In
this B&M thread on dealer abuse, someone mentioned a guy named Buddha that had the reputation of having made every female dealer in L.A. cry, and a book that talked about it, "God Wants you to Roll." Buddha was a very skilled pai gow player, but the book is not about gambling. See, Buddha also had a knack for selling cars that did not exist, to the tune of $21 million over 7 years.
Most of that money wound up in the cage of the Bike, the Hustler Casino, or Crystal Palace, where Buddha would play pai gow and have swings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The money came from a scam that seems ludicrous when paraphrased: Robert "Buddha" Gomez claimed to be the heir to an estate that was giving away cars as an act of charity, but since the estate was in probate, the estate could not pay title and transfer fees itself. Therefore his friend James R. Nichols, excutor of the estate, required payments for those fees well in advance of the unspecified date when the estate would come out of probate.
This sounds so unbelievable, so flimsy a premise, that I red the book expecting to learn how cleverly the boys established their con. Instead, as the details emerged in the book, it only became more ludicrous that this ever worked.
It worked because of the charisma and social engineering of Buddha and Nichols. Almost the only thing the boys established to make their con work, was their own belief in the stories they were telling.
Author John Phillips III originally came into contact with the story when Car & Driver asked him to write about the trial. He came away so impressed that he wrote a book, interviewing law enforcement, victims, and the perpetrators He does seem to cross the line all true crime books must toe: dramatizing the actions of criminals without lionizing them. I was left fascinated with Buddha and Nichols, impressed with what they accomplished.
I could see how so many were taken in with them, even as I laughed at the outrageousness of what they were doing to them.