In series one, he revealed that his father was an ordinary, law-abiding citizen whose only dream was to retire when he was 60, until he dropped dead of natural causes three days before his 60th birthday.
Having watched his father play by the rules all his life and being destroyed, he has a strong hatred of people who simply use the system to make themselves rich at the expense of others.
The gang states that their first rule is, "You can't cheat an honest man," not simply because they should not, but since those being conned are greedy and dishonest, they are less likely to over-analyse anything that would make them rich.
In that sense, Mickey is not hypocritical because he does not steal from "old ladies"; all his marks are either blatantly dishonest or simply coldly dismissive of others – he stole a man's credit card after hearing him attempt to convince his staff to only pay Eastern Europeans £2.50 an hour.
His cons often reflect this, as on several occasions he makes it appear as if a theft has taken place when the "stolen" objects are simply hidden or moved.
At the show's conclusion, he retires after faking his death to escape with his share of almost 10 million pounds his last mark was tricked into investing on the London Stock Exchange.
He is also tasked with building websites to convince marks of the legitimacy of any fake business and will fabricate any props and small electronic gadgets, such as bugs and phone taps.
It has been hinted in several episodes that Ash was "tasty" (slang for a good fighter) in his younger days, and often the threat of him becoming violent is enough to defuse situations where the team need protection.
Although his age gives the impression that he is the second-most-experienced team member, Ash has stated more than once that he is not interested in leadership, recognising his niche and remaining within that area even when the group votes for a new leader during Mickey's absence.
[8] He often falls back on using a skull fracture he obtained in a bar room brawl many years ago to play a con known as "The Flop".
He steps out in front of careless drivers, gets hit and acts badly injured, wearing a padded coat to avoid real damage.
Albert is an elderly American who acts as the group roper; his role is to identify targets ("marks") and lead them to the inside man.
His distinctive style exudes the kind of dignified professionalism that wealthy, unsuspecting marks trust implicitly, making him the ideal man to rope them in for the serious score.
As a result, he is a member of numerous establishments where the very wealthy can be found – private gentlemen's clubs, casinos, top hotels and restaurants are regular haunts for Albert and his targets.
He is a master of cold reading – a technique often used by mentalists, fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine details about another person to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they do.
Even without prior knowledge, a practised cold reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by carefully analyzing body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, and manner of speech.
Although born in America, he was stationed in North London during World War II, where he fell madly in love with a local girl, Lily Cooper.
Albert was reunited with Susan and their daughter Kathleen at the end of the seventh series – where he also learned that he had grandchildren – but he missed a chance to say goodbye when he got caught up in a poker game to celebrate the gang's latest victory.
Egotistical and ambitious, Danny is determined not just to be good but to be the best and sought out the crew of confidence men run by Mickey Bricks to learn and master the long con.
Despite hoping to hire a "fit bird" as Mickey's replacement, he eventually gave the go-ahead for Billy Bond, a short con artist, who acted very much like Danny had on the first episode, to join instead.
Although he lacked Mickey's ability to plan ahead for all possible contingencies- to the extent that Albert had to come up with a plan to fake the gang's death after they robbed a notorious casino owner-, Danny's style of leadership was nevertheless effective; during one con, Danny deliberately discarded a highly expensive bottle of wine by pouring the contents down the sink to convince the mark that their characters had no idea of the value of the wine that was allegedly in the cellar of the house they wanted to trick her into buying.
When Mickey rejoined Ash, he informed him that Danny and Stacie had decided to stay in the States to pull off some more cons following their success in the fourth series.
Although Stacie initially claimed that Danny had run off with a cocktail waitress to escape her husband the last time she saw him, Danny made a surprise appearance in the final episode of the show, portraying a hitman employed to murder Mickey's crew, shooting at them with blanks to fool the mark- Stacie having stolen the card with the real hitman's number and replacing the number with Danny's-, before revealing his identity and leaving with the other six members of the cast at the end.
Stacie and Jake were married for several years but the marriage ended after he left her, taking their house and money, leaving her with nothing more than a mouldy piece of cheese, a Phil Collins CD and a plant (her ex appears as the subject of a con during the second series).
In the third series, they con a newspaper editor because he inadvertently caused a friend of Stacie's to attempt suicide by implying that she had embezzled money from the charity she worked for.
During the cons themselves, she usually takes on a variety of roles depending on need, ranging from a sultry vamp to a nerdy museum keeper, to help weave the web of deception.
The petty grifts played on him by the crew whenever they want to get out of paying their bar tab, make a point to someone, or are just plain bored, are a recurring theme through the series, and often serve as foreshadowing for a trick that will be important later in the episode.
Portrayed as an astute and likeable character despite prior involvement in drug dealing and street gangs, he knows that his inclusion within the crew is his chance to make it big.
Replacing the departed characters of Danny Blue and Stacie Monroe, Emma and Sean Kennedy are brother and sister, put into foster care after their mother died, a year after their father ran off.
Sean originally never wished to be a grifter, unlike his sister, and was set on going to Drama school when he had the money, which he and Emma were raising through their cons.