Sandwiches, anyone?
I was about 19 at the time, young and slender and innocent looking. A very good combination for being the front man, really... but I was smart enough not to do anything too shady.

So what did I do? I sold sandwiches to uni students.

A mate of mine had a sandwich shop that didn't do particularly well, so we struck a deal. He'd make up a load of sandwiches and put them in a milk crate with a load of canned drinks, then drive me to the dormitories. I'd get someone to let me in, then wander through the dorm with my crate and ask if anyone wanted to buy a sandwich and a drink. About the time I was done selling the lot my mate would be outside with a new crateful, and off we'd go to the next dormitory.

I'd cover every place on campus I could get into, and sometimes would even catch people between buildings. Nice clothes and a ready smile sell a lot of food to pissed-up students. At the end of the night I'd go home with a tidy chunk in my pocket and my mate's shop was booming. We did this on Fridays and Saturdays, then again on Wednesday. The students were well fed (we really did make good food), and we were profiting nicely.

That is, until I got caught on campus without a student ID and carrying a load of food into a dorm. The security types were less than congenial. Turns out that peddling on campus was rather frowned upon.

Arse. We were harming no one, and in fact made people happy!

Bastards.

(Besides, going through the girls' areas was a very nice bonus...)
(Shimrod, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:31, 4 replies)

Squirming on my tongue
It was near the end of another year at school, and time for the summer fete. The call went out for volunteers to run stalls, and a select few of us formed a plan - a plan that would make us rich beyond the dreams of avarice!

Stage one was to approach our form tutor and suggest our stall. This went off without a hitch. Stage two was the construction of our apparatus - again, a simple task. We made ourselves a poster, laid our claim to a prime piece of playing field and, the day before the fete, procured our final component. All was ready.

"Maggot Racing!" our sign proudly proclaimed. The track was a simple wooden tray, painted with gridlines and with ineptly-constructed balsa wood lane dividers. The competitors, in several attractive colours, were procured from the local fishing shop and writhing away in their tubs. The concept was simple: 5p buys you a maggot, 10 maggots to a race, and the owner of the first maggot across the finish line takes home 25p, with the rest of the entry fees as profit. Not profit for us, you understand, profit for the school. Our plan was more cunning than simple embezzlement.

There were three of us. The school insisted that two of us man the stall at all times, but this left the third free to pretend to be a punter. When purchasing their maggots for a race punters usually just picked a colour, although the more serious gambler would often specify a particular maggot and the occasional adventurous soul would choose their own by hand. The maggots were then placed on their lanes under starters orders until we had enough for the race to begin. It was perfectly legal to handle your maggot prior to a race, although this wasn't advertised and most were content to allow their wriggly athletes to prepare themselves in solitude. We, however, knew better.

Whichever of us was playing the punter would purchase a single maggot for the next race. The runner would be selected for the enthusiasm of its thrashing about in the tub. Unknown to many, maggots perform best in a racing situation when warm, and so the little fella would be swiftly placed onto the tongue and held in the mouth, there to squirm around in moist, warm, dark ecstacy until the starting pistol. Better than half the time, to the disgust of the other gamblers, the mouth-maggot would romp home to an easy victory and another 25p would join our rapidly growing fortune. At peak times we were raking in almost £3 an hour!

At the end of a long day, we had accumulated a total of around a tenner - a fortune! When we realised that this would then have to be divided between three of us it was a slightly less impressive fortune, but still none too shabby.

Obviously we immediately spunked most of our ill-gotten gains trying to win a bottle of Liebfraumilch on the tombola, but just think what we could have accomplished with a bit of investment! Stuff the horses, maggot racing is the future.
(wellgroomedwookiee is a filthy-minded hobgoblin, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:11, 9 replies)

Dear Ryanair
1. You are a bunch of rich cunts. But, unfortunately, you're proud of that fact.
2. You hate people. You hate your staff. You hate your passengers. Your contempt for people is utterly unparalleled. They hate you. Its fine. However, your flights are astonishingly cheap.
3. I have the solution to your PR. It will make you nicer and people might not hate you as much. Therefore - ultimately richer!
4. Here's a clue. I would rather pay £50 IN ONE GO for a flight, than a flight advertised at £1 with £49 worth of hidden extras, totalling £50 because I feel every time you do this, I feel like i am being raped by a stupid irish cock. You make me feel like shit. Which is why I fly Easyjet now. Who incidentally, are like a Bugatti Veyron to your rusty reliant robin.
5. Make the inside of your planes SLIGHTLY nicer. Just tone down that fucking yellow.
6. Michael Leary whatever your name is. You are a cunt.
7. Profit!
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:08, 14 replies)

I could have done 10 years in prison (or so my father told me) ...

Well, ok - now that's its been almost 20 years and the statute of limitations is over --
I made a huge fortune making fake IDs for underage students while at university.

The IDs were from "New Jersey" and my partner and I figured out on a real ID. 1 mm is enlarged to .8 inches on our 3x5 foot ID board.
Being a graphic design major - it was relatively easy to construct.

Our "Clients" would come in, stand in front of the board, with its removable/replaceable addresses/DOB and other info - and we would snap a polaroid. - Then take his airbrush with gold paint. Using a template, gave it a light gold dusting to simulate the holographic logo appearing over the ID. At $50.00 each - it was a bargain and withing a few weeks we had appointments with all the fraternities/sororities on campus. Must have made 100's of them ... Eventually we got paranoid as another ID maker got busted by campus police (a moron, we were off campus) -
so I sent all my material to my sister up in NYC at university there - so she could hold it while the pressure went down a little ---
Of course, being the nice little sister -- she went and told our parents.... HUGE family confrontation -- I was pulled from my campus housing and forced to live back at home for a year.
---
But I did make tons of money that of course I blew on booze and women. My record was $1300.00 in one day.
---
Don't try it kids - crime doesn't pay and your parents WILL find out.
(xianstudio, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:04, Reply)

Get Rich Quick?
Why? What's he done?
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:03, 2 replies)

I sold crack...
...and i'm not proud!
(By George I Think He's Got It! It's not fucking Sheep is it?!, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:02, 3 replies)

Ma-ma Mi-a!
No, not the sing-a-long cinematic atrocity about female bonding, but the utterance of a group of Italian businessmen in the automotive industry who'd collectively realised they'd been blessed with outrageous luck that continues to make them filthy rich. You think I’m joking? In spite of calamities of comedic proportions, the Italian car industry still manages to keep its executives in cashmere suits. How? Well I put it to divine intervention.

Everyone who’s ever owned an Italian car knows of the Great God of Italian Cars, who’ll randomly piss in the fusebox of every third newborn car on the production line, cursing it with inexplicable and hugely expensive electrical problems for the rest of its life. Meanwhile, in reciprocal arrangement the Italian car industry is so blessed that they’ll never go out of business no matter how many woof-woofs roll off the production lines.

You want examples of such calamity? Okay...

Thirty odd years ago, one clever chap said thus:

“We sell-a da Russians da Fiat 128, in ex-a-change for shed-a-loads of cheap-a Sov-iet steel!”

Everyone agreed enthusiastically, including a sober suited gentleman with busy eyebrows and a hammer and sickle lapel badge. Then they all fucked off for tortellini and wine, borscht and vodka.

Sure enough, the Italians moved an entire state of the art factory virtually brick by brick to the Soviet Union and taught the Russians how to build cars. The Russians themselves re-engineered the fragile Fiat 128, beefing it up until it was sturdy enough to be repairable by the roadside with a hammer, before thoughtfully exchanging the “Fiat” badge for one that read “Lada”. The subsequent Ladas rolled out of a factory on the Volga river and even managed to export a few to Western Europe and Canada.

