<human>: Give me the gist of the text in a nutshell

I actually got done reading about Steven Jay Russell, a con artist who inspired the actually pretty terrible Jim Carrey film "I Love you Philip Morris." 
Among the man's cons (you really should read all about him as he may be the most fascinating dude ever :  was how he got a job as  chief financial officer of the North American Medical Management Company, by way of lying about his experience and education (he bought a bunch of pre-paid phones, set them with voicemail messages which would sound like they belonged to the businesses he was claiming to have worked at, or the college he was claiming to have attended, then would return calls to employers using different voices and give himself glowing recommendations)... He was, shockingly, successful - and could have maintained the job, had he not gotten greedy and decided to steal from the company. 
It left me wondering how far one could get in a career on a giant lie - and why more people don't do it - though it could be the case that I am naive and tons of people do it.
<bot>: Read about con artist who lied on his resume to get a super high paying job and got to wondering why this doesn't happen all of the time.