Door-to-Door Scamsman
Saturday, April 15th, 2006 • Filed under Scams • Comment
Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” Sometimes, the one who’s being fooled is the one who thinks he’s doing the fooling but is actually being fooled himself. Ow, my head…
TOKYO (AFP) – A Japanese swindler truly picked the wrong building to target when a stranger he tried to scam turned out to be a senior police officer.
Masakazu Kamitanida, 52, went to the top floor of a three-story apartment after midnight Sunday and tried to pass himself off as fellow resident who needed to borrow cash because of a death in the family.
What Kamitanida did not know was the building was an official residence for executives of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police — and he was trying to fool the chief of Joto precinct.
That’s some crack police force. They’re so good that they don’t have to go out searching for crimes. The crime comes right to their door.
The scammer asked the cop for 15,000 yen (around $125 bucks, -$57 in Mexican pesos) and the cop actually gave him 20,000 for his sob story when his cop intuition told him that something wasn’t right. Maybe it’s because when a relative passes away, they aren’t alive to ask YOU for money.
So after he gave him the money, he watched him walk away to another door where he gave someone else the same sad story. Now that he’s arrested, Kamitanida said he plans to go cell to cell and ask for money to go to his relative’s funeral.
Funny Money
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 • Filed under Forgery, Fraud, Scams • 2 Comments
There’s a great line from the movie “Wall Street,” “The main thing about money…is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.” Oliver Stone should have added, “and it don’t make you that much smarter either.”
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The counterfeit money looked good, but there was one flaw. There’s no such thing as a one billion dollar bill.
U.S. Customs agents in California said on Tuesday they had found 250 bogus billion dollar bills while investigating a man charged with currency smuggling.
Tekle Zigetta, 45, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of trying to bring cash, phoney bills and a fake $100,000 (57,000 pound) gold certificate into the United States in January.
A man tried to pass off a billion dollar bill as real? Doesn’t he know that Enron tried to do the same thing and look what happened to them?
I’ve never understood the logic of counterfeit money makes because they eventually get so greedy that they always get caught. This guy creates a billion dollar bill, and tries to use it? Who has change for a billion these days? I have a hard time finding change for the vending machine at the bus station.
And how do you trick someone into believing it’s real? The only way to make someone believing it’s truly the billion dollar bill, you’ll have to put George Steinbrenner’s face on it.
Strife in the Fast Lane
Friday, January 27th, 2006 • Filed under Other, Scams • 5 Comments
Before I start this post, I vow I will not make any jokes using the word “dummy.” It is the most overused pun since “Poker? I hardly know her!”.
WESTMINSTER, Colo. (AP) – A motorist was arrested Thursday for driving in a high-occupancy vehicle lane with a mannequin dressed to look like a passenger, police said.
Investigators said Greg Allen Pringle, 53, was the only human in the car. HOV lanes are open only to buses, motorcycles, vehicles carrying two or more people or hybrid vehicles.
Officer Mark Watters said Pringle was southbound on U.S. 36 between Boulder and Denver. Watters said the mannequin was dressed in a gray sweat shirt and a baseball cap.
This has got to be another first. The one and only time that a man has been arrested for using a dummy in public and he WASN’T caught having sex with it.
For his crimes, Pringle got slapped with a $115 fine, public humiliation and a weekend in beautiful Guantanamo Bay! Bon voyage, enemy combatant!
Wendy’s Old Fashioned Handburgers
Thursday, January 19th, 2006 • Filed under Con-artists, Scams, Updates • 3 Comments
Remember the woman in California who faked finding a severed human finger in her chili at Wendy’s? I wonder whatever happened to her? (insert harp flashback music and blur)…
SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – A couple [Anna Ayala and Jaime Plascencia] who planted a human finger in a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s fast food restaurant was sentenced in California on Wednesday to nine years in prison.
…
Davila also ordered the couple to pay almost $22 million in restitution but Wendy’s officials indicated to the court they would only seek to collect approximately $170,000, representing the wages lost by employees at the San Jose restaurant where working hours were cut back after a downturn in business.
These “Love Connection” rejects made everyone believe for a solid month that the finger was real before investigators announced it was a fraud. Even though Wendy’s was vindicated, the fingering caused the sharpest decline in their third quarter profits since their deal with Disney to rename the hamburgers in their Kids’ Meal “mouseburgers.”
The judge showed the press just how hooked he was on phonics by saying..
“Greed and avarice overtook this couple and they lost their moral compass,” Judge Edward Davila said of Anna Ayala and her husband Jaime Plascencia in handing down the nine-year sentence.
Wow, nine years in prison for a finger? Even Michael Jackson didn’t even face
nine years for using his finger to…never mind.