Dolores 0:01

Imagine you're at one of the biggest sporting events in the world. The Ryder Cup. Fifty thousand people lining the fairways and the greens. Security checkpoints. Ropes. Officials. Former US presidents in the VIP sections. And you're standing on the 18th fairway, in the middle of it all, when a professional golfer on one of the teams taps you on the shoulder and says "Excuse me". Because you're standing between him, and his shot onto the 18th green. Confused? Stay with us for this remarkable real life story. Today, Edward explains how he pulled off the con of his life at the 2006 Ryder Cup in Ireland. And he tells us what it taught him about the psychology of fraudsters, like the ones he's encountered over the years. Edward, before we get into this I have to say, when you told me what the episode was about today, I was not expecting this tale from you.

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Well, Emily, in all the episodes we've done together, I've always been on the side of the investigator, haven't I? The forensic accountant, the expert witness, the person who unpicks what the fraudster has done. Today I'm going to tell you a story where I intentionally deployed the very same techniques that a fraudster uses to achieve a particular objective. With one crucial difference, though. I wasn't defrauding anyone. I wasn't after money, and nobody was harmed. But the mechanics, well, they were identical, taken straight from the fraudster's playbook

Dolores 2:07

Set the scene for us. September 2006. The K Club Country House and golf club and resort in County Kildare, outside Dublin, in Ireland.

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Well, it was the 36th Ryder Cup, Europe versus the Un- United States, the first time the Ryder Cup had ever been held in Ireland. And what a team Ian Woosnam had assembled. Darren Clark, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia, Paul McGinley, Luke Donald, Henrik Stenson, against a formidable American side that included Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. The K Club was the venue, and it was electric. Fifty thousand people a day on the course, and I was there with a group of friends, having been fortunate enough to get tickets for an event that was very much in demand.

Dolores 2:58

As a spectator

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Yes, as a spectator initially. But you have to understand something about me, Emily, and this is relevant to the psychology we're going to discuss. I knew the K Club well. I'd stayed there. I'd played the golf course. I knew the layout, the terrain, the geography of the place. And on the final day, with the crowds deep and the conditions damp, it had been a very wet few days, let me tell you. I found myself watching by myself at that time from behind the ropes, craning to see over thousands of other people. And something in me thought, "There has to be a better view than this." I was determined to find a good vantage point from where I could watch the golf matches and to really experience all the excitement.

Dolores 3:50

And that's where it started. Tell us about the Umbrella.

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Earlier, I was wandering around the public viewing parts of the course, watching some of the early play. It was wet, as I said, a damp, gray Irish day. And I noticed that an official, probably one of the marshals or organizers who was stationed around the greens, had put down their umbrella at the side of one of the greens and walked away from it. It was an official Ryder Cup umbrella, branded, distinctive, the kind of umbrella that says, "I belong here." Anyway, I picked it up, and I still have it to this day.

Dolores 4:29

You kept it!

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I kept it. There was no one around to give it back to. It was just on the ground, almost as if it was waiting for me to pick it up. And then a little further on, I spotted a small collapsible metal chair, the kind officials use when they're stationed at a particular green for a long period. Also abandoned at the side of the course, I picked that up too. And so now I have a costume. I have the smart golf polo shirt and golf trousers I was wearing that day. I had an official Ryder Cup umbrella and a folding chair. And most importantly, I had the knowledge of the K Club's layout that most people in that crowd simply didn't have.

Dolores 5:13

You had the props

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And here is the first lesson about confidence tricksters. Props matter enormously. A uniform, a clipboard, a letterhead, a badge, whatever. These are the tools that bypass rational thought. People see the prop before they see the person. Their brain registers official and moves on. They don't ask questions. They assume

Dolores 5:41

So you have the props and tools. Then what?

5:45

I spotted a checkpoint, a point where officials were preventing members of the public from crossing from the public gallery into a restricted area. And I thought, I wonder. I knew from the layout of the course that on the other side of the checkpoint there was a path down towards a small lake behind some trees that would bring me close to the sixteenth green, where the focal point of the match was heading. Where the distinctive moment to determine the winning team, it seemed to me, was going to happen. And here is the second lesson about confidence tricksters. I didn't ask permission. I didn't hesitate. I didn't look uncertain. I walked towards the checkpoint carrying the umbrella and the chair, wearing my golf attire, and I kept walking as if I had every right in the world to be going through. And if I knew exactly where I was going and why. Nobody stopped me. Not a word. And then there was a second checkpoint, another twenty yards further on. Another line of officials. Another barrier between the public and the private areas. And I did exactly the same thing. Head up, pace steady, the air of someone who has places to be and knows exactly how to get there. And through I went again. My heart beating a little faster this time, though. This is what magicians do. It's what mentalists do. It's what the great confidence tricksters have always done. They don't sneak. They don't skulk. They don't look furtive. They stride. They command. They assume the space around them as if it belongs to them. And because most people are deeply conditioned to defer to apparent authority, to not make a scene, to not challenge someone who looks like they belong, they get away with it every time

Dolores 7:37

So you're through, you're on the inside. What happens next?