Meanwhile the Italians eagerly awaited their shipments of dirt cheap Soviet steel.

The steel arrived.

The welding commenced.

The cars were sold at huge profit.

Then something strange happened. Six month old Alfa Romeos, Fiats and Lancias started to disintegrate into gritty ferrous piles before their owners now somewhat watery eyes. Indeed, a few were apparently suffering from terminal rot as they were trailered to the dealers, fresh from the ferry.

Billions of lira were spent on warranty claims, yet ten years later Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia were still alive and cocking it up gloriously.

How? Well ten years later, an executive with Alfa Romeo experienced a brainwave of epic proportions.

"We go-a into da bus-i-ness with da Nissan. The Japanese know-a how da maka da cars" said one

The others sagely nodded. It was genius, it really was. No-one knew more about making beautiful cars with character and personality than the Italians, especially Alfa Romeo. On the other side of the bargain, the Japanese could mass produce cars with the innate reliability of a Swiss watch, for not a great deal of money. Sure enough, the bolognese was washed down with Sake amidst some backslapping.

You’ve probably already worked out the way to produce the Best Car in the World by now. Even a seven year old child could work it all out.

But you’d be very wrong.

For reasons that no-one – not even the Italians themselves – can understand, the Japanese were put in control of the styling and ergonomics. Meanwhile, the Italians were given the responsibility of not all the oily bits but also assembling the resulting unholy creation.

This was the frankly gopping result.

Minging isn’t it? It was in production for a whole three years before anyone noticed how monumentally awful it was.

Even so, thanks to the Great God of Italian cars, the Italian car today industry contributes 8.5% of Italy’s GDP and employs some 250,000 people. The current chairman of Fiat, Alfa, Lancia, Ferrari and Maserati is a multi-multi millionaire and is linked with a possible bid for the Italian premiership.

At the same time in Britain, the vast state owned Leyland Cars, comprising of Austin, Rover, Morris and Jaguar, together employing some 250,000 people at its' peak, was churning out some real bow wows too. The period 1970 to 2004 saw Rover's - nee British Leyland - market share shrink from 40% to a paltry 6%. Today, the Chinese owned car plant at Longbridge, Birmingham will recommence production for the first time since 2005.

Today, Britain's largest remaining domestically owned vehicle manufacturer is probably Caterham Cars, which produced 430 vehicles in 2003.

(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:50, 10 replies)

The great liberal conspiracy to swindle increased taxes out of us:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_report
( Matoosh would rather like a biscuit, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:44, 11 replies)

i seized my change to get rich quick
on a typical piss wet day in Wigan library revising for my O levels in 1985, i was waiting for the rain to clear before legging it to the bus stop.

Its not there now but the library used to be opposite the council's finance office where a security van was waiting for the drivers mate to get in.

Out he waddles (this is Wigan remember, full of chubby gits, open the door and struggles to heave his pie filled frame into the cab....dropping a bag.

My heart was racing as he drove off. i was shitting myself.

Ever so casually i wandered accross.

grabbed it and dashed round the corner.

ok, if you are 16 and live in Wigan, you probably dont want to wear glasses but it saves being disappointed when you think your lucky day has arrived. it was a screwed up bag of chips.
(sarcasminasuit, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:41, 1 reply)

Pron
Aroundabout the age of 13, I was a bit of a budding Paul Raymond with my very own, if small, porn empire.

There were two sources of my material:
my stepfather's rubbish pit*
shoplifting

The pit was a good source of rare and exotic publications but one couldn't gaurantee that on a given day there would be anything to be had. One day, out of desperation, I was lurking in the bushes when the skip lorry came along, I noticed that the driver, my step-uncle, put down a magazine before walking around the other side of the truck to operate the tipping mechanism. "Bound to be porn" thinks I. I ran out of the bush, grabbed the magazine and scampered back into my thorny den with that months copy of Men Only in my hand.

