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Disappear Without a Trace We received an odd request a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you saw it in the comments of the site in question. Someone wanted to buy the site, but didn't have a PayPal account. Who doesn't have a PayPal account? Red flags alerts went up. Especially since he left the following for his name: Subversive Uncle FrankI left a smart-aleck response as a comment and went on with life, but he came back. He insisted that he was willing to pay 20% more than our asking price for the site Sufaq.com because it started with his initials. He was willing to Western Union the money. Hmm... more red flags, but usually the scammers want you to Western Union money to them. I explained to him that the software runing on the site (Internet Business Box) required a PayPal account to work. He proposed a 50/50 joint venture if we left our PayPal account on the site and paid him his 50% cut after six months of holding it to make sure there would be no chargebacks. He also now offered 50% more than what we were asking for the site. I couldn't see the scam, so we arranged for the transaction. He prompty renamed the site to Subversive Uncle Frank Answers Questions and started posting some pretty edgy stuff. You can check out his first post here: How to Disappear Without a Trace What did we get ourselves into? I hate talking on the phone. It is such a waste of time. I don't even have a telephone, but I just had to talk to Subversive Uncle Frank and told him so. I'm cruising in the Caribbean right now, so I sent him an email and asked him if we could talk by telephone in a couple of days. This was Saturday. He agreed to a telephone conversation and gave me a number to call. My boyfriend and I cruised to the Roatan marina where I could use an Internet cafe to make the call. This is where it gets REALLY weird. I went to the Internet cafe and asked to make an international skype call. Most Internet cafe's in the Caribbean have private rooms with headsets and charge differently to use these rooms and their Skype account to make calls than they charge just to use the Internet in the public area. I couldn't make the connection though so I asked for help. Sometimes Skype accounts in other countries are set up so that you have to dial International numbers in a peculiar fashion. The problem was simple and I was talking to Subversive Uncle Frank in person just 45 minutes later. The problem was that the number he gave me wasn't international. It was local!!!He was in Honduras! I told you it got weird, but wait... that's not all. Not only was he in Honduras. He was on an island very near the main island of Roatan. It was only a $1 water taxi ride to get there. I didn't even use my own dinghy. Forty five minutes after our scheduled telephone call to find out if this guy was for real... I was shaking his hand. My boyfriend and Frank got along right away and I didn't have a chance to keep things under control from that moment on. Yesterday will be one of the most memorable days of my life. We hiked into the jungle to Subversive Uncle Frank's hideway. It was like something straight out of a movie. He is currently living with his wife and two sons in a hand made hut next to a pond that was at the bottom of a forty foot water fall surrounded by dense jungle. Now get this... his sons are just little kids. I didn't ask how old they are, but they aren't even school age yet, but are walking and talking. So we are talking about 2-4 years old. This is guy is WAY hard-core. He had bought two boat batteries on his trip into town and carried them in a backpack on the way back up. As he continued to tell war stories to my boyfriend and I got to know his wife, he worked on adding the batteries to his existing bank of about 10 other batteries. I'm a yachter, so I know a bit about 12 volt electrical systems and I kept looking around to figure out how he charged the batteries. There was a slight clearing that received direct sunlight, but it was over the waterfall and pond. There was no wind. I didn't see anything electrical working anywhere, but I was still curious about how he was going to charge those batteries. I found out later. It was straight out of a movie too. He actually has an exercise bike hooked up to a generator motor that he rides to charge the battery bank! I told you it was a memorable day! He and his family are aboard our yacht right now. The kids keep making me and their mother nervous by running around on deck, but apparently they have spent quit a bit of time on boats and every other method of travel, so they are being pretty safe. We'll spend another couple of days together, but I can already tell you... Subversive Uncle Frank is for real... and VERY subversive. It has been a joy to get to know him and his family. I hope we cross paths again. You can read about his adventures and subversive tactics for keeping life EXTREMELY interesting here: |
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