Delayed Wire
The Con Man and his crew represent that they can give access to advance information available to no one else, for a price. The off-track betting tale from The Sting was a Delayed Wire gag.
Advance stock-price movement, "hacked" access to currency fluctuations, a "tip" on zoning regulations that will boost the price of real estate are all updates of the kinds of information for sale. A key element of the tale (called the "hook") lies in convincing The Mark that he has a short window of opportunity to cash in, in a situation where he has all the control. Often the mark is steered toward "discovering" the illicit operation in such a way that he feels he can threaten to call in the police.
A variant is the Reverse Pyramid Scheme, where a large pool of potential marks are given predictions about events, and only those marks who have received correct predictions are retained. The pool dwindles to a small pool of marks who have received a stunningly accurate series of correct calls and are then offered one last prediction at an obscene price.
Note that if a contact is genuinely giving this sort of advice (as in, the delayed information is true), it's called insider trading, which can be just as bad.
Film
- The Sting has a horse racing variant.
- The immortal "tootsie-frootsie ice cream" scene from A Day At The Races.
- The Grifters uses this as a long con.
- The end of Trading Places.
Literature
- The Count of Monte Cristo uses an early wire scheme to bankrupt his enemy Danglars - making this one Older Than Radio.
Live Action TV
- Done in the first series finale of Hustle, which references The Sting, then again in the first episode of fifth season.
- The Remington Steele episode "Sting of Steele", inspired by the movie The Sting, plays this trick with betting on overseas sports results.
- Used in an episode of The Riches, as are several other types of cons,
- Alias Smith and Jones, in "The Great Shell Game"
- Is the original con in the Leverage episode "The Bottle Job".
- Neal and Peter have to pull one in the White Collar episode "The Dentist of Detroit".
- The Reverse Pyramid variant was used in one of Square One TV's Mathnet serials—the first serial after their transfer to New York, in fact. A character calling himself "the Swami" sent predictions to pretty much all the retired lawyers in the city, including a basketball game, a football game, and a trial, before separately offering the last seven the name of the winner of a horse race for $5,000.
Radio
- Done in The Lives of Harry Lime episode "Horse Play"; 20 years before The Sting.