Shoplifting was obviously higher risk but something that one could do during the lunch hour and make £5 per sale. Easy money. We often operated in a small group so that we could have a look out, maybe have someone distract the easily spotted big, fat, ginger store detective bird by walking round and round the aisles with a choccy bar before putting it back. Not difficult to hypnotise a fat ginger munt with a 200g bar of Dairy Milk.

Once back at school, no problem finding some repressed geeky kid willing to fork out a weeks worth of lunch money for a weeks worth of wank fodder. A fondest memory is of one such boy who bought from me just before a chemistry lesson. Inside the lesson, the class arse (and also one of my accomplices) grassed him to the teacher "Sir, Clugh's got a dirty magazine in his bag!". The bag was searched, the offending item confiscated.

As luck would have it, I had a detention that very evening with that very chemistry teacher. I was given the task of "tidy the lab" while he went off for a cup of carrot juice or something, well he was a vegan and probably a few other things beginning with "v". So into his office snuck I and popped the jazz mag into my bag.

Result I think.

*if you're looking to make real money and you enjoy driving diggers, buy a field, dig a big hole in it, sell the earth/sand/gravel that came out of the hole then charge people to dump rubbish in the hole.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:35, 3 replies)

The evils of Cash Converter
Meekman and the Computer Exchange thread reminded me of the evils of Cash Converter.

Cash Converter, are truly evil bastards of the highest order. I can’t help but feel a tinge of sorrow for the poor buggers that sold their stuff to them. They have had to sell something really cool all because they were strapped for cash and trying to make ends meet, and were probably within inches from getting knee capped by their tyrannical landlords for not paying the rent, or whatever. But I also think that perhaps some skank has sold their stuff just because they’re a human drink and drugs cabinet, and sold their stuff just so they can sort/inject/ingest cheap anything.

Anyway, I digress…

It was around ten years back, and I had bought myself a Sony Minidisc recorder to add to my Hi-Fi seperates. I decided that I no longer needed x2 single deck tape recorders, and got rid of the lower spec’d one of the two, an Aiwa ADF-450 (the other was the ADS-750 that had HX-Pro, and Dolby B,C, and S noise reduction, that one was a definite keeper). Barely anybody had a PC or Mac, nevermind an internet connection, and eBay had probably yet to exist. Or, it was in its infancy. I have only been online since 2002.

Therefore, I decided to sell my surplus Tape Deck to Cash Converters. So, I brought it to the Wigan branch (the nearest one to me). I thought that I was going to make a good price on it. Regretfully I didn’t.

They poured through an endless sea of catalogues to find out how much it was brand new. Annoyingly, they had also heard of Richer Sounds too, and had a few back catalogues to check the brand new value of it. To make matters worse, they had an ADF-450 already in the window for sale, which made the resell value of my surplus Tape Deck even worse.

I got shut of the Tape Deck for the relatively poxy sum of £15. I would have got £30 if they didn't have the identical model to mine in the window, they had the cheek to tell me. I couldn’t be arsed lugging the thing back home (my journey was done by public transport), and so it went for peanuts.

The Tape Deck that was already in the window was for sale @ £50.

Cash Converters are total wankers people. Avoid them like the plague, you will have better luck selling your stuff on “The ‘Bay”.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:31, 4 replies)

MA Trading 2 (see previous)
Myself and Adam revamped the MA Trading name and came up with the idea of forming a hamper company.
We would take orders for hampers, collect the weekly payments, then in December go on an almighty big-shop.

We made an appointment with the manager of a local bank to see about a loan so we could purchase a van of sorts. He rolled his eyes at us in an alarming way, suggested we try borrowing cash off relatives and essentially told us to fuck off.

We printed out some rather piss-poor looking catalogues which were essentially lists of items in the proposed hampers and no pictures at all, all photocopied on 4 pages of rather cheap paper each.

We walked around a local estate and posted maybe 80 of the damn things. A week later, we went round and collected maybe 30 of them, with not one order.

