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Friday, November 6, 2020

Flying Saucer Swindlers: Four Convictions

 


Hoaxing UFOs is not a crime. 

Bob Considine, from "The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax!", Cosmopolitan magazine, January, 1951:

"However plain the hoax, the Air Force often feels that it must take samples of the 'wreckage' for study in its Wright Field laboratories... And nothing can be done about such frauds.  A man who pilfers a three-cent stamp from the Post Office Department can be fined and sent to a Federal prison.  One who turns in a false alarm that routs out the local fire department on a Halloween night can also be jailed, as can a man who writes a check for a dollar when he has no bank funds to cover it. Yet the most callous and cynical saucer­hoaxers will continue to go scot free, with a cackle of delight, until a penal act is created to check such offenses."

Unless the act involves something like public endangerment or filing a false police report, it’s not a matter for the law. There have been some notable exceptions, and they all involved money.

The Saucers That Time Forgot is a project by Curt Collins and Claude Falkstorm that looks at little-known aspects of UFO history. The specific focus is on events from the first twenty years of the era that shaped our knowledge, beliefs, and myths about aerial phenomena and extraterrestrial life. The STTF series, “Flying Saucer Swindlers,” examines the incredibly rare instances where UFO-related hoaxes or fraud resulted in arrest and convictions. Here are links to the four major cases:


Silas Newton and the UFO Crash



Reinhold O. Schmidt: The Trial of a UFO Gold Digger



The Life and Legend of Otis T. Carr

There's a rich history to the UFO subject, and like the rest of the human experience, it's rife with frauds and counterfeits. Studying the past can prepare us to avoid the old pitfalls. In this way, we can make progress, entirely new mistakes.