Author: Moises Naim
_Moises Naim_
Reading time: 22 minutes
Synopsis
Charlatans (2025) looks at why smart people believe obvious scams. It shows the mind tricks and tech weaknesses that make anyone an easy target for bad people. It explores how today’s tricksters use the same old methods as con artists from the past. But now, they spread fast around the world using social media and new technology.
What’s in it for me? Discover why smart people fall for stupid scams, and how to avoid falling for them yourself.
You live in a time with a lot of education, connections, and information. You can check facts very quickly. You have more knowledge than whole groups of people had in the past. But somehow, this is also the best time for tricksters.
Ponzi schemes used to trick only a few people. Now they steal from millions. Fake religious leaders make huge amounts of money. They promise cures for sickness. Some ideas that started as jokes online now make groups of people cause trouble.
The things meant to keep you safe from lies are now used against you. This is because some people understand a worrying truth. Your brain has old ways of thinking. These ‘bugs’ or weaknesses are known by modern tricksters. They know exactly how to use them.
This summary explains how tricksters, con artists, and fake sellers use our old ways of thinking. They do this to cheat millions of people. It’s not if you can be tricked. It’s about which weakness they will use first.
Blink 1 – Wired to be fooled
You probably think you would never fall for a scam. Most people think they are too smart for cults. They think they won’t trust a con artist. They believe they are too logical for conspiracy theories. But smart, educated people are tricked every day. This happens more often than you might think. The hard truth is that your brain has old ways of thinking. These make it very easy to trick you.
For example, people often follow the crowd. This is a strong part of human nature. For people long ago, following the group helped them stay alive. If everyone else ran from something, you ran too. If someone stopped to think, they might have been eaten. But today, this same feeling makes you weak to things like sudden rises in stock prices or fake crypto plans. It also makes you weak to political groups that use lies.
Consider what psychologist Peter Wason discovered. He did a study in 1960. He brought university students to his lab in London. He showed them three numbers: 2, 4, 6. He said these numbers followed a special rule. Their job was to find this rule. They could suggest their own three numbers. He would tell them if their numbers fit his rule. When they felt sure, they could guess the rule. Think about what you would test first. Most people think the rule is ‘add two’. So they suggested numbers like 8, 10, 12 or 14, 16, 18. They wanted him to say ‘yes’.
This shows how your brain works against itself when you try to find the truth. Wason’s real rule was very simple: any numbers going up. The sequence 1, 2, 3 worked. So did 5, 17, 4,000. But the students almost never tried numbers that might show their idea was wrong. They wanted to hear ‘yes’ to feel good. They didn’t want a useful ‘no’. When they got a ‘yes’, they thought they knew the rule. They didn’t realize they were only proving their own small idea. They weren’t finding the full truth.
This mistake in thinking is called confirmation bias. Philosopher Karl Popper studied this for many years. Popper showed that people naturally look for things that prove what they already think. They ignore things that go against it. If you think your lucky numbers win more often, you remember every win and forget every loss. This is why gamblers still believe their method works. It’s also why victims of Ponzi schemes put in more money, even when things start to look bad.
The problem gets worse because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you know little about something, you often feel more sure about what you think. People who know least about money often feel most certain about how money will act. People with very little health knowledge often feel most sure they understand vaccines. You don’t even know you’re not good at something.
Blink 2 – How greed blinds us
Charles Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who was good at talking. In 1920, he found out something amazing. He saw that if you promise people money they can’t really get, and you pay old investors with new investors’ money, then the victims will find more victims for you. In just six months, Ponzi got 15 million dollars. That would be about 250 million dollars today. This type of fraud is now called a ‘Ponzi scheme’. But he didn’t invent it.
The Ponzi scheme works because it uses different mind weaknesses. It’s not about following the crowd or proving what you already think. It uses your greed. But it also uses your fear of missing out. And you tend to trust people who seem successful. When you see others getting the money they were promised, the plan looks real.
Those first winners become your salespeople without even knowing it. They talk about their earnings at parties and family meetings. When the money plan finally fails, the trickster has usually run away with millions.
Charles Ponzi was arrested almost 100 years ago. But a young Turkish businessman, Mehmet Aydın, showed that the same trick still works well today with computers. In 2016, Aydın started Çiftlik Bank. This means ‘Farm Bank’ in Turkish. The app told users they could buy fake cows. Then they could earn huge amounts of money from fake milk and meat.
This sounds silly. Who puts real money into cartoon cows on a phone? But Aydın knew something important. If you hide an old trick with new technology, people think it’s something new and clever. They don’t see it as a trick.
