'll conspire with the mark when really they're conspiring with the con or the dealer and actually I see this a lot on the Vegas Strip uh the cops bust them all the time they pull out their foldout tables and they do like a really quick three card Monty And when they see the cops coming they'll run you know I see it every day well I used to uh they don't play so much at night you know like 3: in the morning uh okay so the

second one is called pig and a poke and basically what you're doing is here you're you're showing off a set of merchandise and then when the person buys your merchandise you give them something that's of lesser quality so you you may show them like a like a Coach bag or Louis Vuitton and then the package that you give them is not of the same quality and so that's what you call a pig and a poke uh you might have other examples in your head maybe or you might have heard this before but that's what I think of when I think of this Con uh the third one is the bait and switch this is also another classic con

uh it's similar to number two the pig and a poke but it deals with advertising method so the advertisement gets you into the door and then after that they'll take that deal away and give you something else that's either of lesser value or just something that they wanted from you in the first place so uh I actually have an example of the pig and a poke or not pick and a poke I'm sorry um the bait and switch yeah there you go one

second this is I'm sorry what was that this isn't actually a artist presentation now is it uh I guess you'll have to decide all right so this is a classic bait

switch okay so you see you see what's supposed to happen the dumbass puts on the blindfold they switch and there you [Music] go so that is your example of the bait and switch so when you're finding a potential Mark there there's a couple of things that you got to keep in mind uh every person every single person in this room every single person that you come across is motivated by something that something could be anything money power uh religion lack of religion family friends it's all there um people want to be recognized uh maybe you guys want to be recognized for the software that you write or that you don't write um and you could also have um motivation

could also be gender specific uh women tend to be uh motivated by other things than men and I'm not trying to put people in a in a gender box but uh there are some things that you can look for uh when it comes to gender um so what you're what you're trying to do is you're trying to find that motivation and be that solution you're trying to be that answer and you do that by talking to somebody uh grabbing on their body language uh paying attention to what they say what they do how they say it and you'll notice that when they're really motivated by something you'll you'll hear it in their voice you'll hear it in

the way that they talk about the subject that really interests them and so again your goal is to be that solution be that answer you want to be the way that they can have their dreams accomplished so in a con while the con is going on uh how do you keep control uh what I learned in sales is that you keep control by asking questions you ask questions and it forces them to answer and you you might have heard it before you ask open-ended questions not simply yes or no questions but just uh questions that force them to explain their issue force them to explain their mindset force them to explain what it is that they want and uh along with that

you have to speak less and listen more so awkward silences uh usually give them the feeling that they need to explain something so let them explain let them just keep talking until they tell you everything that you need to know and the third one I wish I brought my towel with me is Don't Panic okay so example number one uh this goes back to high school or yeah I'd say High School freshman year I think that uh is past the statute of limitations um so the example is that guys have Diaries too basically my Mark was a girl that I used to have a crush on um but she didn't have a crush on me back so

[ __ ] she actually had a crush on my best friend U at the time and I was like well [ __ ] so I told her and the Mark was infatuated with my my best friend she just was Head Over Heels about him she wanted to know everything about him and she had these delusions of mutual affection now to her defense maybe he let her on a little bit but in any case I saw an opening to maybe get even I was immature at the time whatever so um she wanted to know why he seemed distant she wanted to know what was on his mind well I was the solution I said yeah he

actually keeps a journal and for some reason he shares it with me so here open this file it's called Journal dobat uh now back then I believe this was Windows 98 SC so the way I wrote the bat file was uh it deleted all other bat files uh batch files in the system so the computer wasn't bootable [Music] afterwards uh she actually paid gate Squad too or whatever was out there at the time I think it was their Best Buy though okay well the example two is uh a lot of my sales tricks that I used to use when uh getting new students for my martial arts school um the first one I call uh respect the nonpresent authority

so basically if I'm talking to somebody about signing up for classes and they're kind of on the fence about signing up I would say okay well let me see if I could work a deal out for you so I would call up some random other martial arts school or not another martial arts school but somebody that's affiliated with me like maybe a a colleague or whatnot and I call them and say Hey you know I got this nice couple here who wants to sign up there a 5-year-old daughter for self-defense classes but they're a little they're a little uh on the fence about signing up I was wondering if we could work a deal out

