MilitantEidolon,
If I were to come up to you on the street and offered you a $20 US gold Double Eagle for the face value of the coin......would you buy it? (presupposing it tested real)

Then if I were to offer you 50 more of them for face value and explained that I had to pay the person who actually had them, up front.....would you go to the bank and take out a quick $1000.00?

If you did and then gave me the money, as I disappeared around the corner, I would just have made a quick $600.00 (valueing a run of the mill Double Eagle @ approx. $400.00)

A quick $20,000.00 profit would stimulate the greed in a lot of hardend buiness men who should really know better, but at least 20+ buisness owners (estimated) fell for just such a routine in and around Denver Co. about 1972-3

Greed is a powerfull motive for stupitidy in most humans.

[edit] one of the coins at least was real...a switch was made in most of the cases and the victim didn't even end up with a real Double Eagle.