“[W]hen I had got hold of a bank roll, I gave up the rough graft of picking pockets and started in what was called at that time “sure thing graft” such as the “flim flam,” or more properly speaking, short changing with a ten or twenty dollar bill. I worked this graft for about six months and was very successful.

In the meantime, I became acquainted with the men in the the green goods business. . . .”

—George Appo, from his unpublished autobiography; quoted by Timothy J Gilfoyle in A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, 2006.