Here’s a funny story published a month ago in Lebanese news site Naharnet.
Iranian police are looking for a phony sorcerer who conned a man into believing he was invisible and could rob banks, the Jam-e Jam newspaper said Thursday.
Customers at a Tehran bank quickly overpowered the deluded robber after he started snatching banknotes from their hands.
Appearing in court, the repentant thief said he paid five million riyals ($625) to a man who gave him some spells and told him to tie them to his arm to become invisible.
“I made a mistake. I understand now what a big trick was played on me,” the would-be bank robber was reported as telling the judge.
His name was not released.
The story is real, and is spreading like wildfire on the internet. It seems like the origin is with this blog linking (with a hat tip) to a metro.co.uk article. Truth be told, I’m waiting for Ynet or Channel10 to pick it up.
Why?
Because they’re 10 years too late!
It happened on November 7, 2002.
Nov 7, 8:00 am ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iranian police are looking for a phony sorcerer who conned a man into believing he was invisible and could rob banks, the Jam-e Jam newspaper said Thursday.
Customers at a Tehran bank quickly overpowered the deluded robber after he started snatching banknotes from their hands.
Appearing in court, the repentant thief said he paid five million rials ($625) to a man who gave him some spells and told him to tie them to his arm to become invisible.
“I made a mistake. I understand now what a big trick was played on me,” the would-be bank robber was reported as telling the judge. His name was not given
If only they would have checked the current Rial – US Dollar rate, they would’ve noticed some inconsistency with the story, because nowadays, 5 Million Rials are worth only $407.
Even more amazing, a quick Google search revealed that this story has resurfaced every now and then, like in 2006 when the original metro article was published (also 4 years late), and then picked up by the blogger and others this year.
The moral of the story is don’t believe in sorcery Google it first.
