The sympathetic con artist and the despicable con artist.

Several works have used a con artist or a team of them as the protagonist(s).

But what if the antagonists are also con artists?

What is an effective way of separating the protagonists from the antagonists?

edited 21st Jan '15 3:03:24 PM by Worlder

The simplest way is that the protagonist cons the corrupt, the wealthy and criminals in general while the antagonistic conman takes advantage of the poor, needy and miserable. Also helps if the good conman has a code of conduct of some sort and sympathetic motivations (like feeding his family or a Freudian Excuse). The good conman could also donate part of his earnings to institutions and hospitals, while the evil conman obviously wouldn't.

what he said

The sympathetic con-artist takes advantage of the incredibly stupid (like the man who spent $1000.00 on E-Bay for an AIR GUITAR) thus performing community service of depriving idiots of money that they didn't deserve in the first place.

A despicable con-artist takes advantage of the desperate and needy.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it's not only the type of victim that matters, but how much the con artist steals from them. Stealing a few million from a billionaire is something an audience might be inclined to forgive. Stealing the man's entire fortune and leaving him destitute is not (unless he's an Asshole Victim of the highest possible calibre).

You also might want to consider motive—the sympathetic conman is either a Robin Hood figure, or needs the cash for other reasons, be it buying himself out of a dangerous debt, saving a loved one, what have you. The despicable con artist is Only in It for the Money and/or just gets his kicks manipulating people.

If you haven't watched Leverage, by the way, I'll suggest that you do so. Very good show about a group of conmen whose victims definitely have it coming.

edited 21st Jan '15 10:02:04 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

What about in the case where one conman does it for selfish reasons, but the other uses the funds to provide dangerous militias with weapons?

The benevolent, the selfish, and the malicious. I should keep that keep that in mind when writing a story.

edited 21st Jan '15 10:55:24 PM by Worlder

Seconding everyone who said to make the good ones people who take advantage of greedy people with too much money and the bad ones people who take advantage of the poor and desperate.

Also, maybe you can make the good conmen much bolder than the bad ones - where the bad ones direct pyramid schemes or scam people over the phone/internet from a distance, the good ones at least have the balls to talk to their victims face-to-face, in the process verifying that they really are bad enough people to deserve it.

You can also have the good ones give their victims an escape clause ("Are you sure you want to do this?") before closing the deal.

edited 26th Jan '15 8:04:48 PM by Wheezy

There is another type of target beyond rich jerks that can be good to target: Other con artists. The series Kurosagi is a great example of this, with the protagonist being a swindler who only hunts swindlers.

Anyway, it's a matter of who you steal from (aka what your Caper Rationalization is) & who you impact with your actions. One's attitude towards things can be a difference maker too.

Also, a tactic that can be used, working from the above suggestion with the escape clause, is to focus the con so the mark destroys themselves. The best cons highlight why the mark is evil in the first place and depend on that, making the mark the (partial) architect of their of their own destruction.

edited 2nd Feb '15 2:57:40 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

Many Real Life con games target the mark's greed and some even work only on marks that are willing to bend/break laws in order to satiate their greed.

"Count" Victor Lustig, posing as a City Council official, "sold" the Eiffel Tower to a bunch of Parisien scrap metal merchants who were not only greedy for the money they'd get for the metal (both in scrap and historical value) but were all willing to bribe him to choose their tender - he never took the money they offered for the purchase, just the bribe money.

Greed and the willingness to bribe a local government official.

He also "leased" a "Matter Duplication Machine" to numerous peopre who couldn't wait to get their hands on it and churn out duplicates of large-denomination bank notes for a year - and many were offering to buy it off him the minute they found out what the machine could (supposedly) do - they settled for merely leasing it later.

Greed and the willingness to commit undetectable forgery at an atomic level...

Think in terms of what you want your despicable targets to crave (needless to say, if they're despicable, they're greedy) and how far they're willing to go to get it and have your sympathetic con artist work his/her cons around that.

Go find Paper Moon, and The Sting. Watch them. Take notes.

The Sting is awesome. Never heard of Paper Moon, I'm going to have to track that down myself.

Actually, I'll add more to the "Greed" thing because, as nice as that sounds, it can be a bit misleading with relation to understanding con artists. Or more, perhaps, knowing this here might help you all the more in separating the sympathetic one from the despicable one.

There are tons of cons that do focus on greed and you can write a con artist who rationalizes themselves on those grounds. However, it's less that greed is the key factor that makes cons work and more desire that's being played on. Don't believe that whole "You can't con an honest man" bullshit. Anybody can be conned. It all comes down to taking advantage of someone's traits, whether that be their desire for money, companionship, loneliness, compassion, poor health, and so forth. Above all else, here is the true lesson a con artist should know: Where there is desire, there is vulnerability. Where there is vulnerability, there is a way in.

Beyond that, think about how writing an anti-hero works. It's all tapping into the same elements. Just a question of how they go about it. The Sting, for example, works incredibly well since the con artist crew are avengers against someone who killed one of their own. Really, motivation and action are a major thing here. That's one reason why I say the Caper Rationalization can be the difference maker at time when writing in this genre.

edited 3rd Feb '15 4:58:34 AM by Prime_of_Perfection

I fully agree. Hence why I said "many" and "some" rather than "all".

I was just suggesting that if the marks in this case are crooks - and most likely are crooks because of their own greed for others' money - a con that specifically targets greed and plays on their own lack of qualms about breaking the law would be a good gambit for the sympathetic con.

If the crooks are targeting honest folk - playing on any of the honest/understandable desires/vulnerabilities you mention in your post - then the crooks are going to be undeniably "despicable" and the "crooks" that take them down will come across as more "sympathetic".

Oh I got you entirely there, I just wanted to build on the foundation you setup for the two different types of con artists!

I can give another quick resource while I'm here to help you in coming up with stuff: Dungeons and Dragons. To be precise, see if you can find the Complete Thief Handbook (it's not difficult to find online) as it has all kinds of stuff that can be used for inspiration. The Complete Scoundrel can also be of use for getting your imagination working on both sides.