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Originally Posted by Donny Brook
I get Acting as elementary to doing the con. I'm trying to figure out what you need to devise/plan it. Psychology (Applied) seems kind of better, but I'm not totally convinced by that either.
Like think of the movie The Sting. Psychology tells you how Doyle Lonnegan would react to the machinations at various stages, but does it tell you what those machinations should be and how to implement them?
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I already talked about Law, Finance, Accounting, and various skills for impressive professions. I would add Administration. Most scams do not involve sophisticated planning though: find marks who are vulnerable to a kind of political propaganda, and feed it to them interspersed with requests for money. Create a fake business and raise money for it. Present yourself as an expert with an invention which can solve everyone's problems if you just have a bit more money to tinker with it. Pathological liars bounce from one deception to another as the first deception raises questions, socopaths have an instinct for climbing the "trust ladder" (attach yourself to marginal member of the group A, use that to build a relationship with local leader B, wave your hand at B when you get to know the leader of a neighouring group C- and make sure they never get together and realize that actually they all thought someone else was vouching for you).
The default GURPS character has few inhibitions (if they do, they have a Code of Honour, Truthfulness, Honesty, Pacifism, Sense of Duty, etc.) so they can think of ways to violate the law or justice without restraint.
I would use the professional skill for police to be familiar with the
Mr. Big / Canadian Technique. Maybe Streetwise for things like the three-card monty. But the hard part is being willing to continually lie to vulnerable people, and how to get away with the money. Theranos never had that figured out, its possible that the directors convinced themselves that their tech would work if they had a bit more time and a bit more money.