Hoax Museum Blog: Con Artists

Quick Links: Q-Ray, MIT, and Stupid Criminals —
Q-Ray Made To Pay
Remember the Q-Ray bracelet? There was a thread about it in the old forum. This "miracle bracelet" could do everything from curing arthritis to helping you win a marathon. Now a judge has slapped its inventor with a $22.5 million fine for false advertising. Turns out it couldn't do any of that stuff after all. Who would have thought?

Woman Robs Bank With Toy Gun
Another Stupid Criminal. Or perhaps a criminal suffering from senile dementia. A 79-year-old woman "walked into the Bank of America branch Tuesday morning and told a teller that she'd just come from the dentist and could only speak quietly... As the teller leaned in, Cooke whispered a demand for $30,000 and brandished a gun that turned out to be a toy, the affidavit says. Instead of handing over any money, however, the teller triggered a silent alarm and walked away. Cooke left empty-handed after several minutes and then ducked into a nearby store, where she was arrested. Officials said Cooke was dressed for the attempted heist in a black trench coat, sunglasses and a white "Princess" visor."

image Fire Truck Tops Dome
MIT students commemmorated 9/11 by placing a fake fire truck on top of the university's Great Dome. I have a short list of other things that have topped the dome here.

Attacked By Naked Men
"Dallas - A former city official who is under investigation in an FBI corruption probe was arrested for public intoxication after claiming he was robbed by naked and scantily clad attackers at a male strip club... Police said he told them he was attacked by three men, one naked and another in only a towel." Big Gary comments: "Who says Dallas doesn't have class?"
Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006.   Comments (11)

Quick Links: Stupid Criminals, etc. —
Do you want to be a gigolo?
Malaysian men promised that, for a fee, they can become well-paid gigolos. It's the old dream job scam. One sucker "was told to meet a client at a city hotel. He waited for hours until he spotted a Western women who seemed to be searching for someone. 'I thought she was my client so I approached her and introduced myself. To my surprise, instead of receiving words of welcome, I got cursed and insulted,' he told the daily."

Dumb Robber #1
Forgets to bring bag for money as he robs bank. Consequently ends up dropping most of the money during the getaway.

Dumb Robber #2
Man attempts to hold up bank. Finds out the building he's in is not a bank. He thought it was because of the presence of an ATM machine.

Lost Candy Bars
If you're a fan of Lost, you might want to try some Apollo Candy Bars, being distributed at events across the country. The Apollo Candy Company is a subsidiary of The Hanso Group, which should be familiar to Lost fans. I should add Apollo Candy to my list of Lost-related hoax websites.

Church ponders possible balloon hoax
On July 23 the Gibbsville Reformed Church in Wisconsin released 600 balloons into the air. Attached to the balloons were tags saying, "When you find me, please send a note to my church." The Church soon received word from Indiana and Kentucky of found balloons. Then a tag was returned to them from China. The pastor is suspicious: "We're thinking it may be just somebody's idea of a joke, which puts us in a little bit of a bad spot. Just the fact that it wasn't signed was somewhat suspicious. There's probably some good sermon (material) in here somehow."
Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006.   Comments (11)

Magic Cheese —
Status: Ponzi Scheme
Chilean police have arrested a pair of con artists who had constructed an elaborate pyramid scheme based on the sale of "magic cheese". OhMyNews reports:
The fraud consisted in selling people packs of "Yo Flex," a powder that, she claimed, would ferment milk into a special cheese. Giselle said that this "Magic Cheese" was the latest fashion in France, where women used it as a skin cosmetic, and which in Africa was used as a food supplement...
In Chile, a pack of Yo Flex sold for US$500, but chemical analysis determined that the powder was a dairy ferment worth only US$4. Mella and Jara told victims that Yo Flex should be mixed with milk and that the cheese should be returned to Fermex, which would export it to France and Africa. The agents promised the people that they would double their money in three months. Initially, Fermex did pay victims profits, but this was a ploy to convince more to invest their money. Soon, many were investing sums ranging from US$5,000 to US$40,000. Many would sell their cars or property or get bank loans to buy the packs of Yo Flex.
Ponzi would have been proud. I think someone should collect samples of all the worthless junk that's been sold through Ponzi schemes (magic cheese, bioperformance pills, etc.), and then display it all in a Ponzi Museum. Or this would be a cool gallery to have in an actual Museum of Hoaxes, should such a thing ever come into existence. (Anyone want to donate a million dollars or so to help me build it?)
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006.   Comments (16)

