Word: scams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...charges grew out of a four-month investigation by New York and CFTC officials. Scam busters discovered seedy boiler rooms where pitchmen used computer lists to contact unsuspecting pigeons, or potential victims. The salesman, in a follow-up phone call, might then say discreetly, "If you act now, I can squeeze you in on a contract." While most of the contracts have not yet fallen due, investigators allege that brokers in fact do not possess the oil to back up the bogus deals. Eventually, customers would find that the salesmen had either left town or were no longer in business...
...would anyone in the Justice Department leak news of the Abscam sting if it imperiled the simultaneous Brilab scam? One possible answer, according to some Justice Department sources, was that one or more of Abscam's key directors in the New York-New Jersey area were angry at what they considered a premature termination of the Abscam operation. Abscam was shut down, these New York officials apparently believed, just as it was about to reach more members of Congress than the eight already involved. Fearing a high-level coverup, the advocates of this theory claim, the lower-level officials...
Dubbed Abscam, for Arab Scam, the 23-month investigation had cost some $800,000 and involved about 100 agents in an elaborate series of hoaxes and disguises. One of these dressed up in a burnoose and posed as a sheik named Kambir Abdul Rahman, whose millions were said to be "burning holes" in a Chase Manhattan account. Other agents in pinstripe suits served as the sheik's American emissaries, translating his gutteral commands and seeking ways to invest his money in New Jersey gambling casinos, East Coast port facilities and an American titanium mine. Along the way, the phony...
With top level approval and ample funds now available, the FBI scam grew ever more elaborate. A swarthy agent, still unidentified, was picked to play the fictitious sheik, Kambir Abdul Rahman. Variously portrayed as being from Oman, Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates, the impostor set up temporary residence in a 62-ft. yacht that docked in several posh Florida marinas. As the flag vessel of the FBI'S secret fleet, the cruiser, seized by customs officials from marijuana smugglers, was first named the Left Hand and later the Corsair. "It gleamed with the predictable varnished parquet decks, teak...
...under investigation. Marcello further revealed to the agents a plot to bribe a federal judge in Los Angeles with up to $250,000 to fix a racketeering-murder trial of five Mafia figures. The judge was tipped by the FBI before he was approached by the plotters. The Brilab scam was shut down last week...