Word: sheiking
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Dubbed Abscam, for Arab Scam, the 23-month investigation had cost some $800,000 and involved about 100 agents in an elaborate series of hoaxes and disguises. One of these dressed up in a burnoose and posed as a sheik named Kambir Abdul Rahman, whose millions were said to be "burning holes" in a Chase Manhattan account. Other agents in pinstripe suits served as the sheik's American emissaries, translating his gutteral commands and seeking ways to invest his money in New Jersey gambling casinos, East Coast port facilities and an American titanium mine. Along the way, the phony...
...securities and paintings. In return for a favorable recommendation to reduce his sentence, FBI agents persuaded Mel Weinberg, a convicted swindler, to help them get thieves to resell their loot to the FBI'S fake fences. The agents used the ruse of claiming to represent a Middle East sheik interested in purchasing the stolen goods...
With top level approval and ample funds now available, the FBI scam grew ever more elaborate. A swarthy agent, still unidentified, was picked to play the fictitious sheik, Kambir Abdul Rahman. Variously portrayed as being from Oman, Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates, the impostor set up temporary residence in a 62-ft. yacht that docked in several posh Florida marinas. As the flag vessel of the FBI'S secret fleet, the cruiser, seized by customs officials from marijuana smugglers, was first named the Left Hand and later the Corsair. "It gleamed with the predictable varnished parquet decks, teak...
...same time, the FBI provided its sheik with a phony business front called Abdul Enterprises, with offices in an undistinguished modern office building on Long Island. More imaginatively, the agents acquired an expensive two-story colonial brick house in a fashionable area of Washington, B.C. It was rented, for $1,200 a month, from a reporter for the Washington Post who had been assigned temporarily to New York City. The agents furnished the first floor with expensive antiques borrowed from the Smithsonian Institution and spent some $25,000 on renovations. These included an elaborate alarm system (to protect the antique...
Amen-ide-ra and his woman Jora led four thousand desert tribesman in a successful revolt against a decadent, evil regime of Sheik lords. These two were essentially vagabonds of unusual wisdom. Their reign marked a golden era lost to historians. Eventually, Amen-ide-ra yielded to the call of the sands and, taking his sword and horse, rode into the sunrise. Jora and Amen saluted each other as one vagabond to another. Jora stayed to rule...