Hello,

There are perhaps few archetypes that have been shown to capture the public’s imagination as well as the con artist—the charismatic swindler who lies his way to the top through his sheer skills of persuasion.

Just think of Frank Abagnale Jr., who impersonated airline pilots and committed cheque fraud across two continents. His semi-autobiographical book was adapted into the $352 million-grossing, twice-Oscar-nominated Hollywood movie Catch Me If You Can, in which he was played by a young Leonardo di Caprio at the peak of his fame.

More recently, take Anna Delvey, who posed as a German heiress in an attempt to rip off the New York City elite. Her story, as told by American journalist Jessica Pressler, became Inventing Anna, a miniseries which, despite mixed reviews, became one of Netflix’s most successful English-language shows.

But this type of scheme, as it seems, may be a dying art.

In The Walrus, editorial fellow Vikram Nijhawan reflects on the changing nature of the scam industry in an era of hyperconnectivity. “Of all the losses in our AI-ridden world,” he writes, “one of the strangest might be the decline of the flesh-and-blood fraudster.”

Yes, he says, scamming is alive and well, but “[t]he increasingly streamlined paths of daily life don’t allow for the same chances to be drawn in by someone’s story and fall into their web.” True con artists à la Abagnale and Delvey, he observes, have been replaced by phishing emails, romance scams, and crypto grifters.

It’s true that, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, digital fraud is on the rise, with investment fraud, spear phishing, and relationship scams among the most costly to Canadian consumers in 2025. Scammers’ methods are becoming more sophisticated, with growing access to AI and deepfakes. Meanwhile, increasing access to digital platforms has led to a globalization of the industry.

“This new landscape,” Nijhawan writes, “has stripped away much of the peer-to-peer charm and humanity of its players—and only the biggest ones stand to gain.”

Where yesterday’s conman was an “endearing scamp who lived under the shadow of Wall Street”, he writes, today’s fraudster is a “technician, not an artisan.” 

“The true grifters of today don’t need to assume different personas or evade authority,” Nijhawan remarks. “The enclaves of a C-suite, venture capital, or a digital screen are enough.”

In Canada, there is at least one man who has kept conning alive the “good old-fashioned” way: Allan Rothschild, whose four decades of activity as a scam artist in Toronto earned the nickname the “Yorkville Swindler.” He is, as far as we know, still on the loose.

You can read his story here, alongside Nijhawan’s thoughts about the changing nature of the scamming industry.

And if you’re interested in the different ways Big Tech is reshaping Canadian’s lives beyond scamming, why don’t you check out our September/October issue. You’ll read about social media’s impact on kids, the rise in opposition to data centres, and why your email inbox will never be empty.