Çiftlik Bank promised up to 400% profit each year. Users could watch their fake animals on a smooth phone screen. It felt like playing a farm game. The app sent happy messages about your cows making milk and getting fatter.
The first people who invested got real money. They happily shared this on social media. People in Turkish villages already knew about investing in animals. They were also struggling with money problems. They saw friends and neighbors apparently getting rich from their phones.
By 2018, more than 130,000 people had put in money. Farmers sold their real cows to buy fake ones. Older people took all the money from their savings. Aydın ran away to Uruguay with over one billion dollars. He left a sad lesson behind. Technology changes. The promises change to fit local places. But the way a Ponzi scheme tricks your mind stays the same.
It doesn’t matter if you bought special coupons in Boston in the 1920s. Or fake cows in Turkey in 2016. Or PlusToken crypto in China in 2019. Greed, seeing others do it, and believing it’s new and clever stop you from thinking clearly. The Ponzi trick still works because human nature doesn’t change as fast as our apps.
Blink 3 – Holy fraudsters
Kenneth Copeland is a TV preacher from Texas. He wants you to know something about Jesus. He says Jesus wants him to own many private jets. Not just any jets, but a 65-million-dollar Gulfstream V. He believes regular planes are full of evil spirits.
In 2019, a reporter asked him about this. His eyes got wide. He started speaking in strange languages on TV. His church gets about 300 million dollars each year. People give money because they think God will give them more money back if they do.
The ‘prosperity gospel’ is a special type of trick. It uses people’s faith against them. Ponzi scammers at least pretend to offer an investment. But religious tricksters say they talk directly to God. They promise: ‘Send us money, and God will give you much more back.’ But only the preachers get rich.
In Brazil, Bishop Edir Macedo used this plan to build a huge business. It is worth two billion dollars. His church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, works like a chain of stores. It has over 5,000 churches across Brazil.
Macedo owns the second-biggest TV network in Brazil. He also has big houses, jets, and a lot of money. Even old kings and popes would be jealous. He did this by becoming very good at tricking people’s minds. He made it look like religious work.
This trick is not only used in Christianity. In India, Baba Ramdev made yoga into a billion-dollar business. He mixed Hindu beliefs with claims of amazing health cures. He was born Ram Kisan Yadav. He built Patanjali Ayurved into a very big company in India. It sells many things, from toothpaste to noodles. They are sold with the idea of being spiritually pure.
Millions watch his TV shows. They believe his breathing exercises can cure many diseases. When COVID came to India, Ramdev said his ‘Coronil kit’ could cure the virus in seven days. Thousands were dying, struggling to breathe. But he said modern medicine didn’t work. He said his breathing methods would save lives.
Go to any religious service that promises miracles for money. You will see the same planned show. Many people will tell stories. They say good things happened after they gave a lot of money. They often say ‘sacrifice’. They mean you must give money until it hurts. This is true even if you don’t have much money. They say that pain shows your faith is strong.
These religious tricksters succeed because they use people’s hope when it is weakest. When you are in a very difficult situation, and normal help has not worked, the idea of God helping becomes very attractive. Then add the pressure from other people in the church. Everyone talks about miracles. It becomes hard to think clearly. The prosperity gospel makes faith like a game in a casino. The church always wins.
Blink 4 – Digital delusions
Someone called ‘Q’ posted a secret message on 4chan. This is a website known for jokes and extreme ideas. This was on October 28, 2017. Q said that Hillary Clinton would be arrested in three days. She was never arrested. None of Q’s other clear predictions came true either. But in three years, millions of people around the world believed something else. They thought they were getting secret information. They thought it was from a top government person. This person was fighting a secret war against a group of evil people who harm children.
QAnon worked when many other conspiracy theories failed. It made people’s fear feel like a game. Q did not just state secret truths. Instead, Q posted unclear clues called drops. Followers had to figure out what they meant. These online clues made followers feel like detectives. They felt they were finding secrets. They weren’t just reading someone else’s idea. When you spend hours trying to understand secret messages and finding hidden meanings, you feel part of the story. It’s like you helped make it.
This group became very good at something called participatory propaganda. Normal conspiracy theories tell you what to think. But QAnon asked you to help create the story. Followers made detailed charts. They connected famous people to pizza places and underground tunnels.
They made videos explaining their discoveries. They got family members to join. They said they were saving children. Everyone added their part to a puzzle that kept growing. It could never be finished, because finishing it would end the ‘game’.
