xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Two women were arrested in February and two men were being sought by police in a failed counterfeit-check scheme in Hickory, N.C.; they were busted because, despite using elaborate computer software to publish bogus checks, none of the four noticed that they had spelled the payer Broyhill Furniture’s name as “Boryhill Furmiture.”

According to authorities in Winona, Minn., in February, Carl Fratzke defrauded seven people of a total of $200,000 in a bogus investment in gloves; Fratzke (not a very sophisticated investor, himself) then immediately fell for one of the myriad Nigerian scams, blowing the entire $200,000 (plus $550,000 of his own money).

News of the Weird has several times reported on Postal Service letter carriers who get so far behind on their routes that they believe their only way out is to destroy their many bags of backlog. In January, two Immigration and Naturalization Service supervisors in Laguna Niguel, Calif., were indicted for allegedly ordering subordinates to shred their office’s 90,000-document backlog (and to continue to shred incoming paperwork so that the office kept current).

Motorist B.J. Justin Lundin, 20, stopped his car in the middle of a two-lane road near Weatherford, Texas, in January, got out, and attacked the driver behind him in a fit of road rage over the driver’s having earlier objected to Lundin’s tailgating; Lundin was then accidentally struck and killed by another car trying to get around the two cars.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD