Notes Toward a One-Man Play About Scammers, Character, and Control

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by Jack Quinn, Publisher

Conversations I Wasn’t Supposed to Have

Most people delete scam emails or ignore suspicious texts. I don’t.

Not because I’m reckless, and certainly not because I’m confused—but because I’m curious.

What happens if you refuse fear? If you replace urgency with politeness, panic with procedure, threat with tone? What happens if you treat the exchange not as a trap, but as a scene—unfolding slowly, in writing, with time to think?

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself engaging a steady parade of scammers by text and by email. What began as idle curiosity has become something more deliberate: a rotating repertory of characters, each deployed to stress-test a different assumption the scam depends on.

I’m now developing this material into a one-man play, built from real exchanges, real language, and real silence—outlandish situations drawn directly from actually engaging with scammers, refracted through performance.

The characters are not disguises.

They are instruments.

Columbo, Compliance Edition

When an email announces urgent account activity or an immediate transfer requirement, Columbo appears—friendly, slightly confused, relentlessly procedural.

He doesn’t resist. He complies—slowly. He asks clarifying questions, then circles back to the first question because he may have written it down wrong. In writing, this can go on indefinitely.

Scammers rely on compression: time, emotion, options.

Columbo expands all three.

Urgency collapses under earnest slowness.

Paul Lynde and the Manufactured Crisis

The moment a scam tries to generate panic—a health scare, a legal notice—Paul Lynde steps forward with nervous brightness.

Every alarming detail is met with theatrical concern, verbal clutter, and sideways wit. He acknowledges danger without ever granting authority.

Fear has nowhere to land when every sentence arrives already wrapped in irony.

Noël Coward in Correspondence

Noël Coward is urbane, faintly superior, emotionally unavailable.

Threats land as curiosities. Warnings are received as conversational color. The exchange is treated less as danger than as a breach of taste.

Scammers do not know how to escalate against someone who isn’t impressed.

Charles Nelson Reilly and the Harrisburg Box of Money

One email promised a physical box of cash waiting for me in Harrisburg.

Enter Charles Nelson Reilly.

He treats the situation as already theatrical. He wants to know the box’s dimensions. Its construction. Whether it requires climate control. He turns a flimsy premise into a production meeting.

The story evaporated the moment the box was required to exist.

I still miss that one.

Dr. Zachary Smith and the International Transfer

Any scam involving global logistics, intermediaries, or banking urgency summons Dr. Zachary Smith—the scheming coward.

He is anxious, verbose, deeply concerned about “proper channels.” He dramatizes consequences before they arrive. He appears compliant while quietly undermining the premise.

Scammers expect fear to accelerate compliance.

Dr. Smith uses fear to slow the plot indefinitely.

The Nephew Who Asks Questions

Some scams hinge on complexity—QR codes, wallets, routing numbers.

This is where the Nephew appears.

“My nephew says we should double-check everything before we hit send.

Could you answer a few questions for him? He loves this stuff.”

The “few questions” inevitably become an audit.

Scams do not survive nephews.

The Wife Who Can’t Work the TV Remote

This persona emerges whenever a scam requires technical execution.

“I can’t even figure out the TV remote, so I’m having trouble with the Bitcoin thing.

Is there a number where someone can explain it to me like I’m five?”

She isn’t resisting. She simply cannot follow the plot.

Momentum collapses under domestic confusion.

Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

(A shield against shame-based scams)

Some scams rely entirely on embarrassment—claiming they have secretly recorded you and will send the video to everyone in your address book.

Fred Garvin arrives with cheerful professionalism.

“Anything like that goes through my OnlyFans representative—my nephew set up the page and handles licensing.

Could you send him the clip? He manages distribution.”

The threat becomes a customer-service misunderstanding.

Blackmail collapses when treated as a branding issue.

The Institutional Gatekeeper

When a scam involves a physical item—a piano, a shipment, a donation—this persona takes over.

“I’d be happy to introduce institutions,” I write.

“They’ll have questions.”

Governance, documentation, inspection—stories built on urgency cannot survive process. Most quietly end here.

The Retired Man with Time

Some scams attempt to impose a deadline.

This character dissolves it.

He is available in principle, never in practice. Tomorrow is always possible. Urgency drains away, replaced by limitless patience.

Scammers need acceleration.

He offers molasses.

The Almost-Convinced Skeptic

“I just need one thing clarified.”

The same thing.

Repeatedly.

Hope stretches. Resolution never arrives.

Truman Capote and the Use of Disdain

Some scams don’t require delay or confusion.

They require disdain.

Capote does not argue with the premise; he judges it. The tone is rushed. The logic thin. The ending implausible.

The real offense is not the threat—but the writing.

Disdain withdraws legitimacy. The scam is no longer dangerous. It is simply bad.

Silence

The final and most devastating role.

No reply.

No follow-up.

No closure.

The thread evaporates.

After the Thread Goes Dark

There’s a moment—usually after ten or so volleys—when the replies stop.

Not escalation. Not retreat. Just absence.

I’m always mildly surprised by what follows. It isn’t triumph. It’s a faint sense of loss. I miss the parries—the strained adjustments, the small tells that the script is faltering but not yet abandoned.

The exchange has settled into a brittle rhythm. When it ends abruptly, the relief is secondary. What lingers is the interruption of cadence, the scene cutting to black before it resolves.

That’s how I know this was never really about the scam.

It was about the moment when pressure gives way to performance—and the quiet intimacy of watching someone realize, line by line, that they no longer control the story.

The Courtesy Follow-Up

If there’s no reply for three days, I sometimes send a follow-up.

Nothing pointed. Nothing clever.

Just a brief note asking whether everything is alright.

Concern is the final destabilizer. A script built on urgency cannot survive it. The scammer is forced—briefly—into the wrong role: the one being checked on.

That’s usually where it ends.