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In 1849 the New York Herald reported the arrest of a man known around the city as the Confidence Man. He would walk up to a stranger, talk for a bit, and ask whether the stranger had confidence enough in him to lend him his watch until tomorrow. Enough people did that the name stuck.

1841. The man tipping you off about thieves has your watch behind his back. Honoré Daumier, Rijksmuseum.

He was late to the trade. In the 1790s, prisoners at Bicetre, near Paris, were writing to strangers about a casket of gold that a small sum would recover, and by one account twenty letters in a hundred got an answer. In 1890 a former gambler explained how a sharper learns a stranger’s name: he greets him by the wrong one and waits to be corrected. That is this year’s “wrong number” text.

What is new is the speed, the reach, the payment rails nobody can reverse, and a voice on the phone made to sound like someone you know. The trick underneath is old, and once you have seen the old one, the new coat is easier to spot. That is what the weekly letter is for: the three going around, the tell on each, one thing to do, and three messages to practice on.