My brush with crime - faces not shown

[The_Traveler]

This picture below (with me in the mirror) was taken in the town of Siem Reap, Cambodia. I was doing a little work shooting pictures for a woman who was doing hotel 'reviews' (checking facilities and such for a travel magazine) and we ran across this little gallery ostensibly that collected funds for a local charity that ran an orphanage. The man, with his back to the camera, was a Canadian who lived in Bangkok and was visiting long term in Siem Reap. The woman decided to collect some information for a possible story on the charity and arranged an interview with the Cambodian who was the charity's secretary and 'ran' the gallery. THis Canadian was there and did all the talking. He said that he had been a newspaper man, written some business books under a pen name but he totally refused to give us his pen name, tell me the paper he worked for or anything concrete about his background. Although he presented himself as an unpaid adviser and benefactor, he did all the talking and the ostensible local person in charge just sat there. He totally refused to have his picture taken and the only fact he mentioned that he had always been in the Rotary Club.

I was really uncomfortable with this guy and, when I got back to the US a week later, called the Rotary Clubs in the big Canadian cities, telling them I was trying to verify his employment history. I finally reached someone who actually knew him and they had the same back story - newspaperman, author etc - but it turned out that this guy had supplied all the details himself and no one knew what the newspaper was. So I started calling newspapers using the verification story and about the 10th one I called I struck the place where he worked.

It turned out he had been in the newspaper business but he was in charge of the trucks that delivered the newspapers and he had never been known to write a letter let alone books, plural.

So I called my friend in Siem Reap and it turned out this guy was, by then, under a cloud for some possibly shady dealings involving land sales to the charity and had been much too friendly to some of the younger orphans. He had fled Cambodia and was possibly living back in Thailand.

No wonder he didn't want his face in any picture.

 

[oldhippy]

Sad but I think true a lot a times.