Auto Dealer Scams —
Status: Useful stuff to know if you're buying a car
Florida businessman Earl Stewart has started a blog, Earl Stewart On Cars, that's full of useful insights about the auto industry. Some of his observations about auto dealer scams and deceptive sales tactics are particularly interesting. Here's a few of them:
• The “Big Sale Event”. If you look in today’s newspaper, you will find that most car dealers in your area are having a sale of some kind. It may be because of a current holiday, “too large an inventory” of cars, to “reduce their taxes”, “the manager is out of town”, or some other nefarious lure... If you don’t buy a car during the tight time constraints of a phony sales event, you can negotiate just as good a price the next day.

“The Price I’m giving you is only good for today”. If a salesman or sales manager tells you that, it is probably only a tactic to push you into buying the car.

“Take the car home tonight and see how you like it”... there are two reasons the car salesman offers this. One is that you must leave the vehicle you might be trading in with the car dealer. This means that you cannot shop prices with other dealers. The second reason is the psychological impact of parking that new car in your driveway where your family and neighbors can see it. The slang expression for this is “the puppy dog”.

• The “really big” discount”... Federal law requires new cars to have a price sticker on the window named the Monroney label. A discount from this suggested retail price gives you a fair basis for comparison. Unfortunately, most car dealers today, increase the suggested retail price substantially with the use of an addendum to the Monroney sticker often referred to as a “Market Adjustment Addendum”. This “adjustment” can be several thousands of dollars. Be sure you know what the asking price is for the car when you have been offered a “big discount”.
In Hippo Eats Dwarf I noted an outrageous example of misleading advertising used by one car dealership. They had a "half-price sale" during which "The price you see is half the price you pay." Think about it.

Carl Sifakis has also cataloged a number of auto dealer scams in his book Hoaxes and Scams: A Compendium of Deceptions, Ruses and Swindles.

For instance, there's the practice (now illegal in many states) of "bird dogging" in which car dealers pay people who refer customers to them. Obviously someone getting paid for a referral might not be objective. Plus, as Sifakis notes, "car salesmen aren't about to give a customer referred by a bird dog an extra good deal." He then relates this story:
New car salesmen tell the standard story of the sharpie to whom a potential buyer was referred. The salesman promptly took him for almost list price, despite the fact that the customer had a trade-in that also netted the hustler an extra commission. The salesman also took the shopper for financing and insurance at very favorable terms—that is, for the car dealer. The kicker to the story showed up on the paperwork when the salesman filled in his contact for the sale. In the space naming the source, he'd written "Mother."
Then there's the practices of lowballing and highballing. In lowballing the salesman offers to sell a car for a ridiculously low price, only to reveal later that the manager hadn't approved the price, and that the real price is much higher. Many people will then buy the car anyway, because they've already got their mind around to the idea of buying it. Highballing is the same thing, but switched around so that the dealer will offer to buy a trade-in for a ridiculously high price, only to reveal later that the manager hadn't approved that price.
Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006.   Comments (14)


