A Tale of Three Hoaxes – Hoaxes, hoaxes everywhere

I once wrote about my friend Sharon, a retired school teacher who feels compelled to forward every warning alarm she comes across on the Internet. Invariably, they turn out to be urban legends and hoaxes. You know, like the guy who talked on his cell phone while pumping gas and blew up the gas station, or the one about the woman who got cockroaches in her mouth from licking envelopes.

Her most recent forward warned that freezing water in a plastic bottle or using Saran wrap in the microwave can cause cancer. Suspicious, I checked the Truthorfiction.com Web site and learned that not only was this an unfounded rumor, but it was one that had been circulating since the Ice Age. When I complained to her, Sharon reacted testily.

"Better safe than sorry," she huffed.

I tried again. "Look, Sharon, suppose that someone e-mailed you and warned that astronomers had discovered that a gigantic meteorite would strike Los Angeles in two days and that everyone should evacuate. Would you pass that one along too?"

"Well, it could happen," she replied. "Better safe than sorry."

I gave up and told her never to forward any more of her idiotic hoaxes. Two days later she sent me an urgent warning not to eat at Wendy's because a woman found a finger in her chili while eating there.

Hoaxes, hoaxes! Are poker players the only honest people left in the world? Right on the heels of the Wendy's extortion attempt came the story of the guy who said he found money buried in his backyard when he had actually stolen it, and the "runaway bride" who got cold feet and claimed she was kidnapped. These sloppy ruses might not compare to classic hoaxes like the Piltdown Man, Shroud of Turin, and Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, but they were still irritating.

I felt a sense of moral outrage that was quickly superseded by a more pragmatic thought: Was there some way I could make money from any of those deceptions?

I started with the finger scheme. Perhaps I could spring it on Big Denny. I knew he wouldn't be aware of the extortion attempt because the Barstow Bugle was always a month or two behind on the news, and in any event, the comic page was the only part of the paper that Denny ever read. Finding a real finger wasn't too difficult. A railbird was happy to sell me one of his for a buy-in to a $50 tournament. I drove up to the Barstow Card Casino that evening, went into the Four Star buffet, and got a bowl of chili. I dug in and then began screaming bloody murder.

The big guy rumbled up to my table. "What da hell's da matter dis time, Maxey?" he asked sympathetically.

"Look at this!" I yelled. "There's a finger in my chili! What are you going to do about it?"

Big Denny stared at the food and scratched his head. "A finger? Aw, dat's OK, Maxey. Yer a friend, so it's on da house."

Well, so much for that brilliant idea. Next on my checklist was the buried money hoax. Curiously, I had written about just such a situation in a prior column. I reported that Robert "Buddha" Gomez, the big poker/pai gow player who got a 21-year sentence for his part in the "Miracle Cars" scheme, had hinted that he buried a still-missing $8.7 million in the backyard of a home now owned by Robert "Chip Burner" Turner. So, I drove to Turner's house in Downey and asked him if he had found anything yet.

"Nah," he said disgustedly. "I dug down for about 50 feet in every square inch of the yard, and all I got was blisters on both hands and a punch in the mouth from my wife, Charity, for digging up her petunias."

I had an idea. "Look, Robert," I said. "Everybody reads my column and learned that the money might be buried here. How about selling chances to a treasure hunt? Charge, say, $100, give people an hour to search, and let them keep half of anything they find. I'll help and split the fees with you."

"But there isn't any money here," Turner pointed out.

"Exactly. So you have nothing to lose."

Seeing the logic of my explanation, Chip Burner agreed. However, things didn't go exactly as planned. Still determined to get some money from Big Denny, I made the mistake of selling the first treasure hunt ticket to the big guy. But instead of laboring with a pick and shovel, Denny simply used a charge of dynamite. He didn't find any money, but he managed to blow out Turner's back porch as well as the windows of every home in the neighborhood.

The third hoax was the kidnapped/runaway bride. This time, however, running away was a matter of simple expediency. With Turner, Charity, Big Denny, a dozen neighbors, and the city of Downey bomb squad on my tail, I had to get out of town for a while. My main concern, however, was breaking my sweetie's heart. When I got up the courage to tell her the news, she was playing a tournament online.

"I have to disappear for a while," I told her tearfully. "But don't worry, I'll be back in six months."

Barbara didn't bother to take her eyes from the screen. "Why so soon?"

At this point, I still needed a runaway/kidnapping ending for the column, so I showed what I had written so far to Sharon and asked for her help.

"How about you running away to Tibet and leaving a ransom note saying you were Saran-wrapped and kidnapped by Martians?" she snapped. "Come to think of it, I would love to see that happen."