CIA Book of Dirty Tricks

CIA Book of Dirty Tricks
#1
Recoil / Eutronix
PDF conversion by Grog
Index
Additives Cheese Fillers Lawyers
Airlines Child Abuse Forgery License Plates
Animals CIA Garage Sales MA Bell
Apartments Classified Ads Gases Mail
Assassination Clergy Graffiti Mail Drops
Auto Dealers Coins Highways Marriage
Banks Computers Hookers Media
Bikers Contractors Hotels Medical
Books Credit Cards Homes Military
Campuses Delivery of
Consumables
Insurance
Companies
Motion Pictures
Carbide Dirty Old Men IRS Municipal Services
Cars Drugs Joggers Neighborhoods
CB Radios Environmental
Rapists
Laundromats Notary Seal
Charity Explosives Lawns Oil Companies
Thomas Jefferson
Additives
Harmful additives are a formidable weapon against machinery,
people, and processes. Additives perform one or more of the following:
1) Corrosion...sulfuric acid, for example, will corrode the gutter,
eaves, and downspout of a home; dumped salt will mar a building
surface or floor and kill a lawn.
2) Contamination...copper salts will rot rubber products; soap in a
public or corporate fountain will create giant foam. Or put it in a
steam boiler if you're more serious about the matter.
3) Abrasion...introduction of light, coarse materials, such as resins,
to automotive fuel, or metal filings placed in the gears of industrial
machinery, will create frictional havoc.
4) Impurities...adding sugar to gasoline creates harmful carbon
from the burning sugar, stopping the engine.
Soaps and detergents make wonderful additions to food and could
even be beneficial if the target happens to be constipated. If not, then soapladen
munchies or drinks will really keep him moving.
During my stay as an invited guest of Uncle Sam I recall some dirty
tricksters' making an action statement against being in KP. They liberally
coated various pans and cooking vessels with GI soap. They washed mugs
with a lot of soap, then neglected to rinse them before letting the utensils
dry. Later, when some drinkable potion like milk or coffee was poured into
the mug by some unsuspecting mark, the soap was activated. Whoosh!
Soap is also a very effective additive to containers in which food is
prepared. The secret is to disguise the taste. Various other additives will do
that and other tricks.
A horny old pharmacist, Doctor Frank Pittlover, claims there really is
a working aphrodisiac. His is almost as esoteric as the fake stuff you read
about in men's magazines. Here's what Doctor Pittlover says: "It's known as
yohimmbine hydrochloride (C21, H23, O3N2), an obscure sex stimulant that
operates on the central nervous system. It was the aphrodisiac used by the
CIA in their MK/ULTRA scam." It is not on the Central Substances Act list
--yet-- and it is classed as a "veterinary aphrodisiac." That means you can
get it openly from a pharmaceutical supply source. What you do with it after
you get it is probably your own business.
There are other references to and uses of additives in many other
topical areas of your revenge...many more than could be indexed here.
"Take tea and see" is a good advertising slogan that should also alert
the dirty trickster to some additives brought to our attention by herbal-tea
producers. Two common products of many herbal teas have side effects that
the trickster could define only as delightful. First, some teas contain the
leaves, flowers, and the bark of senna plant, a tropical shrub related to our
bean plant. The dried leaves, bark, and flowers of this plant are a mighty
powerful laxative. Chamomile flowers are also popular in herbal teas.
Related to ragweed and goldenrod, chamomile can produce severe reactions
in people sensitive to plants of that family.
The trick in both cases is to obtain extracts of both products and use
them in concentrated enough additive form to create the desired effect.
Meanwhile, from the other end, Doctor Christopher Garwood Doyle
has a prescription that could really get a mark moving. Syrup of ipecac is a
common purgative, easily available. Here's how Doctor Goyle uses it.
"Your mark is with you or your agent somewhere having a few
drinks," the doctor outlines. "Presumably, the mark is drinking something
sweet and heavy, like rum and Coke. When the mark goes to the bathroom
or is otherwise out of the area, mix one tablespoon of syrup in ipecac in with
the drink.
"You now have a fifteen-minute waiting --or escaping, if you prefer--
period for the mixture to get active. After that, bombs away! The mark will
begin violent projectile vomiting, which really messes up the nearby
environment and anyone else who happens to be the way.
"We first did this in medical school, using to get back at a classmate
who'd turned us in to officials for having an after-hours party in our dorm
with women and booze. They threw the book at us because we were
supposed to be mature medical students.
"The student who did this fancied himself as a real boozer," Doctor
Doyle explained, "but he really was a hell of a hypocrite about it and really
played pious when he turned us in. So we figured he who tattles about
booze shall also toss his booze."
Doctor Doyle reports that this additive will work easily with nonalcoholic
drinks, too. He says the secret is to select a carrier drink that will
hide the taste and consistency of the syrup.
Another good remedy for a hotshot is cascara sagrada, made from the
dried root of a thorny shrub found on the American West Coast. It produces
violent diarrhea. Once, Joe Kascaba introduced some cascara sagranda into
a mark's orange juice. The mark was with his girlfriend and her parents in
their family car. He had the "juiced" orange juice about ten minutes before
getting into the car.
Kascaba reminisced, "The stuff's fast acting, and we were lucky to
have the girlfriend's brother as our ally, to report the action. It hit the mark
about six minutes into the trip, and in another minute he didn't even have
time to yell for them to pull over. He just started letting go with loud, wet,
explosive bursts.
"This is all in full witness of his girlfriend and her family in a tightly
packed auto. He couldn't get stopped, either. They took him to a hospital,
but by then the additive was through his system and the storm had subsided.
That surely is super powerful stuff."
Kascaba explained why he had taken action this explosive action,
saying, "The guy was a real creep. He was always trying to make out with
other girls, and since he wasn't very smooth, he used to get them drunk.
This was always with other girls, of course--his regular girlfriend knew
nothing about all of this.
"Well, one night he pulled this crap on a friend of mine, got her drunk,
messed around...she got this feeling all guilty and emotional, then got sick --
puked, in fact. He thought he was macho stuff and gave her hell for it.
"We figured if he was going to act like such a shit...well, I'm sure you
understand...."
The above trick is suggested to be used in such a place so that your
mark can not easily reach a bathroom within a few minutes after the attack
hits. This will cause him to literally shit his pants and drip at the heels.
As a final note, Kascaba says not to use this powerful additive with
older folks, because it weaken them to the point of very serious medical
complications such as dehydration which may kill them. Have some respect
for the elderly, think of your grandmother!
The following trick is technically a substitution and not an additive: I
know of one person who visited her mark's home and emptied the hair
conditioner out of his bottle, then poured Neet hair remover into the
conditioner bottle. She knew that Operation Substitute was a bald success
when she saw her mark in a local store several weeks later, wearing a large
scarf on his head.
Vinegar makes a great substitute for nose drops or in nasal-spray
devices. One especially nasty person also suggested it for use in eye drops.
I'm not sure about that one though, sight's a precious thing. You'd better
reserve that one for a very deserving person that shot your dog, wrecked
your computer, busted you for phreaking, etc.
Airlines
Arrange to have a friend meet you at the terminal gate when you
deplane. Give your friend your baggage claim checks and have him/her
retrieve your bags from the carousel, then leave the baggage area with your
bags. Before your friend leaves the airport with your luggage, be sure to get
your claim checks back. Then, you saunter over to the baggage area, spend
half an hour waiting for your bags. Ask some clerks for help, then report
your "missing" luggage, showing your claim checks as proof. Very few
flights ever have a clerk actually check the baggage and collect claim
checks. It's foolish, but they don't. Make a polite, but firm scene and
demand satisfaction. Normally, the airline people will have you fill out a
form and they will attempt to find your luggage. Obviously, they won't find
it. Bug them some...write them letters. Soon, you should get a good
settlement from the airline. Don't try to pull this one on the same airline
more than once!
Leaving the airlines and aiming for the individual mark, you can do a
lot of personal damage. For instance, if you find your mark is going to use
airline travel, you could call and cancel the reservations.
You might try to slip a couple rounds of pistol ammunition or a
switchblade in to your mark's pocket just before he goes through the metal
detector at the airport terminal. You could also slip some drugs into his
pocket at the same time. Read a book on pick pocketing to note the
technique for doing this. It's quite easy. Leave accurate-looking, but totally
bogus hijack scenario plans, bomb diagrams, or orders of battle for terrorist
attacks in airport bars and restrooms. This fires up both the rent-a-cops and
the real security people. The security delays and resultant hassles with
passengers create unhappy people who are angry at airports and airlines.
Naturally, the blame for these plans must focus on your mark. If he has
really been bugging you it's about time to get even!
Leaving the airlines and aiming for individual mark, you can do a lot
of personal damage. For instance, if you find that your mark is going to use
airline travel and there are only a few travel agents in town, you could call
until you find the correct one and cancel the reservations. Or if you know
the name of the airline, call their office and cancel the mark's reservations.
You might try to slip a couple of rounds of pistol ammunition or a
switchblade knife into your mark's pocket just before he goes through the
metal detector at the airport terminal. You could also slip some drugs into
his pocket at the same time. Read a book on pick-pocketing to note the
technique for doing this. It's quite easy since you are placing stuff back.
Bill Cutcheon sometimes poses as a Moonie, Hare Krishna devotee, or
other cultist and goes to airports. His goal is to act like a completely
obnoxious fool. He really hams it up, usually getting tossed out after totally
grossing out the passengers. The heat, of course, falls equally on the cults
and on the airport for letting "them" behave like that.
Another Cutcheon stunt is to leave accurate-looking but totally bogus
hijack scenario plans, bomb diagrams, or orders for terrorists attacks in
airport bars and restrooms. This fires up both the rent-a-cops and the real
security people. The security delays and resultant hassles with passengers
create unhappy people who are angry at airports and airlines.
Naturally, thew blame for these plans must focus on the original
perpetrator of Cutcheon's problems. He says, "If some nut group's been
hassling me for money, messing in my neighborhood, or otherwise being
obnoxious, I'll leave evidence to pin the hijack or bomb rap on them. I got
back at a motorcycle gang by doing this once, after they had sideswiped my
truck and refused to pay damages."
He also explains that this is a good vengeance grabber against an
airport facility that has offended you.
Mitch Egan of San Francisco doesn't like cultist panhandlers harassing
people at airports, so he founded the Fellowship to Resist Organized Groups
Involved in Exploitation, or FROGIE. Egan and his friends use those little
metal clickers shaped like frogs to ward of religious solicitors.
According to Egan, thousands of people across the country are now
armed with the little metal frogs, and when a religious panhandler
approaches, they whip out the clicker and "Click, click, click!" the pest
away.
"In San Francisco, I saw two hundred people clicking away at a
Krishna," Egan remarked. "They blew her right out of her socks."
He adds, "If God wants a dollar from me, he can ask for it. I'm not
against religion, but I'm fed up with organized beggars."
Relief is just a click away.
I knew a chap who became annoyed at a Krishna who followed him
out of the Indianapolis airport, verbally abusing him for not making a
contribution. Having surreptitiously "armed and primed" himself, our hero
suddenly stopped, whipped around, and pissed all over the startled harridan.
After the few necessary seconds of attack, he calmly replaced himself,
zipped up, and walked away. A bemused security cop nearby tried to hide
his laughter.
Animals
If your mark is an oily cuss with a credibility problem you should
easily pull off this stunt. It involves a cop, reporters, SPCA folks and some
farm animals. Call the police and tell them you know about a cock or dog
fight that's being held at your mark's home. Explain that you have no morals
against animal fighting but you lost big money there last time and think the
fights are fixed. Next call your mark and report to him that some people are
holding dog or cock fights on his property. Call the reporters and SPCA and
tell them all about the fight. Mention that your mark and the cops have a
payoff relationship. Give everyone the same general arrival time, never be
too specific. Hopefully, all will sort of show up at the same time. You
might manipulate things so the press and animal lovers show up first. Even
if a real story doesn't develop, you have scattered some strong seeds of
distrust. If you want a stronger story, find a dead dog on the road or
something and plant it near by and tell the reporters and SPCA where to find
the evidence. It will be fun to hear your mark and the cops talk about
everything to the reporters.
Dead animals are very useful. Wait until your mark goes on a trip and
will be leaving his car or house empty for several days. Get into the car or
house and stuff very large and very dead animals everywhere. Your mark
will probably have to sell his car and fumigate his house when he returns.
If you are bothered by big dogs chasing you just take a good quality
plastic water pistol and fill it with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Shoot the
furball right in the eyes and it'll soon stop the canine harassment.
Apartments
Your mark lives in an apartment? A squirt or so of Eastman 910 or a
similar type glue into the lock can screw up the mark's trying to get back
into the apartment after an evening on the town. It's best to save this one
until late evening or on a weekend. Of course, this same stunt would work
on a house, but an apartment lockout disturbance causes more of a public
scene.
If the mark's apartment is an older building with wooden door frames
and you can work quietly and quickly at night, you can lock him/her in the
apartment from the outside. Quietly fix a hasp and keeper on the door and
frame using wooden screws. Then slap a padlock on the new fixture. It
creates a great deal of frustration if that door is the only way out of the
apartment. Do it late Saturday night so the discovery is made on Sunday
morning when it's impossible to get help.
Run a classified ad offering to sublet the mark's apartment. You can
list either the mark's telephone number or that of his/her landlord. As usual,
make the contact hour for very early in the morning "because of shift-work
schedule."
You might want to make a "milk run" to the mark's apartment very
early on several mornings and place a whole bunch of empty booze bottles
outside his or her door. This works well in ritzy apartments where the
neighbors are snobs. How do you get by the security people? One way is to
pose as a delivery person, a service person, a building inspector, or someone
on a work crew. You can also hire an accomplice in the building, or you can
bribe the door guard.
Suppose you are the victim of a nasty landlord who evicts you for no
good reason. There are lots of legal ways to get your tenant's rights, but
there are also many quasi-legal and illegal ways that are much more fun.
For example, you could simply "sublet" the place, on your own, to a bunch
of dopers, bikers, drunks, hookers, runaways, or twenty-four-hour party
throwers. Make this extracurricular subletting your going-away surprise.
Another person I know went to the local animal shelter on several
different days and got a total of fifteen cats for twenty-five dollars. He
bought a bunch of cat food and a bushel basket of fish, and filled his bathtub
with water for them. He then nailed every window and door shut from the
inside before crawling out the tiny casement window in the basement. He
had previously nailed the basement door shut behind him. Obviously, he
had moved his things out several days previously. His eviction notice was
effective the next day, but the landlord didn't check on the house for five
days. My God, what a mistake that man made. To say that that cat house
was an uninhabitable mess is an understatement.
Tim Carroll was tossed out of his apartment by the landlady because
one of Tim's many lady friends stayed over for the whole entire evening.
This upset the old biddy who owned the building, and being a staunch, Godfearing
charter member of the DAR, she canceled his lease and ordered him
to leave the building.
Displeased with the arbitrary and unilateral treatment and the
upheaval caused by her dubious moral judgement, Tim didn't get angry; he
got even. He had a trusted friend place a large sign in a hallway window of
the landlady's apartment building. The seventh-floor window faced a busy
business street, and the sign was quite visible to many hundreds of people.
The sign read: TIM CARROLL SUCKS.
The landlady didn't see the sign, so two days later, Tim's friend
positioned another sign, this time in a sixth-floor-hall window.
The second sign read: TIM CARROLL IS A FAG.
The landlady saw both signs and removed them. Two days later, she
got a letter from Tim, with a picture enclosed showing her building with the
signs easily visible. The letter was Tim's complaint about personal slander
and harassment. He asked her please to desist.
Sometime early the next morning, in time for rush-hour morning
traffic, a new sign went up in the window: TIM CARROLL BLOWS
DEAD BEARS.
At 8:30 A.M., the unsuspecting landlady received a call from an
attorney friend of Tim's, citing the original slander and warning the woman
against further incidents. Shaken, she swore her innocence. Ten minutes
after hanging up, he called back, sounding furious because Tim had just
called him about the latest sign. Flabbergasted, the old lady swore she
would remove it and loudly proclaim her innocence.
Another sign went up that afternoon in time for rush-hour the other
way: TIM CARROLL IS A FLAMING HETEROSEXUAL.
The landlady got the lawyer's call just after dark, when the sign was
no longer visible. She was almost in tears because of his threats to sue. She
begged to just talk to Tim, to tell him none of this was her doing. The
attorney told her that he had advised his client to have no further discussions
with her.
The next day's sign read: FOR A GOOD LAY, CALL TIM
CARROLL.
That evening, a new sign went up. The landlady, frantic, according to
Tim's friend who was putting up the signs, got to it fifteen minutes after it
went up. The attorney called her five minutes after she go back to her own
apartment.
Tim related, "You might feel almost sorry for the old lady, except that
she had told me earlier that she was going to keep my security deposit and
that I would have to forfeit the month's rent I had paid in advance because I
had violated the morality clause in my lease. The was no such clause. I
found out she had done this same thing to two other guys a year before and
some guys before that. She also tossed out a couple because they weren't
married. She'd come into your room when you were gone and snoop, too.
That bugged me."
No signs went up for the next three days, although the woman
checked the windows every twenty minutes or so. On the fourth day,
hundreds of passersby, accustomed to the signs weren't disappointed.
The new sign read: TIM CARROLL'S WHOREHOUSE.