BioPerformance Goes to Court —
Status: Pyramid scheme unravels
Thanks to Joe for sending along some links about the ongoing downfall of BioPerformance, Inc. (discussed in the hoax forum in this thread about fuel additives). To summarize briefly: BioPerformance seems to be a classic case of a pyramid scheme. The people at the top of the pyramid were convincing suckers to pay for the privilege of selling little green pills that supposedly, when placed in a car's gas tank, yielded "vast improvements in mileage, performance and emissions". What BioPerformance wasn't telling anyone was that the pills were simply mothballs that didn't improve mileage and could actually ruin a car's engine. (Though oddly enough, according to the Dallas Observer article, mothballs can, under certain conditions, boost octane levels, which can help engine performance... but only when used in very carefully controlled amounts and in high-performance engines.) Sadly, in a classic example of cognitive dissonance, many of the BioPerformance faithful are refusing to admit they've been scammed. But thats always the way it is with con-artists and their victims.
Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006.   Comments (33)

Breast Exam Scam —
Status: News
76-year-old William Winikoff of Coconut Creek, Florida has been charged with lewd and lascivious conduct for posing as a doctor and offering women free breast exams. Remarkably, he duped at least two women with this scam:

Carrying a black “doctor’s” bag, investigators claim Winnikoff walked up to a apartment building and told a 36-year-old woman, that he was in the neighborhood offering free breast exams. According to police, the woman let Winikoff into her apartment and the phony doctor began the exam, touching first her breasts, and then, her genitals. The woman quickly realized that Winikoff was not a real doctor and she called 911, but the fake doctor had already left her apartment to find another victim; a 33 year old woman who lives in the same apartment complex.

The Smoking Gun has some more details about this case.

It may sound like a stupid scam, but variations of it seem to happen more often than you would think. And the perpetrators always manage to find women who will fall for it. For instance, in October 2002 Zachariah Scott, a Toronto hospital employee, was charged with telling women in the obstetrics ward of Mount Sinai Hospital that he was a 'lactation consultant,' and then examining their breasts. No one realized anything was amiss until one of the women asked a nurse if she could see him again. She was told that the hospital only had female technicians.

Even weirder was the case, reported by Portuguese newspapers in 2002, of a woman who phoned other women and told them about a revolutionary new technology that allowed breast examinations to be conducted by satellite. All they had to do, she told them, was stand topless in an open window and a passing satellite would conduct a mammogram. Every woman who was contacted complied with the strange instructions. One woman even stripped entirely naked. The phone would then ring again, but instead of getting their mammogram results, the phony doctor would describe her sexual fantasies to the women in graphic detail.
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006.   Comments (17)

Boston Couple Eats Glass —
Status: Insurance Scam
When I was in elementary school, I often heard a rumor that if you ate chalk you could fake the symptoms of being sick, and thus not have to go to school. I never tried it, but this couple seems to have taken the same idea and advanced it a step further:

A couple has been charged with filing fraudulent insurance claims that said they had eaten glass found in their food at restaurants, hotels and grocery stores, federal prosecutors said... The couple used aliases, false Social Security numbers and identity cards, and in some cases, had eaten glass intentionally to support their insurance claims, prosecutors said. The glass did not come from the food they had bought, prosecutors said.

On the other hand, this couple could also suffer from hyalophagia, a medical disorder characterized by the eating of glass. (Thanks to Joe Littrell for the link)

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006.   Comments (2)

The Musuem of Hoaxes —
Status: Typosquatter
My wife just discovered this. If you misspell museumofhoaxes.com by switching he 'e' and the 'u' in museum (a very easy mistake to make), you'll arrive at The Musuem of Hoaxes, which contains links to info about museums. It's obviously a site created by a spammer hoping to profit off of people who are trying to get to the Museum of Hoaxes, but who aren't great spellers. I probably shouldn't link to this alternative version of the Museum (I'm only sending more traffic to the spammer), but I'm kind of flattered that someone thought it was worth their time to create this. According to Larry Adams, author of Fraud In Other Words, this kind of practice (registering misspelled domain names) is called typosquatting:

Typosquatting is the intentional use of misspelled domain names and meta tags to misdirect Internet traffic or revenue from one Web site to another. It is based on the probability that a certain number of Internet users will mistype the URL or name of a Web site. Typically, a typosquatter registers several possible input errors for a Web site of a famous company, brand name or celebrity known for its high traffic. The typosquatter monitors the bogus sites to see how many clicks a day each of their "typo" domain names receives, and uses the information to sell advertising for the sites that receive a high volume of accidental traffic. Advertising revenue might come from selling ads to the original site's competitors or by providing redirect pages to gambling and porn sites.
Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006.   Comments (13)

Mermaids and Bull Genitals Used to Find Missing Car —
Status: Scam
This leaves me at a complete loss for words. It's amazing:

HARARE, Zimbabwe - A bogus traditional healer who persuaded a businesswoman to hire "mermaids" and accommodate them in a Harare hotel to help find a stolen car was convicted of theft by false pretenses, court officials said Tuesday...
In Zimbabwe, where tribal superstition is deeply entrenched, prosecutors said Chizema persuaded Margaret Mapfumo to pay 200 million Zimbabwe dollars (about $30,000) to hire mermaids, feed and accommodate them in a Harare hotel, buy power generators for a floodlit lakeside ceremony and invoke ancestral spirits to find the missing car. Some of the money was to be used to buy a bull whose genitals — described in court as the animal's "strong part" — would point out the car thief, prosecutors said.


All that was needed was the addition of a penis-melting Zionist robot comb, and it would have been a perfect trifecta of weirdness. (Thanks to Big Gary for the link.)
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006.   Comments (11)

Fake Russian Music Degrees —
Status: Fraud
Korean investigators have uncovered a case of widespread degree fraud involving over 120 people who bought fake Russian music degrees from a woman "identified as Do":

Do advertised her institute as a Korean campus of the Russian university and the Russian college dean came here along with a couple of other Russian professors for about 10 days a year to provide lessons,'' said a prosecutor... Prosecutors said that the fake degree holders registered their degrees at the Korea Research Foundation (KRF) and some of them worked as lecturers at local universities, trying to create an academic clique.

This strikes me as odd as I would never have picked music as a field conducive to degree fraud, since other musicians would notice pretty quickly if you don't know what you're doing. Also, the idea that these fake degree holders were all colluding to create an academic clique is a bit bizarre. They must have figured there was strength in numbers.

The case also reminded me of the fake Moscow Philharmonic that was caught touring in Hong Kong back in 2000.
Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006.   Comments (11)

Thames Whale Watering Can on eBay —
Status: Beware of fakes
This is just pathetic:

Opportunists have tried to capitalise on the hysteria surrounding the Thames whale by putting a bogus watering-can up for sale on eBay, with a starting price tag of £1,924. The unidentified owner insisted the item was used in the attempted rescue of the 19ft northern bottle-nosed female whale to keep her moist and comfortable. But the fake sale outraged the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, who spent 36 hours and £100,000 trying to save the sea mammal's life and who were selling their own watering-can online.

Here's the real watering can for sale. Bidding is currently up to £99,701.25. (I hope that's not because of fake bids.)
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006.   Comments (5)

The GTC Group Billion Dollar Trust —
Status: Scam
Here's an offer that has scam written all over it. The GTC Group (I'm kind of reluctant to link to their website, on the off chance that I'll help send a victim their way, but here it is) claims that if you agree to establish a trading account in their name (no money or fees required!), they will pay you, and 5000 other lucky volunteers, $24,000. They're circulating this claim via email. Here's how they explain the deal on their website:

Our client is a family trust with $1B to invest. We recently presented them with an investment opportunity to make a return of 18% without risk. Unfortunately, this opportunity involves the purchase of certain restricted financial instruments in the Asian markets. Due to regulation, the purchase of these instruments is restricted to $200,000 per person (or trust or any other entity). We are therefore unable to invest any more than $200,000 of our client's funds. We presented our client with a possible solution, to which they were agreeable. Our solution is very simple, as I'm sure you may have preempted already. We require 5,000 people who would like the opportunity to earn a share of the return WITHOUT any investment required. Once we reach this number, each person will have a trading account established in their name. Each account will be funded with $200,000. The trading cycle will then begin, which lasts for just over one month. At this stage, the profit will be split between our client and the participants. Of the 18% return our client will receive 5%.

