Con Man, John (Ellsworth) Jaymes on the hustle

To John’s left is Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, and Me (it’s Circus Circus, I’m looking up at an aerialist). Glyn Johns, with the beard, is standing behind Mick.

Here, with a photo by Ethan Russell, we have John Jaymes at work hustling the pit boss to let us photograph in the casino. 

John was my first experience with a con man. This prepared me for my next encounters with con men. I helped bust two others. One trying to con the Lakota Sioux, Native Americans: A friend had recommended me to check out a film deal they were being offered. The deal was a scam. I got them out of it. Six weeks later the scammers made front page of the LA Times business section. Ironically I was at a party when one guy was telling me he had a deal closing on Monday from the con group. They were giving him and his partner, $1 Million, I asked if he was paying them any money. “Yes” he said, they were paying him $75,000. They had already paid $3000 as an act of good faith..”So, they’re giving you 1Mil and you are giving them $75,000 back of the money he is giving you? Makes no sense, I said.”  I told him I had the newspaper article at my house and we went there a 2am. He called and woke up his partner. While they were discussing what I had told him, the partners wife said.. “remember they call them con men, not because they are convicts but we cause they gain your confidence.” The deal never happened.

and the other; conning naive people. When I revealed a con to a woman who brought him to her group to invest in a film, she said she knew after he conned her out of $25,000 but he said the money he got from her group would be used to pay her back….I gave her the, ‘yeah sure’ …after I told her group…she left town for Hawaii.