The colour of money
Two Cameroonians have recently been cleared by a court in Spain of charges of attempted fraud. But did the court get it right, and is it sending out the right message?
The two men charged in this case operated the black money scam. Claiming to be from the Ivory Coast, they told a Spanish businessman, Jose "GG", that they were looking to buy a luxury property in Valencia. The pair claimed to be transferring money from their homeland but, in order to cover their tracks when smuggling the money, had dyed the notes black. Showing GG a suitcase of black notes, they then proceeded to demonstrate the bleaching process with just a couple of the notes. A special liquid was applied, the notes were wrapped in aluminium foil and left for 24 hours, and at the end of it there were two usable, high value bank notes.
The businessman then handed over two hundred thousand Euros in cash in exchange for a bottle of the magic cleaning solution and a suitcase full of notes which would be worth well in excess of his investment. The scam of course is that only the two notes used to demonstrate the process were genuine bank notes, and all the other notes in the suitcase were nothing more than dyed paper.
Naturally, GG was somewhat annoyed when he discovered he had been defrauded and arranged a second meeting with the pair who came along thinking they could extend the scam, only to be greeted by the police.
Amazingly, the Spanish court ruled that the two perpetrators were innocent of fraud because, according to the law, the methods employed must be "sufficient to fool a perceptive and clever person". The judge decided that this scam "would not have fooled a citizen with a normal level of knowledge", and attributed the victim's misfortune to his own negligence.
It seems to me that this ruling is saying it is okay in Spain to defraud people who are too dim to realise they are being conned and this is surely the perfect defence for all future fraudsters. I think the judge has been harsh. It is easy to be wise to the fraud once the con has been explained to you but if we were all as perceptive and as clever as we like to think we are, magicians and fraudsters would never be able to make a living.
28th February 2011
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.