Trust has become a central theme in contemporary social science. From various theoretical points of departure, studies have been made of how trust between actors enables actions that would not otherwise be possible. In this lecture, attention is focused on a neglected problem in the current sociology of trust, namely episodes in which trust is abused by actors� calculated attempts to gain some of the advantages of trust through fraudulent methods. This perspective on the problems of trust can be seen as an attempt to combine central ideas in modern social theories of trust with Erving Goffman�s emphasis on the gamelike aspects of mutual strategic interactions.