Although it took her an hour to discover and remove it, the lawyer
friend of Tim's didn't call until the next morning, when a new sign was in the
window: WHOREHOUSE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. The
landlady's telephone number was listed.
A second sign was placed on the sixth-floor window underneath:
TIM CARROLL COULDN'T BEAT THE COMPETITION.
In his best tones, the attorney explained that enough was enough and
that on behalf of his client, Mr. Carroll, he would be filing an action. The
woman was distraught. He told her to have her attorney present for a
meeting at three the following afternoon. He asked her who attorney was
and said the meeting should be in his office. Tim and his attorney postponed
this meeting several times, then told the woman that since she had stopped
putting up the signs, they would hold the suit in limbo for the time.
Reportedly, she monitored the halls and windows of that building
regularly for five months. But more importantly, she also left her tenants to
their own moral lives.
Assassination
Suppose you have a mark whose ill temper has created problems for
you. Or perhaps this mark is simply an obnoxious nut whose obsessions
have cost you personally. A dentist I know spent many unselfish hours
working to get fluoride into his community's drinking water as a means of
fighting tooth decay in children. An apolitical and highly dedicated
professional, he was concerned only with healthcare for the kids in the
community. A hyper, rightwing zealot jumped on the issue and scared the
town council with his insane babble. He claimed that fluoride was a
Communist plot to poison America's drinking water and minds and that
using fluoride would lead to LSD as part of the International Communist
Conspiracy. The timid council voted "no" on fluoride.
Beside himself, the young dentist said he surely would like to get back
at the rightwing firebrand but just didn't know what to do. Sighing, he gave
up his fight and put his time back into his practice. The kids never got their
fluoride treatment, and as a result he had a lot of business. It's too bad that
young dentist never met Maurice Bishop.
In the hypocritical piety following the assassinations of the sixties,
physical security was supposedly tightened to protect the chief executive
chosen by the power brokers who now control the United States. A former
law-enforcement official with a probable intelligence background offered an
astounding dirty trick related to this topic. To protect this source's identity
we'll use the cover name of Maurice Bishop.
Bishop says that the CIA, FBI and Secret Service all keep a list of nut
cases, radicals, and others who threaten political figures. Often, these people
are jailed, kept under protective custody, or placed under twenty-four-hour
surveillance by authorities when political targets are in the area. Bishop's
idea calls for threatening telegrams to be sent to the politician in the mark's
name. At the very least this telegram will bring a visit by one of the
government agencies, and perhaps it will result in a bit of jail time if the
mark loses his/her cool as a result of this dirty trick.
Bishop says this will also work with state officials, bringing a visit from
state police or some other law enforcement official.
Auto Dealers
If an automobile dealership screws you, on either the car, the deal, or
the service, don't get angry -- get even. Wait outside the showroom until a
prospective customer starts talking to a salesperson about the same type of
car you got. Walk right up to the customer and tell him you woeful story.
The idea is to screw up as many sales as you can (it will cost the dealer at
least $5000 for each screw-up). Be factual, be cool, and act as if you're an
honest citizen trying to save another honest citizen some money and
heartache -- as you wish someone had done for you. Sincere good faith is
the thing here, because the salesman is going to blow his about the second
time you pull your act.
When the manager asks you to leave and you don't, he will probably
call the police. You had anticipated this earlier and alerted someone at the
local newspaper or television station--probably the action-line reporters.
Small-town media usually won't allow reporters to come -- car dealers buy
lots of ads, and you don't. A regional TV station may show up -- if you
promise a confrontation with the law. So when the manager calls the police,
you call your TV reporter -- fun and games for the 6:00 P.M. news.
If all this doesn't work, wait off the dealer's premises and approach
customers as they leave the showroom. Tell your story there and then.
Offer to help them avoid your mistake. But stay on public property. And
keep after the action-line reporters.
If you escalate the attack a bit, show up when the night salespeople
are on duty -- they won't recognize you. Look at new cars; wander around.
Few salespeople pay much attention to an obvious gawker. As soon as
someone else or a telephone distracts the salesperson, you can do things to
the automobile right there in the showroom. A bottle opener is hard on the
finish. See the file on additives for things you could quickly put into the fuel
tank. If you could smuggle some in with you, stuff roadkill under a car seat
or in the glove compartment. Or toss a condom (preferably used) on the
front seat. By the way, used condoms make wonderful plants in other
locations as well, like the boss's desk, or in a customer's car back in the
service shop.
If you can manage to slip undetected into the service area along with
your bag of sabotage goodies, such as glue, wire cutters, paint, potatoes,
M80s, etc., you can run amok. Work quietly and quickly. This sort of
guerrilla warfare can literally wreck a dealer's service reputation.
Banks
It could be time to make your bankroll. According to Townsend
Alexander, our financial intelligence agent, you can make good money
buying some very cheap foreign coins that are the same size as quarters. Get
a paper coin wrapper. Wrap a few real quarters on the ends but fill the rest
of the roll with the cheapie import coins. Wrap the roll and with felt-tip pen
write some phony account number on it to add to authenticity.
Take the roll of coins into the targeted bank. If you dress like a
business person and go at a busy time, especially with the account number
written on each roll, and the rolls in a bank sack or your briefcase, the teller
will probably give you ten dollars per roll without checking.
If you could get a banker to tell the truth, he'd admit that they hate
college-student checking accounts. There's probably a lot of justification,
since most services like this for college students cost far more than they're
worth in return. However, that's not our problem.
Suppose you have a gripe with the bank. Acting as the bank's ad
manager, get in touch with the student newspaper at the school and arrange
to run some ads with banner headlines reading, STUDENTS WELCOME,
plus such services as NO SERVICE CHARGE, FREE CUSTOM-PRINTED
CHECKS, INTREST ON THE BALANCE, NO MINIMUM BALANCE,
and so on. Offer to give away free albums or Walkman radios. The day
after the "bank's" ad runs they will be swamped with unwanted students,
who are going to be very angry at the bank (and probably at the student
newspaper).
Modern banks now have cash machines where you insert your plastic
money card and the machine gives you the money. If that institution or its
machine has become your target, here's a dairyland delight you could easily
employ. Take some tough, hard cheese and cut it the same size and shape as
your plastic card. Insert the cheese "card" into the slot of the machine and
leave the area. One banker told me it took a service person nine hours to
clean the machine and get it operating again when someone pulled this stunt
in Baltimore.
The bank still giving you trouble, or you didn't give them enough? It's
time to move things up the scale a notch. Rent a safe-deposit box under
another name. Pay cash for a three-month rental. That's all the time you'll
need to collect on this one. Go to the market and buy a couple of overripe
fish -- I'm sure you'll get a bargain price. Carry them wrapped in plastic in
your briefcase. Go directly to your safe deposit box. In the privacy of the
bank's little cubicle, unwrap the fish and lay the big, stinky suckers right in
the safety deposit box. Close it, lock it, and store it. Then carry the fish
wrappers, briefcase, and yourself out of the bank. In a few days your deposit
will gain their interest. You'd better do your real banking at another
institution for a while. It's quite possible bank officials will have to hire
someone to drill the lock on the targeted safe-deposit box to remove the
contents.
Bikers
You're walking along a pedestrian sidewalk, and along come a
bicyclist, churning away his/her spare calories on that nonpolluting
transportation device. Within moments you're an involuntary participant in
a game of chicken with that cyclist, who swerves while you weave. You
finally pass each other in good dodgem-car fashion. Maybe. Wonderful
stuff, adrenaline.
On the other cheek, maybe you've been blindsided by an irresponsible
cyclist trespassing on your pedestrian walk right of way.
"No more turning the other cheek," is the war cry of Mel Scafe, an
anti-cyclist who is fighting back.
"I've declared war on all two wheelers who trespass into my life," Mel
says. "I'll get the senior citizen bicyclist who forces me off my sidewalk on
the same day I get even with the teenage dirt biker who tears up the hill
behind my home."
One of Mel's tactics is to toss a length of chain into the spokes of the
dirt bike when it's roaring by. Instantly, the bike stops going forward while
the rider continues onward until gravity takes over.
"I've also used a wire cutter to snip the spokes on a bicycle whose
owner has done me a disfavor," Mel relates. "That'll cause a real collapse in
his biking game."
Another time he spread a large patch of grease on the path used by dirt
bikers.
He can't even estimate the pounds of air he's released from captivity in
bike tires. He's used all the nasty engine additives mentioned in another file
for these machines that disturb his world.
"I liked that Burt Reynolds movie where the truck driver drove his rig
over all those goddamn motorcycles," Mel grinned. Turning seriously, he
added, "I've thought about the old World War II trick of stretching piano or
barbed wire across a trail or bikeway, but I think that could be fatal, so I
don't really do it."
"If there were some way I could totally kill the damn machines and
only embarrass the people a bit I'd surely like to hear about it. Until then I
will stick to the old standards that have worked for me so far."
He adds, "I know people may sneer at me for being mean to kiddies
on their bicycles, and I know bicycles are an in thing today. But maybe if
those young riders learn some manners early and stay the hell off pedestrian
walkways, they might grow up to be decent people."
Books
Did anyone ever borrow a book from you and not return it? Our
private library consultant, Roberta Russell, has a suggestion with an air of
financial finality behind it. For the first step, a printer should make you
about three or four dozen bookplates, all featuring your mark's name and
address, plus the legend, "If this book is lost and you find it and return it, I
will pay you $10 cash." Your next step is the local Goodwill Industries, a
local thrift or second-hand shop, or a garage sale for books. Buy two or
three dozen used hardcover books. You buy them as cheaply as you can, but
they'll cost your mark plenty. Your next step is to paste on the bookplates
and distribute these books -- at the beach, on park benches, in a bus or
subway, or in a bar or restaurant. The final step is for you to enjoy a good
chuckle at your mark's expense, as people find the "lost" books.
If your mark has a fine library, you might consider introducing it to
silverfish. They love good books; in fact they will devour them. If you feel
this nasty, you probably already know where to get silverfish and their eggs.
This one bothers me, though, since I love good books. Maybe there's a
better way. Perhaps you could put an earwig in you mark's bed pillow.
Why not give your mark the image of a philanthropic person? Donate
books in his/her name to the local library, but without either party's
knowledge. Buy a bunch of really skuzzy porno paperbacks, especially the
colorfully illustrated ones from Denmark -- the more grossly hardcore, the
better. Your printer will produce some paste-in bookplates that say
something like this, "This book donated to the [Name] library by [Mark's
name] in loving memory of all the sweet children of [Town name]." Paste in
the bookplates and sprinkle the donated books around the local library. Put
some in the children section, and others in the religion books.
Campuses
Not everyone is hibernating on college campuses. Although it's true
that many students have become docile zombies, lobotomized by lethal
doses of television and the bureaucracy of the educational system, there are a
few live ones. At an eastern university, a number of students got upset with
the rent gouging of a massive corporation acting as an absentee landlord for
private off-campus dormitories. After getting nowhere appealing to an untesticled
school administration, and after being ignored by a housing
inspector and a city council belonging to the same social class and clubs as
the corporate landlords, the students held a pizza party.
The unusual part was that the pizza party was held in the clothes
dryers of the dormitory laundry rooms. One participant reported, "We
dumped a couple of really gooey pizzas in each dryer, put in the coins, and
turned them on."
Try cleaning up that one!
Epilogue: The corporate landlord and his student tenants settled their
problems shortly after the party, totally to the satisfaction of the young
protestors.
Professor James Shannon claims that college students of the past had
heinous imaginations. Today, of course, many students are content merely
to move around enough to prevent roots from forming on their contact
surfaces with the ground. Professor Shannon suggests that if you have a
teacher you don't like, and he/she lectures from a desk or podium on a raised
platform, you move the stand so its legs are barely balanced on the front
edge of the platform. When the academic leans forward on the structure
ever so slightly, it will come crashing forward. With any luck the
pedagogue will land on top of it.
At an eastern university, two looser colleagues filled a humorless and
bookish faculty member's office closet with several large and irritable geese
one evening. The professor was in the habit of arriving quite early for 8:00
AM class, early enough so that the hasty-tempered birds would just be
awakening. When he opened the closet door they woke up and became
badly aggressive really fast. Eyewitness reports left no doubt whose feathers
were ruffled most.
This will be truly appreciated only by those privy to the pettiness of
academia: Other colleagues of this same professor sometimes send truly
pedantic, nasty, personal, and vindictive memoranda to various other faculty
members, deans, etc., in the name of their priggish colleagues.
On one occasion they sent really nasty letters to the parents of a few
of this faculty member's students, giving the poor folks hell for daring to
produce such genetic drift as their kids, much less turning them loose on a
college campus. The school's PR people had a terrible time getting out from
under that one. As for the mark, the dumb schmuck had no idea why so
many people disliked him. But please take his colleagues word for it – he
deserves every bit of it.
Carbide
Having been brought up around hunters and miners, I learned all
about carbide lamps and carbide fishing early. Working on my grandfather's
farm, I learned about carbide bombs. Let me explain some things you might
find useful.
When calcium carbide is exposed to air and water it produces a gas
that will kill small animals. Farmers often pour it down gopher, rat, or
groundhog holes, then dump in some water and put a rock over the hole.
The animal is gassed to death.
A lot of poor people used to fish with carbide with the same efficiency
with which legions of GIs fished with hand grenades. Simply toss a pound
or two of carbide into a can and seal it, but be sure to punch a few holes in
the lid. Toss it into a pond. The results can play havoc with your mark's
fish pond or fancy goldfish pool or an indoor aquarium. Water and carbide
can produce an explosion.
Some of the nastier kids used to place amounts of carbide into the
toilets at our school. The idea was to place the carbide bomb in the toilet,
leave a lighted cigarette on the seat, and run like hell. The carbide would
combine with the water to produce a huge cloud of noxious gas, which
would explode when it hit the lighted cigarette the perpetrators left behind.
This little homemade bomb did more damage than an M80.
Tim Bell, who later became a Special Forces NCO in Vietnam,
explains, "We had a kid bully whom no one liked -- a real prick. He always
went to the john after fourth period to sneak a smoke. So two of us went in
right after him and laid a carbide bomb in the water in the next stall. We
were about a hundred feet down the hall when the damn thing went off."
At this point, Tim burst into a wild laughter. I was able to learn,
though , that the bully had his legs burned and cut by flying porcelain, bit his
tongue badly, was knocked violently off the throne, bruising his ribs against
the steel wall of the stall, and was deafened for nearly twenty-four hours, all
by the force of this carbide explosion. With that kind of background as a
high school kid, it's no wonder Tim Bell made a good Special Forces
trooper.
Are there more adult uses for carbide? Some sixties semi-terrorists
used to dump a pound or so into the toilets of corporate offices and
government buildings, flush the mess into the system, and walk away
briskly. Enough of the stuff could get very dangerous, considering the
possible backup of gases. A combination of water and carbide has been fed
into the ventilating systems of various corporate and government buildings,
also by semi-terrorists who wish to harass the resident bureaucrats.
Cars
This one's really kiddie Halloween time, but it does work. A bunch of
old nuts and bolts placed into the wheel well behind the hubcap will make
the mark think his/her car is falling apart. It's worth some minor harassment,
of course, and works outstandingly well with high-strung non-mechanical
typed who absolutely panic at car noises.
You can get a little heavier than Halloween by removing a hubcap
from your mark's car wheel and loosening or removing the lug bolts. Sooner
or not much later, the wheel will simply roll off the car.
Moving up the escalator of nastiness, you could probably fill your
mark's whole body with adrenaline if you placed a split shot sinker, of the
type used by fishermen, on the accelerator cable of his/her vehicle. Willy
Seamore, a top mechanic, suggests you extend the cable, then place the lead
weight on the extended portion, which effectively blocks it from returning.
This means the vehicle's throttle will run wide open. It's a nasty version of
the jack-rabbit start.
From choking up to locking up is hardly a quantum experience. The
new miracle glues are impregnable when squirted into car door keyholes.
Nothing short of a locksmith can repair this low-risk attack. If you hit just
before the mark's family vacation, leave the car door locks alone and hit the
trunk lock. With any luck, they'll never notice until they're miles from
home.
A refinement of simply putting a super glue or epoxy into the car's
various locks is to take any old key that will vaguely locks is to take any old
key that will vaguely fit into the lock cavity, insert it, then twist it rapidly
back and forth until the key breaks off, stuck in the lock. Now is the time to
squirt glue into the lock. The job is more permanent and more costly to
repair.
If you tire of fooling with the locks, you can look elsewhere.
Marshall Tanner, inventor of muffler bearings, says you can prop some
large-headed nails against the tires of your mark's car, especially if it's
parked so it will have to be backed up to get out of a parking stall in a lot.
The car moves back and the wheels roll over the nails, puncturing the tires.
If your mark's married, you can have all sorts of sport with his
ride. A male mark deserves that you slip sexy undergarments usually worn
by a sexy lady under his car's front seat or wedge them carefully into the
back seat. You could tear them a bit. More than a hint of perfume or
flavored douche will always hype suspicion. You can escalate this stunt
somewhat if you buy male underwear --get the sexy style in white—and
place some lipstick smears around the fly area. You can help the campaign
along by having a very trusted lady friend call and ask nervously for the
mark. The younger she sounds, the better. Have her call several times. Use
your and the mark's wife's imagination.
