These scams were ingenious, and if it wasn’t for one thing or another, we wouldn’t be
talking about them right now because they would have gotten away!
Let’s get started with:
4 - You Can Account on Her Alison Smith stole more than a million euros
from the small family business where she worked.
She carried out her clever fraud for nine years and was only caught after she had left
the company.
After a review, accountants discovered a payment Alison had recorded hadn't actually gone through,
and the supplier hadn’t yet been paid.
Alison had been stealing money by duplicating invoices and changing the bank details of
suppliers and paying herself instead.
So what did sneaky Alison get with her loot?
Well, she used the bulk of the cash to fund expensive vacations, buy expensive cars for
her children, and renovate her daughter's home.
She also used a part of the money to fund a growing gambling addiction, because as everyone
knows, it’s always better to gamble with someone else’s money.
Since she was such a trusted, long time employee, Alison was able to have the time of her life
living on stolen funds without anyone raising an eyebrow.
Sneaky Tactics
Aside from her creative accounting, Alison had other ways to avoid detection.
One method was setting members of the family against one another- if they were fighting
with each other, they wouldn’t have time to look at her.
The daughter of the company's owner, known as Ms. Lane, said Alison went to great lengths
to ensure that she and her husband weren’t involved in the business.
Alison did that so that she could have unfettered access to the company's finances and continue
defrauding it as she liked.
Ms. Lane further said that she'd had a fantastic relationship with her family, but Alison had
gone to great lengths to sow animosity.
Aftermath Alison's lawyer argued that she had developed
a gambling addiction many years ago, and her actions were a result of that addiction.
The lawyer also claimed that Alison had used alcohol to try and cope with her fraud.
In the end, Alison pled guilty to the crime of fraud and was sentenced to five years in
prison.
However, only five of those were to be spent in custody.
In his closing remarks, the judge said that Alison appeared to feel sorry for herself
and for the family she stole for.
That regret, said the judge, was taken into account before a sentence was passed.
It’s nice to know she was held…accountable.
3 - Booby trapped Dr. Ian Paterson is a breast cancer surgeon
who was accused of carrying out damaging and unnecessary surgeries over 15 years.
Since the beginning of his career as a doctor, serious questions about Paterson's competency
had been raised.
In 1996, he performed what should have been a low-risk operation, but the patient almost
didn’t make it.
Yet, he was still allowed to continue unquestioned, operating on hundreds of patients.
Everywhere Paterson was employed, he brought with him a reputation for being difficult
and stubborn.
It was always his way or the highway, and his former employers often warned his new
employers of his behavior.
But the warnings went unheeded.
Paterson eventually found himself at a hospital with a serious surgery waiting list problem.
But this didn't phase our butcher doctor, as he often completed his surgeries in record
time- which is something you always want to hear when getting surgery.
Procedures that were supposed to take two hours took just twenty-five minutes, and in
a year he had dealt with over 350 cancer patients.
He was like the Flash if the Flash had a medical degree and was into carelessly performing
surgeries.
Dr. Negligence
Concerns about Paterson's methods eventually arose.
One complaint that repeatedly came up was the amount of tissue Paterson left behind
after performing a mastectomy.
He once told a patient's husband that he did this intentionally, as he wanted his patients
to still have a bit of cleavage.
How kind of him.
In time, this quackery bore fruit and his patients began to report higher than normal
cancer recurrence rates.
The reason was simple; Paterson had simply done an awful job with their mastectomies.
Those recurrences soon lead to astonishing patient recall rates.
It got so bad that the hospital had to recall as many of his mastectomy patients as they
could.
But even that wasn't enough to stop Paterson from practicing.
At the end of 2011, almost 400 of his mastectomy patients didn’t make it.
By the middle of 2017, which was two years after his arrest, the number was closer to
700.
As the scale of Paterson's negligence and incompetence became apparent, lawsuits against
the hospitals he worked at increased.
At one point, the hospital he worked at settled over 800 claims and paid out almost around
£18 million.
It wasn't left to be a civil matter either.
The police soon launched an investigation into Paterson's private practice.
Charges were brought against him, and he eventually had his day in court.
God Complex In court, Paterson's victims had a lot to
say about his behavior.
Dr. Rosemary Platt told the court that Paterson had performed an unnecessary operation to
remove her left breast.
Others in court spoke about how he exaggerated the risks they faced to get them to acquiesce
to surgery.
