In 1920s, the famous con man Victor Lustig built a money printing machine that could create perfect duplicates of any currency. No bank could tell them apart. The reason? The money was real, it was the box that was fake. And since Lustig sold his boxes for $10,000 each, he made a packet.
Jump to Melbourne in 2009 and the same scam has just been pulled on three businessmen.
Two men, aged 23 and 25, have been arrested for a scam in which they claimed that they had created a chemical that could duplicate cash. They sold this fake concoction to three unsuspecting Victorian businessmen.
The scammers took a single note, put it between two pieces of black paper and poured a ’special liquid’ over the top. (really a mixture of hairspray, baby powder and bleach.)
A short time later and the notes had apparently duplicated themselves.
The three victims gave a total $160,000 to the con artists to be ‘duplicated’ before the two alleged swindlers were caught.
Interestingly, police have said that, while the business men were conspiring to make fake cash, they had not broken Australian law because they did not succeed!
I’m in the airport looking at a book called Persuasion.
It’s one of the hundreds of self help books that populate airport bookstores. It claims to be able to teach you how to become some sort of Svengali, making people your meat puppets.
Being a con man, this kind of thing is right up my alley so I’m looking at it wondering whether I should I buy it.
But I have realised that maybe the only reason I’m considering buying this book is because the author is using his powers of influence to make me buy it.
This evil master mind is forcing me to buy a book I don’t want.
Of course, if the book really does have that power, then I definitely should buy it.
I flip through the contents to see if there is a chapter called “How To Make People Buy Your Book Through Hypnotic Cover Design.” It’s not there.
Maybe he’s saving it for the sequel.
If I buy the book, his powers have worked and it’s a Good Book.
If I don’t buy the book, it’s probably crap. What sort of persuasion expert can’t even sell a book?
AS FEATURED ON ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE WITH KATHY BEDFORD
I’ve been sitting on this footage from my trip to Barcelona in June but thought I’d share it with you now. I spent a day hunting down the Trileros, con artists who play the Shell Game on the streets with unsuspecting tourists.
This is just one small piece of footage that I’ve collected over the past six months. I’ve also shots taken in Stockholm, Portugal, London and Paris to come later.