If the mark is a woman, a pack of condoms carelessly hidden in the
car is always a sure-grow plant. Several daint handkerchiefs of the type
favored by milady and heavily impregnated with semen can also be stuffed
in the car. As with the male, a series of appropriately timed telephone calls
from a nervous male will add to the marital festivities between mark and
spouse.
In less carnal surroundings, if you can get to the distributor cap,
remove it and use graphite from a pencil to contact the rotor brushes. The
charge will run along the graphite, causing the engine to misfire. This could
cause the mark to dash into his local car butcher and get charged an
outrageous price for an unnecessary tune-up.
A quick way to disable a car battery is to slip a couple of Alka-Seltzer
tablets or a teaspoonful of baking soda into each battery compartment. The
antacid will kill the battery's power before you can say "Plop, plop, fizz,
fizz."
Another camhead nasty is to take a pushpin and jab a few tiny holes
through spark-plug wires. According to Lee H. Santana, a real straight
shooter in the dirty-tricks department, the pin pricks cause a hellishly
rumpety noise when the car is driven.
Don't forget additives when working on a mark's car. The nice thing
about additives is that you don't have to be odd or even to use them. Many
experts, including some of Uncle Sam's khaki-clad nephews, suggest light
materials, such as crushed cork, as a great additive to the gasoline tanks of
vehicles belonging to people or institutions you don't like.
One former professional trickster said, "It isn't to exotic, but a handful
of old leaves in the gas tank will bind the damn engine up too."
Sand is not recommended because of its weight, especially when wet.
It would sink to the bottom of the tank and not much would be introduced
into the engine, he explained. The idea is to get the additive to the bearing
surfaces, where the coarse little buggers can kick and scratch up a
mechanical breakdown. Silicone carbide, emery powder, and fine metal
filings will work. During World War II, our OSS used a mixture of finely
ground cork, resins, carborundums, and metal alloys to muck up an engine.
Another method that could possibly send a driver off to a service
station would be to pour a gallon of shellac thinner into your targeted
vehicle's gasoline tank. The alcohol will gather up all the water in the fuel
trap, and when this mixture goes through the fuel line it will cause the
vehicle to snort, stammer, and act as if it has big carb troubles. By the time
the driver gets the vehicle to a mechanic, the problem has usually departed
out the exhaust pipe. Done enough times, this one can redline the frustration
and credibility levels of both the driver and the mechanic.
If you want to use additives in your mark's gasoline tank, yet are concerned
about arousing suspicion in daylight or in an otherwise high-visibility area,
simply adopt a cover prop.
"Put the harmful additive in a metal gasoline can like they sell in
stores," advises Joey MacJohns, a veteran trickster. "That way, any potential
witnesses will never really pay attention to what's happening; they'll simply
infer because you have a gas can that you're putting gas in the car."
And don't forget oil additives. Styrene, a colorless, oily liquid, is an
organic compound that is one of the two chemicals mixed together to make
hardened fiberglass. Boat-supply stores and marinas have styrene available
for patching fiberglass boats. It is also used in body shops and upholsteryrepair
places.
There are substitutes compounds that will do the same job as styrene,
so read the label when purchasing the stuff to make sure you're actually
getting styrene. Styrene is the only sufficiently effective, commonly
available material that can be put into a car's crankcase to completely break
down the oil and ruin the engine.
Styrene in the crankcase is far better that sugar in the gas tank because
it can't be seen after being introduced and because only a little does a
thorough job. If it's used at the rate of one per four quarts of oil, the treated
vehicle will run about a hundred miles before the engine locks up tight.
This is a fairly high-risk stunt, but it could be fun if you don't get
nailed doing it, according to Bill Rally. If you find that your mark is going
alone to a movie you have an hour or so to have some fun with his
automobile. If you're motivated enough to carry off this stunt, no one has to
tell you how to start the mark's car without a key. After you start it, drive to
some very nice homes with pretty lawns. But stay fairly near the theater, so
you can get back there in a hurry. Do donuts, dig out, and otherwise use the
car to make a shambles of lawns, shrubbery, flower beds, etc. Run over
lawn furniture, hit mailboxes, and try to frighten some old people by coming
really close to them with the car.
This is a real hit-and-run mission. Do your dirty driving fast and get
the car back to the theater parking area even faster. Park it and leave. If
you've done enough damage, all sorts of police reports will be out on the car.
The second or third question the police will ask the mark is whether he or
she has any witnesses for the movie alibi.
That can be a real blast. But if you want another sort of pop, dig
deeply into the potato bin for this one. My thanks here go to all those great
truck farmers who say a potato jammed into a vehicle's exhaust pipe is not
explosive, but it will cause all sorts of nasty problems. In one case, the mark
parked his car with the rear end towards his home. His tormentor jammed a
fresh, hard spud tightly into the car's exhaust pipe. The mark started the car
on a cold evening and waited a few moments for the engine to warm.
Meanwhile, the hot gases, unable to escape, built up dangerously behind the
potato....Woom!...KABLOOM!... With an explosive roar, the gases fired
that big, hot, hard potato right into the metal siding of the mark's home, just
fifteen feet away from the exhaust pipe, which acted as a cannon barrel. The
holing and denting of the siding cost $150 and a day to repair.
There are all sorts of other devices that make good muffler bombs. A
firecracker may be shoved into the vehicle's exhaust pipe, pushing it along
with a stiff wire until the explosive device falls into the muffler. It takes
only a few moments of driving with today's hot exhaust gases to explode the
firecracker. Even a fairly small firecracker will cause panic, especially if the
driver is paranoid to start with. If you want to destroy the muffler and drive
the mark's panic into the fantasy of having his/her car really bombed,
substitute an M80 or a shotgun shell for the prankish finger-sized
firecracker.
If the violence and property destruction of this bothers you or causes
you to grimace, consider this next happy face. Most mail-order and novelty
stores sell very realistic rubber-faced masks, resembling everything from an
ape man, through a drooling idiot, on down to a Ronald Reagan mask.
Select one that looks especially gross -- like an old man, or the idiot, or
Richard Nixon. Position is so it looks realistic on the back of your head.
This leaves your vision unobstructed. Head for the road in your car.
Just as another motorist overtakes your vehicle to pass you, lean out
the window. The effect on the approaching motorist would be interesting to
observe, as that other driver will see a drooling goon looking back, directly
at him, with no apparent concern for the road ahead. I bet very few cars
actually pass you with this stunt in operation.
Taking the license plate off a mark's car can be a good shot, even you
don't want to steal the thing for other nefarious purposes. How many times
do you look to see if the plate is on your car? A cop has only to look once. I
bet it would be fun to hear the mark's explanation of where his license plate
has gone.
Don't you get really happy when some defective excuse for a human
suddenly pulls his/her vehicle out directly in front of yours or cuts you off?
Marty Mullin has a solution in hand.
A delightful person, Mullin reveals, "I bought a top-quality pellet
pistol, one of those compressed-air guns, which I keep in my car. You can
use either the cartridge or the pump type -- just to be sure you get one with
enough power to penetrate metal. Get a supply of the .177-caliber pellets,
too. Then, next time some dip pulls out in front of you, pull up behind the
dip's vehicle and get in his/her blind spot. With a truck or van that's easy
enough. Then you bring your pellet gun into action.
"Plunk a shot into the mark's vehicle, the trunk for a car, or the back
of a van or rig. If it's a big truck you can get in quite a few shots, because
the driver is not likely to hear them. A van or car will make a helluva
TWHUNK when that pellet hits, so be cautious.
"There's no discharge noise, because you're not using a firearm. After
your attack, back off and proceed your business as if nothing has happened.
You probably have not taught the mark a lesson, but you feel better for what
you just did -- I guarantee that."
I asked Mullin about the possibility of hitting a passenger who is
riding in the back of the mark's vehicle. He replied, "Then, that passenger
also has every right to be furious with the dippy mark for pulling out in front
of you."
CB Radios
Want to send your neighborhood CB nut a message? This nut is the
CB addict who refuses to filter his/her equipment and thus disrupts TV,
stereo, AM/FM, and other normal communication for blocks. Usually, these
idiots are about as sensitive to other people's feelings as Idi Amin was to the
plight of the poor. In both cases a lesson is called for.
To do this effectively, heed the lesson of Sterling Orco, who says you
must personally interdict the mark's CB antenna. It would be well to do this
when the mark is away from the home area. Unfasten the CB coax line from
the mark's antenna. Then clip two leads of a regular 110-volt line to the CB
coax -- one lead to the center conductor, the other lead to the shield. Small
alligator clips will do nicely. Then, hop down from your perch near the
antenna and plug the other end of the 110-volt wire into your mark's nearest
outdoor socket.
Next time he/she turns on the CB and hits the transmit button...well,
words fail to describe the results adequately. One comment -- even the
repair people will shake their heads.
A bit less destructive, but no less nasty, is the old pin-in-the-coax
trick. You prick a tiny pin through the plastic outer cable and through the
shield. Be sure it touches the center conductor. Then cut the head off the
pin and push it in some more -- out of sight. The plastic should close behind
the pin, making the wound invisible. Just make sure that the pin shortcircuits
the center conductor to the metal outer shield. Do a couple of these
along the coax between the antenna and the CB set. It does stuttering
wonders for the transmission.
Charity
Charity begins at the home of your mark. You simply volunteer
his/her services to the charity's recruiting chairperson, giving the name and
address of your mark. These charity drives are so happy to get volunteers
these days that they will rarely verify your call. That means the first contact
the mark has is when another volunteer shows up at the door with all sorts of
campaign and collection materials. In many cases, the mark is too
embarrassed to refuse, and you've added to his/her workload.
If you think that's a dirty trick to pull on a charity, ask them how many
cents out of each dollar go directly to the victims and other people who are
at the bottom of the line for help. Besides, your mark might turn out to be a
great charity worker.
You can call in generous pledges in your mark's name during
telethons and other charity drives.
You can also call in pledges to bothersome telethons, using double
entendre names. For example, when one public-TV station held another of
its semiweekly fundraisers, several contributors announced over the air as
pledging financial support included Clint Toris, Seymour Kunt, Connie
Lingus.
Margie Kowalski used to work for the Salvation Army. She suggests
that you call the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, or whatever charity and
report your mark for stealing out of the organization's pickup boxes. Report
the mark by his auto license number. Say you work at one of the stores near
the collection box and you've seen the mark rob the box several times. You
can also report this "crime" to the police.
Cheese
It's tried and true, but I bet you haven't heard of it since you were a
kid. This one came from Alabama, the old Limburger-cheese-on-the
muffler-of-a-new-car trick. The exhaust manifold works well, too, as a
surface for a cheese spread. Or you can simply place some of the same
substance behind a radiator in a home or office. Once it's burned on, the
smelly sour effect can last for weeks, despite robust cleaning efforts.
Child Abuse
I heard a real horror story recently where a truly evil-minded teenager
[Hmmm...] swore to child-abuse officers in her county that her parents beat
her. They hadn't and didn't. Never mind; the bureaucrats came bouncing
out of the woodwork, and the harried parents had to appear in court to
defend themselves against the lies of a teenager with mental problems
[Hmmm II...]. The parents were looked upon as villains, even though the
judge dismissed the charges as unfounded. Their attorney (yes, they had to
hire one to fight government persecution) advised them against a jury trial
because they'd lose on the emotionalism of the issue, regardless of the facts.
Nice.
All this leads up to the fact that you can report your mark as a childabuse
offender. Acting as a "concerned neighbor," you can tell the
authorities. The hassle is unreal. After you've done this, a few anonymous
letters to the mark's employer about the "child-abuse thing" will help out.
CIA
Your mark might have sneaky points you never thought about. For
example, maybe your mark would make a good CIA employee. You could
easily find out. Write a letter of application to the agency using your mark's
name. The agency get hundreds of letters from would-be action agents, such
as unemployed gangsters, karate freaks, ex-soldiers, Walter Mitty types, etc.
I doubt that they take many of these seriously, but they might be interested
in talking with a highly qualified technical person, such as an analyst, area
expert, journalist with oodles of foreign experience, language expert, or
economist. Advanced college degrees and military service abroad as an
officer are fine credentials for your mark. Make up a good solid
background. It is probably illegal for you to make a false application in your
mark's name using phony credentials.
Send resumes to: Personnel Representative
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
You can also send in an application in your mark's name for a CIA job
at the field office in the nearest city. Yes, they are listed in the telephone
book.
Classified Ads
Classified advertisements in your local newspaper are inexpensive
little bullets that can cause major wounds to the mark's psyche if properly
aimed. For instance, suppose you had a score to settle with some bitchy
neighbors. You could insert a classified ad to "sell" their automobile. Price
it five hundred dollars less than market value, instruct callers to call after
midnight (shift work is the explanation you can offer), and explain in the ad
that quick cash is needed for an emergency. That will bring in the phone
calls.
You can also put your mark's house up for sale. Again, ask potential
customers to either call or visit at hours that will be very inconvenient to the
mark.
The "personals" in newspapers can provide even more fun. Maybe
your mark ought to advertise for "young boy and girl models to pose for 'art'
pictures." You should use his/her home or business telephone here for return
calls, whichever would cause more difficulty for the mark.
Placing ads is a snap. Most newspapers let you do it right over the
phone, and most of the ad people I've talked to say they rarely verify a
classified ad. Take a tip from that and don't make it outlandish. As with any
practical joke, there has to be a credible amount of reality to the premise for
the sting to work.
While you're thinking of newspapers, don't forget those sexy tabloids and
their really gross cousins that let readers advertise all sorts of weird sex
things. I don't know whether any of that is on the level, but it's worth
finding out -- in your mark's name, of course. Maybe you'll be doing
him/her a favor. But somehow I doubt it -- there's no such thing as a free
lunch.
You might help the mark share his new friends' sexual talents. Place
an ad in one of the target audience magazines -- the publication that runs
very explicit and very honest classifieds. If you're not sure, contact a local
sympathizer and ask him/her for help.
You might write your ad copy like this:
"Soft white male aged 35 wants to play with black lady with large
buttocks. Bi-couples welcomed for Greek and French culture."
You can really make bondage and S/M optional, depending upon
reality, the publication, its audience, and your mark. You really ought to
study the target publication before you word the ad. The kicker is that you
will register the mark as the sponsor of the classified ad. Read a section of
this book that tells you about using a neighbor's address and the mark's name
before you get started.
If you decide to run kinky classified ads for your mark in SCREW,
BALL, and whatever, be sure you get some copies of the issue in which the
ad runs. That way you can send originals or Xerox copies to the mark's
neighbors, relatives, business associates, and friends. Enclose a brief note
asking how they can even admit knowing such a perverted person. Offer to
pray for them. You could use the name and address of another friend,
neighbor, or business associate as the return address for this note.
Help your mark out of the closet by running a classified
announcement ad in homosexual publications. Have her/him grandly and
proudly announce that he or she is gay and has dated and/or married only for
cover. Now, he/she is coming out and telling the world she/he has taken a
lover -- and name a friend, neighbor, or business associate as that lover.
Libelous? Yes, it is. Don't get caught.
Using classified advertising, Bill Colbeley had an auction for one of
his many marks. He followed the usual auction format to prepare the
newspaper ad, then ran it when the mark and his family were away for a
weekend. The ad was one of those "Job transfer--everything must go--
fantastic bargains" types so normal to an industrial community. But let
Sweet Old Bill tell the rest of his story:
"I set the time of the auction for 7:00 A.M., so that just as the sleepy
mark was rolling out of the sack about that hour, he looks out on his yard
and sees about three hundred salesgoers out there trampling all over his
lawn, garden, and flowers. It took an hour for the mark and the police he
called to get the crowd out of there."
Although it's not strictly a classified advertisement, the little indexcard
notices that people place on bulletin boards in bars, supermarkets,
laundromats, and other public places are great ways to harass your mark.
Just about anything you can use in a newspaper can be used on these more
personal notices. But the advantages are, they don't cost anything but the
time required to prepare and post them, and you can be a lot more wordy,
descriptive, and personal than you can with a newspaper advertisement.
Folks seem to read these very regularly too, as I know from my personal use
of this community advertising medium with legitimate messages.
Clergy
One of the most useful bits of armament in the trickster's arsenal is a
set of clerical garb. Lenny Bruce proved how financially useful this disguise
is when he panhandled Miami dressed in a religious costume. But then,
organized religion has known this for years, profitably practicing their old
proverb "Let us prey."
Obtain and make use of overt religious garb. It creates a wonderfully
secure and trustworthy image. Drug marketeers often use priest and nun
outfits when moving dope. In Ireland, weapons and explosives are
smuggled by kindly-looking middle-aged persons disguised as religious
figures.
Coins
If consumer attorney Dale Richards is correct, more Americans lose
money to coin-operated vending machines than lose money gambling or
paying taxes to the IRS. What's also astounding is that so few people rise
above simple vandalism as a response.
Richards explains, "Many vending companies are quite liberal in their
refund policy. They don't question most refund requests. However, getting
refunds is annoying to people, it takes time, and the machines shouldn't
cheat people in the first place."
People who work for vending companies claim that customer
vandalism is why the machines don't work in the first place. Critics claim
that vandalism-repair cost is built into the price for the goods and services
you get from coin machines. I'm not here to adjudicate this debate, but to
pass along some alternative philosophy.
Abbie Hoffman says that every time you drop a coin down the slot of
some vending machine you are losing money needlessly. There are many
inexpensive foreign coins that will duplicate the American version and
operate vending equipment. It may be tough to get some of these coins,
because many legitimate dealers look suspiciously upon attempted purchases
of large numbers of cheapie foreign coins. You could tell them that you use
them for jewelry. Apparently, many coins dealers are establishment
snitches, so be careful.
Here, according to Hoffman, are the more useful foreign coins. The
Icelandic five-auran piece is the most effective substitute for an American
quarter. They are hard to come by, since they are no longer minted. The
Uruguayan ten-centisimo coin will also substitute for the U.S. quarter in a
variety of vending machines, parking meters, telephones, toll gates,
laundromats, etc. It does not work in cigarette machines. The Danish fiveore
piece works in just about anything but pop and cigarette machines.
Dime-sized coins include the Malaysian penny, which works in a
variety of machines and devices that take a dime. Some of the newer
vending machines will reject this dime substitute. Another ersatz dime is the
Trinidad penny.
You might be able to have friends who travel abroad get you rolls of
these coins for collection purposes or to make jewelry.
Computers
The computer won't really be human until it can make a mistake, then
cover up by blaming the error on some other helpless machine. More than
one critic has pointed out that it is machines, not people, that both run and
ruin our society. It seems perfectly proper, then, to seek vengeance against
these tyrannical mechanical masters of ours. Most of us have the advantage
when fighting a machine, because we can reason, we can note shades of
gray, and we can think abstractly, beyond a set program. Machines cannot
do this, unless some person translates these abstractions into programmed
sets of yes or no.
The classic way of fighting a computer is to punch a few extra holes
in the computer card. This, of course, screws up the system, and the
computer regurgitates your card. A supervisor must handle the situation
manually, which costs money and time. People punch these extra holes in
cards using a keypunch machine at a nearby school, or they simply and
carefully cut a keypunch pattern with an X-acto art knife.
This sticky trick delights repair people, in addition to you. Place a
large strip of Scotch tape on several computer cards. The slippery surface
causes cards to fall off the track and into the bowels of the machine. A
repair person has to come and perform mechanical surgery on the machine
to remove your fatal paper bullets that felled the machine. This sort of dirty
trick can tie up equipment for several hours of very, very costly down time.
Should the opportunity arise that you have a few secure moments with
some reels of computer tapes and you want to screw up whoever or whatever
controls the data on these tapes, you might try passing a portable
electromagnet back and forth across the tapes. It erases them just the way a
bulk eraser cleans off your audio tapes at home. In many cases computertape
records are the only records kept by many companies and schools.
Contractors
Just suppose your new home wasn't quite what the contractor ordered
and promised. If you're lucky, you'll discover this sad fact before he's done
working on the house. If not, you'll have to chase him to his next job site. I
once went through that many years ago, and it can be fun.
Anyway, here's what you do. Erect a huge sign on your lot that says
something like, BUY THIS UNDER-CONSTRUCTED, POORLY DONE
HOME -- CHEAP. Display the contractor's name and telephone number
prominently. When he complains, tell him you wouldn't think of subjecting
your family to the horrors of living in such a poorly constructed dump, and if
he buys it you'll take down the sign. Have a list of things you think are
wrong with the house. You have already shown him your list if you had to
eventually resort to the big sign. Show him again. The heading of the list
should state his name, address, and telephone number along with your
general beef about the poor quality of his work, followed by the specific
complaints. Mimeograph this list so your contractor will think you're
handing them out faster than a politician's calling card. It's worked well in
the past. You should get your grievances satisfied.
A man calling himself Hank suggests one for the construction trade.
He says that if your mark is building anything from concrete and you or your
allies have access to that concrete before it is poured, add concentrated
hydrochloric acid to it. Hank claims, "I've seen it work -- it causes slow but
continual deterioration of the structure from corrosion."
Credit Cards
Designed as a credit convenience for consumers and a big profit
turner for business, credit cards are impersonal pieces of plastic whose
power potential can be awesome. The only way to use a credit card
intelligently is to pay off each month's balance, avoiding the outrageously
high interest charges. But even paying on time doesn't always guarantee
perfection.
You are dealing with computers when you use credit cards. God help
you if the computer rings you up as owing more money than you do or if the
computer slaps you with late payment, resulting in an interest charge. Yes,
there are consumer-protection laws designed to help you. But as more than
a few people will tell you, there is often a great deal of difference between
principal and principle.
Kathy Ross had a bad time with magazine-subscription service
through which she ran a credit-card charge. Not only did her new
subscriptions get mixed up with renewals, but she was charged for items she
never ordered. She followed the consumer-protection rules, and within
seven months she was being billed for fifty dollars in interest charges alone,
still didn't have the subscription mess straightened out, and was getting
dunning letters from the credit-card company, calling her irresponsible.
Computers didn't understand her human pleas for logical service. Kathy
never did get justice. She paid the charges, finally giving up because "it was
easier."
If you can get the mark's credit-card number, order a huge bunch of
mail-order merchandise for him/her. Use the telephone to order things too.
The secret here, according to a former security agent for one of the card
companies, is to keep the amount of each individual purchase under forty
dollars, because telephone confirmations are made on greater amounts. Just
make hundreds of forty-dollar purchases in a short time.
Using the mark's credit-card information to place telephone orders
involves some investigation, according to Robert Schoster, a master
manipulator. Sometimes, Schuster will simply call the mark's home,
pretending to be a verification clerk at some local credit union or bank.
Schuster gives the mark's full name and address, then asks the mark or the
mark's spouse to please verify the credit-card numbers. If it works, and
Schuster says it does ninety-nine percent of the time, you are now ready to
order all sorts of goods and services on behalf of the mark.
If you don't have his/her credit-card number and you feel honest, don't
steal with it. Go a step beyond and report the mark's card as stolen. Pretend
you are the mark. That will cause some upset for the real mark when he/she
tries to use the card a week or so later.
This is fraud, but one recycled Yippie who is now billed as a
professional psychic for the various supermarket tabloids told me how he
applied for and got various credit cards merely by lying on his application.
Easily getting cards, he would run the credit to the extreme and beyond on
the cards, survive the corporate dunning letters, then move to a new location
without benefit of forwarding address. Despite my doubts, several
corporations I asked denied that they passed along these losses to the rest of
us in the form of outrageous interest charges.
Delivery Of Consumables
For years kids have ripped off beer distributors' trucks, pizza wagons,
etc. The scam is to call the place from a pay phone and give them a fake
name in some high-rise apartment. Give them the pay-phone number and
stick around there for a while, since some places call back to confirm orders.
When the truck arrives with the order, and while he is up there trying to find
a nonexistent customer, you could help yourself to what's left in the truck.
Why would anyone want rip off an innocent beer-delivery truck or
pizza wagon? Fred Littman has one reason, saying "I ordered a pizza at one
place locally, and it was awful. I spoke with the manager, and he told me to
get lost and refused to give me my money back. I figured I had some free
pizza coming to make up for that."
Lefty Gaylor has another reason: "We swipe beer from only one
distributor, because everyone knows he's a big Mafia type, and they rip off
everyone else, so why not steal from them?"
Isn't stealing from the Mafia dangerous?
"Not if you don't get caught, and this one's too dumb to know any
better. He blames the drivers, and they get mad and figure if they're gonna
get blamed, they might as well steal beer from him. That way we multiply
our efforts."
Dirty Old Men
If you know some jerk who's a terminal lecher, not just a dirty old
man, but a truly, grossly obnoxious swine, the following is a sure-fire
method that's right on target. You need either three or four associates,
depending on whether you personally want to go into the field on this one.
One of your associates must be a comely young lady.
The drill goes like this. The mark is told about the young lady. She is
described as being either an unfaithful wife or a hot-to-trot daughter,
depending on the age and circumstance. The mark is told she has eyes and
everything else for him, and that if he wants to have a lot of heavy action,
you or an associate will make the introduction.
As you approach the fateful house on the evening decided upon, you
or your associate, acting as a "guide," must stress that the husband or father
is a fiery and jealous man and that she takes you on as a secret lover because
of insatiable lust, etc. Build up both the sexual suspense and the thrill of the
forbidden. You have to get his adrenaline and imagination cooking really
well.
The mark and his guide are at the door and the sweet young thing
opens it and moans out a greeting. She should be dressed --or undressed-- in
the appropriate fashion. The mark should have just enough time to wet his
lips and survey her architectural lines. About the time his eyes bug is time
for the next act.
Instantly, a large man comes roaring around the corner of the house,
bellowing in rage about the honor of his wife or daughter. The guide
screams in shrill terror, "Run! Run like hell! It's the husband [or father]!"
As the mark and guide start to dash away, a couple of shots are fired,
and the guide falls. As he falls, he screams to the mark, "Jesus, keep
running! He's killed me!" Another shot rings out; then all is silent.
All is not really silent. The mark's heart is probably thudding against
his chest like a caged elephant. It's a great idea to carry on with this scenario
for a few days, with you or another conspirator, who has been undercover,
keeping the mark apprised of the guide's condition from the supposed
gunshot wound. It would also be good to float the rumor that the father or
husband is spending all his time looking for "the other bastard who got
away."
The mark won't stop his fearful shakes long enough to wonder why
the police haven't arrested the husband or father. Maybe, when he does
come to this logical question, he will call the police and ask for protection.
This scam turns a lot of corners before the mark finally realizes that he's
been had. The police probably won't be as amused as you are, but you'll not
know about that. The mark will.
If you know the right street people, and if you're going into dirty tricks
you must know them, you will have trickster access to ladies with social
diseases. Some of the veterans of the streets will help you out between
treatments for a price. Younger, less-experienced ladies don't know they
have the diseases, but their pimp or madam does. Think how much fun it
would be if you could hire one of these venereal versions of Typhoid Mary
to dazzle, pick up, and seduce your mark. This scam has been pulled off
successfully by at least four people I know personally. It is not that hard if
you plan, bargain, and buy ahead.
Drugs
Once, a very close friend of mine was badly hurt by a former
employee who not only had been stealing from the company, but when the
employee left, she said and did some terrible things that damaged my friend
personally and professionally. Revenge was the best medicine, and he did
extract his dose.
He waited a year to get even. It was worth it. The woman has moved
to another job in a city about two hundred miles away, in the next state.
Having access to drugs, my friend got a small amount of cocaine and planted
it in her car during a special visit to the other city for just that purpose. He
then used a pay phone to call police and give them the lady's name. He told
them that she'd just burned him on a drug deal and that he was turning her in
because of it.
As this is written, the case is going to court. Happily for my friend,
this female actually had a bit of marijuana on her person when she got
busted for the planted coke. Talk about good luck. The third stroke of luck
was that this bust took place in New York State. He has followed the case
through the other city's newspaper and through a friend. He says the police
aren't buying her story of innocence. The best part is that by now, she can't
think of anyone who would have a motive to hurt her.
Having drugs around is a very dangerous risk. But if the stakes are
right, it can become a very serious business for the mark. You should know
that your call to the police will be recorded. Disguise you voice
mechanically by using a re-recording tape, or inhale some helium from a
balloon just before you make the call, since it will alter you voice totally. If
you're a good thespian, try to use a foreign or regional accent. Speak very
softly, also. Don't stay on the line for more than thirty to forty-five seconds.
Do your number and hang up.
An old head like William Harvey would get a chuckle from this, if he
were still with us to enjoy it. If his mark was straight or naive about dope,
Bill thought it was fun to mail him/her bags full of chopped weeds, oregano,
etc., with some incense sprinkled on for scent. As an added touch he
included one or two joints rolled using the bogus weed, with a note saying,
"Enjoy the samples on me."
These materials were mailed to the mark's home address using a slight
variation in the spelling of the name. Ideally, the mark thought she/he had
been confused as an innocent dupe in a dope deal. After a day or two,
Harvey had a male with a rough, raspy voice call the mark to ask if some
package had been misdirected to him/her by accident. The caller suggested
that other, nastier accidents might happen if the mark did anything un-cool
like calling the authorities. Naturally, the mark already had done this. What
would you expect a mark-type person to do? After all, that's how people get
to be marks.
As a postgraduate version of this scam, Harvey used to send a
package containing some suspicious-looking white crystalline powder
(sometimes with a touch of brown) using the same bit just described.
Environmental Rapists
If you dislike land rapists, such as big developers, big real estaters,
gas and oil drillers, etc., then your first order of business is to read Edward
Abbey's THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG, twice. The first time you read
for fun and pleasure; the second reading might be for tactics, as in a manual.
For example, if you've had unpleasant dealings with utility companies
"creating progress" in your area, for example building roads, drilling gas or
oil wells, stripping coal, deep mining, etc. you know the feelings. The
monkey wrenchers have an answer.
Note the advice of one of Abbey's protagonists:
"Always pull up survey stakes. Anywhere you find them. Always.
That's the first goddamned general order in this monkey wrench business.
Always pull up survey stakes."
He should have added that you should always disguise the dirt from
the stake hole, tamp it down, and disguise the scar, so the enemy cannot
simply replace the stake. A further suggestion would be to move the survey
stakes...perhaps enough that a lawsuit could be instituted against the
environmental rapists.
According to a Cat operator I shared several lemonades with a few
times, Karo syrup poured into the fuel tank of heavy machinery is enough to
deadline the equipment for a thorough bit of maintenance.
"It'll turn to solid carbon, that syrup, and seize the engine up tight. It
makes a helluva mess of an engine. I'd suggest about three to four quarts per
tankful.
"Now look, though," he cautioned, his eyes glinting hard enough to
stare open clam shells at a hundred yards, "if you did that to my own
machine I'd come after you hard. But if it was a company machine or if
they'd leased my machine, hell, I'd probably buy you a drink afterward!"
In the summer of 1978, about 150 angry farmers in Minnesota held a
beer-and-hot-dog party to celebrate the coming of the "bolt weevils." The
party and the "weevils" cost a utility giant a quarter of a million dollars.
The farmers were fighting mad over the invasion of the huge utility
conglomerates who were running their power towers and lines across the
countryside, ruining farms and dairy operations. All legal and moral efforts
to oppose this land rape failed. That's when the "bolt weevils" came to the
farmers' rescue.
After beating off state police by using Wrist Rocket slingshots to fire
ball bearings at patrol-car windows, the farmers brought out their wrenches
and cutting tools. Soon, after two of the 150-foot-tall, hundred-thousanddollar
transmission towers lay smashed on the ground, victims of the "bolt
weevils."
A dozen years ago, these farmers were staunch, conservative
Americans, firmly behind "their" government, and they claim that the
radicals of the sixties were right. That's comforting, at last.
One farmer says, "The goddamn government's playing red herring,
bleating about Arab terrorists and weathermen and the underground. Hell,
it's the people --us, the little people-- they better watch out for. We're the
revolutionaries, and we're ready to fight.
"They may finish this power line and others, but the greedy, land
raping bastards will never keep it in operation. There's not enough guards
for that. And more people are coming around to our way."
You could almost hear an echo of "All the power to the people," with
not hint of a pun.
A major gas company was ripping and raping all over the countryside,
using the national need for natural gas as its excuse for avarice. One
landowner whose livestock were disrupted by the gas-drilling operation
decided to get even, quietly.
Farmer Dale explained, "I knew a little bit about the state
environmental regulations, so I decided to help the gas company violate as
many of them as I could, even if it mean sacrificing a few things of my own.
"Late one evening, I kicked over the hose from their fuel tank and
opened the valve. By morning, the result was nearly seven hundred gallons
of diesel fuel in the stream below my place. It took members of the
sportsmen’s club about a mile downstream two hours to get state officials
out there to the well site. Because of a phone call I'd made earlier, the local
newspaper sent a reporter, too.
"Later that day, I dumped my barrel of old crankcase oil on the
drilling access road, and you should have seen the foreman's pickup when it
hit that oil. He slammed through my cornfield. I acted really wild, raising
hell about first polluting our stream, then wrecking my crops and spilling oil
on the road. He was shook up to beat hell and blamed his own truckers for
leaking oil. I billed their company for three-hundred dollars in damages, and
he endorsed the bill for payment right there."
Farmer Dale did some other things that week, like move and replace
those "Underground Cable" markers used by the power and phone
companies to mark buried wires. Naturally, the driller's dozer tore up the
real wires, creating further havoc. He sprayed weed killer on his own crops,
within a hundred-yard radius of the gas well, then raised hell with the state
agricultural people. He submitted a bill for a thousand dollars for damaging
his crops, although the gas company balked -- at first.
"Finally I dumped some chemicals in my old well and had the water
tested (he had had the water tested prior to the drilling, of course) by the
county. They reported it had gotten polluted during the time the gas well
was being drilled. I turned it all over to my attorney at this time."
His attorney filed to have the drilling permit revoked and also to sue
the company for huge damage settlements. The case was settled out of
court, allowing the company to finish its rape, yet at a very high price,
including unlimited free gas and a lot of cash for Farmer Dale.
Another combatant in the never-ending war between the land rapists
and landowners or environmentalists borrowed the old OSS tire-spike idea,
married it to the Malay gate of Indo-Chinese fame, and put some heavy
vehicles on the shelf for a while. Angered because the well drillers for a
natural-gas company were filling their mammoth water-tank trucks from a
trout stream that ran through his property, a landowner spiked their plans.
He took a two-inch-thick piece of twelve-inch board and pounded five teninch
housing spikes through it. The board was about eighteen inches long.
He did the same thing to another board.