We stuffed them in someone's wheelie-bin and went to the pub instead.

We think back to those days of blind optimism and it makes us literally bend double with cringeing.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:21, Reply)

MA Trading
One day at college, arsing about and geting to know the miracle that was Windows 3.0, I came across a spreadsheet. I don't think it was Excel, may have been SuperCalc. Was that available for Windows at the time?

Anyway, I asked a mate whose name was Adam to explain how it worked. A couple of years beforehand, I was selling bags of sweets to people. I'd give the order forms out, people would order stuff. I'd pass them onto a guy who went to the cash and carry, he'd deliver them, I'd dish them out to the customers, he'd come back a week later to collect the cash and that weeks orders. I did none of the donkey-work and made about £25 extra a week on top of the tenner pocket money I was getting. This lasted until the Xmas when trade practically stopped.

I pointed out to Adam that this would have been ideal for my previous venture, so he demonstrated the spreadsheet based around the fictitious "Maudlin and Adam's Sweet Shop".

A couple of days later, he showed me a business card design he'd knocked up in CorelDraw 3. "MA Trading" and featured my home address (which contained the words 'court' and 'way' and looked like a trading estate address). We blagged some blueish card off the English teacher who had access to that sort of stuff, took it and the graphics to his Dad's office and printed out 50 cards or so.

Using this card, we went into a local cash and carry and managed to wangle an account card from them under the name of MA Trading Ltd.

A few weeks later, there was a college concert and we offered to do the interval refreshments.

We went back to the cash & carry and bought £60 worth of crisps, chocolates, drinks and biscuits.

We set up stall, and sure enough the people flooded out. By the end of the night, we'd broke even.

A few days later, we folded the company, shared the contents of the cash tin and the stock and MA Trading was no more.

About 5 years later, I received a court summons regarding trading under the pretence of a limited company. However, I soon realised it was fake put together by Adam by the info on the back stating that "I ought to wear a nice suit rather than that tatty thing in your wardrobe."
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:14, Reply)

Jesus Saves (the planet)
I've just politely turned lisping, be-suited bible-tract-wielding children (accompanied by do-gooding evangelist parents) from my door. They didn't ask for money, but I bet they sucker you in first. They had an new angle - save the planet from global warming through the word of god.

I don't believe in god or man-made global warming.

My money is safe. Well, until the Old Testament style floods begin and I have to spend it all on a boat.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:14, 4 replies)

Get rich quick schemes?

Fucked if I know.

Love,

Anna Nicole Smith
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:05, Reply)

Mad Tom
At Glastonphant during "part 1" of the ambulance post:

I had a mate, whose identity I shall protect by changing one letter of his name, known universally as Mad Tom. He was indeed mad, schizophrenic to be precise. He was mostly OK to be around, occasionally he would go bananas and have to spend a few weeks in a psychiatric ward but that was rare.

Tom lived for drugs. He lived with his parents and spent his combined Income Support, Sickness Benefit and Disability Benefit of £120 per week almost entirely on drugs. Trouble is, because of the madness, it didn't really make much difference whether the drugs were real or not.

Did he care? We went mushroom picking in Wales once and he scoffed all the falsies including some that were bright blue that I chucked out of his swag bag.

He came along as did another mate's mad, in the crystal healing and horoscopes sense, hippy mum and her lovely 12 year old daughter Celeste. Celeste had a large paper bag of pink sherbert with her which gave me an idea, I'm at a music festival, 100,000 yoofs and I've got a large bag of pink powder, it's scam-o-clock time.

So, I said to Tom "Want to try some of this?". "What is it?" he asked when I passed him the bag. "Cocaine" says I. "But it's pink" says he. "It's Pink Champagne" I further fabricated, "the finest Cocaine money can buy".

He dabs his hand into the bag, pulls out some powder and snorts it up his nose, Then he has another and another and another. He looks up, pink bubbles dribbling from his nose, "this is good shit!" he exclaimed.

