October29
Tricks and treachery
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“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Archive for October, 2009
October29
ABC Radio 26/10/2009
Listen to me spinning tales on ABC Radio with Kathy Bedford in my weekly radio spot.
This week we talk about my recent trip overseas and pickpockets at the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival.
October28
Horse thieves hit town
AS FEATURED ON ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE WITH KATHY BEDFORD
The big Aussie scam story this week is reports coming in of con artists flying in from Eastern Europe to skim credit cards, pick pockets and generally cause trouble at the spring racing carnival.
As an Australian con artist I’m not sure how I feel about these Romanian and Bulgarian swindlers coming in, stealing jobs away from hard working local.
But it could be far worse. The current cost of an airfare to Australia is around $2000AUD. So only the most dedicated swindlers are making the trip down under. However, in Europe, thanks to low budget airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, you can fly almost anywhere for under $50.
Now, all of the major European cities are hit by con artists who fly into town, make as much money as they can and then move on to the next city. In June, I bumped into the same con artist in Barcelona and Stockholm in the same month.
If you do go the races and you find yourself up against these Eastern European hucksters, here are a few tips:-
1) Always keep your wallet in your inside jacket pocket. Better still, keep it in my inside jacket pocket.
2) Don’t make a big deal if you win. Your “Watch-Me-Rub-My-Thousands-Of-Dollars-Cash-All-Over-My-Body” dance may draw unwanted attention.
3) Avoid women in head scarves and peasant dresses or men with a single gold hoop earrings and a puffy piratesque shirt. This is how all Eastern Europeans dress.
4) Avoid situations where people rub up against you. This includes lines for the toilet, public transport and the Lambada – the forbidden dance.
5) Be aware if someone offers to help clean a mark of some kind off your coat. This is a classic ploy of pickpockets. They secretly spill ice-cream on your jacket then offer to clean it off, stealing your wallet. This is a criminal waste of ice cream.
You might also enjoy this video I put together from earlier this year. It’s from the 1959 film The Pickpocket and features annotation by me…
October26
You Wanna Buy A Baby?
Craigslist has never really taken off in Australia in the same way as it has in the USA.
For those who don’t know, Craigslist is a not for profit classifieds site. If Ebay is the world’s largest department store, then Craiglists is the world’s largest dodgy car boot sale cum sleazy public toilet pick up spot.
It’s the place to go for everything from tradesman to anonymous sexual encounters to both.
Like similar sites, Craigslist is awash with swindlers asking for cash in advance for products that don’t exist or wanting to pay by bank cheque for your grandmother’s jewellery.
But a case earler this year trumps all of those.
Jenni Brennan, of Massachusetts, posted some of photos of her son Jake on her wordpress blog.
A short time later she received an email from a woman saying she had seen Jake’s photo on Craigslist and Jake was up for adoption.
Swindlers had pinched the photo and used it to lure parents in waiting into paying $300 application fee to apply to adopt the kid.
I know that whenever I adopt a baby I always asked to see the ownership paperwork first and never neglect to cross-reference the babies VIN number with the national baby database. I also try to avoid the cheap imports.
nobody puts baby in the corner
October25
Selling A Pig In A Poke
There is nothing like a good crisis to get the swindlers rubbing their hands together.
This year’s swine flu outbreak has seen a similar outbreak in shifty online companies selling dodgy swine flu cures and treatments.
It’s become so much of a problem that this week the FDA in the US released a warning telling people to buy only approved treatments Tamiflu and Relenza.
“Products that are offered for sale online with claims to diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat or cure the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus must be carefully evaluated,” the FDA Commissioner said.
Of course, since the US government has only produced 13 million of the 120 million promised doses, it’s no wonder there are people willing to risk a buck on false hope.
Add to that the various skeptics, critics and crackpots who worry that the existing vaccines are untested and/or unsuccessful and it makes it very hard for the general public to get the right treatment.
It’s making me very paranoid about my runny nose.
Some sort of metaphor
October22
The Liar
“My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected about you. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster.
My favourite kind of person in fact.”
- Stephen Fry (The Liar, 1991)
October22
Balloon Boy
AS FEATURED ON ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE WITH KATHY BEDFORD
Like the rest of the world, I watched the balloon boy saga unfold with great interest. (by saying ‘great interest’ it makes me feel less like a guy slowing down to watch a car accident).
NEWSFLASH - A boy appears to have climbed into a weather balloon and taken off.
NEWSFLASH - The balloon lands and the boy is MISSING probably DEAD.
NEWSFLASH - The boy is found hiding in his parent’s garage, scared that he’ll get in trouble.
NEWSFLASH - The boy admits on live TV that his parents allegedly put him up to it because they allegedly wanted to build a media profile and allegedly get on reality TV show. Allegedly.
This is where I come in.
Whenever you want informed opinion on ‘making stuff up’ or ‘talking out of your backside’ then I’m the guy to talk to.
Apparently, the nation’s media agree. I came back to my computer after a few days off sick to find a pile of requests from various media outlets for interviews to discuss the issue.
So here it is.
In the golden age of the con artist, swindlers would impersonate powerful and influential people for profit. Frank Abagnale pretended to be an airline pilot and rode the skies for free. Wilheim Voight pretended to be a Swiss army captain and confiscated a town’s treasury. Christophie Raconcourt pretended to be a long lost relative of the Rockefeller family.
These days, con artists pretend to be interesting people.
A suburban American family pretends to be child suspending adventurers.
James Fey pretends to be an ex junkie in his fake memoir A Million Tiny Pieces.
Reality TV contestant Darva Conger took part in the “Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire” and won, marrying the millionaire and then declaring she just “was playing a role.”
We live in age where reality programming is king. And when reality is enough, we create a better one and sell our shiny new personalities to the world at a very reasonable price.
I worry about people so desperate to get on TV and so void of any actual personality that they have to pretend to tie their six year old to a weather balloon just to get people to look at them.
October11
The Great MacDonald’s Mystery
Con artists have pinched $145000 from 1500 MacDonald’s customers and the police have no idea how they did it.
The 1500 West Australians have all reported large sums of money going missing from their bank accounts. The money seems to have been withdrawn from ATMS in Malaysia and Canada.
The only link between he victims is that they all visited a MacDonalds in the past few weeks and paid with a debit or credit card.
So how did they get away with it?
Was it a disgruntled employee skimming cards at the counter as customers made a purchase?
Did a con artist get access to the eftpos machines before they even got to the restaurants, installing a reader and transmitter that communicated the victim’s details to the con artist?
Or is MacDonalds one of those dodgy companies that keeps customers credit card details on file? A few years ago, Roses Only got hacked by swindlers who stole thousands of customer’s details because the company kept them on file.
What do you think happened?
Police are seeking this man in connection with the scam.
October9
Blackface Zebras
During the recent war between Israel and Palestine, the Marah Land Zoo outside Gaza City it’s two zebras to starvation.
The only way to replace them would be to sneak them into the city through underground tunnels at the cost of $15000US per zebra.
The zookeepers have come up with a more creative but far less honest solution.
Zonkeys.
Using masking tape and black hair dye, the zookeepers have striped white donkeys so that they look like zebras.
The results are surprisingly effective….
Even though the kids can’t tell the difference and the parents don’t mind, Harry Connick Jr has already expressed his disapproval of the black painted animals.