According to a colleague, Paterson was falsely diagnosing patients with cancer on a large
scale.
He didn't even perform a biopsy on many patients and would simply operate on them after the
first consultation.
Even in court, Paterson's behavior was less than ideal.
He constantly antagonized his patients and even called one of them a slur.
He also mouthed the words "you're a liar" to another while she made her statement.
One might wonder why Paterson's bosses at the hospital he worked at didn't notice his
disturbing behavior.
The truth is that the managerial class of the hospital was usually more concerned with
target goals than with the performance of their doctors.
Paterson, on the other hand, wasn't performing all these surgeries just because he was an
awful person.
He was also performing them because they made him more money.
He spent the money he made from the surgeries on expensive properties around the world and
expensive suits.
He dined in Michelin-starred restaurants, drove an Aston Martin, and was treated like
a celebrity at sporting events.
He also bought a £ 1.25 million eight-bedroom Georgian mansion in Edgbaston and a vacation
home in Florida with views over a private golf course.
The decision of the court was straightforward.
Paterson was convicted for over 17 counts of intentional injury and was jailed for 20
years.
Whistleblower In the end, the evidence that convicted Paterson
came from a whistleblower who'd been his colleague for over ten years.
The name of this colleague was Hemant Ingle.
Dr. Ingle had been worried about Paterson's performance of unnecessary procedures and
wrote letters outlining his quackery.
He also raised concerns about questionable procedures in Paterson's presence.
However, Paterson promised to get Ingle sacked if he continued to ask questions.
Dr. Ingle's first batch of whistleblowing letters prompted an internal investigation
that proved that Paterson was carrying out unnecessary procedures.
However, the result of that investigation inspired no action from the hospital's management.
Paterson also had a deal with the NHS where he took on excess patients and treated them
privately.
Dr. Ingle himself only knew the extent of the harm Paterson had caused when a few of
the butcher doctor's patients were referred to him after his arrest.
That's when Dr. Ingle made a comprehensive review of cases and discovered that Paterson
was the patron saint of medical malpractice.
The cases were so numerous that in the end, a compensation fund backed by the NHS and
Spire paid out £37 million to around 750 patients.
2 - Cupcake Capers Ava Virginia Misseldine started her life as
a chemical engineering student at Ohio State University.
After graduating, she made a living as a cancer researcher, but after years of toiling in
the lab, she decided that she needed a break.
Misseldine had always enjoyed baking with her grandmother, so she ventured into baking
instead.
She found almost immediate success in her new career and became one of the most respected
bakers in Ohio.
Very soon, her work was so renowned that she was once featured on Food Network's The Best
Thing I Ever Ate.
It would seem like her life was on the up and up.
However, there was just one tiny hiccup.
Misseldine was never a cancer researcher, and her grandmother had never taught her how
to bake.
Most of what was in the public domain about her life was false.
She wasn't just baking cakes in her bakeries — she was also cooking up lies.
Brie Bourgeoisie
Misseldine's identity scam started after she was released from prison in 2000 following
a 1997 conviction for theft and forgery.
That's when she decided to steal the identity of someone else and use their documents to
create a new life for herself.
Misseldine started her fraud by getting an official Ohio state ID card in the name of
her victim, Brie Bourgeoisie.
Meanwhile, the real Brie Bourgeoisie had passed away back in 1979 not long after being born.
However, Misseldine didn't care.
She took the ID card she'd acquired and then used it to get a social security card and
a driver's license.
To authenticate her claim that she was indeed Brie Bourgeoisie, Misseldine also presented
a copy of the original Brie Bourgeoisie's birth certificate and the names of her real
parents, Jacques and Paula Bourgeoisie.
After getting the documents that supported her lie, Misseldine continued to live under
her real name and that of Brie Bourgeoisie.
In 2006, she obtained a drivers license under her real name, in addition to the license
she already had under Brie’s name.
The next year, Misseldine used her identity as Brie Bourgeoisie to get a job as a flight
attendant for Columbus-based private charter service JetSelect.
Misseldine also got a student pilot certificate using the Brie Bourgeoisie name.
In addition to that, she got a passport for Brie Bourgeoisie using her fake driver's license
and a letter from the company she worked at.
Despite walking such thin lines, Misseldine didn't even stay out of crime.
In 2007, she went to court as Brie Bourgeoisie for theft charges where she pleaded guilty.
In the court papers, her home address was the same one she used for her legal Misseldine
driver's license.
