Choose the Right Synonym for swindle

Verb

cheat, cozen, defraud, swindle mean to get something by dishonesty or deception. cheat suggests using trickery that escapes observation. cheated me out of a dollar cozen implies artful persuading or flattering to attain a thing or a purpose. always able to cozen her grandfather out of a few dollars defraud stresses depriving one of his or her rights and usually connotes deliberate perversion of the truth. defrauded of her inheritance by an unscrupulous lawyer swindle implies large-scale cheating by misrepresentation or abuse of confidence. swindled of their savings by con artists

Examples of swindle in a Sentence

Verb hundreds of people were swindled out of their savings, and all they had to show for it were fake land deeds Noun a swindle that involved selling a lot of land that really didn't exist identity theft has become one of the most frequent and feared swindles of our time

Recent Examples on the Web: Verb Likewise, delays in distributing prizes due to the pandemic give the scammers both extra time to swindle you out of more money and disappear with your cash. — Melissa Ramsey, Houston Chronicle, "BBB on Seniors: Feeling lucky? Watch out for scams," 15 Oct. 2020 Hundreds of thousands of dollars crisscross the globe via MoneyGram, PayPal, and foreign bank accounts in a plot to swindle more than $100 million from the world’s most valuable internet retailer and its customers. — Spencer Soper, Bloomberg.com, "How an Amazon Bribery Scheme Became a $100 Million Swindle," 24 Sep. 2020 Crooks are using the coronavirus pandemic as a springboard for all sorts of money-swindling schemes. — Robert Hackett, Fortune, "The 5 most common coronavirus scams still circulating," 8 Apr. 2020 McKellen plays Roy, a man who has spent his life swindling others and sets his sights on Mirren’s character, a lonely widow named Betty. — Washington Post, "Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen relish roles in ‘The Good Liar’," 14 Nov. 2019 Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, a feature-length documentary about the former *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys’ manager, reveals his slide into disgrace after swindling the bands and other investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. — Melinda Newman, Billboard, "New Lou Pearlman Documentary Reveals Former *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys Manager's Slide Into Disgrace," 14 Mar. 2019 In the last year alone, Americans were swindled out of $19.7 billion over the phone. — Kim Komando, USA TODAY, "10 COVID-19 scams spreading right now that people are falling for," 30 Apr. 2020 All of this comes as James Biden faces a lawsuit in Tennessee in which Michael Frey and his wife, Natalie Frey, accuse him of swindling their idea for turning rural hospitals into one-stop shops for mental and physical health centers. — Spencer Neale, Washington Examiner, "Biden brother accused of using political clout to win high-dollar loan from bankrupt healthcare provider," 9 Mar. 2020 Hitesh Madhubhai Patel, 43, of Ahmedabad, India, admitted to operating a call center for years that used fraudulent tactics to swindle up to $65 million from thousands of unsuspecting victims. — Jay R. Jordan, Houston Chronicle, "Houston court handcuffs one call center kingpin. How to keep others away from your money.," 21 Jan. 2020 Recent Examples on the Web: Noun The withered pancake would be a souvenir, all right, but not nearly so much in the memory of poor old Ted as in commemoration of the great Martuch-Harris swindle. — Ted Trueblood, Field & Stream, "FS Classics: Advice to Cooks," 19 Dec. 2020 Eric Heflin, 65, of Rosemount, was charged with three felony counts of theft by swindle. — David Chanen, Star Tribune, "Former Lakeville South high school softball coach charged with stealing from booster club," 25 Nov. 2020 But if a few of Trump’s most loyal boosters might fall for that kind of prevarication, there are other signs that the Republicans’ tax swindle hasn’t been convincing to the majority of American workers for some time. — J.c. Pan, The New Republic, "Our Plutocratic Tax System Was Built for Rich Cheaters," 28 Sep. 2020 Durand was also charged with three counts of theft by swindle. — Paul Walsh, Star Tribune, "Onetime Rockford school chief charged with stealing $42K via a district credit card," 8 Sep. 2020 In 1897, they were arrested for running a swindle on a paper company in Chicago. — Paul Brown, Longreads, "How Four Americans Robbed the Bank of England," 10 Aug. 2020 The elements of deception and manipulation in Ms. Floren’s saga sound familiar to those knowledgeable about the rise of online romance swindles. — Paula Span, New York Times, "When Romance Is a Scam," 27 Mar. 2020 Note that these swindles are on the milder side of the criminal spectrum, with the perpetrators essentially trying to steal or squeeze money out of you. — Andrea Sachs, Twin Cities, "10 common travel scams — and how to avoid them," 10 Aug. 2019 In 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history. — BostonGlobe.com, "This day in history," 12 Mar. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'swindle.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.