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I found myself down by the lake behind a screen of trees completely hidden from both the public gallery and the officials, and I waited ten minutes perhaps. And then over the public address tannoy, I heard an announcement that the players in a key match were approaching the sixteenth green. And I thought, now, seize the moment. I stepped out from behind the trees, and the next thing I knew, I was standing on the edge of the sixteenth green on the inside with the players, the officials, the caddies, and a few select persons and me right amongst them. And I watched from an unbelievable vantage point as Henrik Stenson clinched the winning point for Europe by sinking a fabulous putt. The celebrations were beginning. Players and VIPs were flooding onto the green, and I was there with them.

Dolores 8:39

What did it feel like? Electric. And I'll come back to that feeling because it's very important in understanding why confidence tricksters do what they do. But first, let me tell you what I was seeing. Tiger Woods standing a few feet away looking somber. After all, he just lost the Ryder Cup. I approached Tiger to get a signature, and he just shook his head and declined. Jim Furyk was nearby. The WAGs, the players' partners, moving onto the green. And Henrik Stenson being interviewed. And Darren Clark being interviewed. Hazel Irvine, the BBC presenter, was doing the interviews right there on the sixteenth green, and I was standing close enough to hear every word. Darren Clark had lost his wife, Heather, to cancer just weeks before the Ryder Cup. He had played the entire tournament carrying that grief. And as he stood being interviewed on that green, having just been part of a historic European victory, the emotion overwhelmed him. He was crying, and it was one of the most moving things I witnessed. A man at the absolute intersection of triumph and loss. I was standing right beside him as it happened. And on the same green, Bill Clinton was there, former President of the United States, with his Secret Service detail. This is getting tense. What did you do? I thought, "I'm not going to let this moment pass," so I approached Clinton-- sorry, President Clinton, pen in hand, and immediately a Secret Service agent stepped in front of me, blocked me. That route was closed. So I repositioned. I came around from the other side, and this time, before anyone could react, I was standing right in front of Bill Clinton and I said, "Excuse me, sir. Could I possibly have your autograph for my son?" He looked at me, smiled, and said, "Certainly." He signed the official Ryder Cup tournament card I had with me. Bill Clinton's signature right there on the sixteenth green while Darren Clark was being interviewed twenty feet away and Tiger Woods stood in silence nearby And there's more to this story. Pray tell! Then I moved on. I was chuffed because the matches still had to be completed. Even though Europe had won, once the Ryder Cup is decided, the remaining singles matches are played out, and I needed to keep moving. I spotted an ABC television crew on a golf cart heading down towards the seventeenth, and I hopped on the back of the buggy. You're telling us you hopped on the back of the television crew's golf buggy, all on live TV? Yes, I was feeling a lot of chutzpah at this point. The cameraman at the front turned around and said, Who are you? What are you doing on our cart?" And I mumbled something, something non-committal, enough to suggest I had a reason to be there without actually providing one. And we kept moving. I rode that cart down towards the fairway, towards the seventeenth green, and then hopped off and made my way towards the eighteenth And this is the point at which the golfer says "Excuse me"! Yes. As I was making my way down the fairway towards the eighteenth green with a small group of officials, guests, and others who were converging on the final hole, we were moving forward, and I was moving with them, going with the flow, so to speak. And then I heard a voice from behind me. That's right, from behind me saying, "Excuse me." I turned around, and to my amazement, there was a professional golfer, one of the last pairs still playing out their singles match, standing about five feet behind me with a club in his hand. He needed to play his approach shot onto the eighteenth green, and I was standing in his way. Excuse me," he said. I stepped aside. He played his shot, and I thought, I am so deep inside this event that I am totally immersed." The confidence trick had worked so completely that I was no longer an intruder. I was just there on the inside. And then you found yourself part of the final celebrations! The eighteenth green was where everything concluded. Gary Lineker was there doing his interviews. The champagne came out. Ian Woosnam was doused. The whole European team was celebrating. And somebody put down a magnum of champagne on the green, a large celebratory magnum. In the chaos of the moment, nobody was watching, so I nonchalantly just picked up the bottle, and I walked off with it. You walked off with a magnum of champagne! I did. It still had champagne in it, and I made my way off the green with the players and then shortly afterwards, I watched Paul McGinley up on the balcony above the clubhouse with the rest of them, waving to the crowd below, and I was still on the inside, and still close enough to see it all at arm's length, while thousands of people watched from behind the ropes. I couldn't get back to the public areas easily. I was effectively stuck in there until the event concluded. And then eventually, I found my friends in the car park. They saw me walking towards them with an official