The worst thing we saw last week in the bigfoot press conference was the absolute decline of American hucksterism. Two Georgia men, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, and Tom Biscardi, an oily California bigfoot seeker, unconvincingly explained how they had found a yeti corpse and live family of bigfoots in roughly the area where the movie Deliverance was set. Even the cryptozoologists, who want to believe in these things, were appalled at the lack of evidence.

We can celebrate how sophisticated we now are in detecting hoaxes, but we should also lament how our country's long history of finely crafted spectacles has been lost. P.T. Barnum wrote a book debunking what we used to call a "humbug." That was after he did a few himself, including presenting a slave named Joice Heth as the 161-year-old nanny to George Washington, according to Matthew Goodman's The Sun and the Moon, Goodman's fascinating book is about a newspaper convincing New Yorkers that an astronomer found prancing creatures on the moon.

To anyone who has an alien cadaver in their fridge or chupacabra in a kennel, here are some hoaxing tips.

1. The first rule of making money off a mythical creature is not to talk about making money off the mythical creature.
Reporters asked how much money they expected to make off the corpse. Biscardi replied: "As much as I possibly can." Later Rachel Maddow asked the finders if that gave them pause or if they had the same goals. Instead of backing out, they agreed wholeheartedly. Much better was their purported desire to save the species.

2. Don't maintain a website that contradicts your own backstory.
The men claim they weren't bigfoot hunters at all, that they just stumbled upon a clan of bigfoots. But they kept up their old website Bigfoottracker.com that offered four-day $499 tours to look for bigfoots. And claimed they originally saw big foot on a mountainside near Helen, Georgia. They seem to have taken the site down, but I saw it up there yesterday.

3. Don't be so sure that merely being interviewed will dispel all doubts.
It must seem that reporters will believe anything. But that can't be your only strategy for a press interview. Call it the lesson of John Edwards. Sometimes if you show up with a flimsy story, people notice. Confidence men have to induce confidence in others, not just have inflated self-esteem and confidence in themselves.

I received an email last week from Christina, who had her money taken by a door-to-door salesman, pitching magazines at inflated prices. The salesperson pretended to be a recently-returned Iraq veteran trying to get make a living, which was enough to disarm Christina. It is now many weeks later and the company has their money, but they have no magazine and the door-to-door sales company won't respond to any inquires about the status of the order.

If you happen to get caught up in a door-to-door sales pitch like Christina did and like my wife and I did a year ago, there are a few steps you can take to try and get your money back. But time is of the essence.

In Ohio where both Christina and I live, there is a three-day cooling off period where you can cancel the order. These sales companies don't make it easy, so keep track of all of your records and follow the directions completely. I took the added step of putting a stop payment on the check despite the company's threat of using a collection agency to come after anyone who dared take this action.

If it is too late to stop your check payment, there are a few more things you can try, but frankly your chances of recouping your cash are slim. You can try to use the Better Business Bureau to get your money back from the company (track down the BBB closest to the company's headquarters.) Another step would be to find a fax or direct line for the headquarters and send in your request for cancellation and a refund. Finally if you want to feel particularly vindicated, you can sue in Small Claims court to recover the money that was taken. In Ohio you can sue for up to three times the amount of the original damages, and since the company must have a lawyer represent it, you'll likely get a quick settlement out of court.

I hope you can learn from our mistakes, buying magazines from door to door salespeople is a bad idea. You're better off going to the publisher's website to get the best deal or support a family member's kid selling them through school. Door to door magazine sales are rife with high prices, scams and long delays in receiving magazines, save your money and avoid these traveling liars!

Moving is a stressful event, tempers are tested and wallets are opened all in the need to get your life's accumulations from point A to point B. The NY Times covered an issue some people are having with moving services, especially with state to state moves. In these cases a moving company provides a lowball offer for moving your goods, often sight unseen. When the movers show up at your new home with all of your belongings locked securely in their truck they then request a substantial additional sum of cash to unload your items!

If this happens to you unfortunately your options are limited. If you don't pay up the movers may damage or leave with your items and if you do fork over the cash your recourse is also limited. In many states the legislation is not on the books to protect consumers from these unscrupulous state to state movers. When restitution is made through the help of a consumer group the process is often a lengthy and involved one.

I haven't used movers in the past but I have run a small moving and storage business with two of my classmates shortly after graduation. One of our biggest issues was gaining the trust of our customers and assuring them that we wouldn't run off with their futon and mini fridge. Just like mechanics, movers are mostly "good people' but a few bad apples can ruin the reputation of the whole group. Before you hire a mover check out a reference or three and contact your local better business bureau for the company's standing.

Just when you finished setting up the final Viagra and ED related keyword filters on your inbox, the scamming spammers have found a new ruse to part fools with their money. The new scam claims to offer a discount of 70 cents on each gallon of gas and originate for now anyway, from an individual representing himself as "Gas Saver." According to McAfee, a security and anti-virus company, in terms of volume gas related spam is still relatively low, but it has the potential to skyrocket over the summer in tandem with gas prices.

Next time you sit down with a friend or relative, do your part; remind them that they shouldn't purchase medication, gas or lottery winnings from an email. It seems to have been said again and again but just like the MPAA and the RIAA run their public service announcements before movies; maybe we need to have an announcement before sending money from your bank to another account. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, especially when it comes to reduced gas prices.

I truly wonder how many times local news stations and papers need to run the story of an individual scammed out of their life savings due to an email that touted a too-good-to-be-true scheme. At the very least, it seems these email-armed con men are on the ball when it comes to identifying consumer needs, or perceived needs anyway. I hear later this year they are coming out with a reprinted version of Dante's Inferno which has been updated to include a new circle of hell specifically for spammers. Until then, be sure to check out how to get gas for $2.99 a gallon for the next three years legitimately.

UPDATE: Additional information has come to my attention, and this article has been updated accordingly.

One of the consumer scams that is most well-known and most hated by fraud experts is the Advance Fee Loan scam. The scam is exactly what it sounds like: You want a loan, and someone offers you a loan but asks for a hefty fee prior to giving you the loan. And we're not talking a small application fee that a bank sometimes requires. We're talking about significant money up front before you ever see a dime. And the "loan" never happens.

One WalletPop reader has been taken for $39,000 with this type of scam. Here's her story with her name changed to protect her identity...

In late 2007, Angie began looking for funding for her small family-owned business. She was in financial trouble and was striking out with banks. She started looking for funding in the private sector, and her research brought her to Global Funding Network.