Fraudulent schemes or tricks designed to deceive people out of money or information.
Origin uncertain, but possibly from 'scamp' or from carnival slang. It became widespread in the 1960s-70s to describe quick confidence schemes and fraud.
Scams evolve faster than fraud prevention—from Nigerian prince emails to cryptocurrency schemes—because once we learn to detect one, scammers just invent a new version, making it an endless evolutionary arms race!
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