Caledoniyya

With the majority of tales such as the one below, the immediate response is one of disdain, peppered perhaps by a guilty smirk.

Yet somehow, this one leaves me wanting to envelop the poor farmer in an understanding hug and lament the abuse of his refined naivete:

Jordanian duped into paying $1.2 mln in ‘magic’ gold trick

Three Jordanians duped a man into paying them more than one million dollars to extract gold from his Amman farm by “using magic”, police said on Wednesday.

“The three men were arrested two weeks ago. One of them claimed he was a magician from another Arab country, and even used a non-Jordanian accent,” police spokesman Mohammed Khatib told AFP.

“They have deceived the poor old man into believing that large amounts of gold could be found in his farm by using magic.”

During the past two years, he paid the three more than 1.2 million dollars, “thinking that his money was going to be more than doubled after the alleged gold extraction,” according to Khatib.

“He complained to police after the suspects, who are currently being prosecuted, disappeared and stopped contacting him.”

Khatib did not say whether the victim would get his money back. [AFP]