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.

Scams

Posted on Sat May 10, 2008



Comments

The willingness of people to be duped seems boundless at times.

As for the 'money making machine', I've seen variants of it sold as a magic trick. It's like a miniature pasta roller, only the 'rollers' actually conceal the paper on one side, and push out the bills on the other.
Posted by Robin Bobcat  on  Sun May 11, 2008  at  12:58 AM
And in case you were interested, a money-making machine figures into to the plot of the opera "The Rake's Progress" by Igor Stravinsky.
Posted by Andy  on  Sun May 11, 2008  at  01:23 AM
thats just stupid i will never believe in a scam like that...
Posted by Silvar  on  Sun May 11, 2008  at  09:18 AM
Anyone can be taken in by some smooth talking con artist. It's usually a matter of breaking down the victim's belief system. I would bet even money that the Vietnamese victim had never seen money multiply like rabbits by any physical means. But there is something about the human psyche that hungers for the "something for nothing" schemes that con artists peddle.
Posted by KDP  on  Mon May 12, 2008  at  08:17 AM
IIRC, just such a machine features in one of the Holmes novels.
Posted by outeast  on  Tue May 13, 2008  at  05:06 AM
I invented a machine where you could put in two identical bills (for example, two $20s) and just one would come out, but I couldn't find anybody who would invest in it. I wish I had that Vietnamese gentleman's name and address.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Fri May 16, 2008  at  10:21 AM
I recall reading a scam where the guy had a box of black paper, and he would soak the paper in a special 'solution' reveling the paper was actually money. Then somehow people were scammed into either buying the blank paper or the special solution they needed to dip it in.

Sounds familure.
Posted by ed  on  Fri May 16, 2008  at  11:19 AM
he that is true........
such fraud cases are increasing rapidlly...
even in indore mp india
such case my cousin has encountered..
i already told him that it is such matter bu he did not belive me ..

plz govt must do something to aware peopllle abt such fraude cases
Posted by paras  on  Thu Sep 25, 2008  at  11:33 PM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.