The ambush site was the deeply rutted pull-off spot the heavy water
trucks used when they sucked thousands of gallons of good water from the
clean stream. The giant trucks had callously dug deep ruts, which filled with
water from their sloshing loads. Our combatant placed his spiked boards
tips upward, into the ruts. He did this on a random schedule over a one
month period, disabling a total of seven trucks and finally forcing the land
rapists and their trucks to another fill-up point.
As a postscript, he enjoyed this activity so much that he built dozens
of the spike devices and became a traveling one-man hit squad, placing the
traps whenever he saw evidence of the heavy water-tank trucks.
Explosives
Now that the feds have outlawed fireworks, you'd better save all the
M80s you can find. Extremely versatile devices, M80s are excellent
propellants for other substances. For example, this stunt started out as a
dorm prank at Clapper Packer University but soon escalated into more
deadly sport, which went like this. Put some fresh feces, the looser the
better, into a large Baggie. Gently break the glass on a large-wattage
lightbulb, but do not disturb the filament. Even more gently attach the
filament to the fuse of the M80. Screw the bulb carefully back into a ceiling
socket. Finally, move the bag of feces up and around the light fixture. Be
certain the fuse and filament do not touch the feces, but see that the M80 is
into the substance. Tape the bag to the ceiling.
Naturally, all this presupposes you have access to the mark's room or
to a room where the mark is likely to be the one who comes in and turns on
the light. One cautionary note: Be sure the light switch is off when you
screw in the bulb. If it's not, you have about four seconds to avoid getting
nasty coverage from the M80's blast. Done correctly, this is a spectacular
stunt. As the designer of this one, George Dierk adds, "You don't have to
limit your spatter substance to feces. Paint, cheap perfume, acid, and CS gas
all have their place."
Gun powder has a lot of uses in addition to filling up a portion of
cartridges. If your mark has an outdoor barbecue, you could sprinkle a cup
of old-fashioned black powder around the bottom of the grill. When the
powder ignites it will do so with a huge, whooshy flash, accompanied by a
great white cloud of smelly smoke. I would hate to imagine the multiple
effects of such a pyrotechnical display on one of those fancy grills powdered
by LP gas. Wow!
Don't let your imagination rest with the cookout grill. Remember
fireplaces, wood stoves, ovens, etc. The experts suggest you use black
powder rather than the more modern smokeless powders. Black powder
really works!
If you can't get a regular smoke-bomb device, a smoke grenade, or
something real from the military, make your own. According to Doctor
Abraham Hoffman, the noted chemist, you combine four parts sugar to six
parts saltpeter (potassium nitrate). You heat this mixture over a very low
flame until it starts to blend into a plastic substance. When it begins to gel,
remove it from the heat and allow it to cool. He suggests you stick a few
wooden match heads into the mass while it's still pliable. You also add a
fuse at this point. The smoke device is non-explosive and nonflammable.
But a pound of this mixture will produce enough thick smoke to cover a city
block. Watch which way the wind blows.
John E Warrenburger likes to mess up people's nervous systems. One
of his favorite non-lethal tricks involving non-explosives is a good bit of
cardiac theater.
John says, "I bundle a few of those road flares -- the ones in the red
jackets -- together and wrap them with black plastic tape. Connect this with
some coiled wiring to a ticking alarm clock and place it so your mark will
get the full visual and aural effect.
Fillers
Trickster Aynesworth Belin is thrilled with the recent introduction of
the super-foam products. These are urethane-and-resin compounds, usually
in a spray can, which billow out and expand into a mass at least thirty times
the original volume. They harden quickly, often within five minutes.
Another version is a two-part liquid that when mixed does even more
astounding things. One quart will give you the equal of 150 pounds of
plaster.
A gallon of super foam will make eight cubic feet of the ultra-strong
material, which is water, erosion, and corrosion proof, as well as heat and
cold resistant. The irony is that these products have been marketed by major
corporations for various legitimate filler jobs. They rely on advertising and
societal brainwashing to make certain the lulled citizens use the product only
for its duly intended purpose. If there was ever a product that belongs in the
arsenal of the dirty trickster, this one is it. I took an informal survey of
fifteen hardware stores in my area. All had the product in stock. Yet one
clerk told me, "Most [buyers] are young kids...got no good use in mind."
I bet some of them have a very good use to mind. What can I say but,
"Try it, you'll like it," even if the mark won't?
Forgery
Forgery is a fine art form, very useful to the trickster. During World
War II, for example, the British Security Coordination often forged
letterheads, documents, and official cables to thwart Hitler's efforts in the
early dark days of 1939 through 1941. Some of their efforts were
spectacular, especially in South America, working covertly with sympathetic
American officials, officially neutral at that time. Some of their tactics are
highly adaptable to today's dirty trickster. Full details are yours for the
reading in A MAN CALLED INTREPID. Another excellent reference is
THE NEW PAPER TRIP, which will give you everything you need to know
about forging to get even.
Garage Sales
Ever have a garage sale? Ever been to one? They're incredible, and
they seem to bring out the most in worst people. Even I, a thick-skinned,
terminal misanthrope, was awed at the gall of some people who demand to
see your entire house or who pound on your door at 6:00 A.M. to get a "head
start" on a garage sale you announced in the paper starting at 9:00 A.M.
Getting the message?
Let's have a garage sale at your mark's residence. Or let's have it in
your mark's name but at the neighbor's address. List all sorts of outlandish
bargains and tell people you have guns, old china, glassware, and dozens of
inexpensive antiques. You want obnoxious gawkers, not buyers. Remember
that! Naturally, the mark and/or the neighbor will know nothing of this until
the first knock on the door at 6:00 A.M.
"I used to get all sorts of odd-hour calls from home-remodeling-andrepair
salespeople at this one local company," recalls Jim Kenslogger. "I
must have called them a half dozen times to ask that my name and number
be removed from their files. No luck. So I decided to change my luck.
"I learned who their chief executive was and pulled the bogus-garagesale
number on him, complete with newspaper ad. Then I started calling his
home at odd hours, asking if he were the party having the garage sale. He
was really out of sorts after about a week of this.
"I stopped, and about ten days later I got another routine sales call
from his company. I called right back, asked to speak to that executive, and
told him I was damn tired of being bothered by his salespeople and could he
get them to stop calling me. He pledged he would and told me wearily,
'Buddy, I know just how you feel. I'll surely take care of it for you.' I had
no trouble after that, so neither did he."
Gases
A serious dirty trickster should have a supply of ammonium sulfide.
This liquid is loads cheaper to buy than milk, booze, or gasoline. It smells
so awful that no one, not even the most terminal of coke sniffers, can stand
to be around it once it has been brought into play. It may be sprayed or
vaporized. Using this stuff as a base, Kurt Saxon offers a very effective
formula for making your own stinkum in his book THE POOR MAN'S
JAMES BOND. The stuff is so potent that it should have to be registered
somehow with someone. Phew. But it's easy to make, and as long as it's
harassing your mark's glands, what do you care?
A little leave-behind hostess present can be a small, uncapped bottle
of butyric acid. Propped near the door you're closing, it will be knocked
over when the mark enters the room. Phew.
Crowd-dispersal devices are also good choices for the trickster's
arsenal. These include spray canisters, gas grenades, pens, and other
chemical-dispensing weapons. Many of these items may be purchased over
the counter in some states. They're generally sold under a variety of trade
names and generally contain CS gas, which is a military version of tear gas.
If you obtain it without undue risk, MACE is an excellent choice. Many
manuals tell you how to make your own MACE.
You can buy many of these materials by mail order. Check current
shipping regulations and any laws against these devices in your own area
first, of course. One of the best mail-order companies in this business is
American Colonial Armament, P.O. Box F, Chicago Ridge, Illinois 60415.
If you are or can appear to be a law-enforcement official you can have
access to a veritable smorgasbord of sophisticated gas weapons by getting a
catalog from the F. Morton Pitt Company, at 1444 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San
Gabriel, California 91776. Finally, if you prefer to brew up your own gases,
get a copy of Kurt Saxon's classic book THE POOR MAN'S JAMES
BOND. He tells you how to do it all in your own kitchen workshop. You
can get his book from Atlan Formularies, P.O. Box 438, Eureka, California
95501.
From Elmer Bill, our gardening editor, comes the charming advice
that spray cans of Raid and other insecticides provide you with an
improvised defensive weapon. The stuff burns the eyes badly and will fire
an eight- to ten-foot spray.
This buffet of gaseous ideas is method only. The rationale behind
why you would use such tactics is your own business, of course. But at
times when people or institutions have done you dirty -- a dose or so of
noxious gas may help set the record straight for you.
Graffiti
Contrary to popular belief, some people -- usually the creepy ones you
want for this stunt -- do call names and numbers found in bar restrooms.
Harvey Rankin and Festerwald Ray proved this premise in their study
SCRAWL ON THE WALL. What you learn from them is that you should
write you mark's spouse's first name and phone number and a boldly stated
sexual attraction (use your imagination) in every restroom of every bar in
town. Biker and jock bars are usually the best.
As a follow-up, you can tune in your tape deck to a pop country song,
call the number yourself, and sound drunk. If you're lucky, the mark will
answer. Tell the mark why you're calling and where you got the name and
number. It is hoped that you'll be the only ringer among a large crowd of
real callers.
Commercial graffiti are available in a form known as billboards and
posters. You could have posters or billboards printed to announce your
mark's coming out of the homosexual closet. Or your bogus billboard could
announce a conservative political candidate's personal advocacy of gun
control, gay rights, blacks, Chicanos, abortion, etc. Your political candidate
may actually support busing. If so, you billboard for him should indicate his
violent opposition to it. And so on.
Bumper stickers are another form of graffiti. You can get bogus ones
printed in the same manner as billboards and posters. Or you can use
legitimate purposes, such as slapping strongly adhesive bumper stickers that
champion your political candidate -- mark to the painted rear-deck surfaces
of automobiles in a shopping-mall lot. It might be fun sometime to sit
around thinking up other creatively rotten things you could do with bumper
stickers to get even with someone.
For example, you could get bumper stickers printed that say, GAY IS
GREAT...TRY IT, and place these on the automobiles of local bikers, right
wingers, clergy, and others who feel threatened by homosexuals. You could
get bumper stickers that say, HONK IF YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE TOO, and
put them on the autos of marks whom you feel are qualified. BAN
HANDGUNS or HUNT HUNTERS bumper stickers go great on the
property of redneck gun nuts. Or put NRA FOREVER! and JUST TRY TO
TAKE MY GUN AWAY! on the property of the simple and misguided
wimps who really think gun control serves any useful purpose.
Other fun bumper stickers can say things like, BEER DRINKERS
GET MORE HEAD; SUCK MY TAILPIPE; HONK IF YOU'RE HORNY;
HOORAY FOR THE KKK; or DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES. Stickers
featuring swastikas or Soviet flags can also be used creatively.
Highways
An activist can have fun on the roadway, too. Can you imagine the
damage possible if one were to substitute a road sign that read, GROSS
WEIGHT 15 TONS, for the original sign on a bridge that read GROSS
LOAD 5 TONS? One protesting employee did this at his employer's Ohio
plant and had materials shipments shut down for eight days.
In World War II, it was common for enemy agents on all sides to turn
road signs so as to misdirect military convoys, screwing up operations. The
same tactic could be used today, even if your only enemy is some
governmental branch or agency.
In the annals of highway history no one has seen the equal of the
many low points of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation,
traditionally a repository for political hacks, Mafia underlings, patronage
hogtroughers, and the terminally incompetent. M. Harvey Shopp, a veteran
political trickster, has all sorts of suggestions for highway fun such as
painting sawhorses to look like official blockades and using them to close
highways, bridges, etc.
Another of Shopp's ideas is to produce bogus DETOUR signs and
place them at strategic locations where they will be sure to screw up
highway traffic.
The road woes of Allen McDonald illustrate the rationale behind these
moves. Whenever the county in which he lived did road repair to the bridge
near his home, they always parked their equipment in his yard. When
county road scrapers went by, they piled a line of debris high enough to
close his driveway. In winter, they also closed his own freshly shoveled
driveway, this time with ice-hard snow and frozen slush. All calls to county
officials were answered with only the uncaring and operationally impotent
cluckings of the tongue.
"I decided to return some of the favors," McDonald said. "I began to
turn road and other directional signs around. I stole a couple of BRIDGE
OUT signs in another county and placed them in front of perfectly good
bridges in our county. I once called the local radio station and announced
several road repairs that would mandate detours -- telling them I was a
county road super, of course -- which really screwed up local traffic for a
couple of days.
"The upshot is that the county got a lot of nasty calls and even more
bad media publicity, and the county commissioners agreed to investigate
these problems 'caused' by the road people. Naturally, in the midst of all this
I also brought up my beefs about their conduct, offering to testify at the
hearings. All abuses against my property quickly stopped. So I stopped my
counter-abuse program."
Check the "Joggers" section of this book to learn about the OSS tire
spikes of World War II infamy.
Homes
All sorts of things have homes -- snails, snakes, groundhogs, weasels,
Japanese beetles, even marks. One vengeful way of getting even with a
mark is to destroy the moat to the castle of his/her home. The idea is to hit
close to home, for both physical and the psychological destruction involved.
One example started at the apartment of Pat Konely. Because the
landlord refused to make needed roof repairs, several rainstorms flooded
Konely's apartment, damaging personal property. The landlord also refused
to pay damages, and Konely didn't have the money to fight the landlord's
attorney.
Pat Konely admits the response wasn't very funny, but it did put a
damper on the mark's day and his own home. It worked because the mark's
front door had one of those mail slots cut in it. Konely says that this stunt
works wonders when the mark is not aware of what's going on until the poor
drip really gets the message. Here's what Konely suggests. Hook a hose,
ideally the mark's, to the outdoor faucet. Unscrew the power nozzle so you
have the bare hose. Carry it to the mail slot and quietly fit the bare hose end
through the slot and into the house. Got the picture? Good. Konely says
you just turn on the faucet and hope the mark has slow reactions. Most
tricksters would agree that it's hardly sporting to do this when the mark is
away from home.
"That would be like shooting puppies in a barrel," Konely snorts. "At
least tip the barrel over and give them a running start, so to speak."
If your mark hates cats, be sure to place dead fish in obscure and
unpleasant places around his/her abode. Do this at night. If you want feline
audio accompaniment, tie a large dead fish from a tree limb or pole just out
of the reach of the neighborhood cats. The nearer to the mark's bedroom
window, the better.
The modern epoxy glues are a miracle to many and a menace to
others. The latter is exemplified by the exasperation of a person who's just
discovered that someone has squirted a load of strong glue into her/his door
lock. (Liquid solder works too.)
You know all those vents in the back and top of a television set? If
you ever pour a bunch of iron filings down in there, some interesting things
will happen to the mark's set the next time it is turned on.
How about some party humor? If your mark doesn't know you're
getting back at him yet, you might even find yourself a guest in the target
home. You could start off your festivities by quieting yourself away from
the crowd, locating the family freezer, and either turning the unit down
greatly, pulling the plug (unless it's equipped with a safety signal unit), or
switching it to defrost.
A trickster by the name of Micki related how she once came bearing
gifts for the mark's family freezer. She had matched the hostess's freezer
wrapping paper and style perfectly. Then, nestled among the nice beef
roasts, steaks, hamburgers, and chickens belonging to the mark, Micki added
her own packages of frozen roadkill -- dead cats, small dogs, groundhogs,
and crows.
Happy eating, all you mystery-meat fans.
While doing your tour of the targeted facilities don't forget to dump
some fiberglass or insulation dust into the mark's washing machine. It will
be picked up by the clothes, ideally undergarments. Within half an hour of
getting dressed, a person wearing clothing impregnated by the fiberglass or
insulation dust will wish he/she weren't. It creates terrible itching that takes
two or three days to disappear. The best part is that no one ever thinks to
blame the rash on sabotaged clothing. Repeated doses of this stunt are
enough to make a strong mark crumble. A continual supply of "product" is
assured if you mix the nasty dust in with the laundry detergent.
Every real kid knows what sulfur smells like when burned – horribly
rotten eggs. Once, some of my peer-group delinquents put some three
pounds of it in a nasty neighbor's furnace, after somehow gaining entry to
the basement. The house had to be aired out for nearly forty-eight hours. It
was awesome. If you want some fireworks with your sulfur-in-the-furnace
gimmick, throw in a mixture of potassium permanganate and sugar. It will
flare, smoke grandly, and, with the sulfur present, stink all the more.
Here is one of Leon Specre's recipe for ill humor. He hopes you dig
it.
Your mark (and family if there is one) is away for at least the
weekend, and you know about it enough ahead that you can hire a backhoe
operator. Also, rent a pickup truck and tape a cardboard sign to its door with
some vague identification on it about a landscaping business. Smear the
license plate with mud or borrow another plate for a short while.
You should arrive at the mark's house about half an hour before the
backhoe. Naturally, you used the mark's name when you engaged the
backhoe and you told the operator you'd have a landscape contractor (you)
there to meet him. The neighbors should think everything is in order if you
act as if you know what you're doing.
Don't give the backhoe operator a good look at you, and use some
disguise kit if possible. The premise is that the mark wants to add a
basement room somewhere on the house. You must tell the backhoe
operator exactly where to excavate. In most suburban areas, underground
utility lines are indicated with aboveground markers. You can pick up gas
lines and water lines from the meters. Pick an area clear of utility lines and
pipes and lay out some string and stakes. Do all this before your operator
arrives. Tell him your client, the mark, wants that area excavated and to bill
the mark directly. Further, tell him that you have to leave to pick up your
foreman and crew and that you'll be back in about twenty minutes. Ideally,
you'll never see the backhoe operator again.
