Word: scams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...commercial attaché in Bern intercepted the machines in France while they were en route to Moscow. Cooperating with the French counterintelligence service, he short-circuited the wiring and removed vital parts, reducing $500,000 worth of equipment to electronic scrap. But Swiss authorities warn that the scam may have a different twist: accounts of the CIA's role might have been planted by the KGB to reduce Western anxieties about the wholesale theft of technology by the Soviets...
...banker" because of his extensive financial dealings with the Vatican. Seven days before his corpse was discovered, Calvi had fled Rome to avoid investigation into illegal dealings and possible imprisonment. He apparently told relatives that he would "name the names" of people involved in the scam...
...give the two workers a change to rescue their integrity, the inspectors sent along a "decoy" package of KitKat candybars. An impartial observer might question the decorum of this move, reminiscent of recent Washington scams involving FBI agents dressed as Arab sheiks offering U.S. Congressmen large sums of money for their votes on crucial issues. The strategy also seems doubtful--Snickers or perhaps peanut M&Ms would seem like better choices. But despite these drawbacks, the scam succeeded. Wilson and Ferguson could not resist the urge familiar to every late-night paper writer. They decimated the package of KitKats...
Sliding from pathos to pathology and back again, Smithereens has the judgmental attitudes of a Hollywood "expose" with little of the craft. For every quirky glimpse of street life (a ten-year-old boy running a three-card monte scam, a prostitute who will "show you my scar for $5"), there is a derisive stereotype of the working-class drudges who get in Wren's way. Wren is so determinedly self-destructive that it becomes hard to care about her fate. Nonetheless, Berman does her best to bring this tough, tart Irma la Douce to life. She and Brad...
...issued the $845,000 order, but only to comply with two recent appeals court rulings requiring that action. Hastings also offered a parade of 50 witnesses, including three judges who testified to his integrity. Borders, concluded the defense, was simply engaged in the time-honored legal scam of "rainmaking," in which bribe money is smoothly returned if the judge fails to do what the con man guessed he would...