26Deceptive Handball Team
In 2004, a fake 'Sri Lankan national handball team' managed to deceive its way into a German tournament, only to lose all of their matches and subsequently vanish without a trace. A farewell letter expressed gratitude to the Bavarians for their hospitality.
27. In 1992, the British government established a fictitious trading company to purchase Russian T-80 tanks for assessment. To avoid arousing suspicion, the tanks were bought for $5 million each and were intended to be shipped to Morocco, with one being gifted to the United States.
28. Nicholas Alahverdian is a criminal who turned into an incel leader after committing various crimes. He then claimed to be a victim of libel. He then disappeared for four years, faked lymphoma and his death, and eventually moved to Scotland, where he posed as a professor. He was apprehended in the hospital while being treated for COVID-19.
29. In 2005, burglars stole $71.6 million from a bank in Fortaleza, Brazil, by establishing a fraudulent landscaping company near the bank and digging a 256-foot tunnel beneath two city blocks over a period of three months. Although neighbors noticed vanloads of soil being removed daily, they assumed it was related to business activities.
30. Orson Welles often wore a fake nose in most of his films because he believed his natural nose was too small. Welles occasionally crafted and applied his own prosthetics, and there are accounts suggesting he even had a personal collection of various fake noses.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Bruce Willis Deep Fake
Despite widespread reports, it is untrue that Bruce Willis ever sold the rights to use his likeness with deep fake technology. A Russian advertising company fabricated the story and illegally employed his image in a commercial.
32. During the War of 1812, Britain dispatched a forged letter to Detroit, falsely claiming to possess 5,000 Native American warriors (while they actually had only a tenth of that number), and deliberately ensured that their American enemy obtained this memo. The ruse led to the surrender of the US forces in Detroit without a single British casualty.
33. In 1967, Mad Magazine printed a counterfeit $3 bill. Unfortunately, since change machines were just beginning to be installed, they failed to identify the bills as fake and dispensed real change in exchange for the phony currency.
34. Operation Border Stone involved Czechoslovak secret police setting up fake border crossings near West Germany to capture people attempting to escape the communist nation. The police conducted deceptive "welcome" interviews and led the refugees into a path where real police awaited their arrival.
35. Soccer legend Diego Maradona used a fake penis to pass drug tests at the height of his cocaine use. His phony phallus was stolen from a Buenos Aires museum in 2003 and has remained missing ever since.
