I have always understood take someone for something to have a similar meaning to peg someone for something. But I heard in the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels:
Look what I did in the dining car! She gave me 100 francs. That's like, uh… 20 bucks! Do you have any idea what it feels like to take a woman for 20 bucks?
Here take a woman for 20 bucks apparently means take 20 bucks from a woman. This also appears in another scene:
Freddy: But she has the money.
Lawrence: Only by selling everything she owns.
Freddy: Come on! She's keeping the mink. If we take her for everything, she still comes out of it with a very nice mink.
Does take someone for something mean take something from someone? I can't find this usage in dictionaries.
Best Answer
It has feeling of coercion or deception to it. It sounds like they swindled the first person, and are trying to swindle the second one. From M-W