Big Screen Tv In The Back Of The Truck Scam

Basic Information

People shopping for pirated software, illegal pornographic images, bootleg music, drugs, firearms or other forbidden or controlled goods may be legally hindered from reporting swindles to the police. A classic example is the "big screen TV in back of the truck" scam, a form of goldbricking.

In this confidence game, the TV is touted as "hot" (stolen), so it will be sold for a very low price. The TV is in fact defective or broken, and may even have bricks inside its otherwise gutted case to give it weight. When it is plugged in, of course, it does not work. The buyer has no legal recourse without admitting to the police that he or she attempted purchase of stolen goods.

Designer goods can also be sold like this - the hawker has one pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes and several boxes of very similar off label Manhole Blank counterfeits - he then sells the latter, misrepresenting them as the former at a price far below what the real thing would sell for but more than the counterfeits are worth¹. Since many jurisdictions will also punish the buying of counterfeit goods the client has little (legal) recourse - and the seller the potential defence in law that he sold an off-label copy rather than a counterfeit with no intention to deceive.

This is amongst the many delightful hazards of shopping on the black (or even grey) market.

On a much lesser scale, there is also the traditional fairground/carnival grift of passing out "prizes" for a game that are worth nothing close to the price of winning them … and in some jurisdictions (where the distinction is made) may not actually be legal to sell due to their poor quality.

Sources

Most of the above text came from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks

Game and Story Use

• While TVs and Vans are fairly modern, this idea can be applied to other settings easily enough.
  • Jewelry, or bolts of expensive-looking cloth might "fall off the wagon" in medieval times.
    • In fact, this can be even easier in medieval times - anything sold outside the relevant guild monopoly is effectively contraband, likewise, in many cases, goods not sold in a licenced marketplace so the buyer has no recourse whatsoever (short of "getting medieval" with the vendor) if it turns out to be defective.
  • Even designer fraud is possible in the pre-modern era - a significant number of the mysterious Ulfbert swords seem to be contemporary fakes made of sub-standard materials.
    • Which has the advantage that someone whose sword broke in the middle of a fight is less likely to be in a state to come after you than someone who discovered their shoes were a cheap knock-off.
  • Magic items that prove cursed or illusory might be hawked in alleyways, with the understanding that they were "stolen from the Prince's treasury".
  • Illegal or restricted death-rays might be sold out of the back of an orbital shuttle. Upon use in a combat situation, the PCs discover the "death ray" is more of "annoying pain ray" or possibly just a very fancy (and oversized) laser pointer.

Footnotes

1. Of course, where the counterfeits are fit for what the user intends (for example, will be mistaken for the real thing on the one occasion that she wears them) and there is a high degree of idiot tax on the real thing, both parties may still part fairly content.