Word: cons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...private eye, approached by an even seedier pal, starts looking for the proceeds of a famous jewel robbery out West a couple of decades after the theft. His allies and enemies in an ever shifting set of alliances include an aging femme fatale, a spunky tomboy and her ex-con grandfather, a trio of murderous Indians, a small-town newspaper editor and a crooked policeman. The plot and mood are vaguely reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon, except that, yes, there is a treasure...
...told, the Federal Trade Commission estimates, con artists working the phones got away with at least $1 billion last year. Other fraud experts put the total as high as $10 billion. Legislators and law-enforcement agencies have stepped up their efforts to disconnect the crooks, but at the moment they are operating almost with impunity. Says William Sullivan, chief of the Illinois attorney general's consumer-protection division: "Lawyers, doctors, policemen -- every spectrum of society is being taken...
...types of telemarketing cons are being hatched overnight, sometimes abetted by front-page news that provides a convincing sales pitch. After the 1987 stock-market crash shook investor confidence in securities, con artists began pushing such alternatives as rare coins, gold, oil and gas leases, and diamonds. One Tulsa-based telemarketing company cleaned up by selling shares in a "secret process" for converting volcanic sand on Costa Rican beaches into gold. A swindler who had been convicted of selling shares in a nonexistent gold mine continued to solicit new investors from a pay phone in his Wyoming prison...
...cute, coy lyrics, which in life would not tumble trippingly from the tongues of underprivileged youth. The wide-eyed wonder of city life may never have been more vibrantly shown than among the World War II-era sailors aprowl in On the Town. The comic chase among cops, con men, thugs and bathing beauties from High Button Shoes improves upon the fizzy Mack Sennett one-reelers that inspired...
...business will never be as peaceful as it once was. Surviving thrifts will have to compete with powerful rivals and satisfy a far more sophisticated customer than they did in the past. But if the industry shakes off its con artists and recaptures its basic prudence, those thrifts that remain might still do George Bailey proud...