I died back in the ’80s.  I was an artiste de scam back then – somehow in debt up to my receding hairline – so as my final scam, I pulled an Andy Kaufman and disappeared.  Arrest warrants ran cold, debtors finally wrote me off.  I dropped off a lot of Christmas lists, but theocratic commercialism never really did that much for me.  And it was a great move, tax-wise.

Middle America served as a vast land of opportunity for a guy with all my short order cook / dish washer / landscaper / “have truck, will haul” abilities.  Off-the-books is a solid basis for the planet’s largest economic system, aka the Underground Economy.  But I had strayed so far off Easy Street that I couldn’t even hear the distant roar of the garbage trucks, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.  Man, I missed making the easy buck.

And then God Bless Al Gore the Internet came along.  (Yeah, I know, some guy named Tim Berners-Lee really invented the Web, but we all boost our resumes with a little lie here and there, don’t we?)  Who needed identity theft when you could just make up a new identity every time you had a new angle to pursue?

Okay, cut to the chase:  I did a lot of things that aren’t technically kosher in the light of day.  But I didn’t hurt people (disclaimer: I never drew blood, and I mostly cheated cheaters), and I’ve since been making amends.  My books aren’t totally balanced, though, so my dear dimwitted brother Razoo has tapped me for this gig.

So look for me here once a week with words of wisdom on Internet (and other) scams.  I’ll pry open the gnarly oyster shells of deceit and dig out some pearls of wisdom for you.  And I take requests; before you spend a single dime on any get-rich-quick scheme, I’ll take a look at it for you and post the truth about it here.  Odds are good that I’ve been there, done that.

Scrud Kelley

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