"Want to make some money Tom?" I asked. "No man, we should keep this for ourselves" he protested. A compromise was needed, "how about we sell some of it and spend the money on acid?". "Yeah!" says Tom.

So I made up 6 or 7 wraps and sent him on his way.

About 5 minutes later he's coming back towards me with a group of big, scarey, beardy biker types. "He's the one who made me do it" he says pointing at me.

I managed to whine my way out of a kicking.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:00, 3 replies)

Tarot reading
I've been messing around with Tarot cards since I was 13. As an adolescent I got quite obsessed with that kind of stuff and know my way around a Rider-Waite deck to the point where a reading becomes intuitive (I can also draw up astrological charts without the need for a computer, interpret the I-Ching etc. etc.). However about the age of 18 I decided this obsession was rather silly and decided to get on with life without "magical" props.

Then last year I got myself a new deck of Tarot cards, deciding that this time it might be just a bit of fun - reading tarot could be my party trick so to speak. Since then I've done a number of readings for people online, because I'm interested in the feedback I get. I always stress they shouldn't take it too seriously and that I can guarantee nothing, but it's amazing how many people claim my readings work for them in some way. I've even been offered money to be transferred to my paypal account, which I've always declined because it seems exploitative.

But then I get to rethinking.. I'm reaching the end of my overdraft and have no job at the moment so I'm wondering what the possibilities could be. I see "buy it now" readings on ebay for as much as a fiver, and my local hippy shop advertises tarot consultations at £15 per half-hour. This is easy money compared to anything I've done before.. but would I be selling my soul?
(lost, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:57, 12 replies)

"How's my driving??"
I have a high-viz jacket for cycling to work.

It says "How many red lights have I gone through? Text 85324"

Reverse charged text at £1.50 a shot. It usually pays for lunch each day
(pineapple_juice, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:56, 3 replies)

Work.
I am burdened with guilt! I must confess how I resorted to grave and terrible measures in order to make myself some money.

It began with small steps. Schooling. Learning maths and science. Unfortunately, I got addicted to it, and went onto A-levels in the same.

This was only the beginning. Then, I ended up going to university to study Chemistry. And then onto a PhD! Finally, I got myself a job, where I'll get paid a decent wage!

If that's not making money fast, I don't know what is. It only took twenty years of education!
(calamarain just invented dehydrated water, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:56, 4 replies)

Fake IDs
When I was a teenager, I looked a lot like I do now. The benefits back then were legendary. I could get served for booze at 15 in any off licence or pub. I also had the sense to look in the back of FHM and invest in a £10 ID. Easiest thing ever. Just fill out a form, send it off with a tenner and a couple of weeks later, there you go, a plastic card ID with everything scanned on. Result. Now this plan worked in 2 ways. I'd always see some mates from school outside the off licence, and they'd ask me to go in and buy ale for them. I'd agree, but only after they paid me a fiver (or bought whatever booze I was after). That made me a few quid, which is always handy when you're 15. The other part of the plan was to sell these fake IDs in school at break time. I made a proper killing here. Charged £30 for them. Never revelaved my source (until today, but so what). Paid for it and pocketed the extra £20. The best week, I sold about 15 IDs. It was a good week. Not really get rich quick, but get more money than Christmas and birthday combined qucik. Another thing the kids around the football grounds do is 'mind' cars. On a matchday, if someone parked their car in a street remotely close to a football stadium, you can bet they're approached by a tracksuit clad youth asking if they can "mind your car mate?". They get the money cos nobody wants to say no to these vagrants who'll be hanging around their car for 2 hours. The kids do fuck all, and would probably help if you wanted to steal one of their customer's cars. Again, not get rich quick, but a good way to make money to pass onto me for getting them ale.
(Visionaryofthe1980s www.myspace.com/visionariesofthe1980s, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:54, Reply)

Not funny
Some years ago, I was a registered firearms dealer with my own premises etc. I went to several weapons manufacturers in the course of my work, and thoroughly enjoyable it was too! On my travels I came across a pair of semi-automatic rifles from the same manufacturer, one "General" grade and one "Sniper" grade. On examination, I found that I could probably turn a "General" grade into a "Sniper" grade with some minimal hand-fitting and a couple of specially machined parts. I did so and found that I could sell these modified rifles for £500 less than the official sniper grades AND make.............wait for it...........£1,000 clear profit!
Over the next three months, I demonstrated the new modded rifle and took 500 deposits, yep 500!!
I took delivery of the unmodded rifles on partial credit, safe in the knowledge they were all pre-sold and set to on the gruelling job of making £500,000.

When I'd finally finished them all and had the proof house check my work (a bit more expense but what the hell!) I sent letters for my customers that their rifle was ready and they could, with the right paperwork, come and pick it up.





That day, Michael Ryan ran amock in Hungerford.

Very soon after, the Home secretary suspended all semi-automatic rifle permissions on Firearm Certificates. My rifles could not be sold.

Very soon after that, the police came and confiscated my stock (illegally, I subsequently found, too late and too expensive to fight it)and destroyed it.


Instead of the cool £500k in cash I was expecting I was in shit street. The rifles hadn't been paid for fully and the company couldn't take them back as they had been destroyed. I had to pay the deposit money back, some of which I'd used to fund the project.

That's how I ended up with the dodgiest mortgage in Christendom and a deep deep hatred for politicians and the police.


Apologies for lack of humus, but the girth makes up for that.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:45, 26 replies)

Refer-A-Friend
About 6 or 7 years ago, I discovered the joys of shopping at Amazon. Just a few clicks of the mouse and a rattle on the old keys and I had DVDs winging my way in no-time, for half the price of HMV! I wanted to spread the word, stop my chump friends wasting their pocket money on the high street! Which is where the refer-a-friend scheme came in...

Now, the deal is that you refer a friend and they get a £5 voucher to spend. Once they've spent it, Amazon chuck another one your way, nicely done. So, why not stick a few of my other e-mail addresses on there and have a fiver off my next DVD?

These "vouchers" are also supposed to have some rules attached too. Minimum spend of £10, one per customer, usual stuff. Thing is, the minimum spend didn't work. You could buy anything, as long as your total didn't come to under £5. Just a bit of postage to pay, then - DVDs for £1.50!

So, I simply got myself a free domain name and referred myself under a variety of extremely clever guises. [email protected], [email protected], etc. etc. That's a lot of £5 vouchers, and a lot of dirt cheap DVDs.

I must've sold at least of the mothers at £5 a pop! Anything that crept into the "DVDs for about a fiver" section on Amazon was offered up to my esteemed peers. I remember ordering all of the Bond films for some lucky boy.

After about 6 months of abusing poor old Amazon, the "Refer-A-Friend" scheme was changed to £3 a voucher, and the rules on minimum spending fixed. I like to think I had something to do with that. Still, was a nice bit of a money for a 15 year old while it lasted!
(slotbadger, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:38, 1 reply)

Sell water! Make millions!
For the bulk volume thing, get water from a hole in the ground, stick it in bottles, and sell it for 30000% more than the clean, regulated, tested stuff that comes out of the tap. Imply that it is in some way healthful.

For the truly exploitative, get distilled water, add nothing to it, claim it's "homeopathic" (but carefully make no actual medical claims for it but it has been used for hundreds of years *wink* *wink*), and sell it for more dosh than perfume.

To appeal even more to the sociopathic tendency, into the bargain you might get to hurt people too, by persuading them to use this instead of genuine medical treatment!

Quids in, from nothing more that simply selling water and lying about it!

Bah. Why am I so honest? I could be rich.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:24, 11 replies)

It’s simple really.

All you have to do is discover / invent something that everybody needs really badly, but where you are the only person who can provide it.

Then you can charge as much as you like.

