William Thompson was an American criminal and con artist whose deceptions probably caused the term confidence man to be coined.
[1] Operating in New York City in the late 1840s, a genteelly dressed Thompson would approach an upper-class mark, pretending they knew each other, and begin a brief conversation.
[1] The New York Herald, recalling his explicit appeals to the victim's "confidence", dubbed him the "confidence man".
[2] The Thompson case may have inspired Herman Melville's 1857 novel The Confidence-Man.
[3] This United States biographical article related to crime is a stub.