Jake Gordon

The Con-Job

3 March 2001

Got back from swimming [read last update] and met some Norweigen guy called Glenn who we’d talked to the night before - he’s quite cool and used to work training the SAS and Navy Seals to ski. Well, he said he’d been robbed, and this is how the story goes (the brief version)…

He was walking down the street and some guy came up to him and asked him where he was from. Amazingly, the man’s brother was about to start up a business in Norway, so the bloke offered him a meal in a cafe. Glenn was suspicious, but had nothing else to do that day so said ‘okay’… free food after all. Well, after the cafe they went off in a car to the person’s house, where he ate a good lunch. During lunch they were being all friendly (more of them by now) but the conversation was going on to gambling, and in particular blackjack. They started to teach him how to cheat at blackjack, and then said some rich guy was coming over and they ended up in the casino area upstairs in their house. Well, after a few games, with Glenn using their signs to cheat, the pot was up to around $50,000, with Glenn using credit which he was given. On this pot, Glenn had a 21-hand, and by the signs he was being given, he knew his opponent had a 20-hand - which meant Glenn would take the $50,000 pot. At this point, they said how he had to have some money to substantiate his credit, and so they said they’d take him to a jewellery shop where he could buy some jewellery to use to bet with. Well, Glenn was having none of it, and for a while now was just thinking about how he was going to get away. They took him downstairs and to a car, but he said he would just walk to the jewellers. Eventually, he managed to get away, and tell the tale.

The thing is - this happens to soooo many people here, and just in the hostel there are two police statements of it happening to others in the hostel, and they were stupid enough to loose around $12,000 each! Luckily, Glenn wasn’t so greedy/stupid. When the hostel bloke heard about it all, Glenn and I went in the car with him to the house where it had all happened, and then last night he called his special ‘crack squad’ who are/were meant to bust the house. I was going to go along with them to this, but instead decided to go to some caves and lakes today instead - which was fun, and I’m about to go back now to find out if the bust actually happened. It sounded really cool, and was quite exciting to pin down the house yesterday!


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by Jake Gordon, some rights reserved