Job done
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:20, 3 replies)

Reclaiming your previous bank charges.
A couple of years ago, I did jump onto the reclaiming your previous bank charges. And it was the best and quickest £600 i have ever made. It took 2 months in total and about an hour of time going through statements (which I could get online anyway). And just popping letters in the post. A great website, penaltycharges.co.uk had all the letters on there ready to print off, and the exact procedure of what to do. Anyone with a grape instead of a brain could do it.

I was quite shocked how many charges I had acrewed. Plus I also was able to claim interest on it, so it ended up being more. Free money! Yaay.
(Miggyman, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:11, 5 replies)

possibly not being a student
.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:07, 2 replies)

I made
£5.25 from this: liveyourwildestdreams.blogspot.com/

The idea being that, as people are too busy to go on holiday, they send me their money and I go for them. It saves them getting sunburnt or having to talk to Spaniards.
(ccc, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:05, Reply)

My dad....
Owns a pub, a few years back, we were going on a pub trip to Italy (simply a reason for all the regulars to go on a piss up abroad), on the way to the airport, we were talking about get-rich quick schemes. My dad's best friend (a massive black guy with long hair, named "Stich", I've always thought he looks like a big, black Bill Bailey) was with us, and had kept quiet the whole way there. Upon arrival we decided to get breakfast in a Starbucks. As I'm sure you all know, Starbucks is ridiculously over priced, when Stich found that it was going to come to a tenner simply for his coffee and toasted pannini, he turned to us and said in his grumpy-est voice...
"Alright I've got one.... buy a toaster!!"
(Madlyinsane, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:01, 1 reply)

Grandads
My great great grandad was what we'd now call a charlatan. Selling fake medicines around the country from his trusty horse and cart. I've no idea how many towns he was run out of or how much money he made.

Skipping down a couple of generations and my Grandad ran a sweet stall on the market.

He was affectionately referred to as 'Toffee Dick'.

Now his actual name was Alf so I have no idea where the nickname came from, or what actual trade he made the money from.

It seems to be hereditary though because I've been known to 'Toffee Dick' after a few too many beers.
(Heyzeus, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:00, Reply)

Easy targets, students.

When younger and being educated at the ‘school of life’, most of my friends were at uni. The situation was thus:

The problem – I was broke
The plan – become the Uni’s answer to Pablo Escobar
The problem (2) – I had no idea where to get drugs from.
The potential – Some students (particularly freshers) are knicker-stretchingly naive.
The plan (2) – Blag it

The tools:

A couple of small plastic bags
A bit of tinfoil.
A handful of your average paracetamols
Some carefully unwrapped oxo cubes
A sheet of paper with lots of tiny random icons printed on it, dipped in aftershave then cut into little squares
Baking soda / Talcum powder

Each ingredient was wrapped in a half-arsed manner and given just enough handling to make them look third hand (at least)

As soon as Freshers week started I would go out with my mates then break away from them for an hour or so and proceed to sit in a dimly lit corner of the pub looking shifty in a long coat.

Slowly but surely I would be approached by a procession of spotty oiks enquiring if they could ‘score some gear’.

Before long I was being considered a one-stop shop for all questionable merchandise.

The pub-rotation policy was a bit difficult but a necessary evil to prevent a bad reputation; if I ever was approached by a disgruntled former customer I merely complained that I was sold a ‘duff batch’ and whinge about how much money I lost etc. However, complaints were rare as it appeared the placebo effect of fake drugs is quite decent, and kids would rather fake being high than admit to being stiffed by household comestibles

I was always careful to do this practice for a couple of weeks and no more a term. Everybody had forgotten about me by the next time I rolled in, armed to the teeth in general home products

The great part was that even if there was a raid, I wasn’t holding anything remotely illegal.

All in all I continued the practice for about 5 years, but unfortunately I can’t say exactly how much I earned because I spent it all on beer.

Happy days
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:54, 8 replies)