Word: conning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...their victims they seemed pretty normal at first, even admirable. Reinaldo Silvestre, a charming Miami con man with no medical training, is alleged to have operated on his plastic-surgery patients by shoving implants into their chests with a spatula; several were permanently mutilated. A drifter named Luis Garavito confessed in October to kidnapping, torturing and killing 140 children over five years in Colombia. Dylan Klebold went to the prom (and Eric Harris wanted to) before shooting up Columbine High in April. Predators with such little regard for morality and human life defy rational explanation, right...
...Janeane Garofalo describes David Lindsay-Abaire's work as "cleverly odd." That seems an understatement for his hit off-Broadway farce, Fuddy Meers. Its characters include a housewife whose memory is erased nightly, her jibberish-speaking mother ("fun-house mirrors" becomes in her mouth "fuddy meers"), and an escaped con with a sock puppet on his hand. Just turned 30, the little-known Lindsay-Abaire has suddenly been discovered. He's been commissioned to write a play for Garofalo, and 20th Century Fox has given him a five-year film-and-TV contract. First up: Road to Ruin, a "screwball...
...many other small-business owners, talk about building a new Oracle, pro or con, sounds roughly as relevant as chatter about a space cruise to Pluto. They consider mergers and acquisitions the only way not just to grow but sometimes even to stay afloat...
Unfortunately, viaticals have attracted con artists the way blood does leeches, and regulators are contemplating halting, or at least restricting, the practice. The problem is with folks like Davis, indicted on fraud and other charges by a Dallas County grand jury last summer. He persuaded scores of unsuspecting Texans to shell out millions on supposedly low-risk, guaranteed investments in viaticals offered by his Dallas-based company, First American Fidelity Corp. But authorities say the policies were fraudulently obtained for the express purpose of reselling them, an increasingly common practice dubbed cleansheeting. Davis allegedly solicited HIV-positive...
DIED. IAN BANNEN, 71, Oscar nominee who played an affable con man in 1998's hit Waking Ned Devine; in a car crash near Loch Ness, Scotland. In a 50-year career, Bannen appeared in Braveheart, Gandhi and the 1980 TV mini-series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and on the London stage in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night...