Qantas bomb hoax

I was watching 20 to 1 Hoaxes Cheats, and Liars with Bert Newton the other night and was quite impressed with this one.

On 26 May 1971, Peter Macari rings up Qantas and claims that he’s planted a bomb on one of their planes. He wants $500,000 in $20 notes. It’s apparently altitude triggered so the plane can’t land without exploding. He proves that this isn’t a hoax by directing police to an airport locker where he’s put a identical functional bomb. Police were so disorganised they bungled the money drop. Peter rocks up in his van and was able to safely collect the cash. How’s that for easy money? I can’t think of any way that police are able to call the bluff. They had no choice but to deliver the cash. It took an anonymous tip for Peter to get caught. By that time though, Peter had already gone through a quarter of a million of Qantas dollars.

However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. On 4 July 1997, a copycat extortion was attempted but this time round, Police and Qantas had smartened up and caught the copycat artist themselves.

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