The return of Collectora Generali?

Snickers Man

Amused to see both the front page of the Irish Times yesterday and RTE news carried the story about Prawo Jazdy, the Polish recidivist driving offender who had 50 different addresses in the Pulse computer system for a variety of speeding and parking offences.

It appears that the monoglot Gardai who stopped him didn't realise that the big words on the card he proferred were simply the Polish for "Driving Licence" and not his name at all.

This reminds me of a story I once read in Private Eye years ago about a scam in the UK which involved criminals stealing cheques made out to the Inland Revenue, which were typically the income tax payments of self-employed people.

It is, or at least was, acceptable for such people to abbreviate the name of the payee to IR, so the crooks would simply write the names Smith or Jones on the cheques after the letters I and R and then open several bank accounts in names like Ian Roger Smith, or Ivor Reginald Jones and lodge the purloined cheques into them.

Sounds plausible.

Private Eye went on to say that they got the idea for the scam from Ireland, where corresponding cheques are made out to the Collector General. Apparently some wise-ass went into a bank, (years before the Money Laundering Act obviously) and said that he would like to open an account for his Italian au pair who was coming over for the summer and who didn't speak much English.

"Certainly sir," said the helpful teller. "What's her name?"

"Collectora Generali".

I used to think it was just an urban myth...........

serfboard

Well, there was a similar urban myth going around Galway that the same thing was happening to cheques made out to the ESB, with account names being opened in the name of E.S.Burke.