Thursday 26 November 2009

Stop! You're Hurting My Head


Alternative headers:

I can't believe I just read this!

You cannot be fucking serious!?

What fucking planet are you living on?



Cheating the parents of Madeleine McCann might turn out to have been a bad move.

Ken Halligen is currently under arrest and is likely to be charged with three separate different sets of offences. The first is the one he was actually arrested or, which appears to be trying to skip out on a hotel bill.

The second is rather more serious and he is under indictment in hte US for this one: ripping off a firm of lawyers working for Trafigura:

Two weeks ago, he was indicted in the US on charges of wire fraud and money laundering over a false contract with lawyers acting on behalf of Trafigura.

A report from the FBI said that he was wanted for conning the law firm of $2.1 million (£1.26 million) between November 2006 and January 2007. He had supposedly promised to use the funds to secure the release of two of the company’s executives, but allegedly fled and used the money to buy a mansion.

But the one that's most likely to get him into serious trouble is the way that he allegedly ripped off the campaign to find Madeleine McCann.

A 48-year-old man wanted by the FBI who allegedly defrauded people across the world, including the Madeleine McCann fund, was arrested last night at a hotel in Oxford.

Kevin Halligen, from Surrey, was hired by the Find Madeleine fund as a security consultant. His Washington-based company, Oakley International, was awarded a six-month £500,000 contract by the fund, but Mr Halligen allegedly disappeared with £300,000.

Essentially he said that he had access to satellite imagery of the area where Madeleine McCann vanished and records of phone calls from that night. What he actually handed over seemed to have been a print out from Google Maps.

And why is this going to get him into more trouble than the other two? Well, imagine that he does get found guilty and ends up doing some time. What would you like to be known for while in jail or prison? A standard hotel fraud? Ripping off some lawyers? You'd probably get a slap on the back for that second. But ripping of the McCann's?

No, life would not be fun under those circumstances.. Tim Worstall


Get real man, get a life, if he serves time here he'll be a goddamn hero, it will be a walk in the park compared to thirty years in some Yanky hell hole.

Life won't be much fun for somebody else if he ever ends up where he belongs, you know the one I'm talking about, your hero Saint Gerry of Rothley, under the circumstances...