Posted on 11/10/2010 9:03:46 PM PST by iowamark
A New York couple have been charged with defrauding a wealthy musician to the tune of $20 million (£12.3 million) after he innocently visited their computer servicing company to have a virus removed from his laptop.
The hard-to-believe story started started in 2004 when moneyed pianist Roger Davidson asked Mount Kisco computer store owners Vickram Bedi, 36, and his Icelandic girlfriend Helga Invarsdottir, 39, to rid his computer of a virus.
On learning of Davidson's wealth, the pair are alleged to have concocted an elaborate social engineering scam that defrauded him of somewhere between the $6 million the police have been able to confirm with an upper figure of as much as $20 million.
Exactly how they executed the fraud reads like something out of an implausible movie plot.
According to police, the pair were able to convince Davidson that the virus was in fact a symptom of a much larger plot in which he was being menaced by government intelligence agencies, foreign nationals and even priests associated with Catholic organisation, Opus Dei.
So convinced was the victim he is said to have agreed to pay the pair $160,000 per month for 24-hour protection against the fictitious threats, payments which continued until recently.
As book readers will recall, Opus Dei were central to the fanciful plot of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, later made into a high-profile film.
"The suspects were isolating the victim and were basically trying to control every dollar that he had," said Police Chief Anthony Marraccini...
Unlikely frauds of this kind are not unheard of. Two years ago, a reverend in Oregon was warned to stop transferring money to Nigerian 419 scammers after giving them $400,000 in compulsively gullible acts.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Absolutely certain. The Helga whose pic you posted is definitely NOT GUILTY!
They look so trustworthy, it’s certainly easy to see why he believed them when they said government agencies and Opus Dei were after him. /s
>>> For an “Icelandic Girlfriend,” she sure looks like a “Helga”!
And how good looking would YOU be if somebody squished your skull into a two inch wide column like this. Poor lady, that must have hurt.
Bjork bjork bjork.
}:-)4
Sort of like the American People Electing an Idiot To the White House
Like most entertainers, they’re talented in the one area that is making them money and complete morons in every other respect. (Ever wonder why it takes 8 months of shooting 16 hours a day to make a movie? Getting these Hollywood morons to sober up and say their lines correctly is a titanic job that has to be done in double-shifts every day.)
“If you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?”
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