-Ancient Egypt- (I study Egyptology)

People went to temples to buy mummyfied cats (ot other animals) in order to stay in the favour of the gods. The Temple would breed kittens just for this. They would be killed to get mummyfied.

So a Person would come to a temple and would buy a little mummy to be sacrificed to the god of said temple.

Here is the scam: There has been evidence of some dummy-mummies. The mummy itself would look like a cat or kitten but the insode contained old papyrus scrolls (rubbish/trash) or such that just molded the outsides to look like cats. (My example is about cats but depending on the temple this can also apply to dogs, birds, monkeys etc.) Most likely were these mummies way cheaper than an actual animal, therefore even the less fortunate were able to make sacrifices to the gods. The cat mummies, real or not, were sometimes even buried in small boxes. There were partially very pretty and even had figures of cats, that sat on top of them.

The example with the cats is located in the huge animal cemetary in the necropolis of Sakkara/Saqqara

For some further reading I would suggest:

Brier, B. (2001) "Case of the Dummy Mummy", in: Archaeology Vol. 54

Bleiberg, E. (2013) Soulful creatures : animal mummies in ancient Egypt

Ikram, S. (2005) Divine creatures : animal mummies in ancient Egypt

The view of the oder generations/dated:

Harwood, W. S. (1900) "THE MUMMIFICATION OF CATS IN ANCIENT EGYPT", in: Scientific American

This other one is not exactly a scam, but it still is an interesting way of perverting the law.

Whenever and wherever coin has been produced, it has also been faked. Period forgeries are curious and very collectible for numismatic aficionados, and 17th century Spain was not an exception to coin forgery, but it had a twist.

In the mid-17th century coin forgery was rampant in places like Madrid, Seville, or Córdoba, but the latter city became famous for it.

Upon an inquiry led by one of the knights 24 of Córdoba (which is to mean the city councillors), a massive coin forging ring was discovered, but nothing could really be done against it, even when coin forgery was punishable by death. How did that come to pass? The coin forging operation was run by three monasteries as a side hustle.

Members of the clergy, both secular and regular, were protected by ecclesiastical immunity, meaning they were not subject to the ordinary civil jurisdiction, and the ecclesiastical authorities did not have the faintest intention of lifting the friars' immunities, as they were also in on the illegal activities.

The forgeries are hilariously bad, but they have the correct weight, metal content, and size. I have one of such coins because it is an interesting historic piece. I'll add a link to a post of mine with pictures of obverse and reverse.

Edit: Behold, the comically bad forgery!

https://www.reddit.com/r/coins/comments/ve8js5/16_maravedis_period_forgery_ca_1640_cordoba/

In a very interesting and extremely well written novel from Spain's 16th century we get the first literary evidence of the "pigeon drop", what we call in Spain "timo de la estampita". The novel in question is called El viaje de Turquía de Pedro de Urdemalas, which has been attributed to Cristóbal de Villalón, Andrés Laguna, and more recently to Francisco López de Gómara.

The mechanics of the scam are exactly the same as the modern version of the "pigeon drop", although the materials are different. In the famous "timo de la estampita" (the stamp scam) we have the scammer pretending to be mentally impaired, showing banknotes to the mark (the victim, in the trade's jargon) saying that he has beautiful stamps of many colours for sale. The accomplice will lure the mark into getting "the stamps" for cheap from the scammer. They proceed with the transaction, and the mark flees with his supposed loot, and when he checks it in safety, he will notice that he didn't get any banknotes but useless newspaper shreds.

In El viaje de Turquía we have the scammer and his accomplice telling the mark that he has some caxaca, which is bad adaptation into Spanish of the Turkish word kaçak meaning "contraband". The mark sees fine contrabanded silk, and hoping to make a solid profit he buys it from the scammer, who switches the bag with fine silk for a bag full of cheap useless cloth. When the mark checks his "contraband" in safety, he realises that he's been taken for a ride, but by then the scammers have vanished.

The author of the Viaje de Turquía did some solid bibliographic work, with just about everything he says being documented either in Menavino, Alonso de Santa Cruz, Spandounes, or Georgieviz, but this particular case is nowhere to be found in those works, so we can assume that the author adapted into the novel a scam that was known to him in Spain.

The attribution to Gómara that I mentioned is based upon linguistic evidence, but also on the fact that Gómara had access to the aforementioned books, as he was secretary to the marquess of Astorga, who owned specimens of all said literary works and many more.

Oh oh oh I can answer one of these!

So - in 1881, Wales passed the Sunday Closing Act. A myriad of reasons why, ranging from a growing call for Home Rule, Methodism being revived, and good old fashioned classism. The long and the short of the Closing Act was that public houses were not allowed to sell alcohol on a Sunday. There were, however, some exceptions; You could buy barrels of ale from a greengrocer, you could have alcohol in your house and drink it privately (not for profit) or, and here's the kicker, you could serve members of a private club beer if it was included as part of their subscription payment.

Now here's your workaround. In 1898 Grangetown, Cardiff, a group of men came up with a scheme - if they provided beer to men as part of membership to a "boilermaker's club", they would be able to serve as much as they liked all Sunday long. As long as the money did not DIRECTLY change hands, it wasn't in direct violation of the law. My favourite bit: they met in the Marl pits outside of town, and claimed that these men were part of the "Hotel de Marl" - each man would toss some coins onto a piece of newspaper in front of the barrel and be handed a glass. There was no way to prove this wasn't a legitimate club, and so the police did not (immediately, anyway) shut them down.

So what we see here is an extremely clever way of completely circumnavigating the law that is, in essence, a scam that has no victims. Hotel de Marl even became mutated into shorthand for any illegal drinking club that, in my opinion, completely misses the nuance of the original.

This is a very long and interesting story that I wrote an entire Masters thesis on, and if you want to hear more feel free to PM or Q&A me!

/u/sunagainstgold and /u/MarcusDohrelius have previously written answers to Did people cut spices with something to add weight, like they do with drugs today?