Donald Trump knew how to use these ideas of conspiracy. He did this without fully agreeing with them. He was very good at being unclear on purpose. He gave enough support to keep people interested. But he could still say he wasn’t fully part of it. A retweet on social media, a secret phrase. He did these things. When people asked him about QAnon, he would say he heard they were against child abuse. He would ask, ‘Who can argue with that?’ This way, he used the group’s energy. But he did not have to take responsibility for what happened.
The new part was not the ideas. It was how they were shared. Social media programs like when people interact a lot. Nothing makes people interact more than anger and fear. QAnon posts about children in danger were shared more than regular political news. YouTube suggested more and more extreme videos to keep people watching. Facebook groups made places where people only heard ideas they already agreed with. The social media companies made billions. Meanwhile, these conspiracy ideas moved from the internet into real life.
On January 6, 2021, many QAnon followers were part of the crowd. They attacked the US Capitol building. Some wore shirts with the letter Q. Others held signs saying they were saving children. They thought they were heroes in a big fight between good and evil. The secret posts probably started as jokes to cause trouble. But they made real people commit serious crimes.
The QAnon methods are now used everywhere. Groups against vaccines use its talk about saving children. Money-related conspiracy theories use its way of linking things together. At local school meetings, people suddenly accuse others of harming or wrongly influencing children. Once people learn to see hidden enemies everywhere, it’s very hard to stop this way of thinking.
Blink 5 – The mind of a charlatan
You might wonder what kind of person makes complex plans to steal from thousands of people. The hard truth is that successful tricksters have special mind features. Most people do not have these. Experts studied con artists who were caught. They found similar personality types. This explains how these people can trick others. It also explains why they are happy to ruin lives for money.
This starts with what mind experts call the dark triad. These are narcissism, Machiavellianism, and anti-social personality disorder. This was once called psychopathy. Narcissism gives them strong confidence. This lets a trickster promise huge, fake profits without showing any doubt. Machiavellianism gives them a clever way of thinking. They can build complex plans. They can also control social situations to help themselves.
But anti-social personality disorder might be the most important part. Not the extreme type you see in movies. It’s a cold, detached kind. It means they don’t have normal feelings. Brain scans of psychopaths show less activity in parts of the brain. These parts deal with understanding others’ feelings and fear. When Kenneth Copeland takes the last money from a widow, he doesn’t feel sad or bad. You would feel that way. He doesn’t feel the pain of the people he hurts.
Most narcissists eventually fail because they are too proud. But successful tricksters learn to hide their pride. They still think they are better than others. But they act humble or caring when it helps them. Mehmet Aydın knew exactly when to act like a new, clever businessman. And when to act like a good Muslim helping farmers. This ability to change lets them keep their tricks going much longer than normal narcissists.
Tricksters also think in unusual ways. They are often good at being creative and using words. But they are bad at planning for the future. This is why many of them get caught in the end. Bernie Madoff ran the biggest Ponzi scheme ever for many years. But as police got closer, he tried to mail millions in jewelry to his family. He made big, bold tricks because he acted on impulse. This same impulsiveness later led him to make silly mistakes.
Maybe the most worrying thing is how many psychopaths you meet without knowing it. About one percent of people are psychopaths. This means there are about 80 million psychopaths worldwide. Facebook has three billion users. So, you share online space with about 30 million people who don’t care about others’ feelings. On Instagram, it’s about 20 million.
Before the internet, you might have met only a few psychopaths in your life. This was usually in your local area or social groups. Now, thousands of them can try to trick you. The internet did not make more psychopaths. But it let them reach people all over the world.
Knowing about these mind traits is important. It puts the blame where it should be. You were not tricked because you were silly or wanted too much money. You were tricked because someone with a very different brain aimed at you. They used methods that have been made better over hundreds of years. To spot tricksters, look for patterns in how they act. Don’t just think you’ll know evil when you see it.
Final summary
In this summary of Charlatans by Moises Naim and Quico Toro, you have learned that…
Every trickster, like Charles Ponzi, big churches, or QAnon, uses the same plan. They use people’s greed with promises that can’t be true. They use faith with false hope. Or they make fear feel like a game with shared wrong beliefs. They win because human brains have old ways of thinking. Modern tricksters have learned how to use these weaknesses. About one out of every 100 people is a psychopath. They feel nothing when they ruin lives to make money for themselves. Today, we are all connected online. These people can reach you from anywhere. It is now very important to know their methods. You also need to understand your own mental weaknesses. This will help you in a world made to trick you.
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