Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters. Welcome to the world of confidence men. You'll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid and cry for the marks who lost it all to his ingenuity—$8,000,000 by some estimations. Fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, even a money-making machine, were all tools of the trade for the Kid and his associates: The Swede, The Butterine Kid, The Harmony Kid, Fats Levine, and others. Dozens of his schemes are laid out in full detail, told with wit and style. A fantastic, engaging read-you won't be able to put it down! Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil was born in 1877 to German immigrant grocers in Chicago. He worked a number of odd jobs before executing a startling number of scams, primarily in the Chicago area but all over the world. He lived to be 101, and is said to have stolen over eight million dollars in total. "I never cheated an honest man, only rascals. They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something." — Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil