Hoax Museum Blog: Scams

Marinated Money Scam — A novel twist on the money-multiplying scam. From Reuters:

A Vietnamese man in Norway lost around 35,000 dollars after he was led to believe that mixing the cash with a special liquid would double its value, Norwegian media reported Saturday...
The victim of the con, who was not identified, was reportedly told by the Frenchman to leave a mixture of real cash with blank bills to marinate in a special liquid overnight, and the next morning he would have double the amount of cash at his disposal.
But when he showed up the next morning to collect his prize, both the cash and the suspected con-artist, whose name was not revealed, had disappeared.

I've never heard of con-artists employing a marinade to grow money, but "money-making machines" used to be a popular scam. Carl Sifakis describes this scam in Hoaxes and Scams:

[Count Victor Lustig] became the leading practitioner of the so-called money-making machine. He told suckers he had invented a process that permitted him to feed plain paper into a machine and turn it into currency so perfect that no one could tell it from the real thing. There was good reason for this, since the "counterfeit" that spewed out of the contraption was real money. The success of the outrageous swindle was in its telling. Lustig sold the machine over and over again to such diverse characters as businessmen, bankers, gangsters, madams and even small-town lawmen.

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008.   Comments (8)

Priest investigated for fake exorcisms — Father Francesco Saverio Bazzoffi, a priest in Florence, is being investigated for fraud for performing "fake exorcisms." From the Catholic News Agency:

Prosecutors alleged that Father Francesco Saverio Bazzoffi would “stage shows” before crowds of more than 400 people at the House of the Sainted Archangels, an organization he founded.
According to prosecutors, the priest’s associates would “pretend to be possessed by demons” and Father Bazzoffi would allegedly exorcise them using obscure rites.
The priest would then offer to heal members of the audience who were sick and solicit donations to his organization.
“During Mass, the priest spoke in Aramaic, and strange things happened. I do not know if it was group hysteria or our suggestibility, but I remember one old woman screaming in a man's voice while five big guys held her down,” one witness told police, according to the Telegraph.

So as long as he can prove that his associates really were possessed by demons, he should be able to beat the charges.
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008.   Comments (7)

Worms in Salad — Here's a recent example of what I call the "gross things found in food scam." The Post Tribune reports:
Tiffany Vance of Merrillville and her dinner date, Christopher Egnatz of St. John, tried to make a scene Tuesday night after dining at Applebee's, but it didn't play out as the pair had planned.
Servers at the crowded restaurant let the couple walk out on a $57 meal after Vance loudly complained she had found worms wriggling in her salad after the two had almost finished eating, a police report states.
But Vance left behind her purse, with a plastic container of maggot-like bee moth worms inside it, when she and Egnatz left.
A waitress searching for identification in the purse also found the container, and called police. As a police officer was taking a report at the restaurant a few minutes later, Egnatz returned, looking for the purse.

Egnatz later confessed.
Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008.   Comments (5)

Kaweah Nation Citizenship Scam — The Texas Attorney General has filed charges against three individuals who were running an elaborate citizenship scam. They claimed to represent the Kaweah Indian Nation, and were telling non-citizens that $400 would purchase a "tribal membership" in the Kaweah Nation. This membership supposedly carried the significant benefit of allowing them to circumvent the ordinary legalization process and entitling them to U.S. citizenship.

Of course, becoming a member of an Indian tribe doesn't circumvent the process of legalization. In addition to this, the Kaweah Indian Nation isn't even a federally recognized tribe. The International Herald Tribune reports:
The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs denied the Kaweah group recognition in 1985 because it was not a real tribe. A Kaweah tribe did exist once, but is unrelated to the one that applied for recognition.

Big Gary, who forwarded me the story, notes that, "Prices for membership in the Big Gary Nation are negotiable." Last I checked, membership in the Museum of Hoaxes Nation was totally free. Plus, it entitles you to become a card-carrying citizen of reality.
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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007.   Comments (7)

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