What are some of the smartest schemes scammers come up with?
Let’s get right into it and get started with:
5 - 23 Years a Tenant Long Island resident Guramrit Hanspal went
over 20 YEARS without making a single payment on his mortgage!
Hanspal bought his three-bedroom home in East Meadow in October 1998 for $290,000.
The only payment he ever made on the mortgage was the first one of $1602.
The house was foreclosed upon in 2000, but that didn't mean Hanspal had to leave.
He filed four lawsuits and seven bankruptcies, which paused the eviction process each time.
Two decades after the foreclosure, Hanspal claimed COVID-19 financial hardship.
Many tried to get Hanspal and the other residents out of the house.
Other occupants filed for bankruptcy, with the house changing hands from different banks
to eventually an investor.
Law enforcement officers repeatedly showed up at the house to evict the residents, and
every time Hanspal handed them court documents that blocked the officers.
Hanspal used the courts to buy himself more time.
He often represented himself and would abandon almost all the court actions.
Most times, he would default or fail to show up to hearings.
Locked Out
Hanspal could no longer delay the inevitable, though he did a pretty good job of it, and
on a Friday morning in November 2021, Nassau County sheriff's deputies changed the locks
on the house.
It was the second time authorities had been to the house since a judge ruled that Hanspal
was illegally occupying the residence.
The eviction had been planned for October 29th, 2021, and a U-Haul truck appeared in
the driveway a few days before.
A property resident, Pamrjit Puar, tried one last time to stay in the house, running to
court on an emergency basis and claiming there was nowhere for him to go.
He tried to stop the eviction for 30 days.
The judge planned a hearing on Puar's request, but Puar never showed up.
By then, the judge was sick of the home's residents playing the system.
Aftermath
Nassau County sheriff's officers, a locksmith, and movers arrived at the house before 8 am.
After not receiving a response, they knocked on the doors and let themselves inside.
Diamond Ridge Partners owned the home, having bought it from Chase Bank in May 2018 for
$184,000.
They offered Hanspal $20,000 to leave, but Hanspal filed for bankruptcy twice more instead,
along with two other residents in the home.
Hanspal's lawyer William Friedman claimed his client did nothing wrong and said that
Hanspal's actions exposed a broken system.
Diamond Ridge supplied storage for items removed from the home, where they would be held for
up to 30 days.
Although the property was finally vacant, Diamond Ridge doubted they would make money
on the place.
They found a lot of damage when they finally gained access to the home and would have to
dedicate considerable time and money to get it ready to sell.
4 - Of course that’s my boat Australian real estate agent Callum Kennedy
woke up on New Year’s Day to a flood of messages accusing him of being Australia’s
biggest scammer.
Seriously, if we had a nickel for every time…Kennedy had no idea what people were talking about
when they messaged him to tell him he ruined their New Year’s Eve plans.
It wasn’t until Kennedy had a video call with one of his accusers that he realized
his identity had been stolen.
Roughly 150 people lost money after buying tickets for a New Year’s Eve yacht party.
They arrived at the dock the night of the party to find no boat waiting for them.
The yacht was supposed to pick them up in a beachside suburb of Adelaide at 8:30pm,
where they would party until the fireworks started.
The misled partygoers bought tickets for December 31st, 2022, on Eventbrite for $130.
Partygoers’ tickets should have meant they had unlimited drinks, food, and a DJ.
Then, they would watch the fireworks from the water.
Old Business
Years before the incident, Kennedy considered creating an app for a boat hire company.
He had a business name for the endeavor, but it never materialized.
However, the scammers used the business name for the hoax.
At first, the 150 scammed had no reason to be suspicious of the event.
The attendees bought their tickets through Eventbrite, a brand and app with an excellent
reputation.
The scammers made $20,000 from the operation and stole Kennedy’s reputation in the process.
As a real estate agent, his image is crucial to attracting new clients, and with his name
attached to this hoax, he fears he may be unable to recover.
Aftermath
Victims reported the incident to South Australian Police, who requested that everyone affected
by the scam come forward and report the situation on the ReportCyber website.
Eventbrite launched an investigation into the incident after being flooded with complaints.
They refunded all of the attendees and released a statement saying they would be working with
South Australia Police to help in their investigation into finding the people behind the event.
3 - The Generous Mom British mom Teresa Griffiths lost $8,700 after
a fraudster posed as her daughter on Whatsapp.
