Strange News: Deception, Drones and Hide & Seek

I decided to divide the show into seasons to allow it to change and evolve into something new. So next episode will be the first one of season two, and it will feature some new segments, interviews, stories, etc. And I'm also going to update the YouTube channel and prepare to introduce the video element. I've decided to do this because that way I can incorporate visual tools to help you guys learn a little bit faster.

I think you'll enjoy the changes, so stay tuned to my social media to find out more. Okay, on today's episode, we're bringing back one of our first ever segments, Strange News, which means that I've compiled or collected a few strange or bizarre news stories from around the world, and I thought we could read through them, check out what happened, and learn some new vocabulary along the way. So, no more introductions. Let's start the show.

You are listening to the thirty-fourth episode of English with Dane. Hit it too. A student from Count Kilkenny in the Republic of Ireland has managed to scam money out of an internet scammer. The scammer transferred £25 to the student's account, which he then donated to charity. So a quick vocab check. The verb to scam spelled S-C A M means to trick someone into giving you their money. It is often used, se usa menudo, as a noun too, a scam, so a dishonest scheme.

It continues and says, This is the third time that Ross Walsh, a 22-year-old student at the University of Limerick, has extracted a small sum, un pequeño monto, from online scammers for charity. I want to waste their time so they're not wasting anyone else's time, he said. The story was first reported in the Limerick Leader on Saturday. It says earlier this month, Mr. Walsh was contacted by a Solomon Gundi who identified himself as a big business banker.

Mr. Gundy emailed asking for £1,000 for his stock trading business. Okay, here's the email. Check it out, it's written pretty badly. Hello friend, pleased to be with you. I know this email will come to a surprise to you, but permit me to desire to go into business with you. My name is Solomon and I'm a big business banker looking to go into business with fellow enthusiastic businessmen. I wanted you to invest 1,000 pounds in my company for exchange for half business.

My business is all about trading stocks. Last week I made a small sum of 35,000 pounds. You may wonder why I need 1,000 pounds when I have 35,000 pounds. I want to teach young business people my knowledge, which comes at fair price. If you send me a PayPal transfer of 1,000 pounds, we can begin immediately and become rich. Kind regards, Solomon. Then Mr. Walsh said he replied to the email immediately to have a bit of fun.

He said, I told him this was very interesting, but that I thought 1,000 pounds was an insult and that I wanted to give 50,000 pounds. Here's Mr. Walsh's reply. Delighted to receive your intriguing business proposal. As you know, I'm a very enthusiastic businessman and I think 1,000 pounds is an insult. I have attached proof of payment of £50,000 to get the ball running. One thing you need to understand about doing business in Europe is we do things big.

Please get back to me as soon as possible to discuss our next move. Before we continue, a quick vocabulary check. The expression to get the ball running or to get the ball rolling means to give or apply momentum to a project, idea, plan, etc. So he wrote him back saying that 1,000 pounds was an insult and he wants to contribute 50,000 instead to get the ball rolling. The story continues. Then I sent him a doctored picture of the transaction for 50,000 pounds and he replied straight away.

A doctored picture means a picture that was changed or altered to look like something else. So he sent him a fake or a false picture of the transaction. Let's keep going. He said that he hadn't got the money in his account yet. Mr. Walsh told the Salomon Gundy account that the bank had put a stop to the transaction because it thought it was a scam. He even told the scammer that the pair should speak in code to avoid the tax man.

The code Mr. Walsh chose to use was all terminology from the Gaelic Athletic Association sport of hurling. Now, if you don't know what hurling is, don't worry, I didn't know either, so I looked it up. Hurling is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic and Irish origin. It's been played for more than 4,000 years. It has a lot of similarities to Gaelic football, such as the field, the goals, number of players, etc. The objective is to use a stick to get a ball into the other team's goal.

The sport looks like a mix of field hockey and lacrosse to me, and it looks really intense. So Mr. Walsh told the scammer that they would use terms from this sport as code. So high ball would now be code for money, short puck out would now be the name for transaction, county final would be the word for business, and the square would be the word for PayPal. I love this. This is ridiculous. Anyway, the scammer was worried because he hadn't received the 50,000 pounds in his account yet.

So back to the article. I said they don't want to release the funds unless, a no serge, they see a small sum of money going from his account to my account just to prove, para demostrar, this isn't a scam, said Mr. Walsh. He fell for it then. After 25 pounds had been transferred into the student's account, he let the scammer in on his own scam with another hurling analogy. He said, Solomon, I want to give you some advice.

