{"id":291,"date":"2019-12-31T15:54:42","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T20:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2019-12-31T15:54:49","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T20:54:49","slug":"the-history-of-the-sting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/31\/the-history-of-the-sting\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of &#8230; &#8220;The Sting&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images2.minutemediacdn.com\/image\/upload\/c_fill,g_auto,h_1248,w_2220\/f_auto,q_auto,w_1100\/v1555389620\/shape\/mentalfloss\/sting_lg.jpg\" alt=\"Image result for picture of movie the sting&quot;\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The movie <em>The Sting<\/em>\ncame out in the 1970\u2019s.&nbsp; It is a story\nabout fun loving con artists who successfully fool gangster Doyle Lonnegan with\na trick called \u201cthe wire.\u201d&nbsp; What some may\nnot know is that the con in the movie was probably invented by a real person,\nJoseph Weil.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Joseph Weil died at the age of 100 in 1976.\u00a0 He estimated that, over the course of his life, he made about 8 million dollars conning people mostly in and around Chicago, Illinois.\u00a0 He justified his actions saying that he never conned anyone who was not greedy.\u00a0 He said about his victims, \u201cEvery victim of one of my schemes had larceny in his heart.\u00a0 An honest man would have had no part of any of my schemes.\u00a0 They all wanted something for nothing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Weil started his career in his early 20s selling\nMerriweather\u2019s Elixir as a cure-all.&nbsp; Its\nchief ingredient was water.&nbsp; He acted as person\nin the crowd who would attest falsely to the curative powers of \u201cDoc\u201d\nMerriweather\u2019s tonic.&nbsp; Soon after the\nturn of the century he got his nickname, the Yellow Kid, after a comic that his\npartner at the time liked.&nbsp; The Yellow\nKid was a goofy sidekick to one of the main characters.&nbsp;&nbsp; Weil got better and better at swindling\npeople and was able to mostly skirt the law because, at the time, Chicago law\nwas that a swindle could only be done on an innocent person.&nbsp; He, therefore did a lot of his work in and\naround racetracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His con \u201cthe wire\u201d which was the big take down used in <em>The Sting<\/em> involved setting up a fake\ngambling house with pretend employees and gamblers.&nbsp; His mark was convinced it was a real setting\nand that Joseph had bribed a Western Union operator to slow transmissions of\nrace winners so that Weil could get the results of a race beforehand and place\nsuccessful bets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of his other big \u201cachievements\u201d allegedly were to take\nItalian dictator Benito Mussolini for 2 million dollars, sell a talking dog, and\nconvincing people to buy oil-rich land that he did not own.&nbsp; Over his life time Weil served about six\nyears in jail but kept all of his swindled money.&nbsp; He died a free man.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movie The Sting came out in the 1970\u2019s.&nbsp; It is a story about fun loving con artists who successfully fool gangster Doyle Lonnegan with a trick called \u201cthe wire.\u201d&nbsp; What some may not know is that the con in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/31\/the-history-of-the-sting\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,36],"tags":[77,78,80,82,79,81],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-united-states","tag-con-artist","tag-joseph-weil","tag-mark","tag-stealing","tag-swindle","tag-the-sting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p29EPY-4H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}