As Frank Foge points out, "My chemistry teacher always said there'd
be a practical use for these high school science courses someday." She was
right. Do you remember what termites look like? Good. If not, any insect
book will tell you. Or visit your local Orkin man and tell him you need to
obtain some termite eggs for an experiment. Or get them from a sciencesupply
house.
I bet you already know the experiment. It's called how fast can the
little eggs hatch into hungry termites and devour the mark's house? There's
no trick here; you just infest your mark's home with the little buggers.
They'll do the rest. This last one was prompted by a frustrated renter whose
landlady refused to have the cockroaches and other pests exterminated from
an apartment. A serious illness to an infant child, traced directly to the
landlady's refusal to follow sanitary laws, triggered the nasty "bugging" by
the renter.
Hookers
In many cities independent business people have set up a personal
service whose employees make housecalls. These paid friends come in all
sexes and meet all tastes. It might be fun to invite one of these hedonistic
harlots to "your" house. Use the mark's name and a neighbor's address. Try
to pick the most upright, puritan neighbor you can find to receive this sexual
good Samaritan -- a professional virgin or librarian; something on that order.
Not all prostitutes carry the Good Housekeeping Seal; some carry
venereal diseases. These are fairly common among streetwalkers, the
bargain basement of hookerdom. If you or a trusted friend in law
enforcement, medicine, or social service can locate one of these carnal
carriers and your mark has a weakness for ladies, hire her and let her pick up
your mark. Nature, as they say, will take care of the rest.
I'm certain your vengeful imagination will have no trouble matching a
deserving mark with a paid friend who might give him/her more than
bargained for. I know a couple of people who set up a cop this way. The
cop was especially hypocritical and nasty about honest working girls: He'd
fully and freely sample the services before busting and totally prosecuting
the servicer. He got his, so to speak.
Hotels
Suppose you are staying at a hotel and get into a bad beef over the
poor quality of the meal you get in their restaurant. After trying to be
reasonable, here is how Ralph Charell, a champion-class advocate for the
little guy, handled it. Seeing absolutely no satisfaction and no end of
snobbish treatment, Charell took the following steps. He requested a deposit
box in the hotel safe and placed the offending rib roast, which he felt was of
poor quality, in the box and locked it. The box had two separate locks and
two separate keys. One was held by the hotel, the other by Charell.
"At this point, the hotel management has absolutely no idea what I'd
placed in the box," Ralph Charell explained. "I told them it was valuable
evidence in a possible legal action I was considering against an organization
with whom I was having a disagreement about the quality of one of their
products."
In a short time, someone at the desk caught the disagreeable odor of
decay coming from the area of the safe. Within another short time, Charell
was called by the manager and asked to clear whatever was in the box out of
the box. Charell explained about the "evidence" in this legal action. The
hotel manager threatened to force open the box anyway. Charell reminded
him of the laws against destroying evidence, then explained the whole
situation.
"What do you want from me, Mr. Charell?" was the manager's beaten
reply.
Ralph Charell then reported the details of the dinner he and his party
had had at the hotel. It takes a real expert like Ralph Charell to turn a trick
into something positive for all sides.
In Homer City, Pennsylvania, a group of the locals told about the time
a fellow had a room at a nearby boardinghouse. He was the pompous sort of
smartass who just begged to be dirty tricked. The locals went to a junkyard
and brought a huge gang plow. It was in pieces and was relatively easy for
these husky lads to put in the mark's rooms. They assembled it and welded
the pieces together with a small, portable machine. They and their machine
left. There was a great deal of consternation on the part of the mark and the
landlord, who parted company faster than the room and the plow.
Automobiles and other bits of large machinery work equally well in rooms
and apartments today.
A collegiate trick reported by Whitney Clapper called for hiding small
dead things, such as mice, sparrows, or moles, in out-of-the-way places in
the marks rented room. Good secret places include light fixtures, inside
switch boxes, unused overcoat pockets, and inside appliances. Within a few
days, the mark will be aware that something is wrong. A few more days,
and he'll be sure. Left unattended, this stunt will provide the mark with a
mass of pet maggots to raise.
Insurance Companies
In the intelligence business, access to insurance company files is
regarded as an operational goldmine. A former executive explains, "These
files contained detailed analysis of actual and potential weaknesses, trouble
spots, and other problems of any sort facing clients. Insurance companies
stand to lose millions of dollars in the event of an actionable accident or
difficulty, such as the Three Mile Island fiasco. Obviously, these very
thorough and detailed investigative data would be of immense interest to a
saboteur. In other words, these companies want to know the details by
which anything and everything could go wrong with a client. These data are
like a printer on sabotage."
Getting access to these reports and data may not be so easy for the
nonprofessional. But if you have enough dedication and imagination you
will find a method. The kids who blackbagged the FBI offices in Media,
Pennsylvania, were nonprofessionals, and look what they pulled off! They
managed to liberate entire files of illegal domestic espionage, which later
blew apart COINTELPRO, the blackest eye Hoover's FBI ever suffered.
Now let's get to the insurance companies themselves. Suppose you
get turned down for insurance and you want to know why. By law, the
insurance company must show you the file it has on you. Suppose you learn
that all sorts of misinformation and other lies are in there. There are
organizations and lawyers that deal in just that sort of thing, and a load of
simultaneous lawsuits for such things as invasion of privacy and slander
would be great.
Deborah Bodenhead hates junk mail, especially mail-order insurance
hustles. So she answers these requests with affirmative orders; "I'll buy,"
she tells them. Then she runs salespeople and clerks through all sorts of
scheduled, broken, re-broken, etc., appointments. She settles finally on a
policy, then waits for the second billing to cancel. Why the second billing?
"They rarely send out the policy before the first billing," Deborah
explains. "I want them to go to the expense of preparing and processing the
policy. I usually get a second bill with a polite dunning letter. That's when I
cancel. It drives the salespeople to anguish every time. Usually when they
whine and ask me why, I just tell them I really hate mail-order advertising
and just decided to cancel on a matter of principle about junk mail."
I asked an insurance agent about this stunt, and he cursed people like
Deborah, saying these people drove our rates up. I asked him if it wasn't
really the companies' own obnoxious marketing techniques that drove up
rates! He cursed me, too.
Don't ever pity or sorrow for insurance companies. They make more
profit in an hour than any of us make in salary in a year.
IRS
A veteran dirty trickster named Michael Mertz has something good to
say about the Internal Revenue Service -- it can be used to furnish a hard
time for your mark. Mertz knows his way around government agencies, and
here's one of his IRS offerings.
"You'll need your mark's Social Security number and some other
obvious personal data. Once you get those data you're on your way.
"Call a regional IRS office and 'confess' that you have cheated on your
income tax, you conscience has bothered you, and you want to make things
right by this great nation. Make an appointment with an auditor, using your
mark's name, Social Security number, address, etc."
The kicker comes when the mark doesn't show up to keep the
appointment, for obvious reasons. The IRS will send a visitor around to talk
with the mark, and chances are he will be audited, regardless of his
explanations.
So much for using IRS to hassle your mark. Many more folks would
prefer the IRS were the mark. As in dealing with any large bureaucracy and
its people, many of the stunts mentioned in other chapters may be brought to
play against the IRS. However, there are a few specific tricks that may be
used to bring rain on the IRS picnic.
You could start by picking up a bunch of blank returns and filing them
in the names of your least favorite people. I have been assured by a former
IRS field auditor that someone will have to make an effort to verify each
return.
With the help of your printer and your newly found forgery skills,
prepare some financial documents indicating that some person or
corporation has received some substantial income. Make copies of copies
several times until you have a fifth- or sixth-generation copy that is not too
clean but is still easily sharp enough to read. The idea is to make it look like
copies of a purloined original. Call an IRS office from a phone booth and
tell them you are an honest employee of the mark and you think he is
evading taxes. Offer to send the IRS person the papers. Get off the phone
very quickly, then send the papers. If the IRS gets nasty they may find
themselves in court. I got this idea from a man who worked for a company
that did fight IRS in court and won big -- through an honest IRS error.
Think what could happen to IRS if you fed them a dishonest error!
Joggers
Overweight and overwrought motorists drive by in their Detroit
Dinosaurs, pass a jogger, and mutter, "Damn stupid schmuck." It's the
human way to hate what and whom you don't understand. Joggers are often
thought of as nuts, oddballs, and kooks to be dealt with.
Marty Jones, a landowner, is more specific, saying, "They run across a
corner of my property, using a path I put in for my own use. I posted the
land, but they ignored the postings. I have tried to talk to them, but they
may or may not even stop to listen. If they stop they keep running in place
while I'm raising hell about trespass. I think most joggers are rude, selfcentered,
and selfish. I was thinking about hiding in the bushes and
ambushing them with my kid's BB gun."
For a variety of reasons, many people don't like joggers. Some folks
even actively plot against joggers, using cars and motorcycles, then arming
themselves with boards, pies, and other objects with which to strike the
runners. There are less barbaric ways, however.
Tire spikes are a World War II relic. During the hostilities, they were
dumped from low-flying aircraft onto enemy airfields and main
transportation roadways, where they caused havoc. Your use may not be so
widespread, but with equally exasperating results. The tire spike is a simply
made piece of one-eighth-inch-thick steel cut in the form of a four-pointed
star. Its purpose is to puncture rubber tires. The original wartime models
were three inches in diameter and had four points at forty-five-degree
angles. One of the points always stuck upward, ready to impale a vehicle
tire. Even today, there are many uses for tire spikes.
One anti-jogger has already suggested that these spikes be reduced in
size and dropped strategically near the running habitat of these long-range
exercise buffs. The purpose, I presume, is to penetrate the expensive bottom
of expensive jogging footwear and, perhaps, the expensive foot of the
jogger. One critic called this tactic "a really sick pain in the metatarsus."
Ultra-thin piano wire strung shin high on a pathway is excruciatingly
nasty. That's another World War II stunt redrafted for this book by Colonel
Jake Mothra. Many military manuals offer equipment and directions, he
adds.
Another contribution to joggermania would be to sprinkle marbles on
their special little pathways. Another nasty trickster, Hidell Crafard, told me
about an acquaintance at the Hunt Sporting Club in Dallas who actually put
ground glass into the running shoe of a bitter enemy. Perhaps that's where
filet of sole originated.
There aren't many counter-activities a jogger can use in retaliation.
Once is to carry MACE for obvious use. Another tactic is to carry cans of
garish-hued spray paint. These can be directed against attackers'
automobiles.
Laundromats
In addition to the dryer for a pizza oven, as outlined in another section
of this book, you can use laundromats to harass an individual mark, or the
business itself can be your mark. It is not very hard, for example, to dump
several packets of dye into someone's wash, ruining his/her clothing. Doing
this at random will bring grief to the owners of the laundromat. One
antisocial chap used to put small piles of moistened rust particles in the dryer
used by his mark so the mark's clothing would have large rust stains.
Roadkill may also be used to good advantage in these operations.
Additives that are positive ingredients for a good time at the
laundromat includes raw eggs, fish, peanut butter, and fiberglass. If your
mark is the operator of the business, you will find a variety of his/her
ancillary services to bugger, including vending machines, customer seats,
and restrooms. Small nails or staples driven partly into seats, and restrooms.
Small nails or staples driven partly into chairs make good items for
customers to snag themselves and their clothing on, for example. And
vending machines can be made to steal money from patrons.
Lawns
Our outdoor correspondent, Lother Gout, came up with a scheme to
hassle your mark's lawn. It's a simple matter of spilling quantities of tomcat
lure on the targeted lawn. The urine of Felix Domesticus will do wonders
for the lawn and the mark's disposition.
There are also a number of commercial lawn-care products that may
used to good advantage by the serious dirty trickster. One stunt is to select a
large, open chunk of you mark's lawn. Using concentrated weed killer, you
spell socially offensive words on the lawn with the defoliant. The grass dies,
and a nasty word or legend is spelled out for all the neighbors to see. This
works best on a slight slope facing a street for maximum exposure. Salt or
vinegar will work almost as well as commercial vegetation killer. If you're
the sort of fun person who's read this far, I'm certain you'll need no
suggestions as to what to say in your little message.
Serious defoliation is one of the many techniques our Vietnam
experiences made available to the dirty trickster. Defoliation is the most
potent way to get back at dastardly people who also have unreasonable pride
in their lawns and ornamentals. These are usually the type of fussy people
who also own small, yipping, bitchy dogs the size of rats -- more on that
later.
This time we're going to take out everything that grows. There are
many commercial products available that will kill anything growing. Look
on the label to see that it says the stuff is nonselective and/or that it makes
the soil barren. You just load up your sprayer -- or the mark's, if you can get
to it -- and fire away. Like a good guerilla, pick out what he loves most and
hit it first and heaviest. Don't leave a single blade or stem standing. No
prisoners. Be cautious, though, that you stay upwind from the spray. At
night you can't tell how much of the gunk you are inhaling or getting on
your skin. We have enough Agent Orange victims without adding you to the
list.
Reinhard Ray, a former special-operations man for the U.S. navy,
suggests a selective use of the weed killer in a psychological battle against a
mark who is a true worrier, fringing on paranoia. You apply the solution
fairly heavily around the mark's natural or LP gas meter; then, broadcasting
a bit more lightly, you follow the fuel line directly to the mark's house. A
final, heavier dose would be appropriate at the jointure of home and line.
Within a few days the frightened mark will be convinced that his entire gas
system is leaking badly. Obviously, this is effective only if your mark's
house uses natural or LP gas. But you could also do this to a water-supply
line coming into the house or a buried electric line.
A related scam would be to spray the stuff in a circle around the
house. Then, on bogus official letterhead you've either duplicated or had
printed, send the mark a letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
explaining how they've just discovered some long lost records revealing that
the mark's home was built over a former repository for nuclear wastes. I'm
sure your imagination can embellish the rest of the letter's content to
convince the mark that he, his family, and home are now radiation victims.
Obviously, you can't use this if the mark's house is more than twenty years
old, because nuclear waste dumps weren't built much before then.
Lawyers
Punxy Phil Ferrick decided to get back at a dishonorable attorney who
decided to try hoodwinking the public by becoming a politician. Ferrick got
hold of the attorney's legal letterhead and got it duplicated by a printer who
was equally outraged at this crook's trying to capitalize his larceny by
becoming an elected thing.
Using the letterhead for starters, Ferrick sent out blatant dunning
letters over the mark's signature demanding campaign contributions from
politically sensitive people. Another mailing was a group of threatening
letters to local civic, church, and charity groups about their winked-at illegal
bingo and 50/50 fundraisers. In the bogus letter, the lawyer threatened
action.
The bogus mailings made the local newspaper when the lawyer – who
had been a big booster, campaigner, organizer, etc., for Nixon in '68 and '72
-- complained of the dirty tricks. The newspaper treated the story straight:
The attorney's denials only aroused more suspicion. And no one ever
suspected Ferrick...until now.
Another scheme is this: Get a blank deed of trust, fill in your mark's
name and address, use your notary seal, and you have a legitimate-looking
phony document. File it at the courthouse, and you have an action in the
works against your mark. It means the mark has defaulted on a mortgage or
some other promissory note and that "you" are filing against it. "You" can
be an attorney if you wish when "you" sign this form. Days of frustration,
anger, and bureaucratic disbelief directed at the mark will follow before
things are straightened out. Don't get caught doing this one. The best point
here is that no one ever does things like this illegally, so the bureaucrats will
never suspect it as a dirty trick.
But there's more. If you have access to a law library or law-library
materials, you can play games with the mark's mind, claims Oswald Helms,
an observer of the legal scene. He suggests, "Law libraries have
standardized legal-practice forms, form books, and routine stationary forms
that lawyers, clerks, judges, and the like use to help draft legal letters and
proper legal forms. A dummy form or letter, photostatted with some dummy
legal notices, using, for example, arrest warrants, summonses,
condemnations, search warrants, etc., can often pass for the real thing. It
will shake the mark very much.
"The secret behind this," Helms explains, "is that real legal people
sometimes use the Xerox machine and routine forms, too. It saves time and
money. It will easily fool the target and will probably force his or her
attorney to at least follow it up."
License Plates
There are many sophisticated and clever ways to obtain additional
vehicular license plates that aren't registered in your real name. However,
it's not necessary to fool around with all that esoterica. Be like a street punk
and simply steal what you need. A bad guy who needs a plate simply
removes one from someone's car or truck. That simple. This is also highly
illegal. But if you're careful and use a bit of common sense, can you think of
a simpler and safer way of getting the extra plates you need for dirty tricks?
MA Bell
Did you ever see those office signs that say, THINK? In one
telephone-company office I visited, I saw signs saying, SNEER.
People have been messing with Ma Bell for as long as that corporate
dictator has been monopolizing telephone service. For years stories have
been circulated about using strips of Scotch tape on coins, which allows their
use again and again in pay telephones. Do you know what a number
fourteen washer will accomplish in a pay telephone?
The Yippies and other groups have developed marvelously ingenious
ways of sabotaging telephone-company operations. Some of their literature
is sheer technological genius, almost as if it were written by a Bell
Laboratories dropout. I once spoke with a radical who had become a
"mole," an agent of his political beliefs who secreted himself away in five
years of deep cover working as a technician for Illinois Bell. His purpose
was to learn about the technical side of the company so he could later
control or destroy telephonic communication.