with them and you know they they'd catch on really quickly because they'd probably be using the same tricks um and they'd be like oh yeah well instead of x amount of dollars a month let's let's go aad and give them $50 a month and they could do all the group classes and private lessons no no problem give them that deal uh so that was the plan originally really we just wanted that money out of you you know um so that's how we got it the when I say nonpresent Authority it's easy to say no to the person who's sitting across from you it's not so easy to say no to the person who's not present who's not there uh

think about like Mr Big or maybe like Deal or No Deal at least that's what comes to mind for me uh the second one is actually my favorite example when it comes to S uh sales I call it the sealed envelope so again uh you have somebody who's on the fence about signing up for classes and what you would do is or what I would do is I would say okay I'll tell you what I I'd invite you to go ahead and shop around talk to other martial arts schools uh see if you can get a better price and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my business card and I'm going to write the price on the back of

the business card I'm going to put it in this envelope I'm going to seal it and I'll keep it sealed you know you'll initial on it and we'll keep it sealed and if you find the price better come back and I guarantee that I'll be a better price no matter where you go no matter where you go in state out of state I will always be the better price I guarantee it so what this does is they'll leave now if they sign up for me uh if they sign up with me or not is not the point the point is that I want them to come back so that I can either have a second chance at talking to them again

or just to prove that I can get them back and this worked probably about four times out of five so they come back and then they'd be interested in you know what happened with the sealed envelope and I'd say okay well let's open it together so we open the sealed envelope and I wish I had a picture of it but basically on the back of the business card I wrote $5 less than where you went but it brought them back it brought them back so that I can talk to them again and maybe have a second chance at selling on them so uh the last one is uh what I don't like to do cold calling I

hate it I really do hate it I hate bothering people at home I hate just picking a number out of a phone book so what I would do instead was i' I'd stand outside by the grocery store handing out uh passes uh you know for free weeks of martial arts maybe a free month or whatever uh when I first started this I was about 16 years old and I got rejected a lot I mean a shitload I'd hand up the the pass and they hand it right back it was almost like playing a trading card game with my own cards so I figured they're saying no to me and I can't take that personally so how do I make them not say no to me

so what I do is I just say I was asked to give this to you so now they're not saying no to me and they're they actually feel more obliged to take it so even if they're not going to sign up with me they took the merchandise um maybe they'll think about it later but the point is that it got them the propaganda it got them the marketing out there so again I say hey I was asked to give this to you and they take it they don't give it back so that's another example all right now example number three is actually uh my favorite example out of all of the examples that I have

uh because it's the most uh intricate it's the most in my opinion wellth thought out uh con that I did um maybe I shouldn't admit to anything here um but let's see so the the Mark was persistent uh I guess I should do a little bit of a backstory here um my cousin is a nurse and she has another nurse friend who was was dating a doctor well you know how that goes uh employee relations doesn't really end well all the time so the she had suspicions of the doctor kind of not playing nice and emailing people that could influence her career so she she thought that the doctor was sabotaging her career by emailing people saying you

know don't don't hire this person don't uh don't continue her promotion and and whatnot so she wanted proof she wanted proof that there was correspondence in his email uh and so she came to me thinking that I was a hacker of hire now yes I'd like to be hack uh I'd like to be hired for uh an information security firm but I'm not a mercenary but maybe I can make it look like I did something so I needed it to look like I like I hacked into the doctor's email I'm not going to hack into a doctor's email I just I don't do that uh so what do I do well I told her I it would take a little bit of time I

told her that you know give me a week or two I'll I'll I'll keep you updated I'll let you know how it goes and actually the waiting game helps out too cuz it gets her to be antsy it gets the mark to be um anxious and that actually plays into getting the results that you want so I made a raid for a little bit um I told her that I was working really hard and I could have showed her screenshots of the command prompt or you know whatever they do now I didn't do all that but what I did was on the last day where I said I'd have it done she asked me for an update and I said oh [ __ ] I

really didn't have anything planned but I said okay it just needs to look like I've hacked into the doctor's email so I sent her a spoofed email using that cat with nothing but uh nothing's in here there's no evidence of uh of anything and she accepted it she accepted that as a fact as you know oh well he hacked into an email and uh there's nothing there no evidence so I guess uh I guess the doctor's honest probably about as honest as I am and so that that's how that turned out and she even paid me for it and and it's it's been so successful that she was actually at my house two days ago uh

