What are some of the DUMBEST scams that scammers actually try to get
away with?! Let’s find out and get right to it with:
6 - Robinhood James Parker found a glitch in
a cryptocurrency website and he used that glitch to exploit millions of pounds in Bitcoin. But he
didn't carry out the scam alone! He had multiple accomplices who helped him steal the money.
But here's the thing- both James Parker and his
accomplices oddly had no idea of what to do with a lot of money.
So they spent the money on a lot of nonsense. They even started just giving the money away!
One of them, William Boys, took a million pounds in a suitcase to buy a villa from
Russians that he met in the back office of a real estate agent. He also paid corrupt
officials off with sixty thousand pounds so that he could continue his money laundering.
ROBIN HOOD James Parker, the leader of the gang, had
so much cash that he resorted to giving it out. He bought multiple five thousand pounds gift cards
and started giving them out on the street. He also started tipping taxi drivers as high as 50 pounds.
Finally, he bought cars for about twenty people — including random people he'd met in the bar.
He was a Bitcoin Robinhood. The only difference was that he
wasn't very good at archery. And also probably didn't look great in tights.
THE HEIST
The scam itself was fairly simple. Parker stumbled upon a loophole in an Australian-based
cryptocurrency exchange. This allowed him to withdraw other people's Bitcoin to his account,
and sell it for money. The loophole was so well hidden that Parker used it for three months,
and was able to withdraw a total of over 15 million pounds.
After withdrawing the money, Parker got a band of merry men and women together.
This gang helped him to launder the money and use it to purchase properties.
Unfortunately for Parker, his luck wasn't going to hold forever.
One of the members of his crew, Kelly Caton, reported to the police that her daughter had
stolen her Bitcoin. At the time, it was worth about 75 thousand pounds.
Aftermath
The amount piqued the interest of the police, and they began to wonder how Caton got so much money.
This launched an international investigation that culminated in the arrest of Parker.
By the time the police arrested him, Parker gained a reputation as a generous Bitcoin millionaire.
In the end, all the members of the gang were found guilty of fraud. Tragically,
James Parker died before the trial could be concluded. The rest of the
gang got appropriate sentences for the role they played in the scheme.
5 - The 100 Million Sandwich Three men were accused of inflating
the values of publicly traded companies to seek out merger partners for the companies.
The first man is Peter Coker Sr, an elderly man who also happens to be the father of
another member of the group, Peter Coker Jr. The third member of the group is James Patten.
These three Stooges hatched a plan to inflate the value of two publicly traded
companies called Hometown International and E-Waste. Hometown International,
at the time of the merger, only had a Deli and $40,000 in sales revenue
to its name. E-Waste, on the other hand, had no discernible business to speak of.
Despite the nature of both companies' income, they both ended up with a combined
value of over a hundred million dollars. The Cokers carried out this scheme by making it
appear that Hometown International had more shareholders than it did.
Coker Jnr was the CEO of the company, and Coker Snr was a large shareholder. Patten,
on the other hand, was just someone who had business relationships with the Cokers.
Inflating The three Stooges
kicked off their plan to inflate the company's value by giving shares to family members. They
gave shares to associates and friends, including those overseas. Everyone was
getting shares, and the company's value was rising like an inflatable balloon.
The family did the same for E-Waste, and they traded the shares back and forth amongst
themselves to inflate their real price. The goal of the inflation was to get the companies to merge
with other companies because of their stock market value. According to officials, these
men were able to inflate the value of Hometown and E-Waste by 939% and 19,900%, respectively.
Unfortunately for our Stooges, escapades like that just don't go undiscovered.
People were always going to figure out there was something unnatural
about a business with just one Deli being worth almost a hundred million.
Investigation
By 2021, news reports discovered that a company with just one Deli to its name was
worth around a hundred million dollars. This was such a clear anomaly that David Einhorn,
a hedge fund manager, joked that the Pastrami at the Deli must be heavenly.
In any case, the reports alerted the police and the SEC to the scheme,
and they immediately investigated the case.
Their investigations revealed the shady dealings going on behind the scenes, and the
police immediately moved to arrest the Stooges. Patten and Coker Snr were immediately detained,
however, Coker Jr was at large for a short while. According to reports, he was in Thailand and had
no intentions of coming back voluntarily to take a bite of his justice sandwich.
So the police did the next best thing: they alerted the Bangkok police,
who found Coker Jr. He was arrested, and then extradited to the US.
The three men face charges ranging from conspiracy to manipulating securities
prices. If found guilty, the three Stooges could face multiple 20-year maximum sentences.
And worst of all: no more Pastrami on rye.
4 - Skating Into A Scam Allison Marie Baver is a
former Olympic speed skater who was accused of lying on loan applications to receive millions
of dollars in Covid 19 funds. But Baver isn't just an Olympic-level speedskater,
she also owns an entertainment company. The name of her company is Allison Baver
Entertainment, and promotes itself as a purpose-driven film and television company.
Apparently, Baver submitted tons of loan applications in April 2020. The applications
were for a $10 million relief fund for her entertainment company. In each request for funds,
she claimed that her payroll was almost 5 million dollars. In reality it was nothing at all.
Show Business
Baver wasn't just the owner of a showbiz company,
she also directed her own fictional reality where she told whatever lies she wanted.
She claimed that her company was big enough to employ between 100 and 430 workers,
but that was just fiction. Federal prosecutors discovered that not only was the company not
big enough to employ even 100 people, but it didn't employ anyone. At all.
However, Baver still got over $10 million from her scam. To her credit,
she didn't just spend all of the money on houses and a lavish lifestyle. Baver actually spent some
of it on her business. She transferred about $150,000 of the ten million to the production
company behind “No Man of God" starring actor Elijah Wood about serial killer Ted Bundy.
