How a guy made over $1 million dollars in a scam and how you will me happy for him when you hear how he did it.
First of all I will explain that this TRUE STORY was told to me by a Tax-Fraud inspector working for the Government. After I had heard the story I realized that by shear coincidence, I had actually met this scam artist.
I will not mention any names but what I will say is that this Tax-inspector actually admired what this scam artist had done:-I quote: "This was the cleverest scam and tax swindle the Govt Fraud department had ever seen in 50 years. It was done right in front of everyone´s faces and we had to accept that the person who did this crime would never ever be caught"
What this tax-inspector was telling me was, this was the perfect crime and its ingenuity and simplicity had to be admired.
OK, now that I have got your attention, here is the story.
At a well known children´s theme park (that I will not name), they were having problems with parking. Basically, due to the growing popularity of the theme park, the official car park was showing that it had not been made big enough, in that there was not enough parking spaces to accommodate the amount of visitors.
A temporary solution came in the form a temporary car park, and the perfect place for this was an unused farmers field directly opposite the theme park.
I had visited this theme park a few times myself and had noticed this parking problem and so the next time I took my daughter there I was happy to see that this new temporary grass car park was now available.
The only negative thing was that you had to pay a small fee to park on there, whereas the official car park was free.
Obviously the theme park had done a deal with the farmer and the farmer had decided to make himself a bit of extra cash. However the fee was so small that it was not worth complaining about - $3 dollars for as long as you wanted.
And so when the car-park-attendant came over to me, I was happy to pay.
Over the years I took my daughter to this Theme Park several more times and almost every time I had to use this grass car park.
One day tax-inspector took his family to visit the children´s theme park and became suspicious and wondered if the farmer who owned the land, had declared his earnings from all the people paying to park on his land.
And so when this tax inspector went to pay for his parking space, he had a little chat with the car-park attendant asking for certain information.
How long had the carp park been there?
The name of the farmer/owner of the land and phone number if he had one?
The car park-attendant responded that he had no idea who his direct boss actually was and that he basically just did his job.
He suggested the tax-man spoke with the people who owned the theme-park.
"I don´t know nothing Guvnor"
And so after the tax-man had spent a nice day at the park with his family he asked to see if he could speak with the person in charge (showing his inspector badge)
Now in the office of the theme park director the tax-inspector once again asked his questions.
How long has this temporary car-park been in use?
Who is the farmer who owns the land and their phone number.
What was the deal they have with the farmer?
The answer the tax-man got immediately rang alarm bells. Basically it was the same answer as the car-park attendant. "We have no deal with the farmer at all. We do not even know who he is. Basically one day it was there and we were grateful for it solved a problem for us. No one has ever complained so we just went along with it." Explained the Theme park director
When the tax-inspector returned to his car he had a quick look around and made a guess-timate of how many cars were parked and made a approximate calculation of how many cars per day were parking there.
The following Monday the tax-inspector organised a meeting with the fraud department and informed them that there might be a big case for them.
They made a calculation:
200 cars per day at $2 = $600 dollars per day
The theme park was open six days a week so that was $600 x 6 = $3600 per week
The theme park was only closed for 2 weeks a year so that meant 50 weeks.
50 x $3600 = $180,000 per year
The car park had be running for about 7 years so - 7 x $180,000 = $1,260,000
One million two hundred and sixty thousand dollars - and this was just an estimate.
It was very easy to find out the name of the farmer and so the very next day two tax-inspectors went to visit him.
When they arrived they found an empty house. After further investigation it turned out that the farmer had been living in Australia for the last 8 years helping out his daughter.
The two inspectors then decided to go to the car-park to speak again with the car-park attendant as he was the only one who must actually know something.
However, when they got there, everything had gone. No car-park markings and no car-park attendant. Just an empty field.
So what happened?
Basically the scam was done by the car-park attendant and know one knew he was at all. I mean how many people ever look at the face of a car-park attendant?
Perhaps we can guess how it happened.
A guy visited the Children´s theme park and noticed it had a parking problem.
It did some investigation regarding the field next door and found out that the farmer was away. He bought himself a yellow jacket like the ones used for road workers. He also bought some plastic strips and a few sticks and marked out the parking area. Bingo ready to go.
Seven years later a tax-man asks him a question and the next day he packs everything away never to be seen again with absolutely no way of tracing him.
$1,260,000 dollars Tax free.
Now ask yourself this question.
How do you feel bad about this scam artist?
Thank you for reading and for visiting my blog.
