Black dollars land Angolan in the dark
An Angolan who allegedly defrauded a gullible Lebanese restaurateur out of thousands of euros using the audacious «black-dollar» confidence trick had to be saved from the irate businessman by Athens police last week, a Saturday report said. Detectives freed Steven Fonseca, 36, from the basement of a Lebanese restaurant in the Caravel area on Friday after a passer-by who had heard cries for help called the police. According to the Eleftheros Typos daily, it then emerged that restaurant owner Mohammed Halif, 34, had given Fonseca 13,800 euros in return for a special chemical with which the Angolan claimed to be able to turn a bunch of banknote-sized black paper into $500,000. When Fonseca disappeared, Halif somehow ran him to ground in a Kypseli bar and dragged him off to the restaurant basement, where he vowed to keep Fonseca until the euros were repaid. Both men were arrested. In recent months, several people in Greece have fallen for the «black-dollar» trick, invariably performed by Africans.
