'Cheaters never win'

by David Grand
March 10, 2005

The hell they don't. And whoever coined that saying might've seen a Mississippi gambler thrown overboard from a paddlewheel boat in the 19th century for being caught cheating at poker. Cheating got a foothold in this country in 1626 with the 32 sq. mi. of Manhattan Island being bought from Native Americans by the Dutch colony for goods valued at $24. What a steal, ranked only behind the pittance paid France in the Louisiana purchase, and in buying Alaska from Russia.      

There are, of course, as many forms of cheating as the human mind can conjure up. Examples:

• Cheating on one's spouse. That occurs so often each hour of the day it would tax the best computers to calculate the numbers. And if I got a dollar for every time that infidelity was the main reason for the 2 million divorces each year, my writing days would end abruptly.
• Cheating by fraud. The first name that comes to mind when I think of con artists is Charles Ponzi, who in 1920 was known as the "Boston swindler" and whose name went into American legend for the simplest of all confidence rackets-"the Ponzi game"-in which Peter is robbed to pay Paul, which cost his investors $15 million (over $100 million in today's dollars). And in recent years, the flimflam boys have worked his get-rich-scheme in everything from off shore mutual funds, private hedge funds, to real estate, commodity contracts and gold coins, with the commonest versions being chain letters and pyramid sale schemes. But as P.T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
• Cheating on tests. Nothing can top the cheating scandal at West Point in 1976 that shook it to its foundation, when 134 cadets were forced to resign for cheating on a series of tests. So much for the Cadet Honor Code that states a cadet "will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do...."
• Cheating on game shows. Who can ever forget the name Charles Van Doren, an American educator and TV personality, who lost both careers when it was revealed to the public that he'd cheated as a contestant on that quiz show "Twenty One" in the late 1950s, by being furnished answers in advance by the show's producers. He deserved an Oscar for his acting performance.
• Cheating in sports. Fixed prizefights, unlike TV wrestling matches, are largely a thing of the past. And when it comes to manipulating the scores in professional sports, nothing could match the Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series. Present and former baseball players taking performance drugs is also a form of cheating. And there's no better example of how steroids can turn an average sized, baseball player like Mark McGuire was as a rookie into an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike, which no doubt gave him that added power in which to bang out 70 homers in 1998. But at least Arnold was man enough to admit he'd used them in his bodybuilding, and still flexes his muscles as governor.   
• Cheating on taxes. Ever since Congress passed the national income tax in 1912, people have searched for ways to escape the tax man or at least hide from him. The IRS estimates that taxpayers pay only 80 percent of taxes they owe, and that as much as $70 billion is drained each year from the U.S. Treasury by more than a million individuals and corporations who've registered as citizens of Bermuda to avoid paying taxes, a practice known as "tax motivated expatriation." And just recently the biggest tax cheat in American history Walter Anderson, who'd evaded taxes on at least $450 million in income since 1992 (using seven aliases), has finally been apprehended.

He's a weird duck, who like Johnny Cash was always dressed in black. But Cash did it out of concern for prisoners, the poor and downtrodden, which hopefully that scofflaw Anderson will soon be all three. (Boy, wouldn't it be great if those cheating CEO's-WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers, Health-South's Richard Scrushy, Enron's Ken Lay and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski end up that way, and joined Adelphia's John Rigas & sons in the same prison.)