What's a Scam?

This is the first of what I think will be a three part series looking at

1. what's a scam?
2. what's a film festival?
3. A comparison of the authenticity of the ANCHORAGE International Film Festival to the ALASKA International Film Festival.

So, what is a scam?

[Note:  I am not an attorney and what I write here represents the facts I have been able to gather and my interpretation/opinion of those facts.]


The answer seems to boil down to deception.  A scam is an activity in which one party deceives another party to gain some advantage.  Another factor seems to be that this tends to be more elaborate than a simple lie.  There is a scheme of sorts in which a person is seduced through misleading representations into an agreement.

One issue that comes up is whether an activity has to be illegal to be a scam.   From what I can tell, the answer is no.

It is like the relationship between unethical and illegal.  Something can be unethical (seen as morally wrong by most people) without being illegal (in violation of the law) and the same seems to be true of a scam.

A 1987 Appeals Court Decision (McCabe v. Rattiner) said:

". . .we observe that the word "scam" does not have a precise meaning. As the district judge said in his bench ruling, "it means different things to different people ... and there is not a single usage in common phraseology." While some connotations of the word may encompass criminal behavior, others do not.2 The lack of precision makes the assertion "X is a scam" incapable of being proven true or false. Cf. Buckley v. Littel, 539 F.2d 882, 895 (2d Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1062, 97 S.Ct. 786, 50 L.Ed.2d 777 (1977) ("[t]he issue of what constitutes an 'openly fascist' journal is as much a matter of opinion or idea as is the question what constitutes 'fascism' or the 'radical right' ").

Scam versus Fraud

In common usage the words tend to overlap, but fraud is the term defined in the law.   From Fraudlaw.org, a site aimed at residents of Washington and Oregon:

 Most people think of fraud as a [sic] evil practice.  But “fraud” as used in law means simply action or lack of action that is punishable by law.  Fraud is defined by the legislature and the courts.  It includes outright deception, and sometimes almost “accidental” misrepresentation.  In some circumstances (like investments) fraud includes failure to disclose or to tell the whole truth.  Sometimes the law makes people like officers and directors and those who assist in furthering the fraud liable even if they did not know about the fraud. 

The discussion goes on to distinguish levels of fraud based on intent:

1) Fraudulent Misrepresentation (Deceit);
2) Concealment and Non Disclosure;
3) Negligent Misrepresentation; and
4) Innocent Misrepresentation. 

It goes on to list:

The 9 elements of Oregon fraud are:

1)  A representation; [I'm assuming this means what was represented to the hearer?]

2) Its falsity;

3) Its materiality; [Again, I'm assuming this is whether a point in the representation is relevant or important to the action taken.]

4) The speaker's knowledge of the representation's falsity or ignorance of its truth;

5) Intent that the representation be acted on in a manner reasonably contemplated;

6) The hearer's ignorance of the falsity of the representation;

7) The hearer's reliance on its truth;

8) The hearer's right to rely on the representation; and

9) Damage caused by the representation.

Musgrave v. Lucas, 193 Or 401, 410, 238 P2d 780 (1951); Webb v Clark, 274 Or 387, 391, 546 P2d 1078 (1976).

On the website GeorgeSMayScam, the writer offers a long example where something can be legal, but still a scam.  He claims to be a former employee who left in good standing:

The George S. May International scam is elaborate [sic] scheme focused on small to medium sized businesses that have some difficulty making a profit or enough profit among other issues.  The most important thing that GSM wants to know is how much money is in the client’s checking account.  If there is not enough money in the checking account, the question is how much does the client have in securities or other quick to liquid assets.  They then tailor a plan to take ALL of the client’s available money.
Everything is done legally and is therefore protected by law.  The forms are long, detailed, and lawyer proof.  The signatures are all in place before services are rendered or one cent is collected.
So, you may ask, “What is your problem?  If it is all legal, why are you calling it a scam?”
The definition of the word scam, according to Webster’s dictionary, is a "deceptive act".  See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scam.  This is how the term is used here.  If a company has a practice of getting clients to sign a contract without completely informing and explaining verbally all of the zingers in the contract, it is deceptive. 

 He then goes on to detail the many ways the legal contract was designed so that the customers couldn't get out of the requirement to pay George S May.  I can't vouch for the person who wrote this post or the facts about the George S May company (though I was directed to the site by a friend whose company hired May and says the description is accurate in his case, though he thinks in some cases a business might benefit from such an audit, though probably not from the way they are charged), but the mechanics he describes help show how a legal scam might work.

There are a lot of types of fraud (Wikipedia has a list of about 22).  Personally, I would argue that it's a scam when

• a customer is asked to sign a lengthy contract 
• that has lots of 'gotchas' hidden in the small print 
• that the seller knows 
• the client would likely not sign if he understood them all

I would include in this hidden fees and penalties etc. in credit card contracts, cell phone contracts, and car and home loan agreements.

Wikipedia also distinguishes another related term:

A hoax also involves deception, but without the intention of gain, or of damaging or depriving the victim; the intention is often humorous.

What is the buyer's responsibility?

Surely,  buyers have a responsibility to pay attention to the agreements they sign.  But in this day and age we know less about the people with whom we do business.  Many aren't local.  Some products are hard to live without (credit cards are often required say to rent a car or buy airline tickets online where they are cheaper) but they come with long complicated legal contracts.  I guess I would just ask readers,

"Before you signed or clicked 'agree' did you read all the fine print in your...

1. credit card contracts? 
2. bank accounts contracts?
3. the agreements that come with software downloads?

To what extent do our schools teach people to be savvy consumers?  US college students' literacy has declined rapidly.  The Washington Post reported in 2005 that in a test that

measures how well adults comprehend basic instructions and tasks through reading -- such as computing costs per ounce of food items, comparing viewpoints on two editorials and reading prescription labels. . .  Only 41 percent of graduate students tested in 2003 could be classified as "proficient" in prose -- reading and understanding information in short texts -- down 10 percentage points since 1992. Of college graduates, only 31 percent were classified as proficient -- compared with 40 percent in 1992.

One might argue that if most college graduates (not to mention non-college grads) aren't  proficient in reading, how can their signatures on such contracts be considered informed consent?  And changes in laws regarding credit card agreements and lending practices suggest that Congress agrees that conditions in these contracts are unreasonable.


However, at some level, consumers do have to take some responsibility to be informed when they make decisions.


So, next comes Part 2:  What is a film festival?

[UPDATE Sept 2, 2019 - Here's a link to 2017 DasKurzFilmMagazin ShortFilm.de post on film festival scams.  It links to this post which is how I found out about it.]