Hoax Museum Blog: Scams

Infectious Money Scam — A new scam targeting the elderly in Italy. Well-dressed young women knock on the door and identify themselves as health department officials. They tell the elderly resident that banknotes have been contaminated with a deadly virus. They ask, "Do you have any banknotes in the house? If so, give them to us, and we will decontaminate them." One elderly woman handed the scammers over $2300. [ninemsn.com.au]

Heltheo’s McCoy Home Health Tablet — "According to prosecutors, Leventhal told potential investors that his company, Neovision USA, Inc., had written agreements with Health Canada to provide it with "Heltheo's McCoy Home Health Tablet," a device that could quickly deliver detailed patient data to doctors. The device, prosecutors said, was apparently named after the fictional character Dr. Leonard McCoy from Star Trek."

Witchdoctor Protest — A unique way to express frustration at having been conned:

Empty Force — Wikipedia defines the martial arts technique of Empty Force as "the expression of force without making physical contact."


However, "Some proponents of martial arts are skeptical about demonstrations of empty force and dismiss them as tricks."

Recently a Finnish empty-force master, Jukka Lampila, gave a demonstration in Barcelona. So some skeptics decided to put his claims to the test.


So basically, empty force works brilliantly as a method of self defense, as long as your attackers believe in it too. Otherwise, you're in trouble.

Here's another video of Lampila doing his stuff. This time unchallenged.

‘Help Me, I’m German!’ — UK police are warning drivers of a new scam in which fraudsters pose as stranded motorists in lay-bys, beseeching the aid of good samaritans with pleas such as, "Help me, I'm German!"

The fraudsters claim that they're out of gas and have lost their wallet. But they offer gold jewelry in return for money. The scam is that the gold jewelry is fake. [cambridge-news]

When I first saw the headline I thought it was going to be about people who wake up, realize they've become German, and cry out for help. Kind of like a Germanified version of Gregor Samsa. That would have been better.

The Nigerian Message-In-A-Bottle Bank Scam — Warning: if you find a message in a bottle requesting your help with transferring £4,500,000 out of Nigeria, it may be a scam.

Tom Fenton recently found such a message in a bottle while cycling along the Thames. It was written by Barrister Umsloppogas Adinga:



Fenton says the message "must be a joke." But a police spokeswoman reminded the public to: "Be wary of who you give your personal details to in the street (eg charities, products, competitions etc). Do not sign up for anything until you have researched the company or charity. Never send money to anyone you don't know." [mirror.co.uk]

The “Fake Dominatrix” Scam — A 35-year-old Austrian woman advertised herself as a dominatrix, promising strict discipline to clients willing to pay. It took the men who responded to her ad a week to realize that instead of getting sexy punishment, they were being made to do work around her farm (chopping wood, mowing the lawn) while dressed in black fetish gear. They were paying for the privilege of doing farm labor. [spiegel]

Money From the Sky Scam — Two men in Dubai were offering to share a sure-fire way to get rich quick. All one had to do was buy a special juice from them and offer it to a jinn (a ghost). The juice wasn't cheap. It cost $30,000. But the jinn liked it so much, that upon receiving it he would return the favor by making $200 million rain down from the sky.

However, these men made the mistake of selling their jinn-juice to an undercover police officer, who promptly arrested them.

The Dubai authorities had harsh words for the victims of these con artists, as well as for the con artists themselves, saying that only greediness could have led the victims to believe that money actually would rain down from the sky. [emirates.247.com]

Massive Louvre Ticket Scam — Parisian authorities are now warily considering the possibility that thousands of Chinese tourists might be getting into the Louvre for free, after Belgian customs officials discovered fake Louvre tickets that were "perfect clones" of genuine tickets in a package sent from China. Though I assume the tourists paid someone for the tickets. They just paid the wrong person. [BBC News]

Maleek Seeks Help — Nairobi singer Moses Kamunya (aka Maleek) posted on facebook that his daughter had died. Sympathetic friends then sent him money to help with the funeral costs. But when people showed up at the mother's house for the funeral, (the mother being the Maleek's former girlfriend), she hit the roof because her daughter was still very much alive. Maleek now explains that "the devil had misled him." However, he doesn't seem quite ready to return the money.

Apparently Maleek is fairly well known in Nairobi for a song titled "Who's Gonna Help."

No Monkey — Call this the Cameroon Monkey Scam. The scammers bait victims online with the promise of a budget-priced monkey. Only $50. So you send in your money. But then, oh, by the way, you also need to pay for a cage, as well as a monkey license, and shots. By the time it's all over you've spent hundreds of dollars. A Battle Creek, Michigan woman fell for the scam. Finally she went to the police who told her, sorry, you've lost your money and you're not getting a monkey. [wzzm13]

Motor Trip Hoax, 1944 — I found the following story posted in the March 3, 1944 issue of the Carteret Press (scanned and hosted by the Woodbridge, NJ Public Library):



But I'm having trouble understanding exactly how the scam would have been profitable. First, if the car was a rental, wouldn't it have been easy to find out the identity of the scammer? Unless, of course, he used a fake ID to rent the car. Second, some kind of deposit must have been required by the rental agency. By abandoning the car, the scammer would have lost this deposit. But if he took in more from the victims than he lost on the deposit, I suppose this wouldn't matter.

