₦airaland Forum

Just to encourage those still struggling to make ends meet brothers pls kindly share ure experiences to motivate others.

What are u doing here by this time of the day(2:33). Busy man my foot.

Chylo: Useless thread. If you like stay on NL 24 hrs, na wen hungry wire you you go stand up look for work.

I log in first thing in the morning to read up news and then in the evening to relax after a hard days work.

I have never had such experience and I pray not to have such but I've dreamt of slapping a hausa Mopol.

Most times we pray and believe that God will answer our prayers. How do u feel during when your prayers have not been answered. Do u feel like giving up hope or is there that strong desire within you to pray more.

Wey my handkerchief I wan cry. A copy of this article should be forwarded to IBB and his cohorts.

seanet01: That is what it is. This is what happens to people who seldom take time out to visit Their Fatherland. They will not be able to realize what is on ground. I know what is happening in Lagos. Everytime i am in ng i make sure i spend at least a week in Lagos. Ibos aAre constituting a nuisance to the well being of Lagos. 70% of Lagos okada drivers are ibos.

who is dis illitrate. PlS if u don't have work get one for urself.In d real sense I used to see Fashola as a more intelligent fellow,but as it stAnds now he should have to purge himself of majority yoruba advisors cos guys r too tribalistic.I'v seen it a lot. shame!!!

If there is anything like a final resting place then I don't expect d spirit of the dead to hover around.

What is your definition of success? Is financial wealth a yardstick for measuring how successful one is? Can a wealthy fraudster be used as a role model of success in a morally good society.

I thank God for all he has done for me and my family both extended and nuclear. I thank him for the gift of life, good health and peace. I thank him for the gift of children to my aunties and my sisters successful wedding. I thank him for securing a business for me and a job for my younger one. I thank him for the numerous journey mercies he has granted me. Thank you Jesus.

Kris May God bless u. Thanks for ure advice and guidelines

I'm not trying to generalize here. This is just a subjective opinion but I've noticed that people tend to be more spiritual and religious when they are experiencing financial difficulty.

I want to expand my IT biz. I deal on computer accessories and networking items like routers, switches, adapters and flash drives.

I established a computer biz. I sell computer accessories and networking items like wireless routers, switches, wireless adapters, laptops, flash drives etc but since I started this business I'm yet to get a good return on investment. Pls fellow entrepreneurs how do I go about expanding my customer base and getting contacts of big companies who will need my products. I really need ure good advice cos sometimes it can be very frustrating staying a whole day without selling anything.





Frank Abagnale





This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2010)



Frank Abagnale

Occupation

CEO of Abagnale & Associates (security consultants)

Spouse

Kelly[1]

Children

Scott, Chris, Sean[1]

Frank William Abagnale, Jr. ( /ˈæbəɡneɪl/, Italian pronunciation: [abaɲˈɲale]; born April 27, 1948)[2] is an American security consultant known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist. He became notorious in the 1960s for passing $2.5 million worth of meticulously forged checks across 26 countries over the course of five years, beginning when he was 16 years old.

In the process, he became one of the most famous impostors ever,[3] claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight separate identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He escaped from police custody twice (once from a taxiing airliner and once from a U.S. federal penitentiary), before he was 21 years old.[4]

He served fewer than five years in prison before starting to work for the federal government. He is a consultant and lecturer at the academy and field offices for the FBI. He also runs Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company.[5]

Abagnale's life story provided the inspiration for the feature film Catch Me If You Can, as well as the Broadway musical with the same name, which opened in April 2011, and ghostwritten autobiography of the same name.

Childhood

Abagnale was one of four children and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York.[6] His French mother, Paulette, and father, Frank Abagnale Sr., divorced when he was 16. At the divorce hearing, Abagnale ran away never to see his father again.[7] According to Abagnale, his father did not necessarily want him, but to reunite his family, he would attempt to win his mother back until his father's death in 1974. His father was also an affluent local who was very keen on politics and theatre, and was a major role model for Abagnale Jr.[8]

First con

His first victim was his father who gave Frank a gas credit card and a truck to assist him in commuting to his part-time job. Frank Jr. devised a scheme to help pay for his dates with women. He used the credit card to "buy" tires, batteries, and other car-related items at gas stations. He made a deal with the attendants in which they gave him cash in return for them keeping the products. Ultimately, his father was liable for a bill of several thousand dollars.[9]

Bank fraud

Abagnale's first confidence trick was writing personal checks on his own overdrawn account. This, however, would work for only a limited time before the bank demanded payment, so he moved on to opening other accounts in different banks, eventually creating new identities to sustain this charade. Over time, he experimented and developed different ways of defrauding banks, such as printing out his own almost-perfect copies of checks, depositing them and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of money in his accounts.

One of Abagnale's famous tricks was to print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips in the bank. This meant that the deposits written on those slips by bank customers entered his account rather than the accounts of the legitimate customers.

In a speech, Frank described one instance where he noticed the location where airlines and car rental businesses such as United Airlines and Hertz would drop off their daily collections of money in a zip-up bag and deposit it into a drop box on the airport premises. Using a security guard disguise he bought at a local costume shop, he put a sign over the box saying "out of service, place deposits with security guard on duty" and collected money that way. Later he disclosed how he could not believe this idea had actually worked, stating with some astonishment: "How can a drop box be out of service?"[10]

Impersonations

Airline pilot

Abagnale decided to imitate a pilot because he wanted to fly throughout the world for free. He got a uniform by calling PanAm, telling them that he was a pilot working for them who had lost his uniform, and going to get a new one with a fake employee ID. He then forged an FAA pilot's license. [11]Pan American World Airways estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles (1,600,000 km) on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries, at Pan Am's expense, by deadheading. He was also able to stay at hotels for free during this time. Everything from food to lodging was billed to the airline company. Abagnale stated that he was often invited by actual pilots to take the controls of the plane in-flight. On one occasion, he was offered the courtesy of flying at 30,000 ft (9,100 m). He took the controls, and enabled the autopilot, "very much aware that I had been handed custody of 140 lives, my own included ... because I couldn't fly a drone".[12]