You don't really need to read any further than "a return of 18% without risk" to know it's a scam. There's no way to make an 18% return on anything, let alone $1B, without risk. There's also the fact that they claim to be a billion-dollar trading outfit, but they can only afford a rinky-dink website. And we're expected to believe that some "family trust" is going to entrust them with $1B? Even though they claim no fees are required, I'm sure people who sign up will be asked to pay 'unanticipated fees' somewhere down the line. I'm also sure no one will ever see that $24,000. According to the registration info for the domain name, the GTC Group is run by some guy named George Davies out of Stanbrook House, 2-5 Old Bond Street, London. (Thanks to Harvey Wharfield for forwarding me the link to this thing.)
Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006.   Comments (23)

Nigerian Curse Scam —
Status: Scam
According to the Arab News, the Nigerian bank scam has taken on a new twist. The scammers no longer tell you that they want to transfer $30 million into your bank account, or that you've won the European lottery. Now they inform you that you've been cursed, and you need to pay up to have the curse lifted. They bypass email and phone you directly to tell you this:

Abdul Rahman, sociology professor at Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University, said he received one of these calls from an Arabic speaker who informed him that he had been cursed by a colleague. The caller then claimed that he could neutralize the evil spell provided a specified sum of money was transferred to a bank account in Mali. The operator even claimed he would reveal the identity of the colleague if payment were sent.

Actually, I don't think Arab News is correct to identify this as an evolution of the Nigerian bank scam. I've definitely heard of fake curse scams before, though I can't find a link to another example.
Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006.   Comments (7)

Counterfeit Money Clogs Toilet —
Status: Stupid Criminals
A Colorado couple, realizing the police were onto their counterfeiting operation, tried to get rid of the incriminating evidence by flushing it all down the toilet. The results were predictable:

There's dirty money associated with crime, then there's dirty money. Investigators encountered the latter on Thursday, when they discovered a rental duplex that had flooded with sewage when the tenants flushed at least $10,000 in suspected counterfeit money down a toilet, crippling the duplex's plumbing system... By the time police arrived at the duplex Thursday, standing water and sewage covered its floors and the toilets weren't functional. Detectives said Marquez and Valdez had been relieving themselves in plastic shopping bags for at least a week because of the inoperable plumbing... Video of the duplex's plumbing shot by plumbers using a "snake camera" on Thursday showed hunks of suspected counterfeit bills packed into the pipes. The clogs span from just a few feet beyond the toilet to almost 100 feet along the lines. The volume of bills flushed down the toilet was so great that the money was visible when police and sheriff's deputies lifted a manhole cover on the street outside the duplex.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006.   Comments (3)

$25 an Hour, Anyone Hired —
Status: Probably a Ponzi Scheme
Cranky Media Guy (aka Bob Pagani) noticed this story in the HawkEye about a job offer that sounds an awful lot like a Ponzi Scheme. Terrie Brown, who owns a limousine business in Burlington, Iowa, is offering to hire absolutely anyone at the rate of $25 an hour. Here's the part of her offer that sounds like a scam:

The hiring process includes filling out an application and then paying a $10 processing fee, according to Brown. Everyone who fills out an application and pays the $10 fee receives a time card and is hired on the spot, she said. In fact, she added, anyone willing to work who pays the processing fee will be earning $25 an hour. "Everyone is paid $25 an hour whether they work one hour or 40 ... and everyone will receive benefits," Brown said. The benefits include health, dental vision and life insurance for an undetermined fee.

So you pay her $10 to get hired, but I bet that only a very few people will actually be put to work and earn that $25/hour. Still, hundreds of people have been signing up for the job:

Since Tuesday, owner Terrie Brown has been inundated with hundreds of job applications from high school students to senior citizens. On Thursday, parking at the business on the corner of Roosevelt and Sunnyside avenues had to be directed due to high–traffic volume. "We had hundreds in here and we want hundreds more," Brown said. "As long as you are willing to work, we want you."