so that I can fix your computer and that's another thing about conning somebody you know you've done it right when they have no idea that they've been conned so hopefully nobody sees or hopefully she specifically doesn't see this on YouTube later yeah well that's the end of one friendship now the point and now why am I talking to you guys about this you guys are in the information security field but I say that hackers can be conned too maybe by Me Maybe not by me the point though is going back to the first lesson everybody is motivated by something what is that something for you are you motivated by uh career path uh software and design recognition uh new

technology do you want to get your hands on new technology uh plea Bargains if you're maybe in trouble how do we con you guys into doing things that you might might not normally want to do and so this is more of a rhetorical question for you guys it's a little bit of introspection my point is just everybody can be conned one way or another find the motivation and be that answer and that and that's really my bottom line so again here's some of my recurring lessons every single person is motivated by something fix it know it use it be it Technologic well I had that song in my head I'm sorry um I don't know if I explained it

correctly in my examples but the second point is very important too information flow control at every point so think about like a man in the middle you control what the mark sees you control what the mark doesn't see you control when they see it you control how they see it and that's what makes a con successful uh really that's it is that you control every aspect of information maybe you call it a smoke screen again man in the middle however you want to term it but that's that's what it is um and what makes conning somebody really successful is that people want to see results so much so that they might ignore their skeptical or critical side

so why do we go to magic shows we go to magic shows knowing that we're going to be deceived so automatically going to like let's say pen and Teller or uh Chris Angel which really is a magic show by the way it's a c dislay show with a whole bunch of flipping uh just in case you guys interested uh don't go to that one I would suggest o or maybe zanity P professional experience so um but yeah so why do we go to a magic show because we want to be deceived we want to be conned or deceived in a way we want we want to see that illusion but the point is you don't have to go to a magic show

to be deceived you go to a magic show expecting to be deceived but where else are you deceived that you don't expect it you know uh sales maybe maybe but you also have what's called swindling what's the difference between swindling and sales well with sales you actually get a product in return or product or service in return swindling or conning you give them the money and they walk they sell you snake oil and they leave and then you call up saying where the [ __ ] are you and they're nowhere to be found they've closed up shop and they're out so uh these were my references uh the one on the left is called mining

manipulation by Dr ha halong oh formating got messed up it's okay and then the the one on the right is a probably more familiar book for this community the social engineering book so uh that's pretty much uh what I have [Applause] so and uh I I do believe I have quite a bit of time for uh for questions so if you have any's Poli performance

uh I would say that there are similarities but the thing with you got to remember that a con is basically a confidence game so you're relying on uh a or service or a promise and in the end you don't get it so if you're trying to turn somebody like as an example you're trying to turn a double agent or or whatnot you have to promise something that at least they believe they're going to get uh and that's that's probably where there's a little similarity and maybe a little bit of difference there as well so I I actually don't work in law enforcement although with gaming surveillance uh I do see the FBI quite a bit uh any other

questions okay cool oh yes yes sir so do you have any cool stories about your current job uh yeah I do and actually as long as I don't name names I have uh I have leeway with what I can talk about um a lot of my job is about uh catching card counters so while I'm watching them play I'm actually counting the cards down with them um and that's really the easy part of the job the hardest part of the job is trying to catch somebody who's using a device to help you or to help them win the game so what I'm saying here is uh and I don't condone card counting but I'm going to tell you right

now that it's not illegal so if you do it the worst thing that's going to happen to you is that you're going to be kicked off a property or at least barred from the table they won't let you play Blackjack anymore so if you want to count cards you didn't hear from me but it's not illegal uh but what is illegal is using devices to help you so if you have a card counting app on like let's say your iPhone uh I don't know the specific name of it but there's one where if it's a high count you tap the top of the touch screen and you they usually have it on their lap and if you

if it's a low count you tap the low part of the touchcreen and then it lowers the counts for you and then it'll vibrate according to how you should bet it's actually pretty sophisticated uh I'm an Android guy so [ __ ] that um but yeah so as far as specific stories H God uh hookers oh hookers are are pros at the con game by the way they they do what's called they do what's called trick roll have you guys ever heard of trick roll okay with the trick roll basically they say hey let's go upstairs and uh you know let's have some fun uh just give me $200 up front dumb asses so they go upstairs and while the

dude has his pants around his ankles they grab the wallet the Rolex the money and they're out and they're out quickly I mean screeching out of the parking lot or they get picked up on the side of the of the casino it's ridiculous but you learn a lot from them um another thing that I've learned too though is that well I haven't learned how to prostitute myself but what but I've learned how to you know I've learned what to look for and speaking of which uh I've also learned something that's kind of a side know not really about conning but if you ever see two people get into a fight I found this really interesting which is why I'm

