Critical thinking news - beware of fake countries!

Just wanted to highlight an amusing report from Australia about a pair of con-men who formed a fake bank from their fake country and started printing up their own currency to spend. After speaking to a few of my Austalian collegues I found that these crooks have pulled this kind of scam before in the past. They go to jail for a few years, are released, then create a new "country" and continue scamming.

There is a reason why they do this - because they successfully either con people out of money or manage to use their fake money to pay expenses. People actually accept money from a fake bank/country.

Now while this is a rare anomaly, creating your own country, it is not new. Check out the wikipedia entry on
micronations. Over history there have been many of these, but the trend has been on the upswing in the last few decades, especially in Australia. Why Australia I have no idea, maybe because there are so many Pacific Islands out there with weird names (Vanuatu, Niue, Nauru etc) who's going to bother to check if one is legit or not? Sometimes these things are used by crooks, but other times it is used by deluded people as some form of tax protest - declare your own country therefore you don't have to pay taxes to that mean ol' government!

I think Family Guy did a parody of this once, the big guy declaring his house and yard a separate nation (for whatever reason).

Lesson to be learned - if you've never heard of a country, or don't know what their currency looks like when you're offered some, don't take it until you do some research. Beware of fake countries.