Is Fraud Funny?

Yesterday I read about a man in the Los Angeles area who scammed Chinese immigrants out of hundreds of dollars each by telling them they could join a special group of the U.S. Army. This article from the L.A. Times discusses the situation and the case against David Deng in a very serious way, emphasizing its deleterious effects on both unsuspecting immigrants and the military; it even mentions that Deng "was also charged with possession of child pornography," further pointing to the serious badness of the scam artist. However, I read the article from Reuters first, and although there are few major differences between the information the two impart, something about the Reuters article made me laugh. Perhaps it was this statement: "Deng, 51, allegedly gave his 'recruits' military uniforms, had them parade in a Los Angeles suburb and took them to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego." I feel for the poor duped immigrants, but there is some humor in imagining a suburban parade of the men and women pictured above.

My conflicted feelings about the story lead me to question both news reportage and whether fraud can be funny. The L.A. Times paints this particular fraud as a horrible trick on impoverished immigrants with little to no knowledge of English, while the Reuters article seems to focus on the spectacle of the situation more than on its impact on those involved. I often express outrage toward those who commit fraud because they prey on those who assume people to be honest, but sometimes it is easier to laugh at the people who are so easily tricked. Fraud, like counterfeit (see Derrida), can be seen to not exist until it is discovered (and subsequently loses its power), and only those who "discover" the fraud, who divest it of its power, can really laugh at the people who were duped. I think that laughing at conmen and fraud puts us in the position of discoverer, which both absolves us of the conman's guilt and makes us intellectually superior to those conned. I don't think those Chinese "soldiers" are laughing at all.