The Versace and Prada threads should have sounded alarm bells. Oh, and let's not forget the Louis Vuitton bags, the limousines, and penthouses overlooking Sydney Harbour...
By the time the 14-year-old boy's mom caught on, her son had masterminded an eBay scam which netted him A$200,000 and the collusion of Australia's four biggest banks.
Although the boy can't be identified, he was arrested at school once his frauds were linked to an IP address on a classroom computer.
Of course rather than deal with her son, the Sydney woman is suing the banks -- the Commonwealth, ANZ, Westpac and National Australia Bank -- for damages.
Apparently the boy auctioned non-existent items like laptops, mobile phones and watches on eBay, earning more than A$6,000 a day.
After the boy began booking A$4,300 penthouses and hiring limos to go to the beach, his mom ultimately found a log book detailing the false transactions which were deposited into several different bank accounts.
Though his mom repeatedly tried to warn the banks that her son was a minor, they defended their position and would not speak to her due to "privacy concerns."
Since 2007, his mom has allegedly handed over her son to the police 15 times.
It's staggering to think a 14-year-old boy could open bank accounts so easily. Shame he didn't put those entrepreneurial skills to good use on Dragons' Den.
When Jill Filipovic opened her suitcase after a flight, there was a surprise for her. A handwritten note by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials saying, "Get your freak on, girl". That advice after the TSA discovered a vibrator in her checked luggage.
Though Ms. Filipovic purposely left the Silver Bullet out of her carry-on, the TSA made the find nonetheless and couldn't resist passing commentary.
“Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok," said writer and attorney, Ms. Filipovic, "but I also just died laughing in my hotel room."
While she initially saw the funny side of TSA’s “love note,” she has since pondered the behaviour of airport security, and plans to file a formal complaint since the note takes invasion "to another level."
At the blog Feministe, the floodgates opened as commenter's shared their own humiliating experiences:
“About six months ago on a flight to NY, I checked an old duffel and received a kind note from TSA informing me that the condoms in the bag had expired.”
The incident isn't the first to raise privacy concerns against the TSA. Last month a breast cancer survivor was aggressively patted down, while safety officials in Los Angeles somehow managed to miss a loaded .38-caliber handgun which fell out of a duffel bag.
What, are you 14 years old? Get with the program, guys, and do your job.
It was a flight for the memory banks, for sure. When Balvinder Singh Ahuja from Brampton, Ont., was on his way back to Canada after visiting family in India, the last thing he expected was to find himself donning the metaphorical hospital greens.
While flying over Kazakhstan, the Air India crew made the 'Is there a doctor on board?' announcement. By happy coincidence, there was.
"So I went back and saw this lady laying on the floor — and her husband was sitting there — and she was quite in pain and these air hostesses said, 'She's pregnant and she's in labour,'" says Dr Ahuja, who was a pediatric doctor in India before coming to Canada.
The doctor, who isn't experienced at delivering babies, "improvised", using Scotch to sterilize the scissors and a microwaved blanket to warm the baby.
"I needed something to clamp the cord at the maternal site. So for that, one of the air hostesses said she's got a sewing kit. So we took threads from those needles and used those threads to tie the knot," he said.
A baby girl named Aakash -- which aptly means 'sky' in Hindi -- was born 45 minutes later, at 11,000 metres, weighing a healthy seven pounds.
Mom and babe were upgraded to first class immediately following delivery, and rushed to hospital in Toronto upon landing, about nine hours later. They are said to be thriving.
Like many foreign-trained doctors, Ahuja isn't licensed to practice medicine in Canada, and would need to be re-certified. Still, he claims the delivery was the highlight of his 25-year career.
There is no mention that the baby came prematurely. A very good reason for not flying past 36 weeks' pregnant!
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