Teaching assistant

He forged a Columbia University degree and taught sociology at Brigham Young University for a semester, working as a teaching assistant by the name of Frank Adams.[13]

Doctor

For eleven months he impersonated a chief resident pediatrician in a Georgia hospital under the alias Frank Conners. He chose this course after he was nearly arrested disembarking a flight in New Orleans. Afraid of possible capture, he retired temporarily to Georgia. When filling out a rental application he impulsively listed his occupation as "doctor", fearing that the owner might check with Pan Am if he wrote "pilot". After befriending a real doctor who lived in the same apartment complex, he agreed to act as resident supervisor of interns as a favor until the local hospital could find someone else to take the job. The position was not difficult for Abagnale because supervisors did no real medical work. However, he was nearly exposed when an infant almost died from oxygen deprivation; he had no idea what a nurse meant when she said there was a "blue baby". He was able to fake his way through most of his duties by letting the interns handle the cases coming in during his late-night shift, setting broken bones and other mundane tasks. When the hospital found a replacement he returned to piloting, leaving only after he realized he could put lives at risk by his inability to respond to situations like the blue baby.[8]

Attorney

Abagnale forged a Harvard University law transcript, passed the bar exam of Louisiana and got a job at the Louisiana Attorney General's office at the age of nineteen. This happened while he was posing as Pan Am First Officer "Robert Black." He told a stewardess he had briefly dated that he was also a Harvard law student, and she introduced him to a lawyer friend. Abagnale was told the bar needed more lawyers and was offered a chance to apply. After making a fake transcript from Harvard, he prepared himself for the compulsory exam. Despite failing twice, he claims to have passed the bar exam legitimately on the third try after eight weeks of study, because "Louisiana at the time allowed you to take the Bar over and over as many times as you needed. It was really a matter of eliminating what you got wrong."[14]

In his biography, he described the premise of his legal job as a "gopher boy" who simply fetched coffee and books for his boss. However, there was a real Harvard graduate who also worked for that attorney general, and he hounded Abagnale with questions about his tenure at Harvard. Naturally, Abagnale could not answer questions about a university he had never attended, and he later resigned after eight months to protect himself, after learning the suspecting graduate was making inquiries into his background.

Capture and imprisonment

Abagnale was eventually caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant he had dated in the past recognized him and notified the police. When the French police apprehended him, 12 of the countries in which he had committed fraud sought his extradition. After a two-day trial, he first served prison time in Perpignan's House of Arrest in France—a one-year sentence that was reduced by the presiding judge at his trial to six months. At Perpignan he was held nude in a tiny, filthy, lightless cell that he was never allowed to leave. The cell lacked toilet facilities, a mattress, or a blanket, and food and water were severely restricted.[15]

He was then extradited to Sweden where he was treated fairly well under Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he had "created" the fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were instead reduced to swindling and fraud. He served six months in a Malmö prison, only to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy. Later, a Swedish judge asked a U.S. State Department official to revoke his passport. Without a valid passport, the Swedish authorities were legally compelled to deport him to the United States, where he was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.[16]

Alleged escapes

While being deported to the U.S., Abagnale escaped from a British VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxi strip at New York's JFK International Airport. Under cover of night, he scaled a nearby fence and hailed a cab to Grand Central Terminal. After stopping in The Bronx to change clothes and pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe deposit box containing US$20,000, Abagnale caught a train to Montreal's Dorval airport to purchase a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil, a country with which the U.S. had no extradition treaty. On his way to Montreal, he had a close call at a Mac's Milk in Dundas, Ontario. He was later caught by a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while standing in line at the ticket counter and subsequently handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol.[citation needed]

Being sentenced to 12 years in the Federal Correction Institution at Petersburg, Virginia, in April 1971, Abagnale also reportedly escaped the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, Georgia while awaiting trial, which he considers in his book to be one of the most infamous escapes in history. During the time, U.S. prisons were being condemned by civil rights groups and investigated by congressional committees. In a stroke of luck that included the accompanying U.S. marshal forgetting his detention commitment papers, Abagnale was mistaken for an undercover prison inspector and was even given privileges and food far better than the other inmates. The FDC in Atlanta had already lost two employees as a result of reports written by undercover federal agents, and Abagnale took advantage of their vulnerability. He contacted a friend (called in his book "Jean Sebring" who posed as his fiancée and slipped him the business card of "Inspector C.W. Dunlap" of the Bureau of Prisons, which she had obtained by posing as a freelance writer doing an article on "fire safety measures in federal detention centers". She also handed over a business card from "Sean O'Riley" (later revealed to be Joe Shea), the FBI agent in charge of Abagnale's case, which she doctored at a stationery print shop. Abagnale told the corrections officers that he was indeed a prison inspector and handed over Dunlap's business card as proof. He told them that he needed to contact FBI Agent Sean O'Riley, on a matter of urgent business.[citation needed]

O'Riley's phone number (actually the number altered by Sebring) was dialed and picked up by Jean Sebring, at a payphone in an Atlanta shopping-mall, posing as an operator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Later, he was allowed to meet unsupervised with O'Riley in a predetermined car outside the detention center. Sebring, incognito, picked Abagnale up and drove him to an Atlanta bus station where he took a Greyhound bus to New York, and soon thereafter, a train to Washington, D.C. Abagnale bluffed his way through an attempted capture by posing as an FBI agent after being recognized by a motel registration clerk. Still bent on making his way to Brazil, Abagnale was picked up a few weeks later by two NYPD detectives when he inadvertently walked past their unmarked police car.[8]

Legitimate jobs

In 1974, after he had served less than five years, the United States federal government released him on the condition that he would help the federal authorities without pay against crimes committed by fraud and scam artists, and sign in once a week.[16] Not wanting to return to his family in New York, he left the choice of parole up to the court, and it was decided that he would be paroled in Texas.

After his release, Abagnale tried several jobs, including cook, grocer, and movie projectionist, but he was fired from most of these upon having his criminal career discovered via background checks and not informing his employers that he was a former convict. Finding them unsatisfying, he approached a bank with an offer. He explained to the bank what he had done, and offered to speak to the bank's staff and show various tricks that "paperhangers" use to defraud banks. His offer included the condition that if they did not find his speech helpful, they would owe him nothing; otherwise, they would owe him only $500 with an agreement that they would provide his name to other banks.[17] The banks were impressed by the results, and he began a legitimate life as a security consultant.[18][citation needed]

He later founded Abagnale & Associates,[18] which advises businesses on fraud. Abagnale is now a millionaire through his legal fraud detection and avoidance consulting business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Abagnale also continues to advise the FBI, with whom he has associated for over 35 years, by teaching at the FBI Academy and lecturing for FBI field offices throughout the country. According to his website,[19] more than 14,000 institutions have adopted Abagnale's fraud prevention programs.

He lives in Charleston, South Carolina[20] with his wife, whom he married one year after becoming legitimate. They have three sons, including one who currently works for the FBI.

Abagnale and Joe Shea, the FBI agent on whom the character of Carl Hanratty was based for the film Catch Me If You Can, remained close friends until Shea's death.

Veracity of claims

The authenticity of Abagnale's criminal exploits was questioned even before the publishing of Catch Me If You Can. In 1978, after Abagnale had been a featured speaker at an anti-crime seminar, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter looked into his assertions. Phone calls to banks, schools, hospitals and other institutions Abagnale mentioned turned up no evidence of his cons under the aliases he used. Abagnale's response was that "Due to the embarrassment involved, I doubt if anyone would confirm the information."[21]

In 2002, Abagnale himself addressed the issue of his story's truthfulness rather vaguely with a statement posted on his company's website. The statement said in part "I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over-dramatized and exaggerated some of the story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography."[22]

Media appearances



Frank Abagnale and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 1977, Abagnale appeared on the TV quiz show To Tell the Truth, along with two contestants also presenting themselves as him. A reenactment of this episode appeared in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), featuring actor Leonardo DiCaprio in his place. This movie is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name, written by Abagnale with the help of Stan Redding. The real Abagnale makes a cameo appearance in this film as one of the French police officers taking his character into custody.

In the early 1990s, Abagnale was featured as a recurring guest on the UK Channel 4 television series The Secret Cabaret. The show was based around magic and illusions with a sinister, almost gothic presentation style. Abagnale was featured as an expert exposing various confidence tricks.

In 2007, Abagnale appeared in a short role as a speaker in the BBC TV series The Real Hustle. He spoke of different scams run by fraudsters.



Occupation

CEO of Abagnale & Associates (security consultants)

Spouse

Kelly[1]

Children

Scott, Chris, Sean[1]

Frank William Abagnale, Jr. ( /ˈæbəɡneɪl/, Italian pronunciation: [abaɲˈɲale]; born April 27, 1948)[2] is an American security consultant known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist. He became notorious in the 1960s for passing $2.5 million worth of meticulously forged checks across 26 countries over the course of five years, beginning when he was 16 years old.

In the process, he became one of the most famous impostors ever,[3] claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight separate identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He escaped from police custody twice (once from a taxiing airliner and once from a U.S. federal penitentiary), before he was 21 years old.[4]

He served fewer than five years in prison before starting to work for the federal government. He is a consultant and lecturer at the academy and field offices for the FBI. He also runs Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company.[5]

Abagnale's life story provided the inspiration for the feature film Catch Me If You Can, as well as the Broadway musical with the same name, which opened in April 2011, and ghostwritten autobiography of the same name.

Childhood

Abagnale was one of four children and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York.[6] His French mother, Paulette, and father, Frank Abagnale Sr., divorced when he was 16. At the divorce hearing, Abagnale ran away never to see his father again.[7] According to Abagnale, his father did not necessarily want him, but to reunite his family, he would attempt to win his mother back until his father's death in 1974. His father was also an affluent local who was very keen on politics and theatre, and was a major role model for Abagnale Jr.[8]

First con

His first victim was his father who gave Frank a gas credit card and a truck to assist him in commuting to his part-time job. Frank Jr. devised a scheme to help pay for his dates with women. He used the credit card to "buy" tires, batteries, and other car-related items at gas stations. He made a deal with the attendants in which they gave him cash in return for them keeping the products. Ultimately, his father was liable for a bill of several thousand dollars.[9]

Bank fraud

Abagnale's first confidence trick was writing personal checks on his own overdrawn account. This, however, would work for only a limited time before the bank demanded payment, so he moved on to opening other accounts in different banks, eventually creating new identities to sustain this charade. Over time, he experimented and developed different ways of defrauding banks, such as printing out his own almost-perfect copies of checks, depositing them and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of money in his accounts.

One of Abagnale's famous tricks was to print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips in the bank. This meant that the deposits written on those slips by bank customers entered his account rather than the accounts of the legitimate customers.

In a speech, Frank described one instance where he noticed the location where airlines and car rental businesses such as United Airlines and Hertz would drop off their daily collections of money in a zip-up bag and deposit it into a drop box on the airport premises. Using a security guard disguise he bought at a local costume shop, he put a sign over the box saying "out of service, place deposits with security guard on duty" and collected money that way. Later he disclosed how he could not believe this idea had actually worked, stating with some astonishment: "How can a drop box be out of service?"[10]

Impersonations

Airline pilot

Abagnale decided to imitate a pilot because he wanted to fly throughout the world for free. He got a uniform by calling PanAm, telling them that he was a pilot working for them who had lost his uniform, and going to get a new one with a fake employee ID. He then forged an FAA pilot's license. [11]Pan American World Airways estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles (1,600,000 km) on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries, at Pan Am's expense, by deadheading. He was also able to stay at hotels for free during this time. Everything from food to lodging was billed to the airline company. Abagnale stated that he was often invited by actual pilots to take the controls of the plane in-flight. On one occasion, he was offered the courtesy of flying at 30,000 ft (9,100 m). He took the controls, and enabled the autopilot, "very much aware that I had been handed custody of 140 lives, my own included ... because I couldn't fly a drone".[12]

Teaching assistant

He forged a Columbia University degree and taught sociology at Brigham Young University for a semester, working as a teaching assistant by the name of Frank Adams.[13]

Doctor

For eleven months he impersonated a chief resident pediatrician in a Georgia hospital under the alias Frank Conners. He chose this course after he was nearly arrested disembarking a flight in New Orleans. Afraid of possible capture, he retired temporarily to Georgia. When filling out a rental application he impulsively listed his occupation as "doctor", fearing that the owner might check with Pan Am if he wrote "pilot". After befriending a real doctor who lived in the same apartment complex, he agreed to act as resident supervisor of interns as a favor until the local hospital could find someone else to take the job. The position was not difficult for Abagnale because supervisors did no real medical work. However, he was nearly exposed when an infant almost died from oxygen deprivation; he had no idea what a nurse meant when she said there was a "blue baby". He was able to fake his way through most of his duties by letting the interns handle the cases coming in during his late-night shift, setting broken bones and other mundane tasks. When the hospital found a replacement he returned to piloting, leaving only after he realized he could put lives at risk by his inability to respond to situations like the blue baby.[8]

Attorney

Abagnale forged a Harvard University law transcript, passed the bar exam of Louisiana and got a job at the Louisiana Attorney General's office at the age of nineteen. This happened while he was posing as Pan Am First Officer "Robert Black." He told a stewardess he had briefly dated that he was also a Harvard law student, and she introduced him to a lawyer friend. Abagnale was told the bar needed more lawyers and was offered a chance to apply. After making a fake transcript from Harvard, he prepared himself for the compulsory exam. Despite failing twice, he claims to have passed the bar exam legitimately on the third try after eight weeks of study, because "Louisiana at the time allowed you to take the Bar over and over as many times as you needed. It was really a matter of eliminating what you got wrong."[14]

In his biography, he described the premise of his legal job as a "gopher boy" who simply fetched coffee and books for his boss. However, there was a real Harvard graduate who also worked for that attorney general, and he hounded Abagnale with questions about his tenure at Harvard. Naturally, Abagnale could not answer questions about a university he had never attended, and he later resigned after eight months to protect himself, after learning the suspecting graduate was making inquiries into his background.

Capture and imprisonment

Abagnale was eventually caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant he had dated in the past recognized him and notified the police. When the French police apprehended him, 12 of the countries in which he had committed fraud sought his extradition. After a two-day trial, he first served prison time in Perpignan's House of Arrest in France—a one-year sentence that was reduced by the presiding judge at his trial to six months. At Perpignan he was held nude in a tiny, filthy, lightless cell that he was never allowed to leave. The cell lacked toilet facilities, a mattress, or a blanket, and food and water were severely restricted.[15]

He was then extradited to Sweden where he was treated fairly well under Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he had "created" the fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were instead reduced to swindling and fraud. He served six months in a Malmö prison, only to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy. Later, a Swedish judge asked a U.S. State Department official to revoke his passport. Without a valid passport, the Swedish authorities were legally compelled to deport him to the United States, where he was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.[16]

Alleged escapes

While being deported to the U.S., Abagnale escaped from a British VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxi strip at New York's JFK International Airport. Under cover of night, he scaled a nearby fence and hailed a cab to Grand Central Terminal. After stopping in The Bronx to change clothes and pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe deposit box containing US$20,000, Abagnale caught a train to Montreal's Dorval airport to purchase a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil, a country with which the U.S. had no extradition treaty. On his way to Montreal, he had a close call at a Mac's Milk in Dundas, Ontario. He was later caught by a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while standing in line at the ticket counter and subsequently handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol.[citation needed]

Being sentenced to 12 years in the Federal Correction Institution at Petersburg, Virginia, in April 1971, Abagnale also reportedly escaped the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, Georgia while awaiting trial, which he considers in his book to be one of the most infamous escapes in history. During the time, U.S. prisons were being condemned by civil rights groups and investigated by congressional committees. In a stroke of luck that included the accompanying U.S. marshal forgetting his detention commitment papers, Abagnale was mistaken for an undercover prison inspector and was even given privileges and food far better than the other inmates. The FDC in Atlanta had already lost two employees as a result of reports written by undercover federal agents, and Abagnale took advantage of their vulnerability. He contacted a friend (called in his book "Jean Sebring" who posed as his fiancée and slipped him the business card of "Inspector C.W. Dunlap" of the Bureau of Prisons, which she had obtained by posing as a freelance writer doing an article on "fire safety measures in federal detention centers". She also handed over a business card from "Sean O'Riley" (later revealed to be Joe Shea), the FBI agent in charge of Abagnale's case, which she doctored at a stationery print shop. Abagnale told the corrections officers that he was indeed a prison inspector and handed over Dunlap's business card as proof. He told them that he needed to contact FBI Agent Sean O'Riley, on a matter of urgent business.[citation needed]

O'Riley's phone number (actually the number altered by Sebring) was dialed and picked up by Jean Sebring, at a payphone in an Atlanta shopping-mall, posing as an operator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Later, he was allowed to meet unsupervised with O'Riley in a predetermined car outside the detention center. Sebring, incognito, picked Abagnale up and drove him to an Atlanta bus station where he took a Greyhound bus to New York, and soon thereafter, a train to Washington, D.C. Abagnale bluffed his way through an attempted capture by posing as an FBI agent after being recognized by a motel registration clerk. Still bent on making his way to Brazil, Abagnale was picked up a few weeks later by two NYPD detectives when he inadvertently walked past their unmarked police car.[8]

Legitimate jobs

In 1974, after he had served less than five years, the United States federal government released him on the condition that he would help the federal authorities without pay against crimes committed by fraud and scam artists, and sign in once a week.[16] Not wanting to return to his family in New York, he left the choice of parole up to the court, and it was decided that he would be paroled in Texas.

After his release, Abagnale tried several jobs, including cook, grocer, and movie projectionist, but he was fired from most of these upon having his criminal career discovered via background checks and not informing his employers that he was a former convict. Finding them unsatisfying, he approached a bank with an offer. He explained to the bank what he had done, and offered to speak to the bank's staff and show various tricks that "paperhangers" use to defraud banks. His offer included the condition that if they did not find his speech helpful, they would owe him nothing; otherwise, they would owe him only $500 with an agreement that they would provide his name to other banks.[17] The banks were impressed by the results, and he began a legitimate life as a security consultant.[18][citation needed]

He later founded Abagnale & Associates,[18] which advises businesses on fraud. Abagnale is now a millionaire through his legal fraud detection and avoidance consulting business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Abagnale also continues to advise the FBI, with whom he has associated for over 35 years, by teaching at the FBI Academy and lecturing for FBI field offices throughout the country. According to his website,[19] more than 14,000 institutions have adopted Abagnale's fraud prevention programs.

He lives in Charleston, South Carolina[20] with his wife, whom he married one year after becoming legitimate. They have three sons, including one who currently works for the FBI.

Abagnale and Joe Shea, the FBI agent on whom the character of Carl Hanratty was based for the film Catch Me If You Can, remained close friends until Shea's death.

Veracity of claims

The authenticity of Abagnale's criminal exploits was questioned even before the publishing of Catch Me If You Can. In 1978, after Abagnale had been a featured speaker at an anti-crime seminar, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter looked into his assertions. Phone calls to banks, schools, hospitals and other institutions Abagnale mentioned turned up no evidence of his cons under the aliases he used. Abagnale's response was that "Due to the embarrassment involved, I doubt if anyone would confirm the information."[21]

In 2002, Abagnale himself addressed the issue of his story's truthfulness rather vaguely with a statement posted on his company's website. The statement said in part "I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over-dramatized and exaggerated some of the story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography."[22]

Media appearances



Frank Abagnale and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 1977, Abagnale appeared on the TV quiz show To Tell the Truth, along with two contestants also presenting themselves as him. A reenactment of this episode appeared in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), featuring actor Leonardo DiCaprio in his place. This movie is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name, written by Abagnale with the help of Stan Redding. The real Abagnale makes a cameo appearance in this film as one of the French police officers taking his character into custody.

In the early 1990s, Abagnale was featured as a recurring guest on the UK Channel 4 television series The Secret Cabaret. The show was based around magic and illusions with a sinister, almost gothic presentation style. Abagnale was featured as an expert exposing various confidence tricks.

In 2007, Abagnale appeared in a short role as a speaker in the BBC TV series The Real Hustle. He spoke of different scams run by fraudsters.

Most times when I read up the news on foreign tabloids our dear country Nigeria is presented on the negative side. These days our African brothers are taking us to the cleaners with incessant cases of deportation.

They even treat us with disdain and look down on us.

As a proud Nigerian youth I believe that one day things must definitely turn out well in this country.

To my dear brothers and sisters especially those in diaspora how do u feel about this country.

Are u proud to fly d green white green colour outside the shores of this country or do u bend ure head down in shame when anything is said about this country.



⁠Our Reporter⁠ ⁠October 19, 2012⁠ ⁠1 Comment »⁠



‘Real Deal’ retires in penury today @ 50

As if pulling a blanket over his head to hide from a world of troubles, Evander Holyfield will finally retire from boxing today he marks his 50th birthday. Be that as it may, Holyfield, one of the ring’s most heroic warriors, has been defeated, not by one of his catalogue of formidable opponents, but by the wounds of self-inflicted poverty.

 

From ‘Real Deal’ to ‘Meals on Wheels’

A fighting man, who battled his way out of the ghetto to a $350million fortune, will wake up this poignant morning in a grim apartment in downtown Atlanta. This is the deepest cut of all those sustained by so many fighting men who have squandered fortunes. Mike Tyson only blew $250million. But Holyfield seems more afflicted than most by the punishment inflicted by so many sledge-hammer blows to the head. Yet, even though his speech became increasingly slurred, as he fought on to an age when the majority of Americans are applying for their bus pass, he had still been hoping for one last world title shot, one last big payday to keep the wolf from the door a little longer.

Holyfield is not just calling it a day, but waiting for a phone call, which will not come. His potentially suicidal campaign for a farewell fling against Wladimir or Vitali Klitschko has fallen on ears that are more kind than unreceptive.

“I believe I can beat either of them, but I don’t have time now to fight my way back up the rankings and become the number one contender. There’s no point badgering them any longer. If I don’t get the call (today), I quit,” Holyfield said.

 

Forget the phone, it’ll not ring

Bernd Bonte, manager of the Klitschkos, said: “Neither of the brothers will fight Evander. Both of them would destroy him at his age and they respect him far too much to do that. He is one of their idols and that means more than however, much money the fight might make.”

The esteem, in which Holyfield is held by the Klitschkos in common with the entire fraternity of boxing, is hallmarked by the horde of memorabilia, which he must surrender to auction next month. As the only four-time winner of the world heavyweight title, Holyfield surpasses ‘The Greatest’ himself, Muhammad Ali.

That collection of WBC, WBA, IBF and Ring belts, are to go under the hammer in Los Angeles, along with the wardrobe-full of gloves, shorts and robes worn in all the most significant fights in the career of one of the greatest boxers of all time. Those treasures drip with the sweat of his epic trilogy with Riddick Bowe, the two controversial battles with Lennox Lewis and along with his blood from that infamous biting of his ear, the sensational victories over Tyson.

Although here is no telling how long his memory of the glory nights will remain sharp, the item from which he will part most reluctantly is the classic red Chevrolet manufactured in 1962, the year of his birth. It will feel as if his life has turned its full circle. Yet, even if the fire sale raises its projected $5million, it will cover only half his $10million bankruptcy.

 

What really happened?

Some of the answers are as old as the hardest game itself. As the money poured in, so Holyfield took to gambling much of it away in the casinos of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. As all the pretty women flocked around, so he fathered 11 children with five of them, as well as marrying and expensively divorcing three times.

As he took gratification from rising to fame through the old prejudices of America’s Deep South, so he flaunted his riches by buying Atlanta’s answer to Buckingham Palace. The most frequently mentioned statistics of that estate are the 109 rooms and 17 bathrooms. He took most pride from having not one, but two marble staircases sweeping through each end of the mansion. There were also houses in the grounds for his ex-wives and some of his children. This was a monument to extravagance born of his pride at overcoming his humble beginnings, but ultimately, beyond his means to sustain.

