To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property.

// The email scammer shamelessly grifted thousands of dollars from unwitting victims.

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"When the families demanded he return the jewellery he had grifted from them he arranged meetings and then did not show." — Peter Spriggs, The Echo (South Essex, England), 31 Oct. 2025

Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort: they illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit, and do not usually resort to physical force or violence. A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist. The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that grift is an early 20th century alteration of graft, a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money or property in dishonest or questionable ways. Both grift and graft have noun and verb forms.