Perhaps I just answered my own questions!

Prof. Humbolt’s Electric-Light Fluid Scam, 1896 —
I came across the above complaint in Gleanings in Bee Culture (1896). It seems that a door-to-door salesman was going around selling something he called "Prof. Humbolt's Electric-Light Fluid," which had absolutely nothing to do with electricity or electric lighting. The term "electric" was thrown into just about every product name back then to make products sound more scientific and modern.

As far as I can tell from the description, this "electric-light fluid" was a powder (not a fluid!) that people could add to the kerosene or coal oil in lamps. Supposedly it made the lamps burn brighter, smoke less, and reduced the risk of them exploding. Kind of like those fuel additives that are sold today that are supposed to increase your car's mileage per gallon.

Of course, as the complaint indicates, Prof. Humbolt's electric-light fluid did absolutely nothing, except separate people from their money.

Fake Chippendales Scam — Recently the "202 Market" bar in Roanoke, VA advertised that it was going to be hosting the famous Chippendales dancers. But soon it had to retract its announcement and admit that it had fallen victim to a scam. It had been deceived by a group of frauds posing as the Chippendales — Chippenfakes, you might call them. [roanoke.com]

Apparently the Roanoke bar isn't alone in falling for this scam. Kevin Denberg, manager of the real Chippendales, warns that there are a number of fraudulent groups trying to pass themselves off as the Chippendales. The official Chippendales website even has a form that allows fans to report any fakes.

What I find interesting is that if a bar books one of these Chippenfakes, a group of men actually does show up and perform. Denberg insists that they are a "subpar product" when compared to the real deal, but you have to wonder how bad are they? Really bad? Or would most people not notice the difference?


Denberg also reveals that these imposters are usually the same handful of individuals. So perhaps it's a group of ex-Chippendales dancers gone rogue. Or a group of bitter men who tried out for the Chippendales but didn't make the cut.

The good news for Chippendales fans in Roanoke is that the real ones have agreed to stage a performance there in December. The scheduled date is 12/12/12, which, coincidentally, is the day the world ends. So it should be quite a show.

The Great Emu Scam of 2012 — Indian newspapers are reporting the exposure of a major scam involving emu farming. Thousands of people were promised that in return for a modest investment in an emu farm, they soon would be earning thousands of rupees every month. They were led to believe this on the basis of the supposedly massive demand for emu meat and emu-oil cosmetics. The scam was exposed when investors realized that their monthly payments were failing to materialize. [thehindu.com, indiatimes.com]

Earn Money Working at Home—Become an Envelope Elf! — The consumer affairs office of the state of Massachusetts has created a series of phony websites designed to teach people how to avoid online scams. The sites advertise products such as work-at-home deals, weight-loss products, and free trips. If anyone tries to order something from these sites, they're directed to a page identifying it as a scam and telling them how they could have spotted the scam. My favorite one is the "Envelope Elf" site.


The SEC did something similar back in 2002. It created a hoax site for McWhortle Enterprises, Inc. The idea was to teach investors that just because a company has a website, that doesn't mean it's a legitimate business.

The SEC actually registered the domain name mcwhortle.com. The Massachusetts consumer affairs office, however, parked all its hoax sites at the same domain: http://topmassachusettsdeals.com. I think they should have paid the $20 and registered envelope-elf.com.

The Old Potato/Laptop Switcheroo Scam — I'm assuming the scammers must stuff the potatoes inside a laptop box. Otherwise I'm not sure how they convince their victims to walk away with a bag of potatoes instead of a laptop.

Marl the Stock-Picking Robot — Accipiter already posted about this in the forum, but the story is odd enough that it deserves to be on the front page.

Back in 2007, two teenage twins from North Tyneside, Alexander and Thomas Hunter, began selling a stock newsletter in which they recommended stocks supposedly selected by an AI robot named Marl. Investors could also pay to get advice through a variety of websites run by the twins, daytradingrobot.com, doublingstocks.com, and equitypromoter.com. Or would-be millionaires could get a version of Marl to run on their computer at home. The brothers advertised that "The longer Marl is allowed to run on a computer… The More Advanced He Becomes!"

The reality: Marl didn't exist. It was the twins who were picking the stocks. The home version of Marl simply displayed whatever ticker symbols the brothers told it to. And often they would pick companies that had paid for that honor. Links: Yahoo! Finance, BBC News

The brothers' websites no longer are up, and they were never archived by the wayback machine. But here's a few of their banner ads that I managed to find: