jason
11-13-2008, 12:35 PM
you've got to be kidding me......
NOMINEE #1
http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6346005,00.jpg
Cosmetic surgery addict injected cooking oil into her face
November 12, 2008 01:50pm
Surgery addict Hang Mioku
Before and after ... Hang Mioku, whose addiction to cosmetic surgery led her to inject oil into her face / Image supplied
A WOMAN addicted to cosmetic surgery is unrecognisable after injecting cooking oil into her face.
The Daily Telegraph in London reports Korean woman Hang Mioku, 48, had her first cosmetic surgery procedure at 28 and was hooked, moving to Japan for more.
Eventually surgeons refused to carry out any more work and she returned home, where her face had changed so much her family didn’t recognise her.
Ms Hang’s parents took her for treatment for her addiction, but it didn’t last. She soon found a doctor who would give her silicone injections and he even gave her a syringe and silicone so she could self-inject, the paper said.
When her supply ran out, she used cooking oil.
Her face became so large compared to her small body that local children called her “standing fan”, the newspaper reported.
Related Coverage
After appearing on Korean TV, viewers sent donations so she could have surgery to reduce the size of her face. The first of several operations removed 60g of oil from her face and 200g from her neck.
Her face has been left scarred and disfigured, and Ms Hang said she would like her old looks back.
LINK (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24640894-401,00.html)
**************************
NOMINEE #2
Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists
SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.
Besides her work as a nursing administrator, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.
So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?
Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.
The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.
All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.
By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.
Spears received just such an e-mail, promising her that she’d get $20.5 million if she would only help out a long-lost relative – identified in the e-mail as J.B. Spears – with a little money up front. "That's what got me to believe it," Spears said.
It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.
The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.
They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."
Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.
More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.
When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.
She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.
For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.
Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.
An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he’s ever seen.
He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.
Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.
She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.
Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.
LINK (http://www.katu.com/news/34292654.html)
NOMINEE #1
http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6346005,00.jpg
Cosmetic surgery addict injected cooking oil into her face
November 12, 2008 01:50pm
Surgery addict Hang Mioku
Before and after ... Hang Mioku, whose addiction to cosmetic surgery led her to inject oil into her face / Image supplied
A WOMAN addicted to cosmetic surgery is unrecognisable after injecting cooking oil into her face.
The Daily Telegraph in London reports Korean woman Hang Mioku, 48, had her first cosmetic surgery procedure at 28 and was hooked, moving to Japan for more.
Eventually surgeons refused to carry out any more work and she returned home, where her face had changed so much her family didn’t recognise her.
Ms Hang’s parents took her for treatment for her addiction, but it didn’t last. She soon found a doctor who would give her silicone injections and he even gave her a syringe and silicone so she could self-inject, the paper said.
When her supply ran out, she used cooking oil.
Her face became so large compared to her small body that local children called her “standing fan”, the newspaper reported.
Related Coverage
After appearing on Korean TV, viewers sent donations so she could have surgery to reduce the size of her face. The first of several operations removed 60g of oil from her face and 200g from her neck.
Her face has been left scarred and disfigured, and Ms Hang said she would like her old looks back.
LINK (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24640894-401,00.html)
**************************
NOMINEE #2
Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists
SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.
Besides her work as a nursing administrator, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.
So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?
Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.
The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.
All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.
By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.
Spears received just such an e-mail, promising her that she’d get $20.5 million if she would only help out a long-lost relative – identified in the e-mail as J.B. Spears – with a little money up front. "That's what got me to believe it," Spears said.
It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.
The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.
They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."
Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.
More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.
When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.
She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.
For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.
Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.
An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he’s ever seen.
He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.
Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.
She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.
Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.
LINK (http://www.katu.com/news/34292654.html)