In echoing contrast to that call which will never come, the phone rang frequently there to be answered by a servant saying: “The Holyfield residence.”

 

But he remains an all-time great

Holyfield’s residence now is a small apartment in one of the less salubrious parts of his home city. The stately home was repossessed when he fell $14million behind on the mortgage repayments. Now, one of his daughters has won an order for immediate payment of $500,000 in maintenance arrears. Since he has no prospect of paying that or the $3,000 alimony due every month, he faces being held in contempt of court shortly.

However, what they cannot take from him is a phenomenal career. A Golden Gloves amateur title and Olympic bronze were followed by a reign as undisputed cruiserweight champion of the world. After winning the heavyweight crown by defeating James Buster Douglas, who had shocked Tyson and the world in the greatest of all upsets, he went on to fight all the best of the big time. He alternated between dominating the division and coming back from setbacks, including suspension with a suspected heart defect to keep reclaiming the title.

He would have been a five-time champion had the giant, Nikolai Valuev, not robbed him of a decision in February 2010 at the age of 47. He has the satisfaction of bowing out as a winner, having defeated Danish veteran Brian Neilsen in what was to be his last fight.

Win or lose, the way Holyfield always went to war in the ring was thrilling and unforgettable. Some may withhold sympathy, given the former scale of his wealth. Yet, while his excesses wee a folly, the sadness is profound.

Tyson, who is finding ways to rebuild his life, is offering assistance and advice to the man whose lavish generosity has extended to forgiving Iron Mike for chewing off his ear. Famously, a born-again Christian, Holyfield said: “I still have hope.”

He needs help, hopefully, from all the people whose lives he has enriched with his courage.


http://www.iol.co.za/sport/boxing/holyfield-turns-50-retires-broke-1.1404011#.UIUm9K4XLeg

More Iraqi babies suffer birth defects caused by US weapons



Yousif Hamed, right, his brother Anas Hamed and his sister Inas suffering from birth defects are pictured in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. (file photo)

A recent study shows a spiraling numbers of birth defects, ranging from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs, among Iraqi babies as a result of weapons used by the US and UK forces.

Sat Oct 20, 2012 11:39AM



The new findings, published in the Environmental Contamination and Toxicology bulletin, report high rates of miscarriage, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination in the cities at the heart of the US-led military campaigns in Iraq, especially Fallujah and Basra.

Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the lead authors of the report and an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, said there is "compelling evidence" to link the increased numbers of defects and miscarriages to military assaults.

The latest study found that more than half of all the Iraqi babies surveyed were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010, compared to one in 10 before the US-led onslaught in March 2003.

Moreover, over 45 percent of all pregnancies monitored ended in miscarriage in the two years after 2004, up from only 10 percent before Iraq invasion. Between 2007 and 2010, one in six of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage.



The most common abnormalities discovered in Fallujah children are congenital heart defects as 24 out of 26 children were born with the defect.



Neural tube defects, which can result in spina bifida, was also common with 18 out of 46 children born with the deficiency.

Hair samples taken from residents of Fallujah showed trace elements of poisonous metals. The levels of lead were five times higher in the hair of children with birth defects, compared to those without, the study said.

US military forces first bombarded Fallujah in April 2004 after four employees from the American mercenary company Blackwater were killed there.

Seven months later, Americans stormed the city for a second time. They used white phosphorus shells plus depleted uranium munitions, which have been linked to high rates of cancer and birth defects.

Basra children with birth defects had three times more lead in their teeth than children living in areas of Iraq which were not subject to similar bombardments.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) is probing the impact on babies and families of toxic substances used in the bombardment of Iraqi cities, where thousands of civilians died.

The WHO report, due next month, is expected to show a "startling increase in deformities" in infants born after the Iraq war.

MSH/MP/MA

ifyalways: Step out of your tiny hamlet and see the world.

Its 2012 please!

Young lady I have one definition for u. You are a BIZAGA. Why trolling on my thread eternal spinster.

I don't know whether this practice is obtainable in other tribes. Why is it that the gizzard of the chicken is always reserved for the head of the family.

@Poster pls what will happen to the price of garri. I sincerely hope it will come down

Over the next several hundred years, virtually every creature on Earth will develop language skills. Further study will reveal the following: Squirrels will speak Spanish very rapidly; dogs (and wolves) will speak English with an Irish accent; cats of every size will speak French; fish will speak German. Just came across this on latest scientific discoveries.

This Sallah has affected me positively cos since morning I've not been able to patronize any Mallam for my routine 3 sticks of white london. All kiosks in my neighbour hood are under lock and key.

This Sallah has affected me positively cos since morning I've not been able to patronize any Mallam for my routine 3 sticks of white london.

Brother just take it up to the alter of God in faith and u will be suprised how fast he will answer tyou.

The young man was putting on his new green white green track suit but not even a single soul asked him for an autograph.

How does this affect the price of white London in aboki's kiosk.

Whilst the President inhabits the luxurious surroundings of the Oval Office and flies aboard Air Force One, his half-brother George Obama lives in a notorious African slum

George Obama has battled addictions to drink and drugs for most of his life at the same time as his relative has enjoyed a meteoric rise to power

The 30-year-old, who was once hooked on cocaine, says that his surname is frequently a burden to him

By Andrew Malone

PUBLISHED: 22:34, 10 August 2012 | UPDATED: 14:31, 11 August 2012

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As a tall, strangely familiar figure leaves his one-room shack in a notorious African slum this week, a few people jokingly call out to him: ‘Mister President! Mister President!’

Heading for breakfast through his junk-strewn yard, stepping over streams of sewage, the appearance of this slim, angular man prompts giggles and pointing from children in rags playing in the muck.

The man’s name is George Hussein Obama and his half-brother is Barack Hussein Obama, Kenya’s most famous son, the first black President of  the U.S. and the most powerful man in the world.

