All language subtitles for The.Broken.And.The.Bad.s01e02.Art.of.the.Con.WEB-DL.1080p.AAC2.0-SNAKE_track3_[eng]

There's,

There's, kind

There's, kind of,

There's, kind of, the

There's, kind of, the vanilla

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world that

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world that most

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world that most people

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world that most people live

There's, kind of, the vanilla
world that most people live in

with a job and a house
and a kid.

There's this other world
right under the surface of that,

this very gray.

And in that shady side
of the world,

there are people that profit
off of deception.

Understanding what someone
needs and someone wants,

that is the real art of the con.

They'll see a crowd,
and they say,

"there's a lot of people
with my money in their pocket."

And I want to do something
about that."

♪♪

In "Better Call Saul,"

Jimmy and Kim pulled off
a spontaneous con,

playing the parts of
inexperienced investors

Viktor and Giselle

to scam sleazy businessman
Ken Wins

into buying them rounds
Zafira Añejo.

Why?

Well, because they could do it.

Most of us believe that
we're too smart to be conned.

Don't think it can
happen to you?

Maybe that's the first step
in falling for a con.

♪♪

My name is Logan Devine,

Simon Quinn, John Foster,
Declan McManus.

My name is Aiden Sinclair,
and I'm a retired grifter.

♪♪

I had 7 to 10
different identities.

I had a suitcase full of stuff.

And I might put on a Notre Dame
sweatshirt and a hat

and be a college kid.

Other days, I'd put on
a $2,000 Hugo Boss suit.

I was living in
a penthouse suite,

a Porsche and a Jaguar
in the garage.

That life becomes addictive.

It's the edge.
It's the rush.

It's the adrenaline.

Robbins:
A con artist enjoys

getting something
for nothing.

And they're also going
to play upon that desire

in their fellow man.

♪♪

Sinclair: I grew up here
in Hell's Kitchen.

Back then, it was a really,
kind of, rough neighborhood.

All of Times Square
was porn theaters,

and there was always
police sirens.

At about 6, I lost my father,
got adopted,

ended up in this kind of
difficult house --

you know, a lot of alcohol,
a lot of fists flying.

By the time I was 10,
I was pretty much on my own.

I started to skip school,

and one time, I ran into
a Three-card Monte game.

I caught on to it
pretty quick.

And I enjoyed the theater of it.

He would deliberately
drop a card

or give a tell and...

Man: Which one you got?
Which one you got?

There was always a winner,
and it was his own employees.

So the money was all
just going in one big circle.

The guy that I learned
Three-card Monte from

had this ethos of,
"It's your fault.

You should know better.

Why would you ever put
your money on that table?"

But every day, people did.

Whether it's Three-card Monte
or a pyramid scam,

20 bucks or $20 million,

it's all the same.

A con artist is playing
upon the greed

of the victim, the mark,
the sucker.

♪♪

A "mark" comes from,

in the old carnivals,

the ticket booths
were very high.

When someone opened
their wallet,

if they had a lot of cash,
the ticket taker could see that,

and they'd give a sign

to someone
who's working the crowd.

And they'd go up to the person
and they'd say,

"you know, have a good time.

Hope you have a good time
at carnival."

And they had a piece of chalk
in their hand

and literally would put a mark
on the person's back.

"They have the money."

Sinclair: Everything is about
sizing someone up.

Can you get the outcome
that you need?

Former professional grifter
Aiden Sinclair

made a career
out of conning those

who never thought
they would become a mark.

Sinclair: Back in the '90s,

I set up
an underground poker room

in Washington, D.C.

I had a guy one night
that lost all of his money.

He was a lobbyist
for the platinum industry.

So he comes up to me and says,
"hey, can we get some credit?"

I said, "no, we don't do that."

So he reaches in his pocket,

and he pulls out
a platinum ingot,

almost a quarter-million dollars
in platinum.

"Would you hold this
for 24 hours?"

I was like, "that, I can do."

We have him.

When you come back tomorrow
to get the bar of platinum,

there is no safe,
there is no room.

There is nothing.

Poof.

Robbins: Ideally, you want
to take down someone

that deserves to lose it.

Then you can feel good about it,

'cause they had it coming.

Sinclair:
But one of the girls

that worked for us
at the room

had been in a relationship
with a guy

that was immensely abusive,

took all of her money,
kind of left her on the street,

just a pretty horrible human.

We decided we'd at least
get this girl her money back.

Once she let us know
that he played cards,

then we kind of had him.

He was a money guy.
He dealt in a lot of jewelry.

We were able to entice
this guy into the room,

sat him at the table,
and made sure he lost.

We had a bruiser
of a bodyguard guy

to pull him aside,
and I explained him

he needed to come up
with collateral

to cover the loss

or he might have an accident.

He came back with diamonds
from work

that he shouldn't have touched.

And then we called his boss.

Yeah, and he went to jail.

We fenced the diamonds off.

We made some good money.

We gave her a good score.

I think there's
a certain karma.

♪♪

In the world of grift,
you come into a place,

you make your score,
and then you disappear.

It's the idea of walking
between raindrops

and not being noticed.

The problem with that is that
if you do it for a long time,

you become invisible.

For 15 years of my life,

I didn't live under
my real name.

No personal attachments,
no family, no friends.

I didn't exist.

Once you go into that world,

you're going to open yourself up
to doing other things

that you didn't think
you would end up doing.

It depends, you know,
how you want to sleep at night.

There's an old saying
that's very much a misnomer,

which is you can't cheat
an honest man,

and you can.

♪♪

Sinclair: I was trying
to get off the grid.

I ended up bartending
in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,

and I ran into a guy
that was an FBI agent.

I had to get out of town.

The problem was
I only had about 200 bucks.

The restaurant I was working in
had this book.

So when you called
to make a reservation,

"What's your
credit card number?"

And it was written down
on a piece of paper.

I had somebody
that I got to know

and was like,
"hey, you know,

my uncle owns
the tour company in Ireland

and wants to start bringing
Irish tourists here to America.

Do you want to be
in the tourism business?"

"Yeah, that would be
kind of fun."

So he started the company
in his name.

So you're gonna need
a credit card processor.

And then we spent
about three hours

running about
100 different credit cards

through that machine.

We made about $125,000 in a day.

And within 48 hours,
I was in the wind.

I was gone,
didn't exist.

That poor guy went from being
very happy one day of like,

"I'm a business owner
and everything's great"

to his entire world
falling in on him.

♪♪

I spent 15 years of my life

making money
at the expense of others.

And I hit a point
where I was like,

"I'm not the good guy
in my story."

How do you change that?

You can't undo the things
that you did.

I think what you can do, though,
is take accountability

for the things
that you do wrong in life.

And that was five years
of my life in prison.

But walking out of prison,

I can look in a mirror and go,
"you know what?

I made a lot of mistakes
in my life,

and I'm trying to be better."

And you try to be
better every day.

Con artistry
will always be around

because con artistry
relies upon human nature.

Everyone is vulnerable.

You roll the dice
and take your chances.

But if you protect yourself,

if you don't think
you're smarter than you are,

If something seems
too good to be true,

it isn't true.

You don't play the game,
you won't lose.

♪♪

What constitutes a con
that's gone too far?

Is it the one-off short-cons
of Slippin' Jimmy,

or the faux-legal cons
of Saul Goodman?

Or is it the life-ruining
long cons of true grifters?

Can you really cheat
an honest person?

Are there any real honest people
left to be cheated?

♪♪