One thing you need to understand about County Final is never trust a short puck out. Which, without the code, translates to one thing you need to understand about business is never trust a transaction. Mr. Walsh also forwarded the invoice for his 25-pound donation to a cancer charity to the Solomon Gundy account. He said, I'll always give it to a good cause to get good use out of the money, because for all I know, that's someone else's money.

Mr. Walsh said he has never reported these accounts to the police. The Solomon Gundi account has since been shut down, according to Mr. Walsh. That story was from the BBC website. One last vocabulary check though. There were two phrasal verbs in there that I wanted to talk about. The first one is to fall for something. It means to believe a lie or a trick or a scam in this case. The sentence from the news article was he fell for it then. In other words, that's when he believed the scam.

And the other phrasal verb was to let someone in on something. This one means to inform someone of a secret. The sentence from the article was after twenty-five pounds had been transferred into the student's account, he let the scammer in on his own scam. So that's when he revealed to the scammer that he was tricking him. That was a long one. A lot of vocabulary there. Hope you have somewhere to write these down. I enjoyed reading it though. I can't believe he fell for it.

What a satisfying ending. The scammer gets scammed. You have to watch out for those scammers. A friend of mine almost got scammed recently, but he didn't. He realized just before sending out a package that there was something fishy, something strange about everything, and he decided not to go through with it, not to continue with the transaction. And then later he was able to confirm that it was actually a scam. So Okay, moving on. Let's continue with another piece of strange news.

This one happened a few weeks ago in China, and the headline reads Fugitive on run for 17 years, found living in cave by a drone. Chinese police have arrested a fugitive who'd been, que había estado, on the run for 17 years after they used drones to spot his cave hideout. To be on the run means to be escaping the law, running away from the police. And the verb to spot, spelled S-P-O-T, means to see or find. So the fugitive was spotted by a drone, right?

Yangshan police received clues about Song's whereabouts in early September, they said on their WeChat account. By the way, the word whereabouts is another way of saying where someone is or was at a specific point in time. Those clues led them to mountains behind his hometown in Yunnan province in southeast China. After regular searches failed to find anything, authorities sent additional drones to help the officers.

The drones eventually spotted or found a piece of steel, a blue piece of steel on a nearby cliff, and traces of household rubbish. Police then moved in on foot and found Song in a small cave where he had been hiding for years. According to the police, the man had been living in seclusion for so long that it was difficult for him to communicate with the officers. State media said Song had used plastic bottles to get drinking water from a river and branches of trees to make fire.

He has since been sent back to jail. Wow. Drones for the win. Okay, I have one more. This last one took place in Scotland around a month ago, and I think it's a really funny headline. It says cops shut down massive 3,000-person game of hide and seek at IKEA. Hide and seek is that game where you have to hide, esconderte, and everyone looks for you. Anyway, it says more than 3,000 people planned a giant game of hide and seek at an IKEA store in Scotland.

But a team of police officers weren't playing around and broke up the fun, according to reports. A good phrasal verb there, to break up. In this case, it's not about a couple breaking up or separating. It means to disperse and to put an end to something. Let's keep going. So they planned to turn convertir the furniture store in Glasgow into an impromptu playground on a Facebook event page last week, prompting the store to call police, according to the Scotsman newspaper.

Five cops stayed at the shop for the entire day on August 31st to see if people were looking for a cheap desk or actually looking for the perfect place to hide. One of the customers said, People are stopping everyone who looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek. Ultimately, there were no arrests and no major issues for cops to deal with, a representative for the store said. So it continues.

Players hide in everything from refrigerators to bed frames, and they say the 300,000 plus square foot shops are the perfect spot to play. That sounds like the most fun ever. I'd love to participate in one of those. But I can also see why it would be annoying if you're working there to have a bunch of people running around and trying to find the ideal place to hide. But it does sound super fun. Okay, moving on. Oh, I got that story from the New York Post, by the way.

I'll put up links to each story in the description of the episode so you can check them out if you'd like. It does help to read while you listen. Speaking of which, if you would like me to send you a transcript of the episode to follow along while you listen, then no problem. Let me know on Instagram or Twitter at Englishwithdain. And if you don't use Twitter or Instagram, then feel free to send an email to Englishwithdain at gmail.com.

Several people have already requested them and they should have received the transcripts just as the episode aired. So just to recap, this episode will be the last one from season one, and season two of English with Dane is coming soon, so stay tuned. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iVoox, or wherever you listen. And remember, the best way to support English with Dane is to give it a five-star rating and share it with anyone who you think would enjoy it.

Alright, thanks for listening. Bye bye.