These words refer to deliberate attempts to gain something from another by unfair or dishonest scheming or dissembling. Cheat is relatively informal and victimize relatively formal, but both are general in their application, indicating any situation where one person preys upon someone else. Cheat , in its transitive use, always implies a victim, although the act indicated may range from the mildly unfair to the outrageously unjust or heinous: The boy cheated his friend out of the apple by insisting that it was rotten, if not poisonous; a real-estate agent who cheated the widow out of the land on which oil had been discovered. As can be seen, cheat usually implies deception or breaking of generally accepted rules; victimize does not specify the means used to prey on the other person. The word can, in fact, apply to situations where nothing is to be gained but sadistic pleasure: a bully who victimized the other children after school. The word does stress the harm done to the victim and is consequently the harshest word here in its disapproval, whether or not tangible gain is implied: gangsters who victimized a whole city with their ten-year reign of terror.

Swindle more specifically points to a scheme, often complicated, by which someone is cheated : a famous stock-market racket that swindled investors by means of forged shared certificates. Often, the word point to the cheating of gullible people who are persuaded to part with their valuables by trickery or deception or by appeals to their cupidity: confidence men who swindle unsuspecting investors with get-rich-quick propositions. Defraud suggest the use of less complex stratagems to divest someone of his valuables; the word can more often suggest a quick or one-time action accomplished through simple misrepresentation or lying: door-to-door salesmen who defraud housewives by taking orders for vacuum cleaners that they never intend to deliver.

Fleece and con are both extremely informal words for cheat or swindle . Fleece suggests the same kind of complicated scheme as is indicated by swindle ; by implication, the victim here is seen to be naïve and innocent as a lamb: an avid art collector who was fleeced of a million dollars by a ring that sold counterfeit paintings attributed to Impressionist masters. The word can be reduced in force to apply to any outrageous price obtained for cheap goods or services: tourist attractions set up to fleece the unwary sightseer. Con is a slang term that derives from confidence game, in which someone is swindled by gaining his trust. The word applies to situations in which the victimizer has a smooth line and a sympathetic manner that wins the confidence of his victim: a man who would con his own mother out of her last dollar. The word has become a fad word for any sort of insincerity that is put on to persuade or win the sympathy of someone else, even where no ostensible gain is in the offing: a drunkard who tried to con all his friends into pitying the hard luck he had met with in his life.