"I'm a detective, mate," he said. "Silly Fraud Office."
"I'm sorry?" I said, thinking that I may have mis-heard him.
"A detective. Silly Fraud Office," repeated the man. "You've heard of the Serious Fraud Office, right? They deal with the Conrad Blacks of this world, the major financial tricksters. Well, there's an awful lot of silly fraud going on as well. That's where my department comes in."
"I see!" I said with considerable surprise in my voice. "What kind of things do you investigate then?"
"Well, I can't speak about any current cases. But I'll give you some examples from a few years ago. One time there was this gang of particularly nasty silly villains who cheekily named themselves Cereal Swindlers. They set up a nationwide network of forgers who would buy boxes of cereal which had a special offer of a little plastic toy if you sent in 5 coupons from the packet. Some of their early attempts at forging these coupons were pretty crude. But after a while they started to use more sophisticated techniques and the folks over at Kellogg's and Nestlé were unable to distinguish their work from the real thing. We estimate that as many as 450 little plastic cars, action figures an twirly rainbow spinning tops fell into the hands of these villains and were then sold on the black market for whatever price they could get. They were completely oblivious to the fact that they were depriving children of the life lesson of diligently cutting out and saving up their coupons over a number of weeks."
"Really?" I said while mentally starting to calculate how much of my hard earned taxes might be going to fund this department.
"No lie mate. The bastards had no scruples whatsoever. Here's another example. This one happened back in the days before entrance to museums became free for all. Those were dark days and dark days often see the rise of dastardly characters. You may recall that you could get into museums free or half price if you had a Blue Peter Badge. Another group of forgers started churning out their own Blue Peter Badges and handing them out to members of their underworld organisation so that they could go round dressed as schoolchildren looking at the bones of dinosaurs, old paintings and really stupid modern sculptures without paying their share for their up-keep.
"We sent a few of our boys into the most popular venues disguised as janitors and museum guides. It was fairly easy to catch out the culprits in the end. They made the mistake of being actually interested in the exhibits (one actually did some sketches) rather than just charging around the museum shouting, laughing at phallic statues and trying to think up ways of getting to snog the girl who developed breasts before all the others.
"Some of them were really hard to break when we got them back to the station. They just stayed in school-child character and refused to cooperate with our questioning. Because we couldn't prove their age, we had to get a Duty Social Worker to sit in with them. But one of my colleagues came up with an ingenious method of sorting out the real villains from the occaasional actual schoolchild we picked up who turned out to be just a really dull swot.
"We leave a brand new all singing and dancing mobile phone on the desk along with a packet of cigarettes and then make an excuse to leave the room. When we returned, nine times out of ten, if it were a swotty kid, they had found out how to play sudoku or chess on the phone and were happily sitting there wiling their lives away with mental stimulation. The real villains virtually never touched the phone or if they were clever and rumbled our little game, they would try but fail dismally faced with the baffling array of options presented on the screen. Sometimes they would take a photo of their ear by mistake." The detective concluded his tale.
"I don't want to be rude about your profession, mate. But aren't these things all a bit trivial? Surely the money you spent solving these petty crimes could be put to better use," I questioned him.
"I often get this question. We believe it is very important to nip these things in the bud. To show the silly ne'er-do-wells where the line is that must not be crossed. If we didn't do something with these cases, where would it end? You'd have people up and down the country opening bank accounts under false mustaches, sending paintings into competitions saying they were 8 1/2 years old when they were actually 9, getting into the pictures half price by sending the short kid whose voice hasn't broken yet to buy the tickets while the others hide near the pick and mix. The economy would be in ruins. This let the little things slide attitude is what is leading this country to the brink of ruination."
Just before he finished this speech, the chap stood up with a flourish of patriotism , clenching his fist in defiance before I ushered him towards the next exercise machine shaking my head slightly with incredulity.
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