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Spanish Prisoner
- 52 statements
- 9 feature instances
- 1 referencing feature instances
| Spanish Prisoner | type |
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| Spanish Prisoner | label |
Spanish Prisoner | |
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| Spanish Prisoner | comment |
Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })A Con Man identifies a potential mark—someone with wealth and naivete. The con man convinces the mark that he serves a dethroned princess who is being held prisoner in, say, Spain. If the mark can come up with just a few hundred dollars, then a guard can be bribed and the princess can flee to the US (where the mark lives) in eternal gratitude. The mark can easily part with a few hundred, and so, though he is wary, he falls far enough for the con man's smooth line. A week goes by. Two. The mark has come to understand that he's been tricked, but before that last spark of hope can die, the con man reappears with a letter from Her Highness. She is free and in France. Now she needs a few thousand dollars for her final passage by sea, and the mark gladly shells it out. Next, the princess might need money to bail out her mother and father, the ex-monarchs; then, she'll need to buy off a Spanish spy who has discovered her escape. The mark keeps paying for as long as the con artists can keep him fooled. The con man shows the mark photographs of the beautiful princess (who is really Dotty from the Nighthawk Diner in a ten-cent tiara). More players are brought in to act out additional roles, each earning part of the take. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })Finally, the mark can be brushed off. One way to do this is for the princess to arrive, at last, on the mark's doorstep. The con man is there, too, but then the Spanish spy shows up and murders the con man. (It's an act, of course; the con man usually has a "cackle bladder" full of fake blood in his mouth, and he usually makes sure to get some of it on the mark's clothes as he falls.) The mark is terrified, and the princess runs to his side, kisses him tenderly, and tells him that she must go into exile or she will endanger his life as well as her own. And so, the mark never sees the princess again, and the con man, princess, and Spanish spy agent all split the take. In this way the Mark never realizes he was conned and doesn't go to the police. There are real-life examples of marks who discovered the con only when they were approached by the police and asked to testify. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })That's the classic Spanish Prisoner. Today's updates are called Russian Bride and Save This Hooker. It's one of The Oldest Tricks in the Book. A variant frequently encountered on the Internet these days is the "419 Scam" (named after the relevant section of the Nigerian banking code, where some of these scams originate), in which the "prisoner" is replaced by a relative of some recently deceased developing countries dictator, who asks the potential mark to help him smuggle and/or launder stolen UN aid money. Or get bank boxes out of a third country. Or steal the ill-gotten windfall profit of an over-invoiced oil contract. If you're reading this, you've probably received spam about it yourself. The total amount of over-invoiced oil on all of these supposed "lucrative" contracts probably exceeds the output of Saudi Arabia for ten years. While the two tropes are similar, in works the Spanish Prisoner scam is much more likely to drive the whole plot, while 419 scams are often used as a bit of characterization or as a joke. Examples: |
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| Spanish Prisoner | fetched |
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| Spanish Prisoner | parsed |
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| Spanish Prisoner | isPartOf |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_1ae04d92 | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_1ae04d92 | comment |
Road to Zanzibar has a simplified version of this con. Julia Quimby (Una Merkel) convinces the Vagabond Buddies to buy the lovely Donna Latour (Dorothy Lamour) from a local slave trader. The two girls split the proceeds afterwards. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_2c96ae0e | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_2c96ae0e | comment |
Hustle - a few times over the course of the series, but most notably in season 7, they pulled this off comfortably against a new mark they'd not been expecting AND against the other three marks they'd had on the hook at the beginning of the episode, but who had not since been mentioned, earning them a triumphant record of pulling off the Spanish Prisoner against more marks in one day than any other crew. In this case, the prison was in Thailand rather than Spain, with the marks being convinced that they needed to pay the gang £100 000 to bribe the Thai judiciary to release a certain prisoner; in the case of the main mark, she was told that the prison was the younger brother of a rich investor who controlled the family fortune. All four marks gave the money to an American ambassador, but were subsequently told that the ambassador had been arrested themselves for attempting to bribe a Thai official. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_3501cc23 | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_3501cc23 | comment |
In The Lies Of Locke Lamora, the Gentleman Bastards team of con artists pull this scam on a pair of nobles, claiming to need funds to import soon-to-be-priceless brandy into the city in return for a healthy cut of the profits. However, the Bastards pull a Kansas City Shuffle on their marks soon after putting the scheme in place. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_3558eaa2 | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_3558eaa2 | comment |
Community has Abed's internet friend Toby, a banker in Nigeria experiencing financial difficulties and requiring Abed to send him $700 to enable him to fly out of the country to meet him. After Abed explains this, Britta is just about to explain that Abed has fallen for one of these... when Toby shows up, thanks Abed, pays him back the $700 and complains how Abed was the only one to actually help him out. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_5bc1d512 | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_5bc1d512 | comment |
Sneaky Pete: Lance pulls this con on the Murphys in the form of an investment opportunity. Marius identifies the con by name and predicts each subsequent step in Lance's plan based on the common structure of the con. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_74fb542e | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_74fb542e | comment |
A That Mitchell and Webb Look episode featured three millionaires (all suffering from a speech impediment that made them sound exactly like automated call generators) who actually were handing out massive yachts for just a small fee to people whose phone number had been selected at random. They just did not understand why everyone kept hanging up on them. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_b712435c | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_b712435c | comment |
Leverage, "The Stork Job" - the mark of the week is in with the Russian Mafia, and runs a version using Serbian war orphans where the prospective parents have to keep paying "overhead" costs. Sophie explicitly compares the scheme to the Spanish Prisoner. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_d0c75992 | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_d0c75992 | comment |
An Inspector Morse mystery centered around the Russian Bride version of this scam. | |
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| Spanish Prisoner / int_f4e799ee | type |
Spanish Prisoner | |
| Spanish Prisoner / int_f4e799ee | comment |
Burn Notice has one guy taken in by an interesting version of this particular con: he's convinced to invest in a new club in Cuba (highly illegal for US residents), necessitating a cash-only transaction. He's convinced by profits shown from an earlier investment (actually a Ponzi Scheme) and just when he's called to meet with the investor to discuss profits, the FBI conducts a sting operation, hustling him out the back door while they arrest the investor. Of course, the "FBI" was in on the plot, so he asks Michael to step in and get his money back (lest he incur the wrath of the loan sharks he got the money from in the first place), so Michael pulls a more complicated version of the same scheme on the con man. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
| Majipoor Series / int_a9bd2807 | type |
Spanish Prisoner |
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