Word: conned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cover blown. Published last month in the U.K., John le Carre's eleventh novel could hardly pass review without someone noting that the main character is a British intelligence officer, as was the author, and that another persona is a dead ringer for Le Carre's father, a notorious con man named Ronald Cornwell...
Philadelphia area for a nonexistent Ghanaian trust fund. Says Castille: "It's the biggest scam in the history of Philadelphia." Adds Assistant D.A. William Wolf: "What you had were some of the most successful and intelligent men and women in Philadelphia who bought a treasure map from con men." Some sources say that Philadelphians were not the only suckers: the bogus trust may have taken in as much as $100 million from a nationwide network of investors...
Italy's tainted-wine scandal con- tinued to spread in ugly fashion last week. More than five weeks after a number of vintners were first discovered to be adulterating their low-priced table wines with methyl alcohol, which is more commonly used as a paint solvent, at least 22 Italians had died and about 90 others were hospitalized after drinking the contaminated product. As the death toll rose, the Italian government listed some 300 labels as suspect, prompting worldwide concern and threatening the country's $953 million wine-export trade...
...blends precise research into prison life, the gem market and rock climbing with outlandishly risky escapades, including a scene in which the hero circumvents a security system by mounting an elevator cable and skittering along a momentarily inactive high-tension wire. The basic elements are conventional: an ex-con who wants to go straight, a fallen woman redeemed by love, moral corruption that goes unnoticed by police, schemes and counterschemes for revenge, deluded invocations to chivalry and honor among thieves. The end game is enlivened by Freudian twists, but the greatest strengths are Gores' skillful crosscutting, swift pace and mastery...
Sobhraj, 42, is known across two continents as a con man, escape artist and master criminal. He had been in jail since 1976 on a murder conviction. Though cleared of that charge in 1983, he was being held for possible extradition to Thailand to face a death sentence for allegedly drugging, robbing and killing several Western tourists. By week's end Indian police had uncovered no trace of the wily crook...