Scroll down for video



George Hussein Obama, the half-brother of the most famous man in the world, pictured in the Nairobi slum he calls home





George Hussein Obama in Nairobi: The half brother of Barack Obama has agreed to appear in a documentary which is critical of the U.S. President

The two men may share the same father, but while Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to his father’s American second wife, George — born in Kenya — was the product of Obama Senior’s fourth marriage.

Today, while Barack entertains at the White House, flies aboard Air Force One and is a friend of film stars and royalty, George, 30, is to be found slumped in his corrugated iron shack which even fellow slum-dwellers regard as a hovel.

 

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Details of his unorthodox lifestyle emerged with news that he has agreed to appear in a documentary film being made by one of Barack Obama’s most trenchant critics.

Called 2016, and directed by the production team behind Schindler’s List, the film sets out the supposed horrors of another four years of Obama in office — though George does not criticise the President on screen. It is the idea of U.S. author Dinesh D’Souza, whose book The Roots Of Obama’s Rage paints a deeply unflattering portrait of the ‘narcissistic’ President.





George Hussein Obama George now spends his time drinking what locals call Chang’aa — a spirit distilled with maize and spiked with chemicals — from the moment he wakes to the moment he slips into unconsciousness



Whilst his half-brother inhabits a desolate Kenyan slum, U.S. President Barack Obama, pictured during an election campaign rally in Colorado Springs, is firmly in the limelight

George has also written a memoir, called Homeland. Published in 2012, it details how he turned his back on a middle-class Kenyan upbringing to live among the desperately poor in Nairobi’s infamous slums. The book’s precis tell us: ‘George chooses to live in the Nairobi ghetto, where he works to help the ghetto-dwellers, and especially the slum kids, overcome the challenges surrounding their lives.’

And the book quotes George thus: ‘My brother has risen to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Here in Kenya, my aim is to be a leader among the poorest people on Earth: those who live in the slums.’

In what sounds like the script for a Hollywood film, he claims to have been the driving force behind the transformation of a slum football team into one of the top sides in Kenya, known as ‘Obama’s champs’.

Such, apparently, is his devotion to good works that many Kenyans want George to stand for President, believing anyone sharing the name and blood of the most powerful politician on the planet can transform their lives.



But, as I discovered, this may prove beyond George. Indeed, standing — let alone talking much sense or walking in a straight line — is tricky for the U.S. President’s brother much of the time, due to his chronic addiction to drink and years of drug abuse.

Nor is there anything heroic and altruistic about his motives for living in the slums. His principal reason is that the potent local moonshine is cheap and readily available here, as is cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

Clearly following the dictum that the best place to hide a tree is in a forest, George’s decision to settle in a slum called Huruma — which is scarred by alcoholism, drug addiction and violence — means his own destructive behaviour attracts little attention.

Details of the lifestyle of Obama's half-brother emerged with news he has agreed to appear in a documentary made by one of the President's most trenchant critics

Although he claims not to be using heroin or cocaine, George now spends his time drinking what locals call Chang’aa — a spirit distilled with maize and spiked with chemicals — from the moment he wakes to the moment he slips into unconsciousness.

Laced with ethanol, embalming fluid or battery acid to give it more kick, this substance is regularly blamed for causing blindness and death when the criminal syndicates behind the trade mix it wrongly.

A glass costs about 10p and, after just five small shots, even hardened drinkers can barely remember their own name. Regular users suffer liver and kidney failure, as well as mental impairment known as ‘wet brain’.



George Hussein Obama says that his last name is a curse, but members of his community say that he trades on it shamelessly for alcohol and food



Whilst Barack Obama enjoys all the perks which come with the role as U.S. President, his half-brother is caught in a spiral of chronic addiction to drink and drug abuse



Barack Obama and his father Barack Obama Sr. at Honolulu airport after the only meeting that the U.S. President can recall over Christmas in 1971

When I track George down early one morning to find out about his life, he’s already been for a liquid breakfast at the nearest Chang’aa den, where sex with prostitutes is also on the menu in a bed kept at the back.

Introductions are made by George’s ‘security man’ — a red-eyed slum dweller and fellow heavy-drinker who drags George out of the den, shouting at him to come and see the ‘muzungu’ (white man) outside.

Then, after shaking hands, I make a mistake. I invite George to lunch at my hotel. For the next two days, he lays siege to my mini-bar, invites a succession of girlfriends and ‘security advisers’ to wine and dine at my expense, and behaves like he is a famous, spoilt celebrity.

He also repeatedly demands ‘kitu kidogo’ — Swahili for something small, which, of course, means something large and financial — and is appalled when I refuse to hand out cash to his assorted girlfriends.



President Barack Obama, pictured aboard Air Force One, is as far removed in the imagination as could be possible from his Kenyan relative



The Huruma slum of Nairobi which is scarred by alcoholism, drug addiction and violence - and is where the President of the United States' brother lives in squalor

Paradoxically, George also moans endlessly about the Obama name being a burden and a curse — yet, at the same time, unashamedly uses it to make as much money as possible to spend on drink and drugs.

‘People are only interested in me because of my brother,’ he sighs, slurping a double Johnnie Walker, with a beer chaser — one of many. ‘I hate it. People all want me to be someone else.’

George first met his now-famous sibling in a playground when he was at primary school. Barack was a young visitor to Nairobi just a few years after their father died in a car crash. George recalls he was playing football when his brother arrived to say hello.

The second time their paths crossed was when Obama — then a Senator — was on a tour of East Africa in 2006, and visited Nairobi to see his family. They shook hands — the two utterly different worlds they inhabited coming together under the African sun.

‘He is an inspiration,’ George observes. ‘We have met a couple of times. We do speak . . . he is my brother.’



President Barack Obama holding a Cabinet meeting in the White House last month, has been feted as an inspiration by George Obama

As for the President, he mentions George in his autobiography Dreams From My Father, saying he is a ‘beautiful boy’, but admits that when they met as adults in Kenya ‘it was like meeting a complete stranger’.

George says, apparently without a shred of self-awareness, that he is under pressure to follow his older brother’s footsteps into politics. ‘I have got a lot of people telling me to stand as a member of parliament. But I’m not interested in politics.’

Then he pauses, and adds: ‘But if Barack was President, and I was president of Kenya it would be easier to meet.’  He says it is only his poverty that prevents the two of them having a closer relationship.

