Rip off!: Australian fraud, deception and dirty tricks. Paul Taylor. 2011.

They’re the rip offs. And they’ve been around in Australia since 1622 when the Trial went down off Western Australia and the surviving captain stole the treasure in its hold. The rip offs never sleep. They just go on and on.

In 33 widely ranging chapters, Paul Taylor looks at some of Australia’s best-known rip offs. 

• The Wagga Wagga butcher who hoodwinked half of England
• The clever, audacious and ultimately murderous Great Bookie Robbery
• The Dismissal
• The duplicity of Al Grassby, the politician in the pay of the Mafia.
• The lies of Lawrence of Arabia that robbed the Light Horse of glory
• Rupert Murdoch’s fight to save Max Stuart from a ‘stitch up’ that had him on the steps of the scaffold.