sharing it if you see two people get into a fight uh and from the surveillance equipment one of them starts walking away stick with the person that's not walking away stick with the person keep an eye on the person that's standing there because nine times out of 10 the person who walked away is not done fighting and come back they'll come back to argue more and start more drama so that to me I found that kind of interesting it's a good uh way to analyze body language and and going down that path so uh any other questions about anything uh absolutely you know uh after my time we can definitely talk a lot more so uh

you had a question though sir uh Shaolin martial art Shaolin Kempo um I don't know if you saw the penguin I love tux and I put uh The Shaolin characters on on his stomach I love the monks I actually trained with them uh in China in 2006 for about 2 weeks and then uh we actually have an exchange where we go out there every other year and every other year they come here we fly them out here to train with them uh once a year per every summer so that's kind of cool so I train with the monks and then I go to Defcon or bides uh any other questions if you cat some do you have a ham in

the okay actually here's a little bit of Vegas history uh we don't have that anymore but I will tell you that the last mob-owned Casino was the Stardust uh everything nowadays is corporate uh so you you have two major players on the Strip you have Caesar's entertainment which is where blackhe hat is and then you have MGM uh which owns the other half of the strip so uh like I said I work for MGM and I'm at New York New York specifically um by the way I'm not working tonight so if you go there and count cards it's not my fault but I have other people who are watching um but you have MGM I'm not

going to name them all but you have MGM Arya New York New York Mandalay Bay they're all part of the same company and then you have Caesar's entertainment which is also part of Harris I believe so you have Caesars um uh Venetian yeah exactly so that that's I find that interesting but no no to answer your question no more no more uh hamers no more rubber mallets or anything uh any other questions oh yes of course uh maybe this should have been underg maybe should this should have been an underground talk but this was my first uh Speech so I submitted to uh Proving Grounds uh as long as you're promising something that you can deliver it then

becomes more of like a contract situation where you have um consideration and acceptance and I took a course on Tor law so that's just something that I remember remembered uh but uh that would be something that makes it somewhat legal but don't quote me on that because you are still conning somebody out of something Car Sales exactly thank you sir yes use car sales I would say that's a con game I really would because they're promising something and then in my experience it's subpar it's not really what they're promising and it's legal so yes that that's your that's your example use car sales uh well sure any other questions or you know we can talk after as well oh

yes well for the for the example of the nurse the example or um she was already desperate she came to me because she wanted to know the answer so bad why why why that's usually questions that you get why why did he do this to me or you know and so that's really their motivation as far as determining somebody's motivation or determining somebody's reason of of of asking something uh you just ask the right questions uh you sit them down and you talk to them face to face face to face is the best way by the way um I know that a lot of social engineering can be done with the phone but what I do is

when I talk to somebody face to face I could pick up on their facial uh Expressions their micro um micro Expressions body language and things like this and then from there I can see maybe what what they're not telling me verbally they're telling me uh in another way um as far as a specific example I can't think of one off the top of my head um but if you give me a couple of minutes I'm sure I can pull out something from my head now whether I'm lying to you or not you'll have to decide uh yes

uh feel you you did you did kind of make me feel but I am very sociopathic no um I I do feel a little bit of remorse but the same question is what I feel worse hacking into a doctor's email potentially violating Hippa or some other regul that I don't know about and then you know potentially really getting myself into a lot more trouble and maybe I am doing this in a way of self-preservation but at the same time I'm kind of looking at the lesser of two evils um and if you really look at her motivation she wants to know okay she wants to know what happened or maybe why it happened and that's all she needs to know she didn't

she didn't need to retaliate she didn't need to uh caused any damage on his end she just needed confidence and the satisfaction that there was nothing there or at least

the how would you feel somebody was ruing well looking back see and that's another thing we still talk that that's a good question but she's actually going for her MCAT in about three weeks and uh her career seems fine to me so well yes to me why did come were you trying to get something from Well here here's another thing too I am not as Elite as everybody who who knows me thinks I am uh and and that's okay I'm not afraid to admit that but I mean you just talk about going to Defcon and everybody's like holy [ __ ] he's a hacker you know and so they say well can you do this can you do that or they see

a movie and they're like well can you do this and can you do that and really that's how she approached me I heard you really this and that can you do this and that and I said well we could try so uh I think I'm out of time but uh I can answer any of the questions right outside I have no time limits so