5. The Badger Game

he badger game dates back to the 19th century, and is arguably one of the most reproduced cons of all time. A form of blackmail, in its most famous form the trick would see a con woman seek out a lonely married man at a bar and lure him back to her hotel room. After getting the man into some kind of compromising position, the grifters would produce photo or video evidence of the man clearly cheating on his wife, which could then be used to extort money from him. Other variations included false allegations of rape or sexual harassment. One famous version of it from the early 1930s involved a woman accusing her male doctor of improper conduct during a medical exam and then blackmailing him in order to keep her from pressing charges. Often the woman would be working in tandem with a second grifter who would show up in the middle of things and pretends to be her angry husband, which would help to scare the mark into going along with the blackmail. Like the embarrassing check scheme, the idea was always that the victim would be too ashamed of his own actions not to pay off the con men.