Laci Mosley on Scams, Comedy, and Scams as Comedy
Photo by Jonny Marlow
It’s only partly an exaggeration to say that Laci Mosley got me through the pandemic—or at least, through its early days. For pretty much that whole first year that we were all hunkered up alone at home, I found myself utterly incapable, for the first time in maybe my whole life, of picking up (or turning on) a single book. Nor could I manage to sit through an album, or watch a whole TV show, or listen to any of the hip non-fiction podcasts I suddenly found stacking up like so many precarious Jenga blocks.
But what I could listen to was Scam Goddess, the weekly true crime(-ish) podcast created and hosted by actor and improv comedian Laci Mosley. Dedicated to “fraud and all those who practice it,” Scam Goddess forgoes the “host tells a story to a naive guest” format that’s endemic to podcasts these days and kicks it up a notch: not only does Mosley’s comedian guest not know the shape of the con, crime, or caper she’s going to regale them with when they sit down at the mic across from her, but neither does she. This leaves Mosley to learn about the fraud-of-the-week in real time, the twists and turns which she and her very funny guests then riff off the rest of the episode. It’s so goofy! It’s so fun! It was, in short, the exact energy so many of us needed that first pandemic year.
It’s no surprise, then, that Hachette commissioned a Scam Goddess memoir to give Mosley space to talk more about the kinds of scams that showed up in her early life, and how they led her to building not just the Scam Goddess brand, but also her broader career as a comedic performer.
To talk more about all of this, I caught up with Mosley over the phone earlier this month. And after a lovely 45-minute chat, I turned to my recording app and discovered that while the visual dial had been bouncing the whole time, only the first five minutes had been successfully recorded. Technology! It’s a scam!
Happily, Mosley is not only a pro, but incredibly generous with her time. What follows is that same 45-minute conversation, recreated over email by Mosley in the week that followed our original call. As she says below, if there’s one thing scammers can teach us, it’s that we don’t have to accept our lives (or technology failures) the way they are, and that you can create the life (or technology wins) that you want.
Paste Magazine: As a longtime listener of the pod, I feel like I already have a good sense of your relationship with scams—and also, that’s much of what your forthcoming book is about. So rather than starting with that question, I want to ask instead, what is it about scams that reads to you as “comedy”?
Laci Mosley: Scams are theatrical. They don’t call them con artists for nothing. Sometimes there’s costumes, fake accents, tons of backstory. You have to memorize your lies like a script, so you don’t get them twisted up. There’s a lot of performance in scams that I find truly hilarious.
Paste: Something you said in a 2020 interview with The Verge resonated with me when thinking about that same “comedy” question: “There’s something about con artists, they have this confidence, usually to the point of delusion: even if you don’t belong there, feeling like you belong there and showing people you belong there.” Is this something that you still think about, this many years into your show?
Mosley: Everyone can learn from scammers. Imposter syndrome is something that’s constantly running rampant throughout our society. Especially when you grow up and realize that nobody knows exactly what they’re doing, we’re all just trying to figure it out. We can all learn from scammers’ confidence, and maybe not use it to do crime but to get that promotion!
Paste: Recently your reader letters have trended towards including some kind of note thanking you for raising their alertness to scams, and/or keeping them from falling for something they’d otherwise have been a great mark for. Has that trend extended to your real life friends and family?
Mosley: Yes, that trend has extended to my real life in a massive way. I feel like a lot of people in my life have replaced 311 in their phones for me. I constantly have friends and family reaching out to ask “should I click this link?” or “ this person called and asked for this information but I hung up like you said.” And nothing makes me happier than when listeners send in letters where they have warned their parents about a scam or stopped them from clicking on something on Facebook. Obviously, I got into this show because I love comedy and I love scams, but a huge priority for me has been erasing the shame of sharing that you’ve been exploited. I love to hear people share and realize that they’re not stupid, a mark, or gullible just because they were exploited. I love to hear people using that information that has been shared to decrease the amount of harm that they face in their life from scammers. I mean scammers likely call me more than my mom at this point, so if we can stop them from getting you I’m all about it.
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