Editing Charlatan (section)

==Usage ==
[[File:The_Pardoner_-_Ellesmere_Chaucer.jpg|thumb|The Pardoner, from the [[Ellesmere Chaucer]]]]
A distinction is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence tricksters. The charlatan is usually a [[sales]]person of a certain service or product, who has no personal relationship with his "marks" (customers or clients), and avoids elaborate [[hoax]]es or roleplaying con-games. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of resorting to quackery, [[pseudoscience]], or other knowingly employed bogus means of impressing people in order to [[Fraud|swindle]] victims by selling them worthless [[patent medicine|nostrums]] and similar goods or services that will [[False advertising|not deliver on the promises made for them]]. One example of a charlatan is a 19th-century [[medicine show]] operator, who has long since left town by the time the people who bought his "snake oil" or similarly named "cure-all" tonic realize that it was a scam. A misdirection by a charlatan is a confuddle, a dropper is a leader of a group of conmen, and hangmen are conmen that present false checks. A gaff means to trick or con and a mugu is a victim of a rigged game.

In reported spiritual communications, a charlatan is a person who fakes evidence that a spirit is "making contact" with the medium and seekers. Notable people who have successfully debunked the claims of purported supernatural mediums include magician/scientific skeptic [[James Randi]], Brazilian writer [[Monteiro Lobato]] and magician [[Harry Houdini]].