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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1919 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The other night I rewatched a movie I liked when I was younger, Heartbreakers. If you want a light comedy featuring a funny performance from Ray Liotta and a hysterical one from Bob Hoskins (and also a leading turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt in her prime, displaying acres of leg and cleavage), check it out.

The premise of the film (this is revealed in the first ten minutes of the movie so it's hardly a spoiler, but the movie would probably be more entertaining if you go into it blind) is this: Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play a mother-and-daughter pair of con artists, Max and Page Connors, who play a long con on unsuspecting marks, the first of whom we see in the movie is Dean Cummano (Ray Liotta). Max meets Dean and gets him to fall madly in love with her, but tells him that she doesn't believe in pre-marital sex. Dean marries Max, but Max pretends to fall asleep on their wedding night, preventing him from consummating the marriage and leaving him even more sexually frustrated. The following morning, Page seduces Dean, and Max catches him in the act. Max divorces Dean and demands a massive one-off settlement; because Dean runs a quasi-legitimate business, he agrees, because dragging him through the courts would open up his business to legal scrutiny.

What I was thinking during this rewatch is, while this long con is obviously dishonest and shady - is it actually illegal? It's not a crime for a woman to ask her daughter to attempt the seduce the woman's husband to see how he'll react. As Page subsequently argues in the movie, "we can't make a scumbag do anything a scumbag wouldn't do anyway". The con hinges on Dean voluntarily choosing to be unfaithful to Max with Page - if he succeeds in keeping his dick in his pants, it's game over.

I actually recall watching this film back when I was a teenager, under the belief that it would feature Jennifer Love Hewitt running on a treadmill with just a bra on top (I learned an important lesson at that point that movie studios lie in their marketing). Was a decently funny comedy with its share of laughs, otherwise.

But your question about the fraud reminds me of the real-life fraud conviction in Japan earlier this year of a "sugar baby" who baited lonely men into giving her money. I recall learning of the details of her scam and also wondering why that was illegal, since there was no business transaction, not even implicitly. There was no contract, no sales, no storefront, no promises, nothing of the sort. It seemed akin to a college student asking his parents for money to buy books with the plan to spend it on beer (obviously parent-child relationship is different from this, but also, I don't know why the law would treat it differently). IANAL so I have no idea if I'm just not well versed enough at fraud law, or if Japanese law is different from American.

Not a lawyer, but criminal fraud laws are loose enough for them to be charged if the prosecutor really wanted to.

They might if multiple men came forward with the same pattern. It'd look a lot worse for the girls if they ran it multiple times and one guy didn't take the bait and Max annulled the marriage since it was never consummated.

As a one off it's hard to imagine them getting charged with anything. Dean could probably sue if he found out, but he wanted to avoid court in the first place.

But what would he sue them for? Fraud? What exactly is fraudulent about the scam?

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