Came across a Tony Giorgio article from 30 years ago or so, and he says the word scam comes form "escamoteur."

Thoughts?

That particular suggestion of the origin of the word is not original to Giorgio, there are many references to it around the inter-webs.

BUT - one thing is in common with all those references, and that is that there is absolutely no evidence to support any definitive statement as to where the word "scam" originated.

Indeed, the word "scam" is one of those words that accurately bears the moniker "no confirmed or known origin".

IMO though, there are a few other suggested origins of the word that make equal (or more) sense, one of which involves the Irish and reads:

From the Irish (of course): ’s cam [é] (pron. s’cam æ): (it is) a trick, (it is) a deception [< ’s contraction is, (pron. iss) + cam “crookedness, a deceit, a trick”]. Used by the Irish-American "criminal" element and brought into mainstream use in the early 1960s after a Time Magazine article on carnival (carny) workers was published.

Escamoteur is a French word that means; illusionist, conjurer

Okay, I assumed everybody reading this would be familiar with the word, but maybe not, so thanks.

Been looking around re this. The word "escamoteur" does contain the letter sequence "scam" but otherwise there doesn't appear to be any link. "Escamotage" in modern French magic parlance is apparently the equivalent of "vanishment", by the way.

I did find one suggestion that seems reasonable (unlike the others I found): that "scam" is derived from or otherwise related to the English word "sham" meaning "something false or empty that is purported to be genuine" (per thefreedictionary dot com; other definitions are similar). That just seems way more likely than the escamoteur thing.

According th the etymology dictionary it's an American word of unknown origin, possibly related to the British word, 'scamp'.

I thought SCAM stood for 'Something Creative And Magical' lol.