golf umbrella in one hand and carrying this enormous magnum of champagne in the other. Well, the looks on their faces. "Where on earth did you get that?" And I started telling them the story. I was buzzing. Absolutely buzzing. The adrenaline was still pumping. Let's talk about that buzz. Because I think it's important, isn't it? It's crucial, and it's something that took me years of dealing with fraudsters to fully understand. Because when I was walking out of the K Club that evening with that magnum of champagne, buzzing with adrenaline, replaying every moment, the checkpoints, the ABC cart, the Clinton signature, the player saying, "Excuse me," I felt extraordinary. I felt alive in a way that ordinary experience simply doesn't produce. And that feeling, that intense, addictive rush is exactly what drives the fraudster. Not just the money, not just the gain. It's the thrill of the performance, the high of having deceived, the satisfaction of having outsmarted a system that was designed to keep you out. So the buzz is part of what makes fraud addictive? Completely. Think about the great confidence tricksters in history. When you strip away the money, there's always an element of performance, of theater. They're not just stealing, they're playing a role, and they're very, very good at it. What I did at the Ryder Cup was play a role, the role of an official, and the techniques I used, the props, the costume, the confident walk, the air of belonging, are precisely the techniques that fraudsters use every day. The fake uniform, the forged ID. These things work because human beings are wired to trust apparent authority. We are conditioned from childhood to follow the person who looks like they know what they're doing, to not challenge, to not make a scene It also involves misdirection and deception Like a magician does in a trick? Exactly like magic. The great magicians and mentalists, what they do is plant an idea in your mind and let you construct the illusion yourself. They don't create the deception. They create the conditions for you to deceive yourself. And that's precisely what the props did for me at the K Club. The umbrella and the chair didn't get me through those checkpoints. They got the officials' brains to say, "Nothing to see here," before a single question was asked. I was sailing close to the wind. I was fully aware of that at every moment. There was a part of me, the accountant, the professional, that was watching the whole thing with a kind of detached fascination. Noting what was working and why. Edward, what's the key takeaways for our listeners? What should they learn from this story today? A few things, apart from the fact that I had a fabulous day out at the Ryder Cup that day. First, be skeptical of props, the uniform, the official-looking paperwork, the confident stride. None of these things confirm that a person has the authority they're projecting. Ask the question. Check the ID. Make the call. The fraudster relies on your conditioning to defer. Disrupt that conditioning, and the whole edifice of the fraud collapses. Second, understand that confidence trickery is a performance, and like all performances, it has a rush attached to it. The fraudster isn't just motivated by greed. They're motivated by the thrill of the role, the sense of control, by the validation of having convinced somebody of something, by the high of having breached a system. Understanding that helps you understand why fraud escalates. Because once the fraudster has felt that rush, ordinary experience feels flat by comparison. They need more, a bigger stage, a more complex deception, higher stakes. And third, and perhaps most importantly, understand that the gap between a harmless adventure at a golf tournament, like the one I had, and a criminal fraud is not a gap in technique. The techniques are identical. The gap is only in intent, in purpose, in what you do with the access once you have it. I walked out of the K Club with a magnum of champagne and a story I've been dining out on ever since. A fraudster walks out with your savings, your assets Same technique. Different intent. Same technique, different intent. And that distinction, so simple, so clear, is what separates an adventure from a crime. The confidence trickster, the con artist, knows exactly which side of the ropes they are on. What my experience at the Ryder Cup that day confirmed to me was something I had long suspected from my professional work. Deception is far, far easier than most people believe. And how easy it is for people who are not looking for deception to be deceived. Not because people are stupid, but because we are all wired to see what we expect to see. We are wired to accept the story that the props and the facade are telling us But I will end with this. Don't be fooled Thank you to our listeners for joining us today and we hope that you have found the episode useful and that it has given you some food for thought. Please share Fraud Files with someone you think may benefit from hearing this episode, and our previous episodes. And if you have a story of your own fraud you've witnessed, experienced or want to shine a light on you can reach out to us through the usual channels and via email: info at fraud dash files dot com In our next episode, entitled Point of Sale scams, Edward discusses: How it happens every day, to all of us at one time or another, in places we all visit and spend money. For the scammer, every little helps! But it's your money they are stealing. Until next time, stay alert. and stay vigilant.

Simon 21:14

Fraud Files is produced by Rock Solid Pods. Fraud Files is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, You Tube and wherever you get your podcasts.