When Teresa received a text from her daughter, Louise Scott, panicking over an outstanding
bill, she offered to give her daughter the money.
Griffiths transferred thousands of dollars out of her savings but later found out it
had gone to a scammer rather than a family member.
The $8,700 was money Teresa had saved up for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to celebrate her
60th birthday.
She contacted her bank, Santander, who told her there was nothing they could do.
Funny how banks always say that, yet their commercials are always about how they’re
there by your side.
No wonder everyone’s grandparents didn’t trust banks.
The Call
Teresa was spending time with friends when a scammer pretending to be Louise sent her
a message on Whatsapp, claiming to have dropped her phone down the toilet and gotten a new
number.
Teresa wasn’t suspicious as the messages were written exactly the way Louise usually
texted.
At the time, Louise was having work done on her home, and her message said she forgot
to pay a $3738 bill.
After Teresa offered to send the money, the scammer posing as Louise sent her the information
for a different bank account than the one Teresa was familiar with.
Thinking she was directly paying the people working on Louise’s house, Teresa didn’t
have any concerns when she sent the money.
Catching On
The scammer contacted Teresa again about another forgotten bill of $5098, so Teresa transferred
more cash from her savings to cover the outstanding amount.
When the fraudster reached out to Teresa a third time, because scammers are like cats,
to ask for $2621, the grandmother knew something wasn’t right.
She responded by saying she didn’t have the money.
The scammer requested Teresa pay what she could, something her daughter would never
do.
Teresa asked the scammer to name her grandchildren, but they laughed off the question.
She next called her son-in-law, who confirmed she had been scammed.
By then, the transactions had already cleared and couldn’t be canceled.
Teresa was already unable to work due to poor health and was devastated to find out the
truth.
Aftermath
The money in her savings was supposed to pay for her 60th birthday trip when the London-based
family planned on going to Las Vegas and New York City.
They canceled the trip due to Covid but intended to rebook it.
Santander was not concerned about the incident and refused to help.
They told Teresa to reach out to the fraud team but soon afterward sent her a letter
saying the situation was her fault, and they closed the investigation.
Teresa spoke publicly about her ordeal, hoping she could stop other people from going through
the same thing.
She never recovered the money.
2 - Brady Family Rings Scott V. Spina pretended to be former Patriot
and still Current Tampa Bay Buccaneer Tom Brady.
Brady had bought versions of the team’s Super Bowl LI ring for friends and family
when New England beat Atlanta 32-28.
All the Super Bowl rings Brady bought were engraved with Brady’s last name.
We’re sure you can see where this is headed!
One of the rings Spina obtained went for $337,000 at an auction.
Spina’s operation began in 2017 after he bought a Super Bowl LI ring from a former
Patriots player, which he paid for with at least one bad check.
A sports memorabilia broker purchased the ring from Spina for $63,000.
Spina bought three smaller Super Bowl rings after learning that former football players
could buy them for friends and family.
Ring it Up While posing as a former Patriots player named
J.T., Spina told the ring manufacturer that he was purchasing them as gifts for Brady’s
family.
He instructed the manufacturer to engrave each one with ‘Brady’.
Spina contacted the memorabilia dealer he worked with on an earlier ring to sell him
the three family rings for $81,000, which would be three times what Spina paid for them.
The dealer sent Spina a $6,500 deposit, but when he sent the dealer a picture of the rings,
the broker discovered the ring’s geolocation was wrong.
Rather than showing Massachusetts, where the Patriots are based, it showed New Jersey.
Spina claimed one of the rings was for Brady’s nephew, but the collector knew Brady didn’t
have a nephew and canceled the deal.
Despite the deal falling through, Spina sold the rings for $100,000 to an auction house.
Spina admitted in court to pretending to be a Patriots player to obtain the rings.
In February 2022, he pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud,
and one count of aggravated identity theft.
In August 2022, he received a three-year prison sentence and was ordered to pay $63,000 in
restitution to a former Patriots player who he paid with a bad check in 2017.
Spina probably shouldn’t’ve picked such a well known player like Tom Brady, but someone
like Adrian Peterson, who’d already gone broke.
For a deeper dive into Adrian Peterson’s inability to hold onto money, click the link
here!
1 - Greener Grass Eric Canori was once the largest high-end
wholesaler of a particular recreational plant and had buried $2.3 million worth of gold
bars behind his childhood home.
He decided to bury gold bars rather than cash after discovering that it made paper money
too moldy, after digging up a million dollars and finding that it made the bills stick together.
We’ve all been there.
The buried gold made up only a fraction of his net worth.
At the height of his career, Canori made between $50 million and $60 million annually.
He wisely chose to sell the greener grass over other illegal substances as it had much
smaller margins.
Also, other substances ran the risk of long prison sentences.
Sales Funnel
Canori’s sales career began when he sold candy in high school.
He would buy candy from a local gas station and sell pieces of it to other kids.
As someone who enjoyed a popular recreational plant, the progression to selling it was natural.
Canori would buy an ounce and break it into dime bags, $10 worth, or roughly a gram for
the uninitiated, which became very lucrative for the teen.
Canori attended the State University of New York at Plattsburgh after high school, arriving
with two ounces of the then-illegal substance, expecting it to be for personal use.
However, he was enticed by the amount of money he could make if he sold it and was soon selling
it again.
Canori formed close relationships by paying attention to anyone with a friend who also
sold, using it as a networking opportunity to meet and work with the friend.
People liked partnering with him as he was trustworthy and low-key.
Soon Canori was part of a much larger operation where he sold to big-time dealers in the area.
He bought pounds of product from Native Americans on a Mohawk reservation and from a motorcycle
gang.
Canori transported his supply in the trunk of his 1987 Pontiac Bonneville.
The student was unsuspecting and had a stack of textbooks on the passenger seat.
Canori graduated in 2001 with a degree in business management.
By that point, Canori was worth $250,000 and had done over a million dollars in deals.
Postgrad
Canori was still involved in his business endeavors when he left college but also maintained
a day job.
He had a legitimate business putting water installations into people’s backyards.
By day, Canori worked his day job without raising alarms to those around him, and by
night he was arranging product shipments via large trucks across the country and sometimes
into Canada.
In 2009, he took a potential girlfriend to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee.
It was his first vacation in a decade, and he was choosing between spending time with
his new friend or packing a 300-pound shipment.
The chain of events that occurred because Canori followed his heart would lead to his
undoing.
The shipment that was transported while he was at the concert should have been a routine
operation.
They planned to pack 300 pounds of product into a cargo trailer that Missy Giove, Canori’s
regular transporter and well-known downhill mountain bike racer, would drive to its destination.
Suspiciously Fresh
Giove, who had been reliable until that point, outsourced the driving to a massage therapist
friend.
Canori paid Giove $60,000 for the job, but Giove only paid her friend $3,000.
Canori was back from vacation and waiting for Giove at his Saratoga Springs stash house.
Giove was refreshed and showed no signs of being tired from her long drive.
Canori knew something was wrong when he found a tracking device in the back of the truck.
The massage therapist who drove the cargo was pulled over by police for speeding, and
when officers realized the vehicle was packed with the devil’s lettuce, she immediately
rolled over.
Agents swarmed the stash house, finding supplies and $1.5 million cash.
They arrested Canori and Giove.
Canori’s time in jail made him put his life into perspective, and he acknowledged that
he wouldn’t have stopped until he was caught.
Canori laid in his cell and didn’t hear his multiple phones blowing up.
Agents had confiscated his cell phones when he entered the jail, and he might not have
been able to answer them, but that didn’t stop people from blowing them up.
He had $3 million worth of shipments coming in that day while behind bars.
People working with him assumed he was in jail or dead.
Aftermath
Canori laundered some of the unrecovered money so that he could hire an expensive attorney
to represent him in court.
He wasn’t an ideal client and refused to snitch on any of his co-conspirators.
Unfortunately, the people he protected didn’t do the same for him.
Agents traveled across the country to get information about Canori, and many spoke against
him.
The DEA knew about his buried treasure after Canori bragged about planting the gold to
some of his co-conspirators.
Canori self-surrendered his $10 million in gold.
Canori pleaded guilty and confirmed minimal details that Giove gave in a statement about
another co-conspirator.
He spent two years in jail and was released in 2014.
Even while behind bars, he retained some of his assets, including bank accounts, stock,
and real estate.
Canori lost interest in the industry where he was once a key player, having lost everything
after one mistake.
Today he is living a different lifestyle and has written a memoir called ‘Pressure’.
He is still figuring out his next move, and now that the product he sold is legal in many
parts of the United States, he hopes to return to the business legitimately.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
Let us know in the comments below who you find more annoying: scammers calling on your
phone or the people working at kiosks who approach you trying to sell something?