Word: prize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...class of crooks preying on the old. Downs' first caller identified himself as Curt and spoke in the sympathetic tones that often win the trust of a senior. He commiserated with Downs over her troubles and then told her that her luck was changing: she had just won a prize worth tens of thousands of dollars. But to collect it, said Curt, she first had to buy something from a company called Professional Marketing Inc. in Las Vegas...
Downs sent a $200 check for a shipment of cosmetics. Instead of the prize, she began getting calls from other telemarketing firms--one in Utah, one in Louisiana and four more in Las Vegas. The firms belonged to a new breed of con artist, those who regularly buy and sell names for their mooch lists, at prices ranging from $10 for an untested "lead" to $200 for the name of someone who has fallen for a whole series of scams...
...there's plenty about Macintosh that's worth controlling. Gates' richest prize may be Apple's intellectual property, both silicon-and carbon-based. The graphic designers, software gurus and other artsy types who constitute the Mac's most fervent cadres are a disproportionately influential market niche. Some two-thirds of all Websites are thought to have been created on Macs. "It's very attractive to Microsoft to have access to cutting-edge Mac developers," says Kurt King, an analyst with San Francisco-based Montgomery Securities, "particularly in areas like video streaming and other graphics technologies that represent the likely future...
...White House officials say they're monitoring the performance of newly inaugurated Iranian President MOHAMMED KHATAMI for favorable signs. It's all part of a modern version of Rudyard Kipling's "The Great Game"--the 19th century competition between Russia and Britain for influence in Central Asia. Today the prize is access to the Caspian Sea's pool of 200 billion bbl. of oil. But tapping that will require construction of the pipeline network. The U.S. hopes Iran will recognize that it is in its own interest to become a player so that it will qualify for much needed Western...
...Conspiracy Theory" opens, appropriately, with Jerry spouting tales of Nobel prize-winning scientists having their frozen sperm stored beneath the ice skating rink in Rockefeller Center, NASA conspiring to kill the President by conducting sonic tests in orbit resulting in major earthquakes along fault lines (the President was going to be in Turkey along a fault line) and perhaps funniest of all, the government putting the metal strip in the new $100 bills as a tracking device; Jerry generously warns a female passenger that if she has any of the bills to get rid of them immediately...