How George Santos, Anna Delvey, and Other Grifter Greats Became a Popular Obsession

On July 8, 1849, James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald introduced readers to William Thompson, a man of “genteel appearance”—and, apparently, endless charisma—who had been arrested for relieving strangers of their watches. “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” Thompson would ask his marks after striking up a conversation and beguiling them with his charm. So it was that a mass-market, 19th-century broadsheet coined the term “confidence man,” which the Herald began to employ rather liberally in its pages. (And which you might have noticed more recently in the title of Maggie Haberman’s aptly… Read Full Article