Qipian's Book of Artifice
Qipian's Book of Artifice is a treatise on scams and chicanery written by the Daxian eunuch Qipian, a famous bandit leader in the late Chen dynasty. Penned and distributed to his forces as a practical guide for raising money through illegal means, it would become a blueprint to follow for Daxian criminal organizations long after the author's capture and execution. Qipian's band was behind one of the first pyramid schemes in history, taking money from investors in order to "carry out an undertaking of great advantage" that ended in the collapse of Qaxi's provincial economy.
Background
Qipian was a former minor functionary working in a regional office of the Imperial treasury. After being found tampering with tax records and pocketing some of the revenue he fled back to his home village and used some of the stolen funds to recruit local vagrants and his own family members into a bandit force. Being a former official that was able to write, read and with knowledge of arithmetic and other subjects gave Qipian a leg-up when it came to running his band and in addition to common banditry in the countryside, he had his followers engage in more sophisticated crimes which were harder to detect and would not immediately provoke provintial law enforcement into action. He codified the majority of these money making schemes into a pamphlet that would later be used against him at his trial, the so called Book of Artifice.
Notable scams
- Spice fraud - The passing off of dust, assorted powders and chimney scrapings as expensive spices.
- Food scams - Outright selling of rotten meat, adding sawdust or stones to bread to meet weight requirements, half filling the bottom of rice sacks with dirt to mimic the weight of a full sack, used of rigged scales, watering down of alcohol.
- Tea House scam - A female accomplice lures wealthy merchants to a tea house. When it is time to pay, she leaves and the victim is presented with an unreasonable bill that must be covered in order to leave.
- False rape claims - Female members of the band get wealthy individuals drunk and then threaten them with going to a local magistrate and accusing them of raping them while drunk, unless a sizable monetary sum is given.
- Quack medicine - The selling of miracle cures for all sorts of ailments, from selling goat blood to cure fevers, to passing off chicken feet as good fortune charms.
- Fake monks - Posing as fake monks or holy men to gather alms from passerby. The selling of fake 'relics' such as the fingers of saints(usually fingers of macaques) was also a part of this scam.
- Selling of fake land deeds - Qipian himself manufactured fake land deeds and 'sold' parcels of land to interested parties.
- Monkey scam - Putting clothes on a monkey and passing it off as a human under a malicious hex and appealing for donations to get a cure.
- Horse scam - Selling of young donkeys and mules as exotic steppe horses.