‘He’s got responsibilities. He’s not supposed to take care of me,’ he says. ‘I’m an adult. Everyone thinks he sends me cash. But I’m not a beggar.’ But asked if he’d take cash if Obama offered it, George smiled and said: ‘Seriously! Yes! Who wouldn’t?’

Though he is consumed with self-pity about his plight, he is, officially, the  co-ordinator of Huruma Football Club, a township team made up of orphans, former prisoners and reformed drug addicts.



Residents of Nairobi's Huruma move along the filthy streets of the dangerous slum



Despite sharing the same surname and father, President Obama's surroundings in the Oval Office differ vastly from the Kenyan slum inhabited by his half-brother

This is just a title. In reality, he spends virtually every day getting drunk or sleeping off the effects. So where did it all go wrong for the 30-year-old? Of course, George is following in something of a family tradition: the father he and the President share was also a notorious drunk and habitué of township Chang’aa bars.

He, too, had a good start in life. Born into a poor family near Lake Victoria, the brothers’ father — also Barack — was a brilliant student. He became the first African to win a scholarship at a prestigious university in Hawaii.

It was on the American island that Barack Snr met Ann Dunham,  an American academic and anthropologist. Despite the fact he was already married to a woman in Kenya, he claimed, dishonestly, that he was divorced. He married Ann in 1961 when she was already three months pregnant with Barack. But when Obama Snr pursued his studies at Harvard, he continued to have affairs — and split from Ann in 1964.

Eventually, he returned to Kenya — leaving Barack in Hawaii — and his heavy drinking spiralled out of control: after fathering George to his fourth wife Jael in Kenya, he died six months after the birth in a car crash in 1982.

George grew up in a middle-class Nairobi suburb with his mother, who married again, to a white man, a French aid worker — a fact he blames for his subsequent rebellion. ‘I was the only guy with a white father in my street. I wanted to be the same as the other black kids,’ he says.



Drinking and smoking marijuana by the age of ten, five years later he was thrown out of boarding school, where he played rugby and learned foreign languages, for taking drugs.

He admits that after becoming addicted to cocaine and heroin at 17, he became an armed robber to pay for drink and drugs. Living with his ‘black brothers’ on the streets, he was jailed in 2003, accused of playing a part in an attempted armed robbery.

Held on remand for nine months before being acquitted for lack of evidence, George claims his spell behind bars changed him. ‘It was hell on earth — literally,’ he tells me. ‘You either come out of there worse, or you change for the better. I changed. I wanted to help other people.’

Of course, George is not the only Obama sibling to have tried drugs. President Obama was a habitual drug-user in his teens and 20s. He tried cocaine. He was also a member of the ‘Choom Gang’ — slang for a group of dope smokers who used to drive round Hawaii getting stoned.

Despite his brother's role as American President, George Obama says that he has no interest in politics

At college in Hawaii, Barack had regarded himself as a ‘cat’ — a cool character. Known as Barry, he was also notorious for ‘intercepting’ — grabbing a joint when it’s not your turn and taking a puff. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that Obama’s High School picture ‘prominently displayed . . . a package of ‘Zigzag’ rolling papers — used to make marijuana joints — and a matchbook.’

In his autobiography, Barack Obama revealed that he ‘got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind’ — a reference to his own difficult relationship with his talented, but wayward, father. ‘Junkie. Pothead,’ he wrote. ‘That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.’



Then U.S. Senator Barack Obama holds his step-grandmother Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama upon his returned to his ancestral rural village, Kogelo in August 2006



Excited Sarah Hussein Obara, hugs then Senator Barack Obama in 2006 when they met after 17 years at his ancestral home in Nyangoma village in Siaya , about 500km West of Nairobi in Kenya



Family portraits showing President Barack Obama (back row 2nd from left) that hang in his family house in Kogelo, western Kenya



Stanley Ann Dunham with her son Barack Obama in Hawaii during the mmid-1960s

Yet Barack escaped his father’s curse. The turning point came one night when, after a college party involving drink and drugs, a female friend scolded him for being self-obsessed and told the future U.S. President that life ‘isn’t just about you’.

He gave up drugs, vowing not to repeat the mistakes of his father. Sadly, there seems little hope of a similar ending for George.

The money from his book — reputed to have been an eight million Kenyan shilling advance (£61,000) — went on drink, drugs and a two-month sojourn with his hangers-on in Mombasa, the country’s stunning beach resort.

And despite his claims that he chooses to stay in his one-room shack, he is only there because he has spent all his money. Friends tell me he used to live in a much bigger house in a better area, and is given the room in Huruma now for free out of charity because he is down on his luck.

All the people in the township know George as a drunk, for all his claims to be a practising Muslim, and friends have urged him to seek help. ‘He’s a madman, really ill, but he doesn’t know he is,’ says Tony, from the football club. ‘He’s in black-out most of the time. We hope the Obama name will help our area. But George seems cursed.’



Obama's opponents are sure to aim to make political capital from the revelations about his half-brother

Sure enough, when we meet the next day, George is drunk and obnoxious after another breakfast of kill-me-quick — slang for Chang’aa.

Shamir, his two-year-old son, born to one of his string of girlfriends, wanders into the Chang’aa den and sits beside me. We do high-fives. George slumps in a seat opposite, saying: ‘It’s all b*****ks, b*****ks, b*****ks, b*****ks.’

He lurches off and disappears in the maze of shacks and alleys, swallowed up by the slum. His son is taken to be looked after by local women.

Whether or not addiction is genetic, George Obama — like the dead father he shares with the U.S. President — suffers in its gruesome embrace.

What’s certain is that what money he has won’t last. Nor will much of it go to township orphans or ‘Obama’s champs’. It will go on kill-me-quick and who knows what else.

Perhaps, tragically, before many more years pass, another little Kenyan boy called Obama is destined to grow up with nothing more than dreams of his father.

@Okija Juju ure a fool for making such insensitive comment. I pray and hope that you will a victim of such brutality one day.

RIP name sake.

How have your replies affected the price of Garri in the market?