Gordon Alexander presents an alternative manner, simple but novel in
these complex days. A professional dirty trickster for more than twenty
years, Alexander uses the dangerous but simple method of physically cutting
telephone lines. If you are looking for instructions on how to safely cut Ma
Bell's lines here, forget it. Unless you know what you are doing and have
the proper equipment you could easily light up like an insect hitting an
electric bug trap. I said it was simple; I didn't say it was easy or safe.
Lee Jenner, an accountant, suggests that you overpay your telephone
bill if you're alienated from Ma Bell. He says, "Overpay by a constant
seventeen cents a month. Make it consistent. Then, after a few months,
underpay by seventeen cents. Start another pattern for a while of
overpayment; then underpay again. It drives them nuts."
Jenner continues, "The local telephone company had screwed a client
of mine and refused even give him the time of day. He started this
seventeen-cent bit, and before the year was out he had the manager of the
local company begging him to stop. It worked totally to his satisfaction."
Meanwhile, on other battlefield fronts, Bell-hater Leo Garry says you
should have your printer make a bunch of OUT OF ORDER signs with the
local Ma Bell's logo on them. Hang them on every public telephone you
find. Speaking of pay telephones, only punks and idiots damage them.
Much as you may hate them, they're the only game in town. If you've ever
needed a pay phone in an emergency, you know what I mean.
You can play games with your local service representative (Ma
Belltalk for salesperson) by ordering phones and equipment for marks or
ordering service shutoffs. Always make these type of calls from a pay
phone, for obvious reasons.
Bandit calling may have been developed by the Yippies. Certainly
they are among its champions, both as practitioners and as cheerleaders.
Aside from the blue boxes, which make free calls for you, there is a tactic
that can be used by the non-technical wizard and doesn't cost you anything.
It's the use of the bogus credit-card numbers, and it works like this.
Always use a pay telephone and not always the same one. Next, you
need a credit-card number. Here is where knowledge of Ma Bell's codes
comes in. For that information check OVERTHROW, a tabloid published
by the Youth International Party. A subscription cost you ten dollars a year,
but each issue contains all sorts of other dirty tricks, as well as an updated
listing of not only Ma Bell's codes, but also the complete credit-card
numbers for many corporations, public utilities, and government agencies.
To order a subscription, send ten dollars to Overthrow, P.O. Box 392, Canal
Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10013. It's a good investment, according to
most readers.
After you get credit-card codes or numbers, the Yippies claim, the rest
of bandit calling is simple. You simply dial the long distance operator from
your pay phone and sound very, very businesslike when you say, "This is a
credit card call, and my number is [give the operator the credit-card
number]. I want to call [give the operator only the number of the party you
are calling]." Be sure you can tell a suspicious operator the area code from
which the card was supposedly issued. If the operator wants to know who
holds the card, either make up a legitimate-sounding company name or use
the name of the agency or company whose card number it really is,
depending upon the circumstance. It helps if your party at the other end of
the call knows what's happening.
Talk straight and businesslike for the first five minutes, as a snoopy
operator -- that's the way Ma Bell trains them -- might stay on the line that
long to listen in. Avoid sensitive subjects like your name, politics, drugs, or
dirty tricks since you never know who is recording calls these days. Break
off the call within twelve minutes. Obviously, your callee should act very
dumb when Ma Bell's security people do come to investigate a month or so
after the fraud is discovered. And don't let them intimidate you or your
friends, either. They're good at that -- many of them are former federal or
state police.
One Bell employee told me that their security people utilize warrantless
wiretaps, blackmail, and physical surveillance to catch persons suspected of
making bandit calls. The employee also told me these tactics are used
against persons who even publicize such practices. I consider myself
warned. So should you. Ma Bell can be one nasty mother.
By the time you read this, though, the game may be up. In
Washington state, the Supreme Court there upheld the conviction of a
newspaper for publishing the telephone company's secret codes. The
telephone company, which has both security and propaganda sections that
rival the government's, was working furiously behind the scenes to influence
the verdict.
Abbie Hoffman suggested this next trick, so if it doesn't work, call
him. Restrict Hoffman's idea to corporate, utility, or institutional telephone
systems. Cut the female end off an ordinary extension cord. Unscrew the
mouthpiece on the telephone in any one office. You will see a terminal for a
red wire and one for a black wire. Attach one of the wires from the
extension cord to the red and one to the black. Finally, plug the extension
cord into a power socket.
According to Hoffman, you are sending 120 volts of electricity back
through equipment designed for six volts. He says this will knock out
thousands of other telephones and the main switchboard, "if all goes right."
Even if his numbers are somewhat exaggerated, you've had a good day.
Mail Drops
These are essential if you're going to carry on any sort of
correspondence with a mark or with suppliers of services and equipment.
Depending upon the circumstances, you will need either a postal box or a
regular street-address mail drop. Post-office boxes may be obtained in any
name, although you will have to present some identification documenting
your "identity."
If your scam is a short-termer, pick an apartment with many little
boxes. Choose an empty one, claim it for the duration, and have it checked
daily. Put in your little name card and use that exact address on your
returns. The mail-delivery person doesn't know or care who comes and
goes. Or you can have a very cool and trusted friend front their address as
you as a mail drop. However, this person must be prepared and capable of
carrying off a very plausible denial. You'd better think this one through
before involving another person. Deniability can be a tough rap for an
amateur.
Mail
The Ku Klux Klan has some interesting strategies for spreading terror.
One of these is to collect from regional newspapers clippings of unsolved
arsons (or robberies, rapes, burglaries, assaults, etc.). If you need to fatten
the file, include clips from national publications too. Place the clips in a
manila envelope and tape it to an old gasoline can (or ax, bra, shotgun shell,
jimmy bar, etc.), which you leave on your mark's home or office doorstep.
David Williams is the pen name of a Texas state legislator who spends
his working hours as a freelance writer. He told about Jim Boren (pen name
of a friend), whose great idea for practical joking was to send single
entendre postal cards bearing personal, sexual, or medical messages to
William's home.
"Since I met Jim Boren, I hide from my postman," Williams notes.
Williams is not Boren's only victim. Many of his friends suffer from
postal cards such as the bogus Playboy Towers Memo that pointed out,
"Davie boy, thanks for taking care of my friend while she was in Austin. I
was envious when she told me how things went down. Love, Elvira."
Or this hotel postcard came from Hong Kong, addressed to Williams
via his pen name at his real address: "She's no longer at the topless bar. But
her sister at the massage parlor thinks she went to Seoul. I can pursue it at
the embassy, but will have to disclose your personal interest. Please advise."
It is signed by J. Harley, identified by a return address as "Harley's
Detective Agency" in New Orleans. There is no Harley, no agency, no
nothing at the return addresses.
Jim also sends cards to people's wives. One said: "Sorry, couldn't
make it this time. My wife came along."
One of Harley's better efforts at postal assassination was this gem,
sent from Toronto: "Thanks for your help with the bail money. You done
better by me than President Nixon did by his boys for doing about the same
thing. If I get the book thrown at me later, I'll ride it out, but I want a written
agreement on the money and I don't want you saying ugly things about me in
the papers if they learn about your personal role in this."
From Cleveland, Jim Boren sent David Williams this postcard: "The
cops found your name and address in one of the girls' diaries. They may be
in touch soon. -- A friend."
This next stunt is also accomplished through the mail. Posing as a
medical researcher, Elmer Surehe says, you can probably con some crablice
eggs from a supply house, for a price, of course. The eggs are inserted with
an innocuous business letter into an envelope addressed personally to the
mark. When the mark opens and unfolds the letter, the lice eggs drop onto
his/her clothing and surroundings.
It would make sense that nothing in this letter connect back to you, of
course. Some people have used the name and return address of another
mark. The resulting confusion will ensure that two marks are unhappy.
A critic felt that this tactic would be unfair because an innocent
secretary, business associate, or spouse might intercept the letter and receive
the dose. Two observations -- first, people shouldn't read personal mail
addressed to other people; and second, sometimes the innocent must scratch
along with the guilty.
A pulled-punch version of the lice-eggs letter is to use itching powder
instead. It's easily available from novelty stores, or you can make your own
following the directions printed in some of the formula books available.
Sneezing powder is another alternative.
A suggestion for a nastier ingredient came in from a former agent of
the American intelligence community who got paid a lot of money for
planning and implementing things like this. He suggests a chemical tear-gas
powder heavily laced into an envelope, noting, "It will clear a mailroom or
an office in minutes."
Marriage
Carol Sludge and a friend decided they should stage manage an entire
wedding for a mark. So they did. She handled the gown and bridesmaids'
goodies, and he did the sartorial bit for the men. They got invitations and
arranged for a church, a reception hall, a caterer, and an orchestra. They did
it all in the name of the mark and his fictitious spouse to be. They chose a
time when the mark was on vacation to send out invitations for the Sunday
the mark was due back in town. Everyone showed up for the ceremony --
everyone but the "bride and groom." Guests were somewhat miffed, and
merchants and others descended upon the mark at his place of business
Monday morning, wanting to be paid for goods and services.
Beyond that, what do you turn to after the old standard buns of
wrecking the marriage ceremony have been batted around the bachelor-party
table? Here are some quickie suggestions, brought to you by the Reverend
Robby Gayer:
1. Hire a woebegone lady with a young child to troop into the
reception and confront the groom-mark with the question of his
continued child-support payments.
2. Hire an outstandingly healthy young wench who is just
brimming over with sensual physical charm. She should cause
heads to turn if she's costumed correctly as she vamps up to the
groom-mark and plants wet soul kisses on him, cooing, "Don't
forget our past, love. And when you're tired of that little girl nextdoor,
you know where to find me." As she leaves, she stage
whispers, "Last [night, week, whatever] was just super. Don't be
such a stranger -- you're too much man for that."
3. Call the church office before the ceremony and say that a
crazed ex-lover of the bride plans to destroy the reception. Just as
the reception begins, arrange to have many M80s or grenade
simulators exploded.
4. Consider bringing additives into play with the punch and the
food.
5. Hire someone, grief stricken at the loss of the bride or
groom, to messily and dramatically "attempt suicide" at either the
ceremony or the reception. Be sure to have associates to carry the
victim out quickly for "medical attention."
6. Hire someone to become physically sick during the
ceremony or the reception. With luck, you can get a member of
the wedding party to do this.
7. Use many additives in the groom-mark's drinks during the
prenuptial bachelor party.
8. Hire someone to slowly and dramatically flash the minister
for the back of the church while everyone else is facing front. This
also works well if there is a singer in the choir balcony. Try to
upset him or her during a song.
9. Call the state police or the drug-enforcement people and
give them a complete description of the car that will carry the
bridal couple on the honeymoon. Report that the couple and the
car are really dope mules, that is, couriers of the drug trade.
Media
The mass media -- newspapers, radio, television, and magazines -- can
be helpful tools in getting even, or they can be your mark in a dirty trick. I
suggest you keep your media-as-tool aspect relegated to local events and
local media. In general, newspapers tend to be conservative and stodgy and
not much interested in your rousing of the rabble. Most newspaper officials
play golf with corporate officials, and their common bond are advertising
and profits.
Television likes good, visual consumer stories, and local TV stations
will go for local controversy more often than will local newspapers. Here
are some basic suggestions for using the media to help you in your gettingeven
campaigns.
If the editor says the event is news, then it goes out to the public as
news. People don't make news; editors make news.
To impress editors you have to keep coming up with fresh action.
You have to be visual, outrageous, funny, controversial, and brief. Your
message has to be catchy, visual, and packaged to fit ninety seconds of time
in the six- or eleven-o'clock news slot. It's no wonder long-winded
academics end up with "Viewpoint," or "Talk Out" at 3:00 o'clock Monday
morning. They don't know how to use TV.
Now, how do you get even with the media when they deserve it?
There are several things you can do:
• Take or phone in a fake wedding story, being sure to give them a
legitimate-looking bride-groom photo. It doesn't matter who the
people in the picture really are. Most smaller and medium-sized
papers will publish without checking, which could lead to all sorts of
wonderful things if you've been inventive in your choice of marriage
partners.
• Use a low-power mobile transmitter to add little bits of original
programming to your community's commercial radio station. Some
people did this in Syracuse, New York, and drove officials crazy with
hilariously obscene fake commercials, news bulletins, etc.
• Newspapers often have huge rolls of newsprint in relatively unsecured
storage areas. It is a low-risk mission to insert paper-destroying
insects or chemicals into those rolls.
• Some small radio stations are often loosely attended at night. Often,
only the on-duty DJ is around, and even he will have to go to the can
sometime. You might be able to wait until then or have an accomplice
distract that DJ while you place a prerecorded cassette with a message
of your own choosing on the air.
• With smaller newspapers, it is sometimes easy to get phony stories
and/or pictures published. Using you imagination, you can certainly
cause a variety of grief with their crime.
According to media consultant Jed Billet, if you have a financially
weak radio station in your area, you can often place ads for your mark over
the telephone. Agreeing, Eugene Barnes recalls, "A couple of years ago, I
wanted to get back at a doctor who'd really screwed up my family with some
terrible behavior in a business dealing. So I designated him as my mark and
had him 'open a pizza business.' I called the radio station and had them run a
saturation campaign of twenty-five spots per day listing his name and home
address and telephone number, plus all sorts of promotional gimmicks, like
free delivery, free Coke, stuff like that. He had to have his telephone
disconnected for a week. The station ran the ads for a day and a half before
the doctor got them pulled. He had 'customers' off and on, though, for the
next ten days."
Newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV are businesses, very concerned
about their profit-and-loss statements. Sales, both of advertising and of
audience for that advertising, are vital to the media. Knowing this, old
media hand Ben Bulova has a scheme that works well most of the time.
"Most newspapers will start a subscription with a telephone call,"
Bulova says. "You call in and order a subscription in your mark's name and
address."
The next step, Bulova explains, is to call the mark and, using the real
circulation manager's name, tell him that you are with the circulation
department of the newspaper and that they're going to give the mark a free
trial subscription. That way, when the papers start to arrive, the mark thinks
they're free. When the bill arrives, the mark will call the real circulation
person. That conversation would be interesting to hear.
Bulova says that this will work with magazines and trade publications,
as well. He advocates an entire string of such gifts.
Medical
Either steal real medical test-report forms from a hospital, clinic, or
laboratory or have a friend get them for you. If this doesn't work, a trusted
printer will make some for you. You will also need matching return-address
business envelopes to mail the reports to your mark. Get some technical
advice from a medical textbook or a very trusted friend with a medical
background, then prepare a series of embarrassing lab reports for your mark.
This could include positive identification of such problems as venereal
disease, drug dependence, cancer, yeast infection, or mental illness.
The mailing of the bogus report must be coordinated with a telephone
call to the mark's spouse, employer, parents, parole officer, etc. Doctor Milo
Weir, who helped with this idea, recommends that multiple copies of the
diagnostic report copy could be sent to public-health officials, and a drugproblem
might go to the state narcotics bureau.
If you're waiting in a doctor's examining room you will probably see
all sorts of goodies stacked around -- syringes, common drugs, medical
equipment, maybe a diploma or two. A couple of Yippies said they used to
make appointments complaining of vague symptoms just so the could rip off
goodies. Beyond simple pilferage, the opportunity exists here for introducing
additives to various products.
This should tickle the fancy of those true sadists among you. It comes
from the Olde Medical Almanak of Doctor Jerrold Andurson. He removes
some of the Preparation H from the regular container and refills that with
tabasco sauce. Andurson guarantees that this will give your hemorrhoidal
mark one of the hottest seats she/he could feel.
Andurson adds, "That reminds me of the observation made by the
man who caught his genitalia in a bear trap. He said that the second worst
pain in his life came when he came to the end of the trap's chain."
One summer, Will Gressle had the misfortune to be incarcerated in a
hospital wing run by a nurse who made Doctor Josef Mengele seem like
Santa Claus. An easygoing sort, Gressle was driven to revenge by this nasty
Brigadier of Bedpans. Here's what he did about it.
"In late November I was visiting my uncle's ranch in Idaho, where he
raises a few sheep. I got about seven pounds of farm-fresh sheep droppings
and put it carefully in an opaque, airtight plastic sack," he relates.
"I put that in a box, wrapped it in bright Christmas paper, and stuck
little happy-face and Christmas decals all over it. Then I wrapped all that in
heavy brown paper and mailed it to the nurse, in care of the hospital. I put a
fake return address on the package and a few holiday stickers on the outside,
too.
"I'm sure the parcel arrived at the hospital, where they have a little
tree in each wing and a small exchange of presents. It is my sincere hope
that Nurse Nasty unwrapped my gift in front of a lot of nurses, doctors, and
patients. She would finally get to the bag of sheep shit and a little note,
which read, 'Just returning a tiny little bit of what you are so fond of dishing
out in great amount,' signed, 'A Former Inmate.'"
Considering that the major side effect of medical treatment these days
is terminal bankruptcy, it is little wonder that the medical institutions and
personnel have become the target of so much getting-even thinking. In
speaking with people on both sides of this fight, I have concluded that there
are only limited stunts you can direct against these specific targets. Yet the
range of regular stunts presented in a dozen other chapters of this book are
as effective against medical institutions and people as against any other
subject -- perhaps more so, given the self-held exalted status of the medical
community.
For example, it's one thing if your mark is a contractor and suffers
from a venereal disease because of your getting even -- but think how it
would work for a doctor! Gossip travels fast in the medical corridors.
However, if you are thirsting for a few little goodies to toss at the
medical community, here's a mini-list of suggestions:
• Leave dead vermin at strategic points of a particular medical facility --
near the coffee shop, the kitchen, the emergency room, the visitor's
lounge, etc.
• Dressed in whites or other appropriate uniform, slip in with cafeteria
or kitchen help and put some harmless food coloring into foods. Or if
you can get in to where the staff food is prepared, more powerful
additives may be used.
• Borrow some medical-insurance identification from a cooperative
friend or otherwise obtain someone else's identification. Use this to
charge medical bills, either real or imaginary. The point is to get bills
sent to a totally innocent or totally unaware third party. If it's your
friend, he or she is part of the scam and will pretend to be outraged
about the whole business. Either way, the medical facility is the real
mark.
Military
While serving as a guest of Uncle Sam, I had some intelligence
assignments. There I found out that there are two types of intelligence --
military and human. Or as Groucho Marx said, "Military intelligence is a
contradiction of terms."
You can get arrested for falsely wearing the real uniform of the armed
forces. That's why some tricksters don't wear an actual uniform but either
build or rent a replica that surely looks real. That way they are free to give
speeches, shout orders, make bogus policy pronouncements, hold press
conferences, use rank, and all sorts of other bits of theater from which the
average citizen might infer that the actor really does represent the official
military. This sort of incorrect inference could cause all sorts of publicrelations
and worse problems for the military establishment. Could this be
considered contributing to the delinquency of a major?
Although the Yippies are a generation or so forgotten, and at least as
this is written, our army is no longer a high-profile domestic villian,
someone may still want to pull one off for old times' sake. A Jerry Rubin
trick would be to find a somewhat deserted area of a large public
recreational park. Place some official-looking, commercially printed signs
in prominent places. The signs will say:
WARNING
Army war dogs training in this
area. Very Dangerous. Keep all
children and pets within sight.
If Army dog approaches do not
move under any circumstances.
--U.S. Army. Official--
Guess who will get blamed when frightened citizens complain to the
town, city, county, state, feds, or whoever is in charge of the park. Guess
how many brass hats will have to visit the site, investigate, write reports, and
give explanations.
According to Captain DeGeorge Media, things got pretty bizarre over at the
Pentagon when the intelligence boys found that OPEC intelligence agents
had broken the Pentagon ZIP code. Hah! Can you military agents reading
this book break the code I just used? -- MESSAGE ENDS --
Speaking of military-intelligence agents, I recall that especially
obnoxious recruits, second lieutenants, and other lower-order sorts could
often be sent on a fool's errand that often multiplied into more harassment
than the stunt was really worth. If your mark caught a first sergeant with an
especially bad hangover or an ill-tempered senior officer who'd just
discovered that his daughter was pregnant by some recruit from a Third
World military unit attached for training -- well, you get the idea. Anyhow,
you can send these marks out to bring back a rubber flag to be flown on
rainy days. Or you can send the idiot out to bring back the cannon report. If
you're air force, a five-gallon drum of prop wash is an appropriate errand
target -- or a bucket of prop pitch or a box of RPMs. The navy is good for
sending someone to get stuffing for the crow's nest, a biscuit gun for the
galley, etc. You can always send someone to the post or ship's print shop for
some dotted ink. A trip to the supply stores for plaid paint is fun. The best
part is that they almost always fall for such nonsense. I think that says
something about the military's effect on human thought processes.
If you have access to the sound system over which Reveille is played
each morning, you might move up that magic time of day by, oh, say half an
hour or forty-five minutes -- just enough to screw things up. The next day,
make it fifteen minutes late. Another day, play it in the middle of the night.
Always play it a bit louder than usual.
In a similar sense, at one summer camp, a national guardsman
switched the Reveille record for a rock record one morning. Another
morning, recorded Rusty Warren and her humor greeted the troops.
Some solid general advice for getting even within the military comes
from a high-ranking and experienced military man who is now a biggie in
the VFW. You know he's qualified to give advice.
He suggests, "The military is a blizzard of paper, paranoia, and intrigue. A
dirty trickster who understands this and can parody the system will drive a
mark to ruin. A good primer for action is to read CATCH 22.
"You will find an abundance of politics, ass kissing, back biting,
gossip, and reputation hunting and destroying among career military people.
It's an absolutely fertile ground to grow dirty tricks. A nastily clever person
will have no trouble getting even for all the petty bullshit the military inflicts
upon sensitive and logical people."
Thinking about sensitive and logical people brought Selective Service
to mind. When we last had a draft, during the Vietnam unpleasantness, all
sorts of young men did all sorts of bizarre things to evade it. However, a
true dirty trickster would think in 180 degree terms -- why not invade the
draft? Simply register yourself in about three dozen locations with an equal
number of draft boards. As far as I know, the law came down on only you if
you failed to register. I guess I don't have to list the reasons why someone
might wish to get even with the Selective Service system or a particular
board.
Motion Pictures
Hugh Troy was a famed artist who was also a hardcore practical joker.
Once, the manager of a motion-picture theater offended Troy. Troy went
into the same theater the next evening, after secreting several jars of huge
moths on his person. Soon after the feature began, he released the creatures,
all of which flew directly into the beam of the projector and stayed and
stayed and stayed....
Have you ever sat down in a darkened theater, later finding your
posterior has been parked on someone else's sticky candy bar or chewing
gum from the last show? Did you ever go to a movie house, feel you were
ripped off by the poor feature, get up and leave well before the film is
finished, and still be unable to get a partial refund?
Peanuts Campbell used the restroom of a local movie house, and when
he flushed the facility it backfired on him, staining his new pants and
causing other patrons to both turn up their noses and turn away their eyes in
annoyance.
Another person was served buttered popcorn in a tub that leaked the
gooey liquid all over his date's dress. Management refused to pay any
claims. The patron of a stage theater had his pants torn on a protruding seat
spring. No damages were paid, and his attorney said the amount was too
small to take to court.
What's next? Peanuts Campbell has an answer.
You must have a quick, clear exit after this action. Peanuts Campbell
used to take a container of lukewarm vegetable soup into a movie theater.
He sat in the front row of the balcony. He made the sounds of being sick to
his stomach -- choking, coughing, retching -- then dumped the soup on the
people below. The same tactic also works at sporting events, public
meetings -- anywhere there is a crowd below you. But you must have a
good escape plan.
The point of all this is to have dozens of irate patrons demanding
damage settlements from the management of the establishment. If you don't
feel adventuresome enough to dump on your fellow customers, simply go
into the theater early and, while no one else is around, place gooey chewing
gum on random seats. Pick seats away form the aisle or ceiling safety lights.
You may also use a slow-drying glue on the seats.
Municipal Services
A former CIA operative who specialized in sabotage shared a couple
of theoretical ideas about some cheap tricks. He suggests that if a
municipality has corroded you with its parking corruption, then a return is
only fair. He suggests a squirt or two of concentrated battery acid into a
parking-meter slot. Repeat as necessary, he adds.
He has an excellent caveat to go with this, though: "If you do this sort
of thing needlessly and unprovoked, it is nothing more than criminal
vandalism, which is stupid, and you deserve what you get if you're caught.
Neighborhoods
Be the first in your mark's neighborhood to become a blockbuster. It's
time to fuss up the mark's neighbors again. Find a real estate agency that
deals mostly with blacks or Chicanos. Posing as the mark, call the agency
and invite a salesperson out to talk about the sale of the mark's neighbor's
house. Don't hoke up your role with a lot of brotherhood stuff -- play it
straight. Now, if the mark is a good, solid white citizen living in a
neighborhood of same-minded bigots, you have a wonderful deal going for
you. The kicker is, you give the salesman the mark's name and the
neighbor's address. Obviously, you must pick the most rednecked, bigoted
neighbor to be the fall guy for the black or Chicano salesperson. By the time
the "mistake" gets straightened out who's going to believe the mark? Not
only have you alienated his neighbor, but you have taken a big chunk out of
his credibility and popularity. Black is beautiful, especially when it's the
color of the mark's reputation among his peers.
This stunt works -- a person I know used it. He's a professional ball
player who went into a furniture store with his wife to buy living-room-andden
suite of furniture. The clerk was bigoted and exceptionally nasty. My
friend calmly asked to see the manager, who turned out to be worse than the
clerk. The black customer suddenly flashed his wallet full of green money,
and both white guys blanched. No further words were exchanged as the
married couple left the store. Two days later my friend called a black real
estate agency. You just read about what happened next.
Notary Seal
Possession of or access to a notary seal is vital to a trickster. To the
average layperson and common lawyer, the mere fact of a notary seal on a
document is like God's own rubber stamp. Many times you will need to
have a document notarized as part of the scams explained in this book.
Having your own seal kit is the obvious answer. Some firms sell real ones --
"official" -- on the black market. Some sell replica kits, which are not
official. Avoid these -- some are so crude that they wouldn't even fool a
politician. I know one trickster who had a seal kit custom made -- by a con
in a California prison print shop. The con had been an engraver in civilian
life and really knew his work.
You can buy a blank die kit openly from any shop stocking seals.
Corporations use them all the time, which may give you a tip right there
about the value of seals. You can have a custom seal made by many of these
companies.
However you obtain it, get a notary-seal kit. The uses of it pay off the
first few times you scam someone. In addition to the notary seal, you should
also get a couple of other official-looking dies. Commercially and openly,
you can obtain blank dies with state logos, or you can get one that looks like
a U.S. eagle. All sorts of possibilities exist.
Oil Companies
The soaring oil prices and lack of leadership got so bad late in 1979
that all the dedicated and honest congresspersons got together to protest big
oil. But who is afraid of seven people!
You remember the Great Gasoline Rip-off of 1979, when the oil
companies raped the driving public both coming and going? Petroleum
magnate Jimmy Slushslinger related this story: A regular customer pulled
up to a service station and said, "Fill 'er up." As he was paying the bill, he
said, "Oh gosh, all I have is a fifty-dollar bill. Sorry."
The gas jockey replied, "No problem -- you can pay me the rest next
week."
Starting rumors at the inappropriate time is the something else to do.
For example, if your mark happens to be a gasoline station owned by a
major company, and a lot of citizens are in a gas line waiting for their semiannual
pittance of overpriced petroleum, you could walk onto the scene
wearing oil-smeared coveralls and stroll down the line -- just out of sight of
the real station personnel. Tell parked motorists that all fuel is gone. If
anyone gets belligerent, use the "I'm a minimum-wage employee, but the
boss said if anyone got angry to send the bastard to him, because he'll sure
cool him off in a hurry." Don't wait around for the cooling-off period.
Cut out a stencil that has the word ARAMCO on it, then spray it with
white paint under the word STOP on all the stop signs in your town or near a
large oil-company office building or refinery. Aramco, in case you didn't
know, is the major oil cartel that works with OPEC to rob American citizens.
During the 1979 oil-company blitzkrieg against the American public,
a guerrilla fighter hit back. He cut a sliding door in the floor of his van. He
had a three-hundred-gallon tank installed in the van, along with a small
electrically operated pump and a twenty-foot hose. He drove in only to
company-owned gasoline stations, parked over the main tank caps, then used
a wrench to open one. He dipped in his hose, turned on the quiet pump, and
filled his tank with three-hundred gallons of free tigers.
Bruno Tannetto dislikes oil companies. For years he played credit
card bingo with them, pirated cards, counterfeited cards, and ran up huge
debts and skipped them -- all in the name of guerrilla warfare against the oil
giants. He also saved all the postage-paid return envelopes they used to
include with his bills. Since he rarely paid, he had quite a collection of
envelopes, which is when he really got his rocks off.
Bruno collected a bunch of heavy rocks and boxed them up in a sturdy
carton, which he marked, "Caution -- Geological-Core Samples" and
addressed to whatever oil company he had the envelopes for. Using the
envelope as the "postage," he mailed this heavy box first class to the oil
company, which had to spring for the huge postal charges. He did this many
times to several of the giants.
Giggi Hilliard tells about a chap who played nasty to get an oilcompany
operation into some difficulty. The agent provocateur's mode was
forgery, and here's what he did. While on a routine visit to the oil company's
corporate offices, he swiped an internal memo from a desk while the
secretary was out of the room. He had his printer create some blank memo
sheets using the company logo. Then, using a safe IBM typewriter and
following the style of the company original, the trickster wrote a very
sensitive memo from one oil-company manager to another. The memo
discussed the need for deep cover to prevent leakage of sensitive financial
contributions to state and national political officials. He then leaked the
memo to the press.
"The idea behind this," Hilliard explains, "is to cause the oil company,
or whatever mark you choose, to have to explain and deny. Nobody believes
them anyhow, so you give that big business another credibility black eye.
Great, huh? You can use this same tactic with any corporation, utility, or
business. The list of sensitive topics is limitless. But always use real
officials' names on the forgeries."
Consult OVERTHROW (see section on Ma Bell) to obtain the
telephone-credit-card numbers for the major oil companies. Use this
information to you best advantage. Beware: Oil companies hire
experienced FBI, CIA, and drug-enforcement people for their security staffs.
The security and intelligence operations of the oil industry are as nasty and
effective as anything the feds could put together, and they are not hindered
with what few laws do restrict the federal law-enforcement people. You
have no civil or human rights when the oil-company security and
intelligence people go after you. When dirty tricking the oil companies it is
crucial that you practice WYA, which means Watch Your Ass!
Recently, a lady trickster called the wife of an oil-company robber
baron and pretended to be a lowly cleaning lady at corporate headquarters.
Telling Mrs. Oil Executive that she, the cleaning lady, was a good Christian
lady who believed in the God-given sanctity of family and marriage, our
"cleaning lady" revealed that she often had to clean fresh semen stains from
the couch in Mr. Executive's office after "private, after-hours conferences"
between the boss and his young secretary. That's all, just a simple telephone
call from a simple, honest, God-fearing lady to a stay-at-home wife who's
probably already paranoid about her executive-husband's extracurricular sex
life. If more right-minded citizens cared about the moral decline among
executives in the oil industry...
By now you surely owe that friendly and cooperative printer a few
glasses of lemonade for being your co-conspirator in a number of scams.
Here's one more. Many of your area's prominent citizens should receive a
fancy invitation to attend a special local social function hosted by your
favorite oil corporation. The invitation should read something like this:
"Admit bearer and guest for the special Hollywood entertainment and buffet
on [day and date]. Informal dress from [time] to [time] at [location]."
Try to pick a Saturday or Sunday and mail the invitation only a day or
so prior to the nonevent. This won't give the doubters, cynics, press, or
anyone else much time to ascertain the veracity of the invitation.
In the summer of 1979, after reading newspaper stories about how the
major oil companies were raking in untaxed windfall profits ranging from 35
to 130 percent, Melvin Lierd decided enough was enough.
"I had no mere dirty tricks in mind; my whole idea was to rip those
bastards as much as I could, the greedy, lying thieves," Melvin muttered
mildly.
His plan was simple. He obtained credit cards from as many
companies as possible and charged as many products and services as
possible only from company-owned stations.
"I ran up bills as high and as fast as possible. I had absolutely no
intention of paying," Melvin explained.
Asked if he got the cards in his own name. Melvin responded, "Nah, I
got them in a fake company name. I run up as much as I can, then pay them
each $5 or so, claiming it is only a token payment because we're a new
company, but I will make the rest soon, blah, blah, blah.
"The greedy bastards are so anxious to make money they'll just add on
those outrageous interest charges -- usury rates, they are -- and drool at how
much they're screwing me on financing.
"I'll string them along for a couple of months; then, if they get serious,
I'll simply dissolve my company and let them eat their bills."
Do lawsuits bother Melvin? He rates lawyers and judges slightly
below clam feces on his scale of respect, and he says, "Let them sue the
company. It has no assets. Plus, they gotta find me. Let me tell you
something, old son -- you have to use the law. There is no justice, so you
use the law to suit yourself. How do you suppose the big oil companies and
the big lawyers and the big judges and all the other crooked snakes got so
powerful -- by using the law!"
At last report, Melvin Lierd was draining the oil giants at a rate far in
excess of his own expectations. He has invited many of you to join him.
Not content to live by the rule of "steal from them before they steal
from you," Carl Bepp likes to add things to the oil-company stations' bulk
tanks. He says that many of the additives described earlier in this book and
elsewhere will work. But, he does have a sentimental favorite.
"Once, some land rapists were drilling a noisy, sloppy gas well near
the home of a friend of mine," he relates. "Since they were stealing from the
land, I decided to steal some land from them.
"One evening, when they were finished drilling for the day, I got
some of that slimy, mucky gunk that the drillers had bailed out of the well. I
took it to my most-hated oil company's very own station and dumped three
two-gallon buckets of that gunk down into their bulk tanks."
He said he has also used several gallons of refurbished solid wastes,
known as sludge, as another additive for the oil-company products.
Thomas Jefferson
A quote by Thomas Jefferson can be used to confuse your friends or
critics if they question your activities as a dirty trickster. A very sharp man
who would be as upset with things in America as you are, Jefferson is
quoted as saying, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
Let the authoritarians and their “domestic Mossad” choke on that one.
It's enough to make them thump a few Bibles. What would be Thomas
Jefferson's views on revolution, anarchy, busing, the draft, marijuana, and
excessive taxation?