Does any of this sound familiar? Three-card monte – also known as find the lady and three-card trick – is a confidence game in which the victims, or "marks", are tricked into betting a sum of money, on the assumption that they can find the "money card" among three face-down playing cards. It is very similar to the shell game except that cards are used instead of shells.

In its full form, three-card monte is an example of a classic "short con" in which a shill pretends to conspire with the mark to cheat the dealer, while in fact doing the reverse. The mark has no chance whatsoever of winning, at any point in the game. In fact, anyone who is observed winning anything in the game can be presumed to be a shill. Just saying

This confidence trick was already in use by the turn of the 15th century. Sounds like the 21st century con game brought to you my pharma, government, schools and my favorite Tv news media including lane night talk shows.