Aftermath
That represents about 1.5% of the actual loot she got from the government. Well,
at least she spent part of it on real work, right? She also made an uncredited
appearance in the movie, which is great value for $150,000 if you think about it.
Unfortunately for Baver, she could speed skate, but couldn't hide, and Jonny Law finally caught up
with her. She's now facing nine charges related to fraud and is yet to enter a plea concerning them.
Be careful of the company you keep, Mr. Frodo.
3 - The Covid House Don Victor Cisternino is a failed lawyer and music
executive from Florida who was accused of stealing over seven million in Covid-19 relief funds.
Cisternino stole the funds through phony claims that his company, Magnifico Incorporated, had
a monthly payroll of over $2.8 million. He also claimed that the company carried 441 employees.
The real number of Magnifico Inc. employees was much less magnificent
than the company's name might suggest. Instead of 441 employees, Cisternino had zero employees.
When our music executive got the funds,
he did what any music executive would have done: he used it to upgrade his lifestyle.
First off, he bought a 12,500-square-foot $3.5 million mansion on a 12-acre estate. The house
was a work of art and had everything from a mobile theater to a five-stable horse barn.
After buying his mansion, Cisternino decided he needed lavish cars to go with the image. So he
purchased a Mercedes-Maybach S650X, a Lincoln Navigator,
and paid off a loan for a Maserati. In total, he spent about $389,000 on buying luxury cars.
Cisternino thought he was going to live out his life very comfortably. But people talk.
International Help
Cisternino's lavish lifestyle soon got tongues wagging,
and those tongues tipped off the police. But Cisternino didn't wait around for the
police to arrest him. Once he got word of the police investigation, he fled to Switzerland.
Once in Switzerland, Cisternino started traveling across Europe. He did this for three months
before he got arrested in Croatia. At one point during his travels, Cisternino tried to claim
asylum in Ireland, but the Irish government didn't buy the corned beef he was hashing.
An international warrant for his arrest was ultimately what caught
the music executive. Once he landed on US shores, Cisternino realized that his
song was over. He pled guilty to his crimes and waited for his sentencing.
Aftermath
Before he was sentenced, the lawyers claimed that Cisternino wasn't a fraud. Instead,
he was pushed to make fraudulent decisions by his addiction to Adderall. They also
claimed he was jealous of his more successful family members.
Finally, Cisternino's lawyers also said that the fact that their client
had bought all his properties in his name proved that he wasn't trying to
hide anything. If that were true, you might wonder why he decided to take a
three-month police-evading trip to Europe then. And so did the judge.
No weight was given to Cisternino's nonsense excuses. He was eventually
sentenced to eight and half years in prison, and ordered to pay restitution
of more than 7 million dollars to the government as a part of his punishment.
2 - Social Media Never Lies Anthony Ragusa was arrested
for claiming $200,000 in disability benefits, mainly because he wasn't disabled. And how did
the police find out that he wasn't disabled? Simple. He told on himself. Ragusa was making
loads of money from the government. He claimed that he suffered a fall in 2013 while working
as an electrician and that this fall meant he couldn't work. Ragusa claimed that the
injuries he suffered were so severe that he couldn't even bend down to put on his shoes.
His claim was successful, and Ragusa began collecting thousands of dollars in
disability payments. He collected these payments while also owning and earning
income from a limousine business in New Hyde Park on Long Island.
Ragusa would have gotten away with his grift if he hadn't picked up two peculiar
hobbies. The first was bodybuilding, and the second was appearing in social media videos.
Helping Wife In 2017, Ragusa's wife,
who was a trainer, began to post videos of Ragusa transforming into a bodybuilder. The
videos were posted on Instagram, and show Ragusa lifting weights at a Long Island gym known as the
Mecca for bodybuilders. Interestingly, his wife even tagged Ragusa's limousine business account
in the videos. This showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Ragusa had been defrauding the state.
Aftermath
He was eventually caught by the police and made to face the law. In the end,
he was charged with one felony count of grand larceny and one felony count of offering a false
instrument for filing. Ragusa had no defense for his behavior, so he had to plead guilty and
was sentenced to pay $200,000 in restitution to the Social Security Administration. If he
fails to pay the restitution, he could be sentenced to three years in prison.
However, we somehow don't think Ragusa would
mind prison too much as long as it had weights for him to lift.
1 - Don’t Bank with Her! Selina Saab was accused of
stealing the personal details of at least 85 people and leaking them to a friend. This was
done in a bid to file Covid claims and defraud the state. The scam was a basic identity theft
scheme. Saab was a civil servant working with the welfare arm of the Australian government when she
stole the details of 85 Australians and sent them to one Salim Merheb through a messaging service.
Merheb then used these details to lodge a series of fraudulent applications for
government relief. These fraudulent applications were then approved and
Merheb defrauded the government of about hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Maximization
Merheb used different strategies to get money from the Government.
First, he claimed Australian Government Disaster Recovery
Payments. This paid out about a thousand dollars to every flood disaster victim.
Then, he claimed Covid Disaster Payments, which paid out about $200 to $750 per
week. Next, he submitted claims for Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments,
which paid out about $750 to adults who couldn't work because of Covid.
Aftermath
Unfortunately for Merheb, he was always going to get caught. The
police eventually discovered the scam, and his home was raided. However,
even after his home was raided and evidence of his crimes was seized, he continued to offend.
Saab was also arrested in relation to the crimes and was subsequently granted bail. Merheb was
charged with possessing proceeds of crime and obtaining financial advantage through deception.
Saab was charged with dealing in identification information and using it to commit fraud.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
Let us know in the comment section what’s the
craziest scam you’ve heard a friend you know falling for!