Then, in 2014, at a bankruptcy hearing, Misseldine's mask almost slipped.
This bankruptcy was done under her real name Misseldine, and in court, she was asked if
she'd ever used the name Brie Bourgeoisie for anything.
She replied that she'd only used the name for about two years, and had used it four
years ago.
She also claimed that she was adopted and that Brie Bourgeoisie was her birth name.
She argued that she only used Brie Bourgeoisie for a while until her adoptive family became
upset about it.
She wasn't adopted, and Brie Bourgeoisie was the name of a real infant that passed away
at 18 weeks old.
Covid Fraud
It almost seemed like Misseldine would never be caught and that she would get away with
everything.
But then the pandemic happened.
As the pandemic progressed and loans became available for business owners, Misseldine
saw one more opportunity to scam the government.
She applied for paycheck protection program funds using both her real name and her fake
name.
Since she had updated documents for both names, she was able to apply for the two identities
at once.
Misseldine listed various businesses, including ones that had closed down, as establishments
that required paycheck protection funds.
In the end, she received up to $1.5 million in government loans that were eventually forgiven.
Misseldine, as one could expect, didn't use these monies to pay employees.
She instead used them to purchase real estate.
She purchased a $650,000 home adjacent to Zion National Park in Utah, and also acquired
a $330,000 spread in Michigan.
Misseldine thought she would never be caught.
She was very wrong.
Discovered
Misseldine's fraud unraveled totally in 2021 when she tried to apply for a new passport
as Brie Bourgeoisie.
She made the mistake of listing Misseldine's email address instead of a separate Brie Bourgeoisie
one on her application.
Internal systems flagged the application, and investigators soon found her out.
She was arrested and charged with passport fraud, Social Security number fraud, aggravated
identity theft, and fraud in connection with major disaster or emergency benefits.
She faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
1 - James Zhong Bitcoin King The US Department of Justice seized around
3 billion dollars in stolen Bitcoin from the residence of James Zhong.
Zhong stole the Bitcoin from Silk Road, an illegal dark web marketplace for every kind
of contraband.
Silk Road was first opened in 2011 and closed down in 2013.
To steal the Bitcoins, Zhong created nine fraudulent accounts on Silk Road and funded
each with anything from 200 to 2000 Bitcoins.
He then triggered over 140 transactions in rapid succession on the market, which then
tricked the market's online systems to release up to 50,000 Bitcoins to Zhong's accounts.
As soon as he got the Bitcoins, Zhong transferred them all to accounts under his control.
Zhing hid his crypto like a 12-year-old kid hiding his dirty magazines: police found a
computer submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin in a bathroom closet holding 3 billion
dollars.
Aside from the Bitcoin, the police also found $661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins — which
are physical Bitcoins— four one-ounce silver-colored bars, three one-ounce gold-colored bars, four
10-ounce silver-colored bars, and one gold-colored coin.
His house was Treasure Island.
So did Zhong go to a bunch of expensive restaurants like all the other scammers in the club?
Nope.
Zhong actually sat on billions of dollars for nine years and never used them to buy
anything.
Crypto Caught
In fact, in the end, Zhong was the one who reported himself to the authorities.
In 2019, he called the local police to report a burglary and reported that a lot of his
Bitcoins had been stolen.
This alerted the IRS Criminal Investigation unit of the police, and they began their discrete
investigation.
The police investigated the original crime that Zhong reported, and never recovered any
cash or Bitcoin.
They didn't even have a suspect.
However, the IRS Criminal Investigation unit had an even bigger suspect on their hands
Mr.Zhong himself!
After investigations, they got a search warrant and raided Zhong's home two years after he
reported that it was burgled.
Aftermath
Once authorities got into his home and started searching, they hit gold almost instantly.
In the end, our crypto prince of crime had no choice but to give away his treasure to
the government.
He was promptly charged to court, and he pled guilty to one count of wire fraud.
He didn't just plead guilty, he also helped the Feds recover crypto that they hadn't found
in his house.
Right now, he's helped them recover over a thousand Bitcoins.
At this point, he's like the Fed's human Bitcoin finder.
He's scheduled to be sentenced next year and could see up to twenty years of prison time.
That should teach him not to rip off an illegal website that was frequented by criminals,
and then not ever touch the money he stole and cooperate with authorities!
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Let us know in the comments below whether or not you would trust someone who had a completely
different identity they never told you about!