If you can wait while the ad plays, this is a very interesting backgrounder for the ‘Nigerian’ scam called ‘Black Money’. In this scam, suitcases full of black paper are sold, along with a very expensive chemical which they claim will wash the black ink off the money, returning it to it’s full value.
They claim that the cash has been marked to make it non-legal tender or to hide it from customs.
The father of a suitor of Chelsea Clinton (Ed Mezvinsky) has fallen foul of this scam himself, and the ensuing race to raise cash has landed him in jail.
Mezvinsky’s stories sound fantastic. At one point, he says, he found himself in Africa gazing on an open suitcase filled with paper shaped like money, although the bills were black.
“That’s the way they would hide it,” he says. “The man later came out with a chemical, threw it on the money, and it all turned to $100 bills. He gave me 10 to have them tested back home. And they were real.”
Some of the African schemes were not far removed from the classic, laughable Nigerian scams often run through the Internet – seeking victims with financial backing to extract millions out of bogus accounts. Others were sophisticated oil prospects.
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