Synopsis
Since he was a teenager, Craig Jacob has had a knack for - well, to put it bluntly, ripping off his fellow citizens. He's a con man, and one of the best. As Jacob says in Twisted Genius: "I added it up once. Ten million dollars, give or take a few bucks, it came to. And the schemes I concocted to get it were unending. For nearly 20 years I played the biggest institutions for chumps - airlines, banks, casinos, newspapers, credit card companies, Western Union, the phone company, department stores and manufacturers. And never was any element of coercion involved. I mean, no guns, no threats. With con, with guile, sometimes with sheer nerve, I took money from these bastions of financial stability. Some of them actually had to change their procedures after I got through with them."
Even law enforcement authorities have acknowledged how ingenious Jacob is. "Mr. Jacob is every credit-card holder's nightmare," said one official. "This man has single-handedly developed a sophisticated scheme that puts banks with all their modern state-of-the-art computer equipment at his mercy....He is the type of person who, equipped with little or almost no information, can make optimum use of it and obtain mobility in spheres that would present barriers to most of us who are not willing to persist or who lack tenacity. He is not intimidated easily, nor is he afraid to test limits."
Craig has been, by his own description, a criminal, but he is undeniably also some sort of genius. A twisted genius.
Reviews
While Jacob characterizes others with the phrase degenerate gambler, common in racetrack argot, he never applies it to himself, but it describes him as well. Beginning during his New Jersey adolescence, he racked up gambling debts and paid them by cheating the friends with whom he played cards. He graduated to passing stolen and forged checks and using counterfeit credit cards, moving all over the nation but concentrating on the East Coast and Las Vegas. Now 42, Jacob sums up his life this way: "I don't feel compelled to... do acts of contrition... I made a ton of money and had me an adventure. It's not a bad parlay." His memoirs, written with Berger (Punch Lines), include a lengthy addendum, "The Jacob Papers," composed of a 1981 presentencing report by a probation officer, a 1988 statement by his common-law wife, a 1994 violation-of-probation report made to the Eastern District of New York and a whiny letter written to a friend in 1995. Jacob is now serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison term, which he is appealing. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Jacob recalls his life since high school, when he began the gambling habit that, he claims, was the main cause of his myriad criminal activities. Jacob would typically gamble away large sums, then run a variety of scams to recoup his losses. Those scams included numerous bank frauds and bad checks and a range of credit card tricks. Jacob also dabbled in legitimate businesses, hooked up with other criminals, assumed different identities, and set up shop in one location after another. He acquired a drug-using girlfriend, fathered two children, started a successful business while in prison, and seemingly loved every minute of it. He is now in prison again, quarreling with his parents over the custody of his children and claiming he's gone straight. The narrative is sketchy, with a paucity of detail (various court documents are appended to increase the book's length), and it frequently strikes an irritating, self-justifying note. This lightweight memoir can be excluded from all but the largest true-crime collections.
Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L.,
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It is an irony of our times that as we become more technologically sophisticated, we also seem to become more vulnerable. Armed with only the most basic information, some technological savvy, and a lot of audacity, anyone bold enough can take advantage of the anonymity afforded by electronic transactions to move funds quickly, albeit improperly or illegally. Jacob, perhaps gutsier and slier than most, is certainly one such individual. Without a trace of remorse or apology, he boasts of schemes netting him nearly $10 million during a 20-year career, although he recently suffered a minor setback--a 7 1/2-year federal penitentiary sentence. Jacob brags that many institutions were forced to change procedures or institute safeguards to prevent others from duplicating his tactics. He tells his disturbing yet fascinating tale through Berger, previously author of a book about the New York Knicks and several about boxing. David Rouse
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