I suppose at some point you’ve wondered what the best way is to tell a real millionaire from a fake rich person, that is, a fraud passing himself off as a millionaire. Is this person as rich as he says, or is he a fake? How can you tell if someone is only pretending to be rich?
The bad news is that there’s no single sign. But we do have the experience of earlier fake millionaires who have already been exposed and debunked, and of course we also have the example of people we know are genuinely rich and how they behave. It can vary from one person to another, but we find some basic differences between the two.
How can you tell whether someone is fake rich or truly wealthy?
Imagine for a moment that you know nothing about finance or financial education, that you’ve never heard of the book The Millionaire Next Door and, of course, have never read it. Imagine too that you’ve taken a knock on the head and your IQ has plummeted.
Having reached that level of imagination: when you think of a millionaire, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? What do you see?
I imagine it will be images of someone wearing an expensive, elegant suit, designer clothes, luxury cars and expensive mansions.
That’s how our brain is programmed, and it’s programmed unconsciously, because we’ve been bombarded with this idea.
In the past it was different
For example, in ancient times, a woman with pale skin was a sign of wealth. In fact, women used the make-up of the day to make their skin paler. The opposite was tanned skin, because it meant the woman worked in the fields.
In the same way, thinness in a woman was a sign of poverty, because it showed she couldn’t feed herself properly. Plumpness meant she belonged to the upper classes. So if a woman wanted to look wealthy, she had to gobble down everything she could like a Christmas turkey and keep her skin pale.
Today our perception of wealth in this respect has changed. There are thin rich women, rich people with athletic bodies, and fat and skinny millionaires. Our brain has evolved because the bombardment we’re subjected to has been aimed somewhere else.
But when it comes to our perception of wealth, we’re still stuck, because the bombardment continues in that direction. And the only way to reprogram our brain here is to acquire financial knowledge and knowledge about human psychology, the latter being the area marketers study most so they can sell us all kinds of things and dreams.
Signs that you’re dealing with a fake millionaire rather than a truly rich person
1. He constantly and persistently talks about how much money he has
This is probably the clearest sign that you’re facing a fake rich person. Believe me when I tell you that genuinely rich people rarely steer the conversation in that direction. They’re millionaires. They already know it, and they know you know it.
This trait has been found throughout history in every single con artist who has come along. They need you to think they’re very successful because they know the halo effect will draw you into their net.
The genuinely rich rarely show you their real assets. In fact, they tend to be very guarded about their money, and often worried because they know that the more attention they draw, the more exposed they are to thieves, people with ulterior motives and, worse still, kidnappers. That’s why they try not to go around showing off how much they have.
2. Will you have to reach for your wallet at some point?
The other clearest sign of a fake rich person is whether all the talk about his success and wealth leads, at some point, to you paying money or buying something. We could say that if someone tries to sell you something (anything at all) after a display of wealth, you are without a doubt dealing with a fake rich person.
This fake millionaire will end up becoming a millionaire thanks to the people he manages to fool with his display of wealth. It’s the con artist’s pattern all over again.
See also: Why do the poor keep getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer?
3. Pictures of cash
Truly rich people don’t usually carry wads of 5,000 or 10,000 euros. In fact, stop and think: why would anyone need to carry an amount of money that could make him a target for criminals?
Those bulging wads of banknotes are usually the most telling sign of traffickers, marijuana dealers or people with shady businesses. It’s not a sign you find in someone genuinely rich, with the exception of athletes or music stars, who are more prone to excess and getting into trouble.
See also: Why you don’t have money and success, according to Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Think how many times you’ve seen Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or Amancio Ortega showing off a wad of cash, or with 15 kilos of gold hanging round their neck. When was the last time you attended a “masterclass” given by an executive of a company in the IBEX 35 (Spain’s main stock index) who was going to tell you the secrets of getting rich?
4. If he has a private jet, he must really be rich, right?
We’re seeing fake millionaires claim they have a private jet. They don’t tell you they’re renting it from a private jet charter company; they say they own it.
Let me tell you something. First of all, anyone who owns a private jet doesn’t just need the plane, but also the pilot. A private jet costs anywhere from $3 million (the cheapest) to $90 million.
Until now, the people who own private jets have usually been genuine millionaire businesspeople whose companies are known across the country (if not half the world), as well as executives of large companies, usually listed on the stock market.
If someone tells you he’s a millionaire and has a private jet, all you have to do is check whether his name or his company’s has appeared in Forbes. If it hasn’t, there’s no way that person owns his own private jet.
5. The same goes for luxury cars
With the rise of info-product sellers who need to look rich, we’ve seen them resort to showing off their luxury cars. What some of them haven’t realised is that the moment you show the number plate, it’s very easy to find out the car belongs to a rental company.
In fact, with a few simple internet searches, people have found that the car one of these fake rich men was showing was exactly the same car (with the identical number plate) that other fake millionaires had shown.
Truly rich people don’t usually drive this kind of car, except for the more extravagant millionaires who like luxury (but who don’t want to sell you anything).
Truly rich people tend to drive good but practical cars. They don’t need to attract attention because, again, they already know they’re rich and have no need to shout it from the rooftops. They don’t need to pretend to be something they already are.
6. Inconsistencies between his lifestyle and business life
For some reason, the fake rich person, intending to sell you the supposed dream he’s living, tends to show you a life of constant enjoyment: beautiful scenery, yachts full of beautiful women, and so on.
Any businessperson, any real, genuine one, knows that unless you’re Richard Branson or Amancio Ortega, business isn’t exactly that kind of paradise. Not even Tim Ferriss (with his 4-Hour Workweek) managed this lifestyle of being on holiday 365 days a year.
See also: The way the rich made their fortunes isn’t smart for the average person
The most unmistakable sign that someone is fake rich or a con artist?
He wants to sell you something. Anything at all.
That’s it. If this person has a system that will make you money and lead you to success for just a few euros, or for “a lot of euros”, you’re the victim of a snake-oil salesman, a con artist.
You’re facing someone who is using the most basic strategy in marketing psychology to move the money from your pocket into his.
If his sales pitch includes words like “easy, fast, no knowledge needed…” or phrases like “if you want to live the life I live…”, you’re facing a con artist who’s going to sell you something that will make only one person rich effortlessly, quickly and easily: himself.
It’s a different matter if someone sells you a course on how to format a computer. Of course that will be quick, easy and require no prior knowledge. But it won’t have you flying around the world in private jets.
What you won’t see in the fake rich
As we’ve said on several occasions, keeping up appearances also costs money, and there may be things we don’t see that these fake millionaires carry in silence, and which often become a source of suffering.
Money problems
These people often suffer financial problems, because they overdo it on renting luxuries (houses, cars, private parties…).
And that’s why some of them start becoming more aggressive in their sales strategies, to shift the product however they can and bring in money.
This is what leads many of them to end up being arrested by the police. They’re fake rich people building fake empires, but they spend real money, and so they need more and more real money.
Underlying unhappiness
A person living a lie knows he’s living a lie. At the end of the day, or the week, he knows what he is.
On the other hand, nobody is psychologically comfortable constantly needing to appear to be something they’re not. When these people realise they could face legal trouble, or that they’ve crossed a certain line, discomfort is added to their emotional state.
Some, when they become aware of this to some degree, are able to back down and return to the values and principles they had lost. Others feel there’s no going back. And it’s this second group who, a few years later, discover there were consequences nobody had told them about.
Featured image: 2010 World Cup – Shine 2010, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