She's even giving people incentives to recruit other suckers to sign up for this job. The Burlington Police are aware of what she's doing, but won't comment on any investigation.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006.   Comments (2)

Plymouth Rock Pieces on eBay —
Status: Scam
According to legend, Plymouth Rock was the first thing the pilgrims set foot upon when they landed in Massachusetts. I think that the rock itself is now on display in Plymouth. But United Press International reports that pieces of the Rock are popping up on eBay where they're fetching as much as $900. The catch is that there's absolutely no way to verify that these really are pieces of the original Plymouth Rock. A lot of people did carve off chunks of Plymouth Rock during the 18th and 19th centuries, but there's no way to differentiate a real piece of Plymouth Rock from a fake piece.
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005.   Comments (13)

Fake Cavities —
Status: Scary scam
An Indiana dentist has been charged with diagnosing patients with cavities that didn't exist. This is the kind of thing that feeds the popular paranoia about dentists:

The attorney general's office said Dunlap diagnosed three patients with cavities, but the patients sought second opinions and were found to be cavity-free. State officials said Dunlap diagnosed a child with 10 cavities in June, but another dentist found that the child did not have any cavities. A similar complaint was filed by a patient in May 2004, said Staci Schneider, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office.

Personally, I've never had a cavity. But one time a dental assistant cleaning my teeth told me I had three or four cavities. Luckily the dentist who checked her work recognized that the 'cavities' were just grooves in my teeth.
Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005.   Comments (44)

Is Surf Junky a Scam? — Surf Junky (www.surfjunky.com) is a service that supposedly lets you earn money simply by browsing the web. The description on its site of how it works isn't very clear, to say the least, but from what I can gather they make you have a browser window constantly open that flashes ads at you... a new one approximately every thirty seconds. They claim that they'll pay you about $0.45 for every hour that they sense you're actively browsing the web with this ad window flashing at you. Of course, it hasn't taken people long to figure out that theoretically you could leave the surf junky window open all day and be earning money while you do other stuff (like sleep). The trick would be to have a program running such as a chat room that would fool the surf-junky browser into thinking you were using the computer. So does this trick work? Can you earn money just by having a browser running? And the larger question: will surf junky actually pay you, or is it all a scam?

The answer is that you're probably not going to make any money this way because it doesn't appear that Surf Junky is very good about paying anyone. At least, there are all kinds of complaints on the web about its non-payment. Apparently they have a habit of cancelling accounts that approach the $25 minimum payment threshold. If you sign up with them you also have to provide your email address and agree to have spam sent to you, so they're making money off you that way as well. All in all I'd say that Surf Junky isn't worth messing around with. There are plenty of easier ways to make a few bucks.
Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005.   Comments (42)

The Hoax Paper Birds of Thailand — Last week 100 million paper birds were airdropped in southern Thailand. The airdrop was supposed to be the Thai government's symbolic peace gesture towards the Muslim separatists who live there. Billionaire Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra personally signed one of the paper birds, promising that whoever found this autographed bird would win a university scholarship (sounds like he has ambitions to be a modern-day Willy Wonka). A few days later a young girl came forward saying that she had found the bird. Provincial authorities checked it out and said that it looked genuine. But alas, it now appears the bird was a hoax. Shinawatra has indicated that he might give her a free scholarship anyway. But nobody knows how many more hoax paper birds are floating around out there.
Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004.   Comments (9)

Conman Makes Money Rain From Sky — Thanks to Big Gary for forwarding me this next story. A conman made hundreds of dollars by convincing residents of an Ethiopian town that he could make money literally rain down upon them from the sky. At first I thought, who could be stupid enough to believe that? But then I realized it's basically no different from any of the get-rich-quick schemes popular here in America: trade your way to riches in the stock market, work at home and earn big bucks, take this seminar and learn the secrets of financial success, etc...

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004.   Comments (2)

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