So some guy decides to impersonate a scrub major league baseball player impersonating other major league baseball players? How Shakespeare.
One of the enjoyable aspects of the Madoff saga – one of the few enjoyable aspects, as some people lost a significant amount of money, and not all of the people were complete jerks – was seeing Cialdini’s Influence in action. No one would believe someone who came up to him asking for money to invest in some odd scheme that paid an equity return with fixed income volatility. But tell someone that the scheme is complicated, secret, and besides, he isn’t nearly cool enough to invest, and all of a sudden people are joining country clubs for the chance to beg their way in.
I wish I could claim to be immune to this, but more than once I have stood in line for a nightclub knowing full well that there were plenty of other places serving beer that would actually be friendly about it.
Anyway, the beauty of this particular scam is that the impersonator, whoever he is, is clearly not a famous person. He cannot walk into a bar and have people come up to him. But by claiming to be someone famous and letting the other person challenge him, he can then back down to being “just” a random major league baseball player. No one knows every big leaguer by name and face – no Keith Olbermann, not Bill James, and certainly not an adult movie actress – and apparently the sheer possibility that the guy might be in the show was enough for the actress to spend the night.
That’s a smooth talker.
