1. Get a Car for Free

This one is a classic. Find a hotel that has a lot of expensive cars in the parking lot. You can distract the guy they have hired to park cars and have someone dressed up like him “park” the car. Take the car and make a run for it. If the hotel only has one person behind the desk you can distract that person and take one of the car keys if they are kept in the same place as the room keys. If there is both a car key and a room key present, this means that the owner is out without a car and these will buy you the most time. Needless to say this scam only works to use a car, not to steal it. There are too many odds against you. The trick can be pulled further when you use the car to drive to a car dealer. You leave the expensive car there and ask for a test drive. If you look presentable, the dealer may see the expensive car as proof that you’re to be trusted. No one would leave his Ferrari there, just to steal a Lamborghini, now would he?

2. Get a Free Hotel Room

Don’t try tricks like this in hotels that are nearly full. Call in to ask if they have places for your volleyball team of 40 people, then ask them if they are close to the volleyball stadium and apologize for not booking the rooms. Ask for specifications about the rooms. On what floor are they? Can all of us stay on the same floor? Ask everything you need this way. Most hotels are quite open. If you just take an elevator up and act like you are a guest who stays in the room. That means that the only thing that separates you from the room is a door. There are several ways of opening it. Don’t try to call room service from another room; most people from room service don’t have access to all rooms. You can try and get the key from the board downstairs through a classic distraction or you can just change in the elevator into a worker’s costume, get your toolbox from your suitcase and act as if you’re repairing the lock on the door.

The best way to get a room is albeit a dangerous one, the classic namecard swap. Try to get a name card of the owner of the hotel. Reprint it, but change the telephone number. Act like the hotel owner’s friend who got his wallet stolen (and beaten up to make it a bit more dramatic) and ask for them to call your friend if you could stay in his hotel. A friend of yours should answer the phone and seal the deal. The worse beat up you look and the more you need help, the easier they’ll go on you.

3. Get a Free Meal at the Restaurant

Although running away without paying works, it has too many disadvantages. If the waiter remembered what you look like, it’s a problem. You can’t go to the same place again. You may have to run with a full stomach. The trick is for them to feel sorry for you. In the movie heartbreakers, one of the actors throws glass in her meal after finishing half of it and both her and her friend leave in a fury. The restaurant wants to keep it quiet so they will let you off as fast as possible. But it’s in a movie, so people may know the scam. You need to slip something in your food without anyone noticing and so on. No, you need to be bold and do it with style. Eat your meal and when you’re ready, trigger the fire alarm. All restaurants need a fire alarm (safety regulations are really harsh on restaurants), if they don’t you can be even bolder and say you’re a safety inspector as your day job and threaten your way out of paying.

Now when the fire alarm is triggered, you need to act cool. Leave the restaurant and go out on the street. You can either walk away or wait for the solution of the restaurant owner. You may all get your meal for free. If you decide on the walk away code and it happens to backlash, use a story. My mother died in a fire and the alarm brought up the memories, I just couldn’t stay there.

4. Get Free Airplane Travel

-This is one of the hardest. Although airlines pay a lot of things for free for you (hotels, food…), the plane trip is usually not one of them. You need to book a flight to even just start arguing with the people behind the counter. The only way to get on a plane for free is as staff. Airline staff doesn’t fly for free, but there are alliances that sort of make the company pay for the staff’s flight. Staff’s names are not a secret. If you have at least one connection to someone who works for an airline, you should be able to find a name of a person on holiday or who is flying on a flight that’s in another continent, than the one you’re traveling to and from. You need to dress up as staff and tell people that you need to go somewhere to be staff on a flight that leaves from that place. Be in a hurry, act friendly and not as if it’s the difference between life and death if you get there or not. This scam needs lots of research and if you get caught, you’re really into a lot of trouble. The more doubtful the airline, the more chance on succeeding, if you’re leaving from Libreville airport on an air Gabon flight and look like a pilot and the documents to match, you’ll probably have a chance.

-The only straight way to do it is by purchasing your flight using other people’s flyer miles. You need the numbers of the card of a person with a lot of flyer miles. You call in to book a flight and tell you will purchase it with flyer miles. Usually a person with a lot of flyer miles is a good customer, so they won’t ask a lot of questions.

5. Get Books, CD’s, Movies For Free

Libraries are big buildings. They need emergency exits and fire alarms. If you use them both, you can get away with any book, movie, CD you like. I agree, it’s not really a scam, more like stealing. Now by the time libraries notice something in their stock is missing and not misplaced, they have no way of tracking you down. The brilliant part about the fire alarm trick is that you can play innocent. Oh but I didn’t even know I had these books in my backpack; I was just too surprised to care.

6. Money

Robbing a bank with guns or using Internet scams are not only stupid, they’re even dangerous. What you need is people giving you money. You can go around for charity organizations that don’t exist, but let’s face it: too many witnesses, not enough money. In the novel American Gods (by Neil Gaiman) the perfect scheme is explained. You need to have a closed bank, with a problem with its night safe. People, who want to deposit money, will have to go a different way. Of course the bank has a solution. They hire some guys (you) with a locker in an “armored” van. You need forms to let people fill out there deposit. You need business cards to make sure you can have one of your accomplices account for the bank at the other side of the phone line. If you got those in order, you just have to wait for people making their deposit and take the money from them.

You can also use the classic lottery scam, as in the movie Matchstick Men. You “find” a lottery ticket and act if it has fallen out of someone’s pocket. You’ve got a guy sitting with a “fake” newspaper. The finder and the victim check the results and win. The person too blinded by greed to see the scam, pays some of the money to the finder and hops of to claim his or her price. Say the victim had won 3000 dollar, you should be at least 800 dollar richer.

7. Free Education

Most university courses are free to enter, so you can get education for free. But you also need a diploma. They are harder to get for free. You need to be enrolled into the classes to receive credit for them. But universities are big structures; the person who does the paperwork to enroll you in classes isn’t the same person, who receives your tuition fee. This means all you need is a phone call/e-mail to the right person and they will enroll you for free. It’s almost too easy, but indeed if the person of the faculty believes you have payed, you’re in business.

8. Entrance to Parties and Festivals

Private parties and festivals use various ways of making sure you have payed or are invited. Badges can be forged; after all they are usually made for just one night, so they can’t be too expensive. There are always ways in. Festivals have ways in; private parties have emergency exits and so on. Every case is different, but let’s face it the only thing you try to do is getting inside. Once you’re inside, they won’t ask questions anymore it’s a party not the G8 summit.

9. Free Massage and Spa Treatment

Swimming pools are dangerous and the area around it is slippery. Go sit at the swimming pool of the hotel. Then when you’re sure a waiter is watching, you slip and hurt yourself. As the waiter comes up to you and ask if you’re okay, you say no. You can also have a “fake” doctor accompany you, to tell the hotel people how bad it is. (If you’re alone, you can be a doctor yourself) Then comes the part where you tell them that it’s so horrible, because you planned this trip especially to play tennis or golf or any other thing you can’t do. The hotel people will be sure to find you an alternative.

10. Free Hardware

Many public places have computers. Find a place where they don’t have a technician. Then introduce a virus to the computer. Return as the technician. Tell them it’s also a problem with some hardware and that you’ll replace some things. Be very technical and walk off with the computer.

I must confess that I haven’t tried any of these scams myself. I’m sure some of them work, but there’s always the feeling that you might have robbed someone else. But if like in the movies you are in desperate need of a car, books, entrance somewhere, you have at least some basic tricks to rely on.