<i>And the the related: you can't con an honest man.</i><p>Of course you can.  Here's three types of cons that would work on honest men:<p>1) Romance scams:  The con artist develops a relationship with the target (mark).  The con artist then develops a range of fraudulent reasons that they need money from the mark, from needing the money to travel to the mark's country to see them to needing the money for cancer treatment.<p>2) Various fake medical cures.  There's a huge industry of these preying on cancer victims, for instance.<p>3) The melon drop: a scammer will pretend to bump into the mark and drop a package that's already broken, then demand compensation.<p>There are many, many more.  Merely being "honest" is no protection.