Community season 6 episode 9: Grifting 101
Jeff Winger says:
How was grifting class? Did you teach some advanced techniques; only you could understand? The Brown Betty, The Texas Well Baby, The Reverse Jim Gaffigan?
Are these references to real grifts/cons/scams?
What do they entail?
My instinct is that the "Brown Betty" is some kind of Food Contamination Hoax; where you place something unpalatable inside something you've bought in the hopes of getting compensation from the vendor. There have been some notable non-scam instances of this happening.
The "Texas Well Baby" would presumably be based on pretending someone is stuck down a well (the modern variation is that someone is stuck overseas) in order to solicit donations from concerned parties. There are, of course real instances of this occurring.
