Usually, it’s very easy to tell when someone’s scamming you, and it’s because they’re telling you can make money investing in crypto. Sometimes, however, scammers are more devious. For example, maybe they have really convincing arguments about how you can make money investing in crypto (some people are already composing such arguments in response to this paragraph).
Or, maybe they have a more complicated scheme in mind. Even so, they might step on a rake and trip themselves up in the end.
The Wrong Dinner
If you want to be set for life, you should try hitching your wagon to an oil heir, or to a prince. Khalid bin Al Saud was apparently both, being a member of the Saudi royal family. In 2017, he approached billionaire real estate heir Jeffery Soffer, offering to invest half a billion dollars in Soffer’s company. It appeared that Saud wanted to be wined and dined a little first, and Soffer played ball, buying him some expensive gifts.
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Then, at dinner one time, Saud ordered prosciutto. Prosciutto is pork, and if you’re a Muslim who doesn’t touch pork, you usually make it your business to know which animal ham comes from. Soffer grew suspicious and had the guy investigated. As you’ve surely guessed by now, he wasn’t a Saudi prince after all. He was born José Moreno, grew up in a Colombian orphanage and had been adopted by an American couple before running a serial spree of frauds.
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Until Soffer wised up, Moreno had gotten investors to hand him $8 million, and this landed him an 18-year prison sentence. But this wasn’t the first time he’d conned people using his Saud persona. In the 1990s, he’d walked into an American Express office and convinced them to give him a platinum card, with a credit limit of $200 million. Not wanting to push his luck too hard, he only used that card for a $25,000 shopping spree before moving on.
The ‘Price Is Right’ Contestant
Postal worker Cathy Wrench Cashwell hurt her shoulder on the job in 2004. We’re sharing her full name here because this means that Cathy Wrench wrenched her arm, and it means Cathy Cashwell sought cash well.
Because in 2009, she appeared on The Price is Right — except, this didn’t actually win her money in the end but instead lost her a bunch of money. Cashwell was on workers’ comp, having claimed to be unable to raise her arms following the injury. Investigators noticed that her appearance on the show involved her raising her arms in a most public manner, to spin the big wheel.
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This may have been what tipped them off, but it wasn’t the only piece of evidence they brought against her, as they later discovered she’d gone ziplining with her husband and also carried heavy stuff regularly while shopping. The workers’ comp claim was false, and she pleaded guilty to fraud.
Note that this story probably circulated partly because some people are very interested in spreading the idea that everyone on workers’ comp is a fraud. That is very different from our motive in sharing it, which is that we think this story’s funny. If you want a deeper look at the people applying for benefits, both cheaters and non-cheaters, we’ve got that, too.
The Pregnant Man
A basketball player for Ohio State University named D.J. Cooper never quite got drafted by the NBA. But he moved to Europe, a continent that explorers say has basketball teams of its own. He played in Greece, and he played in Monte Carlo. In 2019, he tried to join a Bosnian team, and as part of anti-doping protocols, he needed to take a urine test.
The urine showed no signs of banned substances. But it did show signs of human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone most associated with pregnant women. Either something was deeply wrong with Cooper medically, or the urine belonged to someone else. It belonged to his pregnant girlfriend, investigators later determined, and Cooper received a one-year ban.
The urine coming back positive for this unexpected test is a punchline right out of a comic. In fact, a quick search online pulls up a comic making that exact joke. Still, all comics are based on real life, which also explains why your cat starts out the week so grumpy.
The Brothers’ Switcheroo
Lots of sports have their own doping scandals. Consider the Comrades Marathon, a 55-mile race in South Africa. In 1999, two of the top 10 finishers were disqualified for banned substances. More interesting, though, was the runner who finished ninth, Sergio Motsoeneng. A while after he received his title and his prize money, he was disqualified when judges realized he had finished the race but had never started it.
His brother Sefako ran the first half of the race. Then Stefako took a quick toilet break, during which he tossed his vest to Sergio. Sergio was bubbling with energy, having not just run 27 miles, so he was able to cover the second half of the race much more easily than Sefako could have.
A review of photos from the race revealed that the two runners were different people. Can you spot the issue?
One brother wore his watch on his left arm, while the other wore his on his right. And now that they noticed that, judges noticed that those were also two entirely different watches. And those were two different pairs of shoes — similar shoes, but they were still different. Oh, and those were two different people. Sergio and Sefako weren’t even twins, though some later recaps of this story mistakenly refer to them as such. They were just brothers.
Sergio was stripped of his title, but he wasn’t banned permanently from competing. He came back to run in 2010, at which point he was disqualified again, this time for failing a drug test.
Imaginary Wine
In 2006, Indonesian wine merchant Rudy Kurniawan netted $24 million from a single wine auction. And we don’t need to elaborate — that has to be a scam, right? Even if he sold the exact rare wines he claimed to be selling, there’s no way they were worth that much. Indeed, his chief buyers were Silicon Valley millionaires who didn’t know a whole lot about wine and bid against each other.
But there was something else wrong with the wine sale, too. Kurniawan was offering wine from the producer Domaine Ponsot, a complex wine called Clos Saint-Denis, with bottles dated between 1945 and 1971. The heir to the 150-year-old Domaine Ponsot company happened to be present, and he noted that the Ponsots hadn’t made that wine until 1982.
Kurniawan had been sticking cheap wine in expensive bottles, while also making his own labels, a most vicious form of wine fraud. The U.S. sentenced him to 10 years in prison but then released him early and deported him. Most recently, he’s told news sources that rich people have been paying him to come to their parties and counterfeit wine in front of them, as a party trick.
As for the Silicon Valley buyers he duped, they took to heart his lesson about how speculation can lead to high prices for something that’s inherently worthless. They went on to invent crypto.
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