‘Flim Flam’ Teaches You How Not to Be a Victim

“Want a free gift?”

“Want to make some big, fast money on a sure thing?”

“Think you can find the red card?”

“Could you take some of your own money out of the bank just so that I know you’re honest?”

If you hear any of these phrases, run--don’t walk--away from whoever’s talking. Or hang up the phone. It’s almost certainly a con artist at the other end.

That’s one of the useful things you learn in “Flim Flam,” the last new “California Stories” KCET is showing this season (7:35 tonight, Channel 28). According to producer-narrator-writer Richard Soto, Southern California is “the uncontested fraud capital of the nation.”

Soto’s evidence is convincing. Sort of a low-key Geraldo Rivera, he takes us from the streets of downtown Los Angeles (where card sharks hustle suckers with a variation on the old shell game) to Orange County corporate offices where silver salesmen and other “investment counselors” cheat the gullible for bigger stakes.

In this substantial, valuable, well-produced half-hour, we also tag along on a postal inspectors’ raid of a typical “boiler-room operation”--a fly-by-night business that sells merchandise by offering falsely described “premiums” (“Would you like a free grandfather’s clock?”) or otherwise misrepresenting the value of what it’s offering.

In every one of these areas, relatively few law enforcement officers are assigned to stem the tide. Even worse, these illegal schemes are likely to continue flourishing because they depend, as an inspector notes, on “greed at both ends.” The exception is the “Jamaican switch,” which preys on loneliness, friendliness and senility (the swindle starts off with a simple request for assistance from an apparent foreigner who says he’s unaccustomed to American ways).

However, there’s one thing all of these schemes share: The answer to the con artists’ inquiries is clear.

Just say no.