Word: conning
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...Marines and South Vietnamese hit back in a multipronged, 10,000-man operation, sweeping into the DMZ area south of the border in an effort to drive the North Vietnamese out of it. Five Marine battalions struck from the south toward their own besieged base of Con Thien. A South Vietnamese task force roared northward up Route 1 all the way to the river border, then divided and turned back to push the enemy southward. Due north of Con Thien, a Marine battalion helicoptered into the DMZ to hammer the North Vietnamese toward the Marines moving north...
...Formidable Fleet. Operation Hickory began with the Marine drive from Cam Lo to relieve Con Thien, which has been under almost constant mortar attack since May 8. The terrain favored the dug-in enemy: a dense jungle tangle of banana trees, bamboo, betel-nut and breadfruit trees in which visibility was seldom more than 15 ft., and fields separated by 10-ft.-high hedgerows. One company was within a mile of Con Thien when it was pinned down by fire from the seemingly deserted village of Trung An. The North Vietnamese had built of logs, trees and dirt an astonishing...
...Best Con Men Ever." "But this is fully documented," a baffled Meadows would occasionally interject. The A.D.A.A. members were not surprised; documents are even easier to forge than paintings. Last January French police raided the apartment of one Raoul Lessard as he was leaving for New York, found a suitcase with four fake paintings, forged custom stamps and certificates by experts, all addressed to Dallas. Lessard has been acting as "private secretary" to a dandy named Fernand Legros, who last March in Paris sent a photo of a painting supposedly by Andre Derain to an auction house, only to have...
...hideaways, has so far insisted that he made innocent mis takes. But Lessard is a French Canadian, and Legros is a naturalized U.S. citizen of French extraction; this description tallies with the two men from whom Meadows bought most of his paintings. "They were charming-real artists, the biggest con men ever," says Meadows wryly. But he is not taking the A.D.A.A.'s judgment as final. While another French dealer, who sold Meadows seven fakes for $100,000, has already agreed to refund the Texan's money, Meadows is insisting that French experts render a verdict...
...former FBI agent on art frauds. The problem in routing out the fakers is that the gulled buyer will rarely swear out a complaint, often chooses to auction off his mistakes or donate them to charitable organizations as a tax write-off. Says one Los Angeles investigator: "How many con games are there that have the power to convert the victims into accomplices after they have found out that they have been...