How to Spot a Crook: 7 useful tips

Crooks come in a lot of varieties. Some crooks want to use you and some of them want to be used by you. There are old crooks and young crooks, rich ones and poor ones, big and small. Crooks are smug tricksters that will try to take advantage of you. But they can't trick you if you can see them coming a mile away! Best be on your guard and brush up on How to Spot a Crook.


1. Men Crooks often have prison tattoos. Lots of them. A very common prison tattoo is an E tu Brute high on the left shoulder. Watch for it!
2. Girl Crooks have boob jobs and too much lipstick. Remember this eqaution: increasing level of disproportion and makeup = higher level of crookedness.
3. Kid crooks wear baseball caps and don't play baseball but they do collect the cards. Don't trade with them because they'll rip you off.
4. Old crooks make you sign on the dotted line. Try to resist the impulse.
5. Crooks will get angry and insult you when you are too shrewd for their crookedness. If you are getting insulted, yup, you guessed it, you are most certainly dealing with someone more crooked than the Cookie Monster's Eyes.
6. All crooks are shifty. The weird lipstick women, the old men with business suits, the boys with baseball caps, they shift!
7. If the person in question is causing physical violence, it's not a crook you're dealing with, but a thug. But don't thank your lucky stars yet! Thugs are often worse than crooks!

Other Things
1. Richard Nixon really was a crook. He said he wasn't, but you can't trust a crook at his word. Donald Trump also claims that he is not a crook, but come on. Even his weird hair is crooked. Crooks like to lie, and they especially like to lie to people that are not crooks. This could really be considered an eighth tip.
2. Crooks don't want you to know they are crooks. This could be considered a ninth tip, or perhaps just a synthesis of the eighth useful tip. If you spot a crook for what they are, they are much less able to run their crooked game on you.
3. I hope these 7 tips don't inspire you to become a crook.
Crime doesn't pay. I mean, I know that Al Capone, the Birdman of Alcatraz, and Machine Gun Kelly all seem to have had industrious and desirable lives, but they were mostly thugs anyhow, a distinction that I can't seem to make clear enough. But, if you do become a crook despite all my best efforts to convince you otherwise, don't point the finger back at me when you get impeached, thrown out of the American Baseball League or court marshaled!

Here are some useful ways to keep yourself safe from crooks!
1. Don't vote for treasonous scam artists that will gladly put their country in jeopardy for the chance to build a big hotel in Russia.
2. Consider wearing a chain wallet!
3. Keep a baseball bat by the door, so that when kids with baseball caps appear, you can go play baseball with them rather than suffering the loss of a bad baseball card trade.