Q: What is the biggest scam you've ever seen?
Before I get sued, I have to emphasize that, technically, this is not a scam. It's totally legal. It's just a huge disappointment that sooner or later every non-vegetarian American experiences and must come to accept:
This is a can of beans in tomato sauce. It may contain a tiny little chunk of pork fat. It contains no meat whatsoever. When you are a kid buying supplies for your camping trip, you don't know this. You will find it out once you have lugged the damn thing several miles through the forest.
I don't know why we tolerate this. If capitalism worked, market forces should have produced a superior product after all these decades. But it never has, and Americans continue to tolerate their beans with no pork meat. The label is, if not an outright lie, certainly the most gross exaggeration in the grocery store.
Recently, a guy bought a first class ticket for an airline in China. Every day he went to the airport to eat for free in the lounge you get access to with a first class ticket.
Instead of getting on to the flight, he changed his flight’s departure to another day.
The next day he would show up with his newly issued ticket for the revised date, eat and again change his ticket date. He did this over and over again for a year.
When they finally busted him, he applied for a full refund and got away with it too.
Simply genius!
The biggest scam i've ever seen goes to Emmanuel Nwude who sold a fake airport for $242 million. Emmanuel Nwude, a former Director of Union Bank of Nigeria successfully defrauded a Director at Brazil's Banco Noroeste based in Sao Paulo, Mr. Nelson Sakaguchi.
Mr. Nwude impersonated Paul Ogwuma, the then Governor of the Central bank of Nigeria and convinced Mr. Sakaguchi to invest in a new airport in the nation’s capital, Abuja, in exchange for a $10 million commission.
The crime occurred in 1995 and wasn’t discovered until 1998. At the time, the crime was the largest in banking history.
This.
This is called ADE 651.
It is a fake bomb detector made by a UK based company called ATSC. The company sold this using the premise that this device could detect any explosive, drugs, ivory, and other substances from a long distance.
This device was sold at $60,000 a piece and the Iraqi government, thinking it was legitimate, spent around $78 million to acquire these devices to be used in Baghdad.
This device is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths due to car bombings in the city of Baghdad.
At this point, I don’t know whether to call this a scam or a potential crime against humanity.
The founder of the company had been convicted in April 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
scam 骗局，诡计
原句：What is the biggest scam you’ve ever seen?
chunk 大块；矮胖的人或物
whatsoever 无论什么；无论如何
原句：It may contain a tiny little chunk of pork fat It contains no meat whatsoever .
lug用力拉或拖
原句：You will find it out once you have lugged the damn thing several miles through the forest.
outright 全部地；彻底的；直率的
gross 总共的；粗野的；显而易见的
exaggeration 夸张；夸大之词
原句：The label is, if not an outright lie, certainly the most gross exaggeration in the grocery store.
lounge 休息室
原句：Every day he went to the airport to eat for free in the lounge you get access to with a first class ticket.
impersonate 扮演；模仿；拟人，人格化
原句：Mr Nwude impersonated Paul Ogwuma.
premise 前提；假设，假定
原句：The company sold this using the premise that this device could detect any